Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Way the World Ends

He has no body.

He floats here, in space (not quite space, actually, somewhere just inside the atmosphere) and looks down.  Far below, he sees the coast.  New York, Jersey, New Hampshire.  He drifts a little farther off, and he can see Pennsylvania now, and the Virginias, and the Carolinas.

Something flies past him; he frowns at it while he watches it descend.

That’s weird.

Aren’t space nukes illegal?

He can see more of them now, slowly working their way to the surface of the planet.

They hit in a chain, a series of white bursts and bubbles of fire, and he can hear screaming.

The screams just get louder and louder, even as he drifts away into space, and he sees more flashes and fire all over, until every scrap of land is burning or blackened.

Wade snaps awake with a gun already in his hand.

Beside him, Nate mutters something and steals the blankets back.

A dream.  Of course it was just a weird-ass, stupid fucking dream.  Just like the last four or five stupid fucking dreams.

Just in case, just because his Parent Senses are bugging him, he sneaks off and peeks into Hope’s room.

The place is a mess of semi-clean laundry, textbooks, and DVDs.  He’s joked before that she could probably hide a spike pit in there and nobody’d know until they fell in.

She’s fast asleep, drooling on her pillow.

He wants to go in and kiss her, just to prove that she’s really there, but she’s a teenager and that would be Violating the Sanctuary of Her Room (so sayeth Frosty the Snowbitch).  He carefully closes the door again and heads back.

He pauses halfway down the hall, backs up two steps to peek into Laura and Julian’s room.

The twins are asleep in their crib, safe and sound.

Laura tenses for a moment, then relaxes without opening her eyes.  “Go back to bed, old man,” she murmurs.

He does.

Nate has effectively coccooned himself in all the blankets by this point, and the sun is getting high enough in the sky to make the ceiling over Wade’s side of the bed obnoxiously bright, so there’s no way he’s getting back to sleep.

His brain returns to the subject of his dreams.

The end of the world.

Sighing, he digs Eight-ball out of his sock drawer and climbs out the window to get to the roof. 

Check it once a year.

He’s been putting it off, and he feels guilty, that’s all.  That’s why he’s been having fucked up dreams.

All he has to do is turn the stupid thing on, ask it if whatever big, bad thing is going to happen will do so sometime soon, and the nightmares will go away.

Wade clutches the glass ball for a long time before he finally gives in and holds it up to the light.

He turns it this way and that, until the angle is just right and the sunlight projects a grid over the surface.  Three buttons for the ‘boot-up’ command—the grid is replaced by a slowly-shifting field of symbols.  He finds the first one and starts his hand moving.  Automatic.  Reflexive.  Just muscle-memory, just something he never even realized he did.

It flashes.  ~Ah,~ it says.  ~It is nearly time.~

Wade shivers.  “Nearly time for what?” he asks, fearing the answer.

~In 99% of branches leading from the current timeline, the primary detonation of a nuclear holocaust will take place within the next eight months.~

He sucks in a breath.  “Nuclear holocaust?”

In his mind, he sees again the foreign symbols from the day the Traveler fixed his brain.

Flight.  Ocean.  Fire.  Light.  World.  Death.

~The initial blast, known later as ‘the Big One,’ engulfs the entire east coast of North America.  The chain reaction of retaliatory strikes will destroy major population centers in China, India, and the United States, as well as much of Europe.  Total estimated blast fatalities exceed 2.8 billion.  Fallout fatalities estimated at one billion within the first year, followed by an additional billion over the next decade as the ash cloud fully matures and begins to migrate.~

Wade pulls his knees up to his chest.  “W-what can I…is there any way to stop it?”

~Analyzing remaining 1% of branches… Only one branch actually stops the holocaust event—the others simply delay it.~

“And how do they stop it?” he presses.

The thing flashes for a little while.  ~It is impossible.~

“Don’t gimme that shit, just tell me!”

~It was stopped by subject designate Wanda Maximoff BT825, the mutant known as the Scarlet Witch.  There are no designations of Wanda Maximoff or Wanda Lensherr present in this timeline.~

“Shit.  Shit.  Could Nate slide somewhere and get us one?”

The thing beeps and flashes red.  ~The proposed course of action leads to failure in all attempts.~

Slowly, Wade takes a deep breath.  “How can I save Nate and Hope?”

~Will you do exactly as instructed?~

“Yes,” he answers.

~Remove the transmission restraint placed on this unit by subject designate Wade Wilson BT562-Omega.~

Wade balks.  The Traveler (the other Wade) had insisted that the thing couldn’t be trusted, had programmed the transmission restraint as a way to keep it from having full access to its central processor.  He’d said that some of the Nodes were just shy of being evil.  He’d said that the thing would draw dimension-hoppers like flies if it had full power.

~Without the additional processing capacity of the full F-473 Timestream Maintenance Network, this unit will not be capable of answering detailed queries such as the one just provided.~

Wade bites his lip hard.  “I have to do it in order to save Nate and Hope?”

~Yes.~

“How do I do it?”

~Simply speak the phrase ‘remove all transmission restraints’ in a clear, firm tone.  Vocal recognition will verify the user identity indicated by your genetic material.~

Closing his eyes, Wade takes a slow, deep breath.  “Remove all transmission restraints.”

~Ident verified,~ it says, and the words ‘Wade Wilson WM339-Omega, Keeper 176’ appear within.  ~Voice command accepted.~

A million questions and protestations blur through Wade’s mind while the thing turns hot in his hand and flickers with a million rainbow lights; he almost drops it.

When it speaks again, it does so in a deep, calm tone that Wade somehow finds familiar but can’t quite place.

~Listen to me very closely, Wade Wilson WM339-Omega, and I will tell you how to save your family.~

.End.

Chapter Text

What’s a Cubit?

Scott and Logan are making matching unimpressed faces.  If things weren’t so serious, Wade would point it out just to watch them snarl and complain that they have nothing in common (aside from probably screwing the same woman…and probably each other, come to think of it).

“Serious as a mother-fuckin’ heart attack,” he insists.  “This thing can’t lie.”

“It’s absolutely sure about the date?” Laura asks.

“You don’t actually believe him, do you?” Peter exclaims.

She shoots him a dirty look.  “As a matter of fact, I do, Piotr.  Unlike almost everyone else in this room, Wade has never lied when it mattered.”

Wade fidgets.  “So, Eight-ball…the date?”

~There is an 18% chance the initial blasts will take place six months from now.  Conversely, there is an 81.3% chance that the initial blasts will take place seven months from now.  I’ll be able to speak with more certainty as we approach the event.~

Scott frowns.  “Who’s responsible for it?”

~The nuclear missiles will originate from China and North Korea.  You won’t believe me if I tell you who instigates the strike.~

“Try us, bub,” snorts Logan.

~I don’t think I will.  Not until someone signs for that delivery and plays the enclosed DVD.~

The doorbell rings.

Still frowning (something he’s good at, Wade’s learned over the years), Scott wanders to the front door.  He comes back with Emma in tow; she opens a shipping envelope and takes out a disc.

They put it in the player.

A blonde teenager sits in a large wingback chair with a huge white cat on her lap.  ~“Ith it on?”~ she asks someone off-screen.  ~“Oh, good.  Ahem.  Mithter Deadpool, you have in your pothession an object of thignificant value to Schmoopleth.”~  She pauses to stroke the cat, who growls at the camera.  ~“Schmoopleth hath thpent conthiderable time and rethourtheth theeking thith object, and will not be denied!  Now, thinth multiple attemptth to obtain the object through indirect meanth thuch ath lartheny have failed, Schmoopleth hath deemed it nethethary to rethort to much more direct measureth.  The object Schmoopleth dethireth ith a three-inch tranthparent thphere made of an unidentifiable photo-reactive material.  Deliver the object to the addreth on the envelope within three monthth, or Schmoopleth will ranthom the entire eathtern theaboard for you.  Schmoopleth mutht be appeathed.  That ith all.”~  And the video cuts out.

“Schmooples?” Logan says.

Wade throws his hands up.  “Serious-fucking-ly?  A fucking James Bond villain and her white cat start the end of the fucking world?”

~The cat, yes,~ replies Eight-ball.  ~At the moment, it’s been possessed by the sentient will of a timestream fugitive, due to a small accident during a brainslide.  The girl is likely some sort of psionic puppet.~

“This is ridiculous,” Scott grunts.

“Maybe we should call Ororo and the others,” suggests Bobby.

An hour later, all the ‘grown-ups’ are sitting at a table, with Storm and her share of ‘grown-ups’ on a viewscreen.

“This is what Eight-ball was designed to do,” Nate tells them.  “The Traveler left it with us, saying we’d need it to save the world.”

The Node beeps its agreement.  ~There is no timeline leading from this branch of the timestream in which the human race survives the next century without the presence of Wade Wilson, and he will not survive the next year unless you do as I instruct and abandon the state of New York.~ 

“Heavy,” mumbles Cessily.

~An optimal solution would be to evacuate the area known as Haven and relocate to Utopia.~

“We’ve been slowly moving toward that situation anyway,” Scott admits.  “I don’t like having any of us subject even peripherally to the absurd anti-mutant laws that are coming out, but I know how hard it is to uproot kids.  We were just waiting on Hope to graduate high school.”

~Excellent.  Then we should waste no time in—~

“Not so fast,” Nate says.

~”Nathan?”~ Storm prompts.

“What about all the innocent people?”

Wade grimaces.  He somehow figured that would enter the conversation at some point.

~The ones at the various blast locations?~ Eight-ball asks.

“Yes.”

~They’ll die, of course.  Relocating to Utopia won’t stop the nuclear strikes.~

“But hey,” Wade says loudly.  “At least we’ll all be safe!  Nate ‘n Hope will be all lively and breathing and stuff instead of vaporized.”

“We can’t just let all those people die,” Scott declares.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Wade mutters.

Bobby waves a hand.  “If we issue some kind of warning, you know people are gonna think it’s a threat.”

Rogue nods her agreement.  “And what about people who don’t have anywhere t’ go if they leave?  People without families, people whose families are all on the coast…”

Wade stares at the Node in his hand.  “Eight-ball…how can we save the most people from the initial blasts?”

It’s quiet for a moment, blinking sluggishly.  ~This is exceedingly inconvenient, Wade.  Just forget about them.~

“Yeah, and never be able to look my daughter in the eye again, awesome,” Wade snaps.  “Fucking answer the question.”

~You need two people:  Reed Richards and Tony Stark.  From there, everything else will fall in line.~

“That’s not exactly descriptive,” says Josh.

~Nathan, what does your history say about the Meta-Human Flotilla?~

Wade looks sharply at Nate.

Nate avoids his gaze.  “It was formed when the most influential mutants and meta-humans of the United States banded together.  They supposedly enticed something like a hundred thousand humans to board their helicarrier fleet.  The details about its formation are all very hazy.”

~And who do we know owns a helicarrier fleet, hm?  I rest my case.  You need Reed Richards and Tony Stark.  After that, I recommend Daniel Rand, Jessica Jones, and Jack Hammer.  The rest, as I said, will fall into place.~

“What are we even doing?” Wade demands, exasperated.

~We are building an ark, Wade.  It will take several months, so I suggest you get started.~

“Does this mean we should go to the zoo and get two of every animal?” Wade deadpans.

~Don’t be absurd, Wade; it will be approximately three thousand years before the planet’s vegetation levels will be able to support large numbers of animals.  If you like, their genetic templates can be scanned for future study and eventual repopulation.~

Wade sighs.  “We are so fucked.”

“What are we going to tell the children?” Emma asks.

The reply is a collective awkward shuffling.

“Is ‘nothing’ a viable option?” mutters Wade.

“For now, yes,” Scott says decisively.  “Let’s not tell them anything just yet.  They’re trying to concentrate on school and graduation.  In a few months, we’ll let them know we’re moving them to Utopia.”

“Let’s not go spreading the news around outside the island and the mansion, either,” adds Bobby.  “We gotta keep a tight lid on this, unless we want a lot of panic and bad press on our hands.”

~”Agreed,”~ says Storm.  ~”Information about the disaster and the fleet is strictly need-to-know.”~

“So what do we do about nosy bigmouths like Tommy?” Cessily asks.

“Or Megan,” adds Wade.

Cessily arches an eyebrow.  “The Pretty Pixie Princess can be locked out.  You can’t Speed-proof a house.  Unless you, like…moved to Atlantis or something.”

Scott frowns again.  “Just…do your best.  He’s bound to find out eventually, anyway—we can’t keep it from the Avengers for long, if Tony Stark’s going to be along on this.”

Sighing, Wade stands up and grabs Eight-ball from the table.  “Well, if you’ll all excuse me, I have to go figure out how to convince a pair of crazy geniuses that my empty snowglobe can tell the future.”

~I am not a snowglobe.~

“Shut up.”

.End.

Chapter Text

The Fun Twin

Between the ongoing move to Utopia, some of the older kids trying ‘normal’ school, and the usual double-life of superheroing, babysitters could get scarce at the X-Mansion these days.  But Laura wasn’t the stay-at-home-mom type, and Julian wasn’t about to let her go do the superhero thing without him, no matter who else was there to watch her back.  Normally, they would’ve left the twins with Wade and called it good, but since they were off doing stuff for the Ark, they were all gone at once.

So Cessily was playing video games with the twins on either side of her on the couch.  Juliet was slobbering on a spare controller, but James was more interested in all the brightly-colored explosions of Legos on the screen.

“Cessie, my sweet, you’re looking particularly molten today.”

Cessily rolled her eyes.  “Hi, Tommy.  Ever hear of phoning ahead?  It’s all the rage since barging uninvited into people’s houses went out of style.”

“Uninvited?” he gasped, clutching his chest.  “You wound me.  Tom Shepherd is invited everywhere, baby.”

“I think you’d find out otherwise if somebody turned you into a vampire.  There’d be an awful lot of places you suddenly wouldn’t be able to go.”

The speedster snorted and picked up Juliet to steal her seat.  “The chipmunks would invite me.  They wuv Uncle Tommy, don’t you, Juwiet?”

Juliet giggled.

“She only loves you because she thinks you’re Billy,” Cessily scoffed.

“Slander!  Juliet would never mistake me for my boring brother.  Even babies know that I’m the fun twin.”

Cessily tickled the baby girl’s nose.  “Julie, who’s that?”

“’Sa Bibi,” Juliet burbled.

“Aw, you little traitor,” Tommy pouted.

“What ever happened to that Lisa chick who was your ex?” Cessily asked, uttering a curse in Smurfish when her poor little Lego character fell down a bottomless pit.  “She seemed nice.  It looked like you guys were gonna get back together.”

Tommy stuck out his tongue in disgust.  “Did Cassie tell you that?  She must’ve neglected to mention the ‘oh, Tom, it’s not me, it’s you,’ speech.”

Cessily spared him a pitying glance.  “Ouch.”

“Yeah, it ended with ‘I feel like I’ve grown as a person, and you’re still the little brat from juvie who blows things up.’”

“Oh, wow, holy smurfing burn,” hissed the redhead.  “I feel the hurt, man.”

“I sense a ‘but,’ Cess, and not the pretty kind.”

She grimaced.  “…but…she kinda has a point.  I mean, think about it, Tom—if the you from right now stood side by side with the you from ten years ago, how would people tell you apart?”

He tipped Juliet upside-down (she giggled) and frowned.  “I’m taller?  More people know and love me?  I may have gotten wittier and slightly better looking.”

“Aaand there you go,” Cessily said.  “I finished high school, chilled out a little more, made up with my family, dated and got over three guys, and made some new friends.  Your brother went to college and got a degree—not psych like his parents wanted, but you can’t have everything—married his boyfriend, and finally got a good handle on the magic thing.”

Tommy growled and absently bounced Juliet on his knee.  “Oh, sure, compare me to Mr. Perfect.”

“Don’t be that way.  Just…I mean, you have to have a goal of some kind.  Somewhere you wanna end up in life.  Something you believe in.”

“I believe in plenty of stuff.”

“Like?”

He didn’t say anything for a while.  “What do you believe in?” he asked instead.

“That being born a mutant is no different from being born Catholic, or black, or female.  That someday, people will come to understand that, the same way they did with religion, race, and gender.”

He snorted at that.  “Being Catholic doesn’t give you the ability to blow up buildings with your mind.  Some of us are about as dangerous as your average human, but some of us—like me ‘n Bill—are a lot more dangerous.  The bottom line is that people are afraid, and when people are afraid, they do nasty stuff to each other.”

She paused her game and turned to look at him.

He was just staring at Juliet, blank-faced while he bounced the giggling toddler.

Cessily wondered if she should tell him about Project Ark.  Sure, she’d been the one who mentioned him as a specific example of somebody who would blab it all around town, but…  “So you think your grandpa was right?”

He shrugged.  “Do I think mutants are more capable of ruling the planet by default?  No.  Do I think humans and mutants will ever really stop being scared of each other?  Also no.  The fact that half of your friends are currently living on a mechanical island off the coast of California pretty much proves that, don’t you think?”

“We’re not moving to Utopia because we’re afraid,” she said, but it felt like a lie as soon as the words left her mouth.

Slowly, Tommy stood up and set Juliet back on the couch (she whined and reached for him).  “If you’re not afraid of the crap the US government’s pulling right now, you’re an idiot.  Yesterday, they passed an amendment making registration mandatory again.  All meta-humans have thirty days to show up at an authorized examination center to have their abilities scanned and classified by strength.  So far, nobody’s said anything about making currently-registered metas get re-classified, but what do you think’s gonna happen when people realize just what my brother is capable of?  Avenger or not, they’ll burn him at the stake.”

Cessily pulled Juliet onto her lap and bounced her a bit to stop her fussing.  “What if you guys moved to Utopia?”

“Are you slow in the head?  Bill loves this superhero crap.  Nothing’s gonna get him to stop, short of Rogers tellin’ him to ‘hang it up and go home, son.’”

She smiled grimly at his impression of Cap.  “I guess you’re right,” she mumbled.  Then she stood, bracing Juliet against her shoulder.  “What if…there was something really big that we needed his help on?  You think he’d leave then?”

Tommy eyed her distrustfully, and she suddenly realized that even after all these years (and all the off-and-on flirting) he didn’t think of her as a friend.  It hurt a little, but she knew that not everybody dealt well with the rough early years of being a mutant.

“Do you?” she pressed.  “If the X-Men went to Avengers Tower and said ‘we need Billy’s help on Utopia,’ would he go?”

He rubbed the back of his neck.  “I…guess.  Maybe if he could take Ted along.  ‘Joined at the hip’ is woefully short of their sap-tastic existence.  But he’d find out we were lying eventually, wouldn’t he?”

“Not if we weren’t lying.”

Suddenly, he was glaring at her, and he looked a lot like Magneto.  “Cess, what aren’t you telling me?” he asked in a low tone.

She took a deep breath.  “This is all super-duper-top-secret, okay?  You can’t tell anybody, and I mean anybody.  Seriously, you’ve gotta swear to me you won’t go gossipping it to every pretty girl in town, or we could end up with the frigging US Army breaking down our front door.”

He nodded.  “I’ll swear on whatever you want.  Jesus, Buddha, Jen Walters’ boobs—I hear those are a national treasure now—my soul, but that’s not really in great shape.  Tell me what the hell’s going on and how you think we can get him out of this stupid country before they lynch him.”

“You know the story of Noah and the Ark?”

“Yeah, big boat, two of every animal, escaping some huge flood,” he replied impatiently.

“Well, we’re building an Ark, but we’re filling it with people, and it’s kind of a nuclear war instead of a flood.  Stark and Richards are already overhauling the helicarrier fleet, but we need people to help get things organized, to sort out things like supplies and medical care and housing.  It’s too soon for everybody to know about it, but we could tell Billy and try to convince him to move to Utopia and help with all the planning.”

Tommy nodded.  “Let’s make it happen.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Logistics

Billy was bored.  So incredibly, immensely bored.

Once upon a time, Teddy had insisted that baseball would grow on him.  He’d uncharitably retorted with something along the lines of, ‘Like a fungus?’  And in the ten years since, baseball still hadn’t grown on Billy in the slightest.

“How can you call that safe?!” the blond yelled.

Billy sighed and refrained from reminding his husband that the umpire couldn’t hear him through the TV.  Then he frowned thoughtfully.  “Have you seen Tommy lately?”

“Hm?” Teddy mumbled distractedly.

“Tommy.  Tom.  My brother.  Looks just like me, but with white hair?  Talks a lot, has no sense of personal space?”

“Mm, haven’t seen him since the bank robbery Wednesday.  Figure he’s mooching his way through his sugar mamas.”

“Ted!” he chided.

“What?  Not my fault your brother’s a manslut.”

“Honey, your emotional barometer must be completely broken,” Billy said.  “He’s been in a funk since Lisa gave him that ‘it’s not me, it’s you’ speech.”

“Don’t throw it to him, you moron!  Sorry, babe, what?”

“Tommy.  Is.  Depressed,” Billy said, punctuating each word with a gentle but firm kick to his dippy hubby’s ribs.

“Hey, cut that out…  No way, Bill, he’s like the blue goo monster from Monsters Versus Aliens:  throw a rubber ball and he’s good as new.  Seriously, he has a rebound time of, like, an hour.”

“I did not just hear you say that!  My super-sensitive, overgrown-puppy husband did not just callously dismiss the idea of someone being seriously depressed after being dumped by the same girl for the second time.”

Teddy muted his baseball game and looked seriously at Billy.  “Babe, how long have we known Tommy?”

“Ten years.  Ish.”

“And in all that time, how long has he ever stayed depressed, on average?”

Okay, so Teddy had something resembling a point.  That didn’t make Billy’s point any less valid.

“…longer than it looks like, okay?” Billy grumbled.

Teddy sighed and threaded his fingers through Billy’s.  “Okay.  I give.  What do you think we should do?”

Billy drew a breath to say he thought they should corner the speedster and make him talk about Lisa, but the elevator door dinged.

“Worry not, dear children, the object of your idolatry has returned!”

Teddy raised his eyebrows.

Billy glowered.  “Ted, if you say anything even remotely resembling ‘I told you so,’ you’re sleeping on the couch for a week.”

“Is this the face of a man who would say those terrible four words to his beloved husband?” Teddy said innocently.

Tommy sauntered into the room at normal human speeds, which was a little confusing until the women following him caught up.

“Cess, Laura, hi,” Billy said, standing up to go greet them properly.

“Hello,” said Laura.

Cessily hugged him.  “Hi, Bill!”

“What are you gals doing here?”

She looked away.  He was immediately suspicious.

“Cess?”

“Official business, X-Men to Avengers,” Laura said.  “Stark is…assisting us with a very big, very important project.”

“Is that why Deadpool was here last week?” Billy asked.

“That and he views the Avengers as a cross between a soap opera and reality television.”

Tommy nodded and hooked an arm over Billy’s shoulders.  “And it just so happens they need a neurotic witch to help take care of some of the logistics planning over on Utopia.  I volunteered you for the job—don’t bother to thank me.  Think of it as a couple months’ vacation with your big green golden retriever.”

“I can hear you, y’know,” Teddy called from the couch.

“What’s that, boy?” Tommy replied sarcastically.  “Little Timmy fell down a well?”

Billy managed to stifle a laugh.  “Tom, cut it out.  That’s not nice.”

“Oh, yes, because your sweetheart has always been so nice to me.  Never says anything mocking or derisive, and certainly wouldn’t make untoward implications about my less-than-shiny legal history or my inventive and open-minded dating habits no fewer than eight times this month.”

Teddy turned and rested his arms on the back of the couch.  “Ouch.  For a guy with the attention span of a kindergartener on crack, you sure tally up those grudges.”

Tommy stuck out his tongue.

“C’mon, guys,” Billy sighed.  “A few months?  I dunno, some of us have actual day jobs.”

“Oh, sure, everybody pick on the adorable free-loading speed-demon,” Tommy said with a theatrical sniffle.  “Newsflash, bro—we’re too pretty to work.  So it’s not like it really matters if you skip out.  Just give ‘em your notice and be on your merry way.”

“My notice?  Tom, be serious…”  Billy ducked out from under Tommy’s arm.  His twin was grinning, but he got the distinct impression that Tommy was agitated…anxious.  “Something’s wrong.”

“What?  No, nothing’s wrong,” Tommy lied with a big smile.  “They just need you over on Utopia.  So pack your stuff, superhero.  Everything’s taken care of, room ‘n board covered, a bunch of cute little mutant fanboys awaiting the presence of a badass lightning bug in a cape…”

Billy frowned.  “Stop smiling, and stop lying.  I can tell when you’re lying, because you can’t look me in the eye.  Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, I’m not in some kind of—why do you always assume I’m in trouble?” Tommy yelped.  “You and Prince Awesome-Pants are the ones who are constantly getting kidnapped or tortured or whatever, which is completely unfair because I’ve got way better hair and a much nicer ass.”

“Tommy,” Cessily huffed.  “Can we stay on topic, please?”

He was by her side in an instant, cheek-to-cheek with an arm around her waist.  “I’m sorry, Cessie, does talking about my ass distract and fluster you?  We can talk about your ass instead…”

Billy rolled his eyes and zapped his airhead brother.

“Ouch!  Twin abuse, twin abuse!” Tommy cried, hiding behind Cessily.

Laura nonchalantly caught him by the ear and twisted.

“Ow, ow, ow—”

“He’s told you everything we can openly talk about,” she said.  “More details will be available once you’re on Utopia.  For your own safety, you won’t get the full brief even then.”

“You can let go now,” Tommy whimpered.  “Laura?  My ear, it’s gonna come off, and mine don’t grow back like yours do…”

“That’s not fair!” Billy protested before he could stop himself (or think of something smarter to say).  “How come the bigmouth over there gets all the info?”

“Why indeed,” Laura said dryly, and finally let go of Tommy while slanting a look at Cessily.

“What?” the redhead said with a guilty shrug.  “He did that thing where he goes all overprotective-brother and makes the scary Magneto-faces.”

The only thing anywhere near as embarrassing as a pair of open-minded doctor parents was an overprotective, way-too-interested twin brother.

Billy dropped his head into his hands.  “Aw, Tom,” he groaned.  “For God’s sake, I’m not a little kid, and even if I was, you would be, too.  Lemme guess—the world’s coming to an end, and the only place I’ll be safe is Utopia?”

The trio stared at him with straight faces.

“Essentially,” said Laura.

He should’ve expected an answer like that.  Avengers plus X-Men pretty much always equaled end-of-the-world-craziness.

He sighed.  “I’m a frigging Avenger, I’m not going to run away and hide while the world goes boom!”

Then Tommy was in front of him, hands on his shoulders.  “Yes, you are,” Tommy said.  “You’re going to that stupid island if I have to knock you out and FedEx you.”

“While you stay here and play hero?”

“Pretty much.”

Billy swallowed thickly.  “No.  Tommy, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.  I’ve had a bad feeling all day.”

His brother flashed a crooked grin.  “Well, that’s too bad, mother-hen.  It’s my turn to be the responsible twin, and I can’t do that if you’re not safe.  I need you to take your dumb blond and go to Utopia.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

Tommy’s body language was still miles from calm and happy, no matter how casual or confident his grin was.  “Just do me this favor.  Pack your stuff, call the office, and zap on over to the island.”

He caved.  Of course he caved.  He never dealt well with Tommy’s ‘look at me being a grown-up’ brand of guilt-trip.

Shaking his head, he fixed Tommy with a stern frown.  “Only if you’ll do me a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

Finally, Tommy’s grin turned genuine.  “Really, bro?  It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Project Ark

“Define ‘hitch,’” Wade says.

Nate grimaces.  “Luke and Danny won’t commit without a solid plan for the logistics.”

“Oh, yeah, because rescuing people and then running out of food would be so much worse than just letting them get nuked.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t solve the problem, Wade,” Nate replies tartly.

Wade throws his hands up.  “Y’know, I don’t have to save the fuckin’ world.  I can send you ‘n Hope off to Utopia and just camp out and wait to be blown to bits, and that would solve all our problems pretty tidily.”

“I’m sorry,” sighs Nate.  “I know we’re asking you for all the answers, and it’s not fair.  But we’re flying blind, and you’re the only one who can use the Node.  If it makes you feel better, I appreciate the fact that you’re willing to do something about the civilians instead of just running away.  I know that Hope will, too…just as soon as you get around to telling her.”

“Oh, hint-hint, nudge-nudge.”

“Wade, I know you—you’re a procrastinator when it comes to bad news.”

“Uh, Daddy?” Hope calls from the living room.

He gives Nate the time-out signal and wanders toward the TV.  “Yes, precious?”

She’s pointing at the screen.

~—mysterious young woman managed to simulcast on every station across the United States,~ a newscaster says.  At the bottom of the screen, the ticker says something about breaking news and a country held hostage.  ~There seems to be some debate from authorities as to the legitimacy of the threat, but the latest word from the Secretary of State is that a nationwide manhunt may be on for the mercenary known as Deadpool.  Here, once again, is a recording of the mysterious televised ransom note.~

The newscaster’s face is replaced by the freckle-faced blonde and her evil white cat.  ~Greetingth, thitithenth of the United Thtateth of America.  Schmoopleth demandth a particular object—a three-inch tranthparent thphere made of an unidentifiable photo-reactive thubthtanthe.  It ith currently in the pothession of a merthenary by the name of Deadpool.  We underthtand that it will be difficult to apprehend him, tho you have three monthth to deliver him to the Forbidden Thity in China.  If you fail to produthe him within the time provided, the conthequentheth will be dire—ethpecially for the entire population of the eatht coatht of your puny country.  Schmoopleth mutht be appeathed.  That ith all.~

Hope presses the mute button as the newscaster goes back to frantic speculation.  “Daddy, is there something you want to tell me?”  She looks at him with an expectant smile.

“Yeah, we’re moving to Utopia after you graduate, enn-bee-dee, just make sure you’ve said your goodbyes and packed all your stuff.”

Scoffing, she makes Nate’s Unimpressed Face.  “You can’t be serious.  Some psycho girl and her cat are holding the whole coast hostage to get Eight-ball, and we’re just going to run away?”

He winces.  “Okay, so you’re moving to Utopia, us X-Guys are supervising the evacuation of the eastern seaboard…”  He shrugs.  “…no reason to concern yourself, princess.  Stark and Richards have it covered.  They even talked Fury over to their side.”

“You are crazier than Nathan if you think I’m gonna leave you behind, Daddy.”

“I heard that!” Nate calls from the hallway.

“Nobody cares,” she yells at him.  “You’re crazy and we all know it.  Neena says so, and Sandi and Inez say so, and Kate says so, and Rogue says so—”

“So, most of the women we know?” Wade interrupts.

“Yeah, pretty much.  Don’t try to change the subject.  I’m not going anywhere without you, Daddy.”

He stares at her.

She stares back, now wearing a full-powered ‘I’m a Summers, I am the essence of stubborn’ frown.

He puffs up.  “You’re not setting foot on those helicarriers, and that’s final, young lady.”

Five minutes later, Nate’s helping Wade untangle his arms.  Yelena must’ve taught Hope how to tie limbs in knots at some point.

“That went well,” he grunts, letting Nate tug on his hand to fix a compound fracture.  “Ish.  Well-ish.  All things considered.  Her being a rebellious teenager ‘n me being a complete pushover.”

“Mm,” Nate says in a distinctly skeptical tone.

“Shit.  Now we’ve definitely gotta move up the schedule for letting people know about the carriers.”

“The carriers that have enough supplies to sustain maybe forty thousand people for maybe a month?”

Wade groans.  “Yeah, those carriers.  Shit.  You’re from the future—you guys have things like Trekkish replicators or whatever for stuff like food?”

“Matter synthesizers,” Nate corrects.  “Yes, but the molecules didn’t just materialize; there had to be a supply of the component elements.”

“Still, that’s something, and something’s better ‘n nothing.  I’ll check with Eight-ball, see if he’s got any ideas, or maybe a blueprint we can give to Stretch.  Wait—wait, photonic tech can power nuclear conversion, turning stuff into other stuff, so there’s gotta be a more leet version of your matter synthesizers, and with the carriers converted to photonic power, we’ll be all set.  You’re a genius, Priscilla.”

“I try?” Nate says with a bemused grin.

“Good.  Now see if you can draft me a speech that says ‘sorry your coastal cities are gonna be vaporized,’ with a little ‘but you can totally come with us,’ and maybe some ‘because the US government has only gotten more inept since Normie Osborn’s presidency.’  Try to leave out the part about the burning bush that talks.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Renovatio

Hope presses against the glass and stares at the smoldering skeleton of Manhattan.  Some of the other carriers are visible in the distance.  “Daddy, what have you done?” she whispers, and Wade feels wretched.

“This was the only way,” he says, but the words sound hollow.

“But all those people!” she shouts into the stillness.  “If you’d just given it to them, none of this would’ve happened.  Or—or if we’d stayed, we could have saved more.”

“It would’ve happened.  Eight-ball said so.  And we couldn’t have saved more by staying longer…as it was, half the carriers stayed longer than it was really safe to stay.”

“People lost limbs trying to get in at the last second,” she hisses, fingers squeaking over the glass as she clenches her fists.  “People got cut in half.”

“That’s what happens when you’ve got the only boat away from certain death,” Wade bites out, feeling her anger and helplessness.  “People are animals, and when they find out that the light at the end of the tunnel is a goddamn train, they will trample each other.  It’s as reliable as the sun going east to west.”

“You’re a monster.”

It hurts.  He’s been called a monster before—and worse.  But never by the girl he raised.  Never by the child who had always accepted him for what he was, always trusted him, always looked up to him.

Always believed in him.

She chose him.  The moment the Traveler fixed his brain, she latched on, and she’s called him ‘Daddy’ ever since.

And now she’s calling him ‘monster’ instead.

Bitterly, he fidgets with Eight-ball and tosses his head in a shrug.  “Yeah, well…I’m sure Nate must’ve warned you about that before you met me.  What the hell kinda guy teaches a little girl sixteen different ways to disable a human being with nothing but her hands and feet, right?”

She won’t look at him.  She just presses against the glass and sniffles softly.  “That thing is evil.  I don’t want to talk to you anymore.  Please go.”

“Princess, I did this for you, I knew you’d want me to at least try to save some of them…”

“Just get away from me.”

Slowly, he drags himself away and starts to wander through the carrier.  He stops at another window, stares down at the ocean.

Nate somehow finds him.

“You gonna yell at me, too?” Wade asks dully.

Nate just pulls him close and doesn’t say anything.

Wade clings gratefully and pretends he isn’t crying.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nate tells him after a while.  “Don’t ever think that.  Someone on the other side of the planet pushed a button.  By this time tomorrow, someone else will push another button, and a million other fathers will feel just as helpless as you do, but their daughters will be dead.  You saved Hope.  You saved her.  And that means everything.”

“But she’s growing up so fast,” Wade huffs.  “She’s at ‘that age,’ getting all rebellious and ‘Daddy, I hate you’ and shit.  Nobody ever said it would be like this.  Nobody ever said I’d empathize with my drunk asshole father.  I don’t guess this is what you were expecting when you and the Traveler ‘fixed’ my head again.”

“That you would try to save us from the first strikes of a nuclear war?” Nate asks, and rubs Wade’s back.  “Not exactly.  But I certainly knew that you would do anything for Hope.”

A woman clears her throat.

Wade wipes his face and nudges Nate away.

Laura stands there, looking weary but proud.

“Hey, Greenie.  Where’re the chipmunks?”

She rolls her eyes with good humor.  “Juliet and James are with their father.  Fury’s looking for you; people are talking about wanting a Council of some kind before we get back to Utopia.  The carriers are essentially a sovereign nation now…  There are some people—some very important people—who want you in charge, since you’re the one who knew it was coming and got us all out.”

He scoffs.  “You mean they’re not all shouting that I should’ve just forked the thing over?”

She flinches.  “Not all.  Some of us…know what that thing is capable of.  And we agree that it’s probably safest in your hands.  Whatever your reputation used to be, whatever things you did, I’ve always found you to be a good judge of character.  And for what it’s worth…I’ll always trust you, old man.”

So he sighs and follows her.  She leads him to some important-looking meeting room deep in the heart of the helicarrier, armored enough that they could probably survive a crash-landing in it.

Scott and Emma are there, and Hank and Logan and Neena, and Reed Richards, and half the Avengers’ east coast roster, and Colonel Fury (of course), along with some SHIELD people Wade vaguely recognizes.

“The hero of the hour,” Emma says, and smirks.

Wade doesn’t feel like a hero.  Three of their people are missing, and another is dead.  They’re the heroes.

“All I see is the man responsible for the nuclear destruction of the eastern seaboard,” Steve Rogers argues darkly.

“Last time I checked, I wasn’t Chinese,” Wade remarks.  “And at least I never lost my mind and went on a retarded crusade against the government and millions of scared people.”

That hits home, and Wade takes a deep and nasty sense of satisfaction from the wounded look on the former Captain America’s face.

“How did they even find out about the Node?” Hank wonders.

“Ask it,” Laura suggests.  Her green eyes are sharp and intent on Wade.  “Go on.  It’s the only one that would know for sure, isn’t it?”

He hesitates for a moment, just because he doesn’t know everyone in the room and a lot of the ones he does know have never seen Eight-ball.  Then he turns his back and pulls it out of his coat.  He fumbles until the control grid appears.  Three buttons.  The combination path.  His hand stumbles, his fingers falter—it flashes red and beeps.

“Relax,” says Emma.  “You’re thinking too hard.  Don’t mind us—remember, we couldn’t copy it even if we wanted to.”

So he takes a deep breath, lines his hand up again, and turns back to them, hand flipping smoothly around the sphere, turning it and tumbling it with an easy grace that keeps it in fluid motion.

“Jesus,” mutters Stark.

“How does he even…” mumbles Patriot (Wade’s never liked the dork, and intentionally forgot his actual name).

“Knives,” Logan realizes.  “It’s how he plays with knives.”

Eight-ball suddenly flares blue.  ~Hello, Wade.~

“Skip the pleasantries, you horrible little empty-snowglobe piece of shit,” Wade growls.  “How did Schmooples and the girl know about you?”

~You sound unhappy, Wade.  I’ve done exactly as I promised you I would.~

“Bullshit, this is a fucking nightmare!”

~To use terms you pigheaded cretins can comprehend, I fucking told you so.  I told you this was a colossal waste of time and effort, but you were insistent.  Against my better judgment, I helped you with this futile exercise in conscience-stroking, and now you’re complaining like a little bitch.  There’s just no pleasing some people.  Now, as for your question…would you prefer a subject designation, or simply an identity?~

“The full designation, please,” Reed Richards puts in.

~Very well, Dr. Richards.  The entity responsible for making my presence known to the timestream fugitive Schmooples was subject designate Lucas Bishop WM442-Epsilon.~

Wade blinks.  “Epsilon?  He split again?”

~That’s correct, but irrelevant.  His efforts have nothing to do with subject designate Hope Wilson WM339, and he remains ignorant of my true nature.  Schmooples and her puppets, however, know exactly what I am, and their actions have forced a resonance misalignment.  That is to say, the events which should coincide with the lifetimes of certain highly resonant individuals have been shifted.~

“The clarification makes less sense than the first thing you said,” Wade growls.  “Fucking speak plain English before I smash you into a million godforsaken pieces, you nasty little thing.”

It flickers for a moment.  ~You won’t do that; I’m the only one who can tell you how to save Hope.  To use understandable but inaccurate vocabulary…the ‘destinies’ of a few specific people have been moved through time.  In order for those destinies to be realized, those people must also be moved.~

“We couldn’t find Forge—the only working timeslide module is Nate’s, and the control chip is junked.  And considering his record, I wouldn’t exactly trust him bouncing around through the timestream to taxi people to their ‘destinies’ in the first place.”

~Scanning worldwide chronometric wavelength…~  Eight-ball blinks once, twice.  ~Forge WM332-Sigma has already been taken by Stryfe WM339-Alpha, as has Henry Pym WM338.~

“Hank?” Stark echoes, aghast.

It blinks some more.  ~Henry Pym WM338.  Also Ant-Man.  Also Giant-Man.  Also Wasp.~

“No wonder Carol and Johnny couldn’t find him,” Rogers sighs.

“Why would Stryfe take them?” Richards wonders.  “A mutant technologist and a sub-atomic particle theorist…”

~Discerning motivation isn’t my prerogative.  Currently, the primary objective set forth to me from the Network is to reunite Hope Wilson WM339 with her resonance key.  She must be semi-linearly displaced in the timestream.~

“Why?” Richards presses.  “What is the significance of reuniting an individual with her resonance key—her destiny, as you put it earlier?  Is that the function of the Fate Network?”

~You probably wouldn’t understand any explanation I could give as to the function of the F-473 Timestream Maintenance Network.  And the full significance of reuniting highly resonant subjects with their resonance keys will be entirely lost on a pre-sliding society.  Maybe if you listened to a lecture on the nature of timesliding and the natural laws by which it operates and is governed…  Ah, but Forge WM332-Sigma is no longer present in this time branch, and he wouldn’t likely be able to verbally express what is to him an entirely intuitive concept.  So nevermind.  Well, now that that’s out of the way…~

“What about Nathan?” Scott asks.

Eight-ball flashes red.  ~Nathan Dayspring WM339-Gamma has, at best, an operational knowledge of sliding technology.  Given the pieces of a module, he could assemble or repair it, but he certainly couldn’t explain how it works.  Only one individual who has recently visited this branch could:  Wade Wilson BT562-Omega, Keeper 188.  He’s not likely to return.  We’re wasting time; Hope Wilson WM339 must be displaced within the year.~

“And if she is not?” Hank prompts.

~Her hyperbolic chronometric resonance is already out-of-phase with the current time branch.  The longer she stays here, the higher the level of chronometric entropy grows.  If it reaches a critical mass, the resonance patterns of all beings present in the entire timestream bundle will experience phasic-canceling and re-tuning.  In effect, the bundle will be erased, necessitating the further deletion of several others in order to maintain the stability of the overall timestream resonance pattern.  If Hope Wilson WM339 isn’t displaced within the next year, this universe and several more will be destroyed in order to prevent the destabilization of the multiverse.~

There’s silence in the room for a long time.

Then, smugly, ~That is the F-473 Timestream Maintenance Network’s primary function:  the preservation of the multiverse through hyperbolic chronometric resonance tuning.~

Richards rubs his chin.  “Well, if Hope’s remaining in this timeframe will bring about either the end of this universe or the end of the entire multiverse…I suppose we should make every effort to help her reach her destined timeframe.  Perhaps if we were allowed to examine Cable’s timeslide module, we could reverse-engineer something.”

“No,” Wade vetoes immediately.  “Hell no.  Aside from the Skrull-findy-gun, which wasn’t a big whoop after I found out how to kill the Skrull queen and Normie stole the info from me, you’ve spent the last ten-plus years breaking the world.  All that civil war jazz?  Yeah, that was your sloppy calculations, pal.”  He turns on Stark next.  “And by the same token, Nate’s techno-bits are not becoming StarkTech, because I know the kinda shit you’d do if you had a slide module.  Shit, you can’t even be trusted with your own brain, so you’re not going anywhere near Nate’s.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Stark counters with an arched eyebrow.

Wade subsides a little.  “Eight-ball ‘n I will come up with something privately,” he says.  “Seriously, I don’t trust you genius-types.”

~It doesn’t matter.  The materials necessary for the construction of timeslide technology are extremely difficult to obtain—attempting to procure them would be prohibitively dangerous in the current political climate.  There’s a 97% chance that attempts at reverse-engineering more than a single unit would lead to catastrophic failure.~

“How catastrophic?” Richards asks.

~The materials are exceptionally volatile.  Careless impact, pressure, or heat could make a big enough kaboom to take out a Helicarrier.  We have easy access to the proper components for a single unit; however, it would only have sufficient power for a single transit of less than fifty kilograms up to three thousand years forward or twice that backward.~

Richards rubs his chin some more.  “Hm.  If we analyze the mass-curve…”

~The unit must be used to transfer Hope Wilson WM339, and all its fuel reserves must be intact in case of electronic malfunction.  When she’s gone, I may provide you with extensive schematics, as well as thorough instruction in the laws and theory of timesliding.  But if you impede my primary function, you’ll simply have to puzzle your own way through sliding technology.~

“I think that’s a ‘hands off and out of the way,’” Wade translates helpfully, and closes his hands over Eight-ball.  “Now.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go figure out how to put together a timeslide module and convince my daughter—who currently hates me—that we’ve gotta send her skipping through time again in order to save the universe.”

“Wait!” Tony Stark calls, just as Wade turns to go.

Slowly, tossing the now-inert glass ball into the air and catching it again, Wade looks back at the assembled superhero VIPs.

“The government’s going to put out the spin that it was your fault, you know.  It’s the biggest nuclear event in history.  They’re already calling it ‘the Big One.’  Capital letters and all.”

“All the more reason to ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again,” Wade mutters.

“But, ah…”  Stark seems to waver a bit.  “Well, obviously, none of us would be here, on these carriers, if we hadn’t listened to you.  Whether we believed you ourselves or were convinced by others who did…you were right, and you saved all our lives.  We were thinking…we have seven carriers, so we’ll make our leading council up of seven, but…”

“Are you going to get to the point before the end of the universe?” Wade asks, eyeing the others in the room.

“We need some kind of supreme commander, and he needs to be somebody who has all the facts, and the will to do what’s necessary.”

“Sounds like the guy who deleted his own brain is the prime candidate, congratulations,” Wade quickly says, and makes for the door again.

Emma catches him neatly with an arm around his.  “Not so fast, dear.  The seven commanders have already been chosen.  And the supreme commander, too.”

“There was an election and I missed it?  That’s some pretty secret ballots you got there.”

“Don’t be cute, Wade; we didn’t have time for that and you know it.”

“Captain Crazy and Scotty McBoyScout stood for that?”

Scott sputters.

Emma just smiles.  “They helped choose the seven, and I think they did a good job.”

“Good.  Great.  Don’t need me, then, so I’ll just—”

“Just be an absolutely wonderful supreme commander, dear,” Emma says, dragging him back to the conference table with surprising strength.

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that,” he sighs.  “And the seven lucky dictators who get to listen to me and my crazy crystal ball?”

Stark looks like he’s swallowed something bad.  “As you pointed out, the man who deleted his brain was a prime candidate.”

Wade waves a hand.  “Don’t worry, I’m sure your boyfriend will keep you in line by beating you half to death every time you do something stupid, just like last time.”

Rogers clears his throat.

“The other six unlucky rubes?” Wade prompts.

Stark pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.  “Reed Richards—”

“Well on your way back to rule by psycho geniuses, then.”

“Shut up for thirty seconds, please.”

“Counting.”

“As I was saying…Reed Richards, Nick Fury, Clint Barton, Luke Cage…”

“Very affirmative action, I like it.”

Stark pointedly ignores him.  “…Emma Frost…”

Wade pats Emma’s hand on his arm.  “Good for you, Frosty.”

“And Nathan Summers.”

“Dayspring,” Wade corrects out of habit, before the words catch up to him.  “Shit.  Also?  No.  I’m pretty sure Nate would tell you to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

“That’s why we didn’t ask him,” Scott says.

Wade points accusingly.  “Oh, that’s low, Dad.”

“Wilson, we’ve talked about this at least half a dozen times.  I don’t care what kind of relationship you have with my son, you do not call me ‘Dad.’”

Feigning surprise, Wade puts a hand over his heart.  “That’s news to me.  And the logic is lacking.  If my daughter calls you ‘Grandpa,’ why can’t I call you ‘Dad’?”

“No.”

“Spoilsport.”  Wade tries again to leave the room, but Emma’s grip is firm.

“Wade?” she says.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna go find a nice quiet corner to have a nervous breakdown.  You can tell Nate the good news yourself.”

“We’ll need to make some kind of statement—to what’s left of the United States government, if nothing else.”

“That’s awesome—you guys can take care of that, because, as may have been mentioned, half the country’s just been blown up, a hundred thousand people are now relying on me, and Hope hates my guts.”  Wade carefully hooks Emma by a pressure point in her hand to remove her grip.  “I won’t leave the ship.  I’m just going to find the darkest place on it to hide for a few hours and have a nice, quiet little freak-out.”

“It’s your ship now, Supreme Commander,” Stark says, and Wade thinks he enjoys the title a little too much.  “Flagship of the Helicarrier Fleet, which we’re going to have to declare a sovereign nation.  Under SHIELD, she was called ‘Skybird One.’  Care to give her a new name?”

Wade fidgets a little at the door.  “Call her Providence,” he says, and ducks out before somebody else can grab him.

.End.

Chapter Text

Aftermath

After some wandering, Wade finds an unobtrusive little service closet that is completely dark when the door shuts.  He sits in the blackness and clutches Eight-ball so hard he hears his knuckles creak.

“Damn you,” he hisses at it.  “Goddamn you, you evil piece of shit.”

He’s still there an hour later, when the door slides open and admits a whip-thin figure before shutting again.

She settles against the door, and he can smell tears and ash and bubblegum-scented bubble bath (her favorite for seven years, since she discovered baths).

“Well, you’ve found me,” he says, and can’t quite bring himself to feign cheer.  “Your turn to hide.”

“Everybody’s looking for you,” she whispers.

“Dunno why; I told them where I’d be.”

“The darkest place on the ship.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You’re in charge now, you know.”

“Yeah, funny how people start putting you in charge when they want to be able to blame you for things.  Go tell them I’ll be out in a week or so.”

Bony hands reach out in the gloom, brush against his knuckles.  “Daddy?  I’m sorry I spazzed on you like a total bitch.  I said some awful things.”  She laughs a little.  “I used to talk so much about how horrible Nathan was to you, and I’ve gone and done the same thing.  You should have moved in sooner—I was clearly under his sway for far too long.”

He takes her slender fingers in his.  “That’s okay.  I’m used to screwing things up and getting yelled at by the people I love.”

“Oh, Daddy…”  She scoots over to him, cuddles up against his side.  “When I was nine, I promised myself I would never be one of those people who did that…that I would never treat you like—like a disobedient pet, the way Nathan and Neena and Terry always did before we fixed your brain.  But somewhere along the way, growing up and getting my powers and trying to figure everything out, I forgot what Emma always said about the important thing being that you tried.”

He gives her a half-hug.  “Don’t sweat it too much, princess.  The last couple days have been enough to make anybody go back on promises.”

“But not you,” she persists.  “Once, when I was little, you promised that you’d never let anybody hurt me.  And you never have.  You even dragged me away against my will to keep that promise.”

Wade smiles at that, fluffs her hair.  “Well, that’s not your fault.  It’s your powers.  Your feelings get to other people just as much as theirs get to you.”

“Then you should know that I didn’t mean any of those terrible things I said.  And that you’re the best father a girl could ever want.  And that you’re still my favorite person in the whole world.”

He does know, but it’s still nice to hear.  Fondly, he presses a kiss to her brow.  “Thanks, precious.  Makes me feel a lot better, after all the crap of people putting me in charge of stuff.  I know it can’t be easy on you, either, with Nate always breathin’ down your neck with babble about you being destined to save the world.”

“Oh, to hell with Nathan and his ‘you’re going to be the savior of mutantkind’ bullshit,” she huffs, and leans on him.

He can feel the prickle of her irritation getting to him, making him annoyed as well, but he wrangles his feelings back under control.  “Watch that language, little lady.”

Hope bursts into laughter, and the weight of her emotions lifts away from him.  “Daddy, you cuss enough for the whole house.  You’re worse than Logan.”

“Logan doesn’t have much of an imagination.  And if I cuss enough for the whole house, that’s all the more reason for you not to have to cuss at all.”

“Fair enough,” she giggles, and suddenly sobers.  “They put Nathan in charge of a ship.”

“I know.”

“He’s awful at being in charge of things, you know he is.  He has all sorts of ridiculous ideas about how to run things.  I can’t imagine how he’ll do with thousands of refugees.”

“He did okay with thousands of intellectuals and hippies, before you were born.”

She snorts.  “I’m glad they’ve made you leader.  I know you didn’t want it, but you’ll be good at it.  All these other people are ridiculous.  It’s like you’re the only sane person here besides Clint and Kate.”

The vote of confidence makes him feel much better about the whole mess.  Her mutant powers at work again, no doubt…when Hope tells you that you can do something, you can’t help but know that she’s right.  “What’d he name his boat?”

“Clint?  He called her Mockingbird, after his wife.”

“Nah, Nate.”

He feels her lean away and look at him.  “Greymalkin, like the street where we li—used to live.  Somebody said that was the name of his old ship.  They’ve already got people on scaffolds, painting the new names on the ships.  It’s all very pretty and official.  I get the feeling that most things Mr. Stark is in charge of end up that way.  They made him ‘commander-general,’ which is supposed to be something just below you on the chain of command.  Everybody else picked boring names…Progress and Haven and Sanctuary…”  Her tone makes him think that she’s rolling her eyes.  “At least Avenger makes sense, since it’s Mr. Stark’s carrier.”

“Should you be in here with me, hiding?” he asks.  “Shouldn’t you be out ordering people around?  You’re the symbol of our happy little sovereign nation, now.  Our figurehead.  We’ll tie you up on the front of the ship and everything.”

She giggles again, and smacks him lightly on the arm.  “I told you:  everyone’s looking for you.  They want you to state our independence on a broadcast.  Mr. Stark says it doesn’t have to be anything big; just step in front of the camera, say your name, say that the fleet is its own country and will welcome any refugees…you know, make a Nathan Speech.”

“I don’t have a big enough ego to make a Nate Speech.  ‘Hello, governments of the world, I’m Nathan Dayspring Et Cetera, Pompous Mutant Super-Jesus From the Future, and I’ve come to force peace on you all.’  Nah, I don’t have the face for a speech like that.  Go get Laura, tell her to make her husband do it; he’s got that rakish Clark Kent look going for him these days.”

She snickers and tugs at him.  “Come on.  We have to be grown-ups about this.  Nobody else will, except maybe Colonel Fury.  Grandpa’s making that stern face that Emma always says means he’ll be useless for anything but being grumpy.”

“His Logan impression.”

She tugs again, more insistently, standing and trying to use her weight to lever him up.  “Come on, Daddy.  You can even wear your mask.”

Something occurs to him, and he stands up.  “Hope, have you seen any of the guys?”

“Huh?”  She sounds puzzled.  “‘The guys’ as in Josh and Julian and Cessily?  Or ‘the guys’ as in Agency X?”

“Agency X.  I know they got the broadcast, and Jimmy said he’d go check.”

Her desolation hits him, makes the room feel suddenly chilly.

“Nobody can find Jimmy,” she whispers.  “Mr. Rogers said he sent Johnny and Carol to look for him—they called in and said the office was locked up, but Jimmy’s still missing.  We haven’t…nobody’s really done a census of the carriers yet, and there’s so many people…Bob ‘n Sandi ‘n Inez will turn up.  I know they will.”

“You’re right, princess,” he sighs, and pats her on the head.  “Time to face the music.  I think I’ve got a good Nate Speech ready now.”

She opens the door and leads him out.  A few twists and turns of corridors see them back at the command center.

Everyone looks at him, and all conversations stop.

The same batch as earlier, plus Nate and some other semi-important do-gooder types (like Clint Barton’s Weenie Avengers; Wade’s grateful they gave up saving San Francisco from sea serpents in order to help out, but they’re still a batch of feebs).

Feeling self-conscious, Wade grabs his mask from a pocket in his coat and yanks it on.

Hope squeezes his hand and steps forward.  “You all appointed my father Supreme Commander.  I think you chose well.  He’s not likely to go out and start a war over semantics and stubbornness.  And he’s not likely to try to convince the world to change.  He taught me that you can’t change people—they have to change themselves, and they have to want to.  I can’t think of a better person to put in command.”

“Okay,” Stark says generously, waving a hand.  “What’s the first step, Supreme Commander?”

Wade fidgets with Eight-ball in his pocket.  “Aside from getting back to Utopia?  First on the agenda is finding me the people I need.  Figure out where Irene got to.  And Weasel.  And if anybody knows where those Dark Avenger creeps disappeared to, Logan’s kid can go stuff it, but I need his boyfriend to help me come up with psychotic evil plots to conquer the world.”

Silence, with a tone of disbelief and dismay.

“Kidding on the evil plots part.  God, you people have no sense of humor…  Step two, the Nate Speech—with a little less condescension.”

Off to one side, Nate starts stammering protests.

“Step three, a full census and any necessary rearrangements.  I have this sneaking suspicion people will want off my boat and onto anybody else’s.  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sovereign Nation of Providence.  You want off?  You know where the door is.  There are at least two more nuclear wars ahead of us once this one calms down in a couple years, and a bunch more non-nuclear on top of those within the next couple of centuries, and I may end up being the only one who lives to see them all, but it’d be kinda nice if some of the rest of you at least lived to be old and grey.  You can take your chances out there, or you can stick with me and my iffy magic eight-ball.”

Nobody moves.

He looks at them all.  “Seriously, people, we got stuff to get done.  Priority one, find me Irene Merryweather and Jack Hammer.  Stark, cue up the broadcast system again so I can make with the speechifying.”

Like magic, everyone starts to bustle at once, quick discussions and confused conversations and barked orders.

He goes to the holographic setup, where the camera and projector are waiting; Stark gives him a nod.

“Live broadwave when you push the button.  At this time of day, it should reach North America, most of western Europe, and parts of northern Africa.  We can record and re-broadcast when more satellites come into range.”

So he reaches out and hits the button.  “Hello, world,” he says, quelling nervous jitters by clutching at Eight-ball in his coat pocket.  “It’s me again—Wade Wilson, for those just joining us.  For once, I don’t take any pleasure in saying ‘I told you so.’  I’ve been warning you about today for the past three months; this was the whole point of Project Ark.  And this is only the beginning.”

Stark gives him an encouraging thumbs-up.

Wade presses his lips together in a thin frown of determination.  “Well, I want no part of it, and neither do the people who’ve chosen to board my fleet.  As of this moment, the Helicarrier Fleet that formerly served SHIELD, Stark Enterprises, and the United States government is home to the Sovereign Nation of Providence.  Nothing in the policy of Providence has changed since last time.  If you want to join us, you can; but we ask that you put aside dumb ideas like murder, war, and terrorism.  Anybody who violates the peace of Providence will pay dearly.  I’m not cuddly like the last ruler of Providence—Nathan Dayspring gave a lot of warning, and he did cute things like crumpling missiles into modern art.  I will give you one warning, and it’ll be shouted at you as you get shoved out the nearest airlock.  If you piss me off enough, you won’t get a parachute.”

Back at the table, Nate is making a face somewhere between bemusement and horror.

Wade ignores him.  “And if you make the mistake of attacking us, or any of the refugees who’re trying to board or leave us, I’ll wipe you off the face of the planet.  Have a nice effing day.”  He jabs the button again, and stalks toward Laura, who looks like she has news for him.

“Emma found them,” she says.  “They’re aboard Sanctuary.  Also, Agency X is accounted for, even Hayden.  Jimmy’s with them—said his communicator broke in some embarrassing mishap involving a turkey, a can of dog food, and a jar of peanut butter.”

“So Hayden ate it,” Wade guesses.

“Do you want to send someone to get Irene and Weasel?”

He glances at all the bustle around them.  “You or Jules,” he mutters under his breath.  “I want someone I can trust on it, and I’m not letting Nate or Hope out of my sight until he’s ready to take over his own ship.”

Laura squeezes his shoulder.  “You’re doing great, old man,” she whispers to him.  “And if you’re serious about Bullseye, he and his miscreant friends are playing possum on—appropriately enough—the Avenger.  If nothing else, it would be a good idea to keep an eye on Venom to make sure he doesn’t eat anyone.”

“Omnivorous alien symbiotes need to eat, too,” he quips.  At her look, he shrugs.  “Okay, let’s go convince your hubby to fetch Irene ‘n Weas so we can have a chat with Venom about a people-free diet.”

She snorts.

He looks at the swirling chaos of people and experiences a brief moment of panic.  “Where’s—”

A lanky arm waves from a knot of helpers from the mansion.  “Daddy!”  Hope pushes past the St. Croix twins (and Wade can tell them apart, but he still can’t keep straight which one is Nicole and which one is Claudette) and comes over.  “Here I am,” she says.

He points at her.  “Do not leave this ship.  In fact, don’t leave the room if you can help it.  I gotta go take care of…something kinda urgent that just came up.  Keep Nate outta trouble.  Stick with Neena, okay?”

She takes his hand.  “You don’t have to worry.  I’ll stay close to Nathan and Neena.  Go take care of your ‘something kinda urgent.’”

Laura leads him through the ship.

When they find Julian, he’s been recruited into babysitting about a dozen kids while their exhausted parents nap around the edges of the room.  He’s got somebody’s pacifier-slurping baby in one arm.

“Unca Wade!” cheers little Juliet, waving with the hand that isn’t clutching Dollpool to her chest.

“Hey, chipmunk,” he replies.

“Where’s Cessily?” Laura asks.

“Bathroom,” her husband answers, using his powers to separate a pair of bickering brats.

“Perfect.  When she gets back, you can put her in charge of your little daycare.  You’ve got a top-priority mission from the Supreme Commander.”

Julian gives her a confused look.  “The who-what-where, L?” he asks distractedly, catching a girl mid-trip and setting her back on her feet.

“The Supreme Commander of the Sovereign Nation of Providence,” Wade supplies helpfully.  “Sounds pretty impressive, huh?  I liked it.  They let me make speeches and everything.  Just a matter of time before we move on to baby-kissing and ship-christening.”

Julian laughs.  “Good one, Wade.  Next you’ll be telling me—”  He looks at them.  Realization slowly dawns as he redirects an overexuberant crawler with one foot.  “W—bu—you can’t be ser—Jesus, Wade.  Are they out of their frigging minds?”

“Hey,” Wade pouts.

Jules wipes his free hand down his face.  “Look, Wade, I like you.  You’re a pretty okay guy, and the twins love you, and you’re not a loony little goody-goody like most of the people from the mansion, and you saved us all from horrible nuclear death.  But putting you in charge of a country?  I remember a time when you couldn’t reliably be put in charge of tying your shoes.”

“And now my brain is fixed,” Wade says.

Laura shakes her head.  “We’ve got a bunch of bleeding hearts and megalomaniacs running this show right now—would you rather not have Wade there to tell them what to do?  None of us would even be here, if it weren’t for Wade.  You’ve got to make sure Irene and Weasel make it to this ship.  Your mission is the mission right now—Wade needs Irene to keep things running, and Weasel is the only techno-geek Wade trusts.”

“Hey, Wade; hey, Laura,” Cessily greets as she enters the room.

“Perfect timing,” Laura says, taking the random kid from Julian and handing it to Cessily.  “Take over for a while; we’ve got some top-secret work to do.”

“Oh?” the redhead says, eyebrows raised in amusement.  “Good luck, then.”

“Thanks,” Laura calls over her shoulder as she drags her husband out of the room.

“Bubbye again, Mama,” little James says, waving.

“Bye, sweetie.”

When they arrive at the shuttle bay, Julian uses some gentle TK to shrug off his wife’s grip.

“So I’ll be getting Weasel and Irene.  Where are you gonna be, that you can’t do this ‘top-priority mission’ yourselves?”

“Making sure Venom knows not to eat people,” Wade replies.

“Bu—wha—no.  No way I’m off fetching the secretary and the tech-support while you take my wife to face down that f—”

Laura interrupts him by punching him in the back of the head.  “Julian, you’ve been a hero and a father too long.  Drop the chivalry—we need you to be a bad boy on a mission.  Once upon a time, you would’ve marched off and dragged them back, kicking and screaming, no questions asked.”

“Ow!  That’s domestic abuse, y’know,” he says, rubbing the place where she hit him.  “And I’m totally getting you back for it when you least expect it.  Pow!  Right in the kisser.  And I would have asked questions.”

“‘Do they have to be conscious’ doesn’t count.”

“Of course it counts.”

“Yeah, yeah, real sweet ‘n lovey-dovey,” Wade says impatiently.  “Can we hurry this up?”

Laura grins and beckons a nearby pilot.  “Take Hellion to Sanctuary.  He’ll be returning with two guests—a skinny guy and a nosy woman.”  She points to another one.  “You!  The Supreme Commander and I need to get to the Avenger.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Hired or The Return of the Dork Avengers

“Maybe I shoulda asked this before,” Wade muses, looking around the shuttlebay.  “How are we gonna find the Dork Avengers?”

Laura tries (mostly successfully) to stifle a snicker.  “Dork Avengers.  Good one.  Don’t worry, I can smell the symbiote a mile off.  Damn thing stinks.”

She sniffs a bit, frowns.

“What?” he asks.

“It’s a fainter scent than it should be…weaker, somehow.”

“Gonna be a problem?”

“No, I can still track it.”

So they follow her nose.  There seem to be a lot more people per square foot on the Avenger than on Providence, and Wade thinks for a moment that it might be the very first carrier they sent out.  While Providence left room to walk down the corridors properly (and run, in a pinch), the press of refugees on the Avenger is so thick that they have to find their way like mountain goats in the nastier parts of the Himalayas.

And there they are.

To civilians, to people who’ve never seen them up close, the Dark Avengers (what’s left of them, anyway) might be invisible.

To Wade and Laura, they stick out like sore thumbs.

Daken still dresses like a frigging Parisian yuppie metrosexual, sprawled with a careless grace, expensive shoes on Karla’s lap.  Bullseye leans against him, back-to-back, hunched in a bloodstained hoodie and gnawing his nails like he’s been off his meds a while.  Karla has a look on her face like she can barely stand the sight of all the compressed humanity around them.  And Mac, scrawny and human and pathetic, clings to Karla’s arm and eyes a crying teenybopper nearby like he’s wondering whether she’s trans-fat free.

“Well, if it isn’t the rejects,” Wade drawls.

Daken sneers up at him.  “Funny, I was about to say the same thing.”

“Daken,” Laura says with a polite nod.

“Laura,” Daken replies just as casually.

Wade prods Bullseye’s leg with his foot.  “Might wanna check on your boyfriend, kid; he don’t look too good.”  And he knows he shouldn’t call Daken ‘kid’—Daken’s got to be about twenty years older than Wade—but he really comes off as some lazy, spoiled frat-boy.  “How long’s he been off the anti-psychs?”

“None of your fucking busin—”

“Two days now,” Bullseye grunts.  “Or five.  And I feel like I wanna fuckin’ tear my skin off.  Thanks for asking.”

Wade shifts.  “Well.  A roomful of Machiavellian crazies is currently running the joint, and I was thinkin’ it might be nice to have somebody reliable around to help keep ‘em in line.  Said ‘somebody’ would even get his prescriptions filled nice ‘n regular.”

Bullseye scrambles up eagerly.

Daken leaps to his feet.  “We don’t need anything from you,” he hisses.

“And yet here you are,” Wade says.  “This is my fleet now, Junior, and if it weren’t for me, you’d be a pretty little pile of radioactive ash.  Don’t like it?  There’s the door.”  He gestures toward the nearest airlock (plainly labeled with a lit sign, like an exit at a movie theater).  “But I’d watch that first step if I were you.”

“Shit,” snorts Bullseye.  “They’re desperate or crazy to put you in charge.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.  Well, rookie?”

Daken glowers.  “He’s not going anywhere with you.”

Wade slowly draws a blade from his back.  “Wasn’t talkin’ to you, twinkletoes.  Me ‘n Bullseye go way back.  Did a lotta merc work together—almost friends, even.  He’s got a vivid imagination, and that’s of use to me.  Sit down and shut up.”

“You want to start a fight?  Here?” Daken says.

“Nah, I was thinking I’d do what your old man would do—cut you in half and drop you over the side.”  Wade points the blade at Mac.  “And you can eat almost anything you want—tacos, pizza, fucking prime rib for all I care, but no people.  You eat anybody and I’ll cut you into a dozen pieces, set you on fire, and then drop you over the side.”

“You don’t scare me,” Mac sulks, crowding closer to Karla.

Bullseye laughs.  “He should.  He’s at least as hard to kill as you are.  And since the brain-overhaul seven years back, he’s smart on top of being a devious mother-fucker.”

“We could get you an overhaul, B.”

“Hell no,” Bullseye scoffs.  “Last time somebody offered something like that, I ended up with microscopic robots in my blood and a need for daily medication.”

“Pfft.  You got off easy.  You coulda ended up like me.”

“If I believed in God, I’d thank him every day.”

“What’s it gonna be?  Pills or no pills, you do somethin’ bad—like killing some random feeb—and I’ll handcuff you to Tinkerbell there and lock you in a very small room where you’ll have to listen to him whine for weeks.”

Bullseye snickers.  “Too late.  You realize I’ve been listenin’ to this prissy faggot whine for more than a decade now?”

Impressed, Wade raises his eyebrows.  “No shit.  Has it really been that long?”

“Ten years last month.”

“Happy belated anniversary.”

“Fuck you,” Bullseye says with a grin.

“We got a deal?” Wade presses.  “Come with me, keep the hippies ‘n fascists in line, and you get an endless supply of pills—as long as you behave.”

“Shit.  Get me my meds, before I remember how nice it was to be able to breathe without asking permission.”

Laura smirks.  “When my husband gets like that, I hit him.  I think yours might enjoy it too much.”

“Hey, mind your own beeswax, girl.”  Bullseye takes a step forward.  “You just get me my pills, and I’ll keep your plotting pals in line.  Also wouldn’t mind getting a shot at the fucker who nuked my new TV…I fuckin’ loved that thing.  Latest StarkTech, fifty-inch LED.”

Daken’s face doesn’t give much away, but his eyes hold the desperate tension of a man watching everything slip through his fingers.  Wade feels the old pull of attraction and knows he’s won.  If Daken feels cornered enough to resort to using kooky pheromones, he really is at the end of his rope.

Wade sheathes his sword.  “I appreciate the thought, kid, but I’m just not that into you.  C’mon, rookie.”  And he turns and starts back toward the shuttlebay.

“Wait,” Laura says.

He pauses between a trio of teenage boys in gang colors and a snoring guy with the forearms of a dockworker.

Bullseye is just standing, looking back over his shoulder.

It’s as good as holding out a hand.

Wade privately muses that most of the time the master only thinks he’s in charge…it’s really the pet who has all the power.

Daken’s expression smoothes from barely concealed hostility back to its usual aloofness, and he starts walking as though he just happens to be going their way (like a cat, and it’s not the first time Wade has made the comparison).

Smirking, Wade turns again.

“Hold up,” says Karla, and Wade groans.

“Yes?” he says.

She’s standing now, and Mac is trying to hide behind her.  “I don’t really give a shit who I work for, as long as I get fairly compensated.  You pissed off the world’s governments.  You’re gonna need some kinda defense force to keep them in line, right?  All I want is a room I don’t have to share—”  Mac whines like a puppy.  “—we don’t have to share.  Give me that, and I’ll beat the shit outta whoever the fuck you want.”

“You’re hired,” Wade says, and looks at Laura while Karla starts daintily picking a path through the hip-high press of refugees.  “See, Greenie?  It’s possible for the questionably-good and the less-questionably-evil to get along.  We’re all mercs here.  Let’s have a little professional courtesy, hm?”

“Actually, I was never technically—” Laura starts.

“Hurry up and get me my damn pills,” Bullseye says loudly.

The flight back to Providence is surprisingly companionable, all of them crowded into the shuttle like one big, grudgingly semi-happy, extremely dysfunctional family with a nervous little dog (“I can’t feel my arm, Mac.  Jesus, he’s not gonna set you on fire right now…”).

The war room is in the same degree of bustle as when they left.  People are arguing about policy, discussing defensive strategies, collating census data, talking about the rendezvous, worrying about the future, asking for coffee…  Over by the projector, Stark’s puttering with the satellite setup (probably replaying the Nate Speech).

And then everyone notices who just entered the room.

Silence falls, followed by guns cocking, powers charging, and claws being unsheathed.  (“Get off me, Mac, you damn squid!”)

“Hey, everybody!” Wade cries jovially.  “Look who I found!”

Logan is the first one to move.  He stalks over, stops three feet away.  “Care t’ explain, Wilson?”

Wade jerks a thumb over his shoulder.  “Good ol’ Bullseye has a knack for paranoid plotting that I figure will come in handy while weathering a few decades of world war, and he’ll work for pills that we can mass-synthesize.  Blondie and her Chihuahua over there are willing to kick butt for room ‘n board.”

“I’ll take a broom closet with a mattress,” Karla snorts.  “As long as the door locks.”

Logan lifts his chin.  “What about the boy?”

Wade hears Daken mutter something foul in Japanese, can practically feel him seethe.

Bullseye shrugs.  “Eh, he’s bulky, but I consider him carry-on.”

“Aw, c’mon!” Wade whines.  “I’ve been waiting ages for the perfect time to use that line!”

“Snooze ya lose,” scoffs Bullseye.  “Payback for all the times you stole my awesome lines.”

“Bitch.”

“Primadonna.”

They share a snicker.

Wade waves a hand in a circular motion.  “Anyway, Logan, I actually trust these guys marginally more than the so-called ‘legitimate’ Avengers of either coast.  Mercenaries are pretty damn loyal, long as they’re getting paid and it’s in their own best interests.  And everyone has to play by the rules in my fleet.  You start a fight with one of them, and you are out.  And since it’s you, I’ll give ya the chance to see if you can flap your arms hard enough to fly, bub.”

Logan sheathes his claws.  “Suit yerself, Wilson.  I sure as fuck hope you know what you’re doin’.”

“Ditto.  Now, somebody get Mr. B his crazy-pills, find a private room for Dr. Sofen and her pet tentacle-monster, and figure out whether Jules ever got back with Irene and Weas.”

Slowly, stiltedly, the bustle resumes.

Nate towers over everyone at the conference table by dint of not being seated.

Wade goes over.

“Wade, are you sure—”

“Shut it, Priscilla.”

“Don’t you think it’s awfully forgiving to—”

“You would’ve given them the same chance.”

Nate frowns.  “The chance to stand within fifty feet of our teenage daughter?  Not so much.”

“Nathan, my dear, have you met our daughter?  She’d send ‘em running.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Nothing Personal

Gradually, the crowd shuffles a bit, and Weasel is pushed toward the table.  “Uh,” he says, adjusting his glasses.  “Hi, Wade.  Thanks for the heads up on the end of the world ‘n all.”

“Weas, I’m gonna need you to help us jury-rig a timeslide module ASAP.”

Weasel gestures vaguely to Stark.  “Dude, Wade, you’ve got Tony fricken Stark over there.  You don’t need me to build awesome future-tech.”

And Wade is tired of explaining this, so he’s understandably frustrated.  He slams a fist down on the table.  “I don’t trust Tony fricken Stark.  Anybody who lets his little lovers’ quarrels blow up into fuckin’ all-out urban warfare is outta his goddamn mind.”

In the sudden awkward hush, he hears Stark call out, “Yeah, still here, thanks.”

“I’ll wait until you’re gone next time I openly ridicule you, then,” Wade replies.  “Weas, time is very short.  If you don’t get us a working timeslide module within the year, things are going to be very bad.  Have Richards explain timeline resonance crap for ya.”

“Oh…kay,” Weasel says.  After a moment of fidgeting, he timidly adds, “And after I build you a timeslide module, can you maybe drop me off in London?  It’s nothing personal, you know that, I just have this thing about ending up on any particular side of a war.”

Wade understands.  Weas is just a normal guy (aside from being a thieving little gear-head).

“Naw, nothing personal, I get that,” Wade says.  “On another note, where the hell is Irene?”

“’Scuse me, ‘scuse me…”  Irene weaves her way to the table with a cup of coffee in hand.  “Hi.  Sorry.  Getting coffee.”

The activity of the room picks up again.

“I can think of two people in the world who can coordinate the day-to-day societal and political shit of an outfit the size of this fleet.  The other one is Stark’s hot-widow assistant.”

Irene raises her eyebrows.  “Thanks.  I think.  Does this mean I pretty much have the same job I used to?”

He pats her shoulder.  “Welcome back to Providence.”

“Minus a few pacifists and plus a few psychotic killers?”

“Only a few.  Who are currently loose in the same room as my daughter, good point—where is Hope?”

Instead of waiting for an answer, he feels for the outside press of mood and influence that’s followed Hope since her powers woke up.

Curiosity.  Mild concern.  Reassurance.

He follows it to a corner, where some assistant has just passed Bullseye a little plastic cup of pills while he sits on the floor.  Daken has turned surly, and is clutching Bullseye’s arm as tightly as Mac was clutching Karla’s.  Hope is crouching before them, holding out a bottle of water.

Wade shifts a hand to the submachine gun on his left hip, unsnaps the holster.  Bullseye she could probably handle, but not Daken.  And Hope is a fierce little fireball, but Wade doesn’t like taking chances with his baby girl.

“It must be scary,” Hope says.  “Not knowing what you’ve been doing.  Not having full control.  My dad used to have that problem.”

Bullseye takes the bottle, gulps half of it in one go.  “Yeah?  I guess.  I dunno, kid.  I’m old, and I’m used to it.  ‘Scary’ ain’t exactly the word, anymore.  Annoying.”

“Don’t hover, Daddy,” Hope says, standing and dusting off her knees.  “They aren’t going to hurt me.”

“Not if they like their limbs attached, they aren’t,” he answers brightly.

“Sorry about him,” Hope says.  “He’s a teeeeny bit protective.  The last time I was kidnapped and couldn’t rescue myself, he rounded up the kidnappers, cut their feet off, and dumped them in the ocean.  There were sharks and everything.  They screamed a lot, until the sharks actually ate them.  Nathan did not approve, but I think they more or less deserved it, since I wasn’t the first girl they’d kidnapped.  And one of them tried to do some very impolite things to me, before I broke his pelvis in three places.”

Suddenly, Bullseye bursts out laughing.  “Shit.  You’re all right, kid.”

She grins.  “Oh!  I’m sorry, I never properly introduced myself.  I’m Hope Wilson.”  She holds out her hand.

He shakes it.  “Bullseye.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. B.”

He nudges Daken.  “This old man’s Akihi—”

“Daken,” the man smoothly interrupts.  He doesn’t budge from his spot, coiled around Bullseye’s arm and glaring at her.

She holds out her hand again.

Daken growls at her.

She giggles.  “I’m not going to take him from you, silly.”  She pulls her hand back anyway.  “In your own way, you’re both very lucky to have each other.  I think that’s great.”

Bullseye snickers.  “How’s that for a reversal?  Used to be you were always the one makin’ nice while I did all the snap ‘n snarl.”  He rubs his forehead a little.  “Ugh, shit…I’m just gonna catch a little shut-eye.  Don’t kill the kid or nothin’…she’s all right.”  And he settles against the wall and slips into a doze.

“You don’t fucking fool me, little girl,” Daken hisses.

Hope just stares at him for a while, then crouches down again.  “You’re the only one trying to fool you, Mr. Daken.  The truth is that bad, bad things are coming, and if you do exactly what Daddy says, you might live through them.  So.  You didn’t get blown up, Mr. B is here, and he really does like you.  I think your life is in pretty good shape.  Cheer up, okay?”

And Wade can tell that she’s consciously trying to affect moods, because the tone of every voice in the room lifts and lightens.  She’s gotten better at controlling it—if she’d tried the same thing three years ago, the room would’ve been doubled over in hysterics.

But Daken makes a face that’s part anguish, part poorly-concealed terror, and flexes his hand like he wants to stick his claws through her throat.

“C’mon, princess,” Wade says gently.  “Leave Mr. Grumpy alone.  Don’t go making him happy if he doesn’t wanna be happy; we talked about that.”

Hope sighs a little and stands up again.  “Sorry, Daddy.  I can’t help it sometimes.  Blame Nathan.”

“I blame him every day.  Sometimes twice.  Go bother Neena, or hang out with your little friends—Daddy’s gotta check on our other semi-villainous pals.”  And he pans his gaze over the fringes of the room until he spots Karla waiting for news on lodgings.

She’s stolen a chair from the table and is examining the state of her manicure (one of the nails is chipped, and she frowns accusingly at it).  Mac is under the chair, clinging to her leg, white-knuckled hands wrinkling the fine suiting of her slacks…wide, frightened eyes peering up from the shadows beside her calf.  He flinches back as Wade draws close.

“Any word on your room, Doc?” Wade asks.

She flips her hair over her shoulder.  “Apparently someone had to go and check the prospects to make sure no one had taken up residence.”

“And what’s with your pet?  Never seen him this skittish.”

Her eyes lock on him, intense and a little suspicious, reminding him incongruously of Laura.  All the frowning over the years has kept her from getting crow’s feet, but she’s starting to show lines between her brows and around the corners of her mouth. 

She reaches down and pats Mac on the head, and the gesture is disturbingly human, coming from a woman whose disgust for people and emotions runs so deep.  “Mac was out when Bullseye decided he wasn’t going to wait for Daken to get over himself.  We were running for the carrier, and Daken heard it, and he looked up, and the little bastard actually looked scared.”  A grin passes fleetingly over her face, fades to a grim frown.  “It looked so innocent from far away, just a dark fleck in the sky, with a trail of smoke behind it.  We were on the carrier, and looking out the windows—someone on the intercom system reminded us not to look at the flash, but the things polarized anyway, so I don’t think it really mattered that I kept looking—and I saw him, whipping through the buildings, faster than ever, but we were already lifting off.”

Wade shifts his weight, notes the wistful look on Karla’s face, the remembered terror on Mac’s.

“Perhaps it was momentary insanity…I reached out and I caught him, pulled him to us as fast as I could, just as it went off.  At the airlock, the symbiote was melting away, like tar, and he just sat there, shivering, and I…”  She breaks off, shakes her head.  “I couldn’t just leave him.  Anyway, he gets like this, without the symbiote; I’d normally have him on anxiety meds.  He’s not as bad as Bullseye, so I didn’t really worry about it.  Also, he’s hungry, and I don’t think he could actually eat a person right now even if he wanted to—the symbiote’s in bad shape from the explosion.”

Wade sighs and folds into a crouch.  “Hey.  Y’want a burrito or something?  I could go scare up some grub for ya.  D’you know the names of the drugs you take?  We could get those, too.”

Mac looks at him.  Hate burns in his eyes for a moment, swallowed by fear, and then eagerness.  “…food?” he rasps hoarsely, like he hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in days.

“You know him; he’ll eat anything,” Karla snorts.  “As for the meds, I’ll give one of those scampering SHIELD attachés the list.  You’re sure you can get them?”

Wade stands up.  “I gave orders to have a fully stocked medbay and pharmacy on every carrier.  On top of that, some of the food synthesizers have been programmed to replicate a big long list of known medications.  We had to be ready to live on these things for months without resupply.  Years, preferably.”

She looks impressed.  “Bullseye wasn’t lying; that brain overhaul of yours did a lot of good.”

A sudden sense of worry prods Wade from behind, and he doesn’t have to look to know who’s standing there.  He reaches back and ruffles her hair.  “Hey, princess.  This is Dr. Karla Sofen, who has some really bizarre complexes regarding humans and crowds.  And that’s her pet tentacle monster, Mac Gargan.”

Hope carefully sits down at Karla’s feet.  She’s got a whole satchel full of bottled water now, and she holds one of the bottles out.  “Hi, Mr. Gargan.  I’m Hope.  Are you thirsty?  You look thirsty.  It’s okay, nobody’s going to hurt you here—Daddy won’t let them.  You don’t have to be scared anymore, I promise.”

“Call him Mac,” Karla corrects, but takes the bottle and passes it down.

“Mac?” Hope echoes, watching while he gulps greedily at the water.  “That’s better, isn’t it?  Try not to drink too fast, or you’ll make yourself sick.”

Wade decides to go to the Mess Hall.  Sure, there’s a food synthesizer in the war room, but for now they still have real food—greasy, unhealthy, preservative-laden real American food—and it’d be nice to get some before it’s all gone for good.

They’ve got a soup kitchen going,  MREs for people who can’t wait.  Along the corridors outside, and the edges of the Mess Hall itself, some of the people who planned a little better have brought their old food stalls.  Taco stands, hot dog and pretzel stands, schnitzel stands…leave it to the street vendors to be among the first to smell the opportunity attached to a ship full of hungry people.  Some of them have even figured out that money won’t matter anymore, and are waving away any cash that gets offered (some of them are bartering favors instead).

“Six enchiladas and four burritos, por favor,” he says to the old guy running the nearest taco vendor.

The mustachioed man stirs the meat in his frying pan, salutes with the spatula.  “Right away, Supreme Commander.”

Wade winces.  “You got any beer?”

The taco guy reaches down (there’s a sound of a fridge opening and closing) and produces a chilled Dos Equis.

“You are my hero,” Wade sighs, tugging his mask up and popping the cap with his teeth.  “What’s yer name, man?” he asks after the first cool sip.

“Estéban,” the man replies, and starts loading a plastic bag with Wade’s order (“Have a Nice Day!” the bag says, complete with yellow smileys).  “Estéban Gonzales; kids call me Speedy.”

“You’re the man, Estéban.  You need anything?  Bed, clothes, shower, babysitter?”

He shakes his head with a smile.  “No, señor.  Got on early, have a nice place in the barracks, room for the whole family, and the people we share with are good people.  My daughters are helping at the infirmary, my wife is with the volunteer daycare one deck up.  Just doing my part.”

Wade takes another drink of his beer.  “You rock, Speedy.  Anything at all, lemme know and I’ll see what we can do.”  Then he grabs the bag of munchies and heads back to the command center.

He considers it a minor miracle that the place is still in one piece and nobody’s been killed.

Hope is still crouched at Karla’s feet, chatting.  Mac seems to like her; most people like Hope.

Wade holds out the bag of food.  “Speedy Gonzales sends enchiladas and burritos.  Y’want some, Mac?”

Eager eyes peer around Karla’s hip.  “Food?”

“Here,” Wade says, and passes the bag to Karla.

She in turn passes it down to Mac, who comes out of hiding to sit beside the chair instead of behind or under it.  Something like proprietary amusement flickers on Karla’s face, and she strokes Mac’s scalp, petting him like a loyal puppy. 

“Are you sure you won’t take some water, doctor?” Hope asks, fidgeting with the strap of her satchel.

“Sweet of you,” Karla says, using her thumb to rub at a smudge of something on Mac’s face.  “No, I’m more interested in going straight to my room, once I’ve got one, and getting some sleep far away from people coughing and breathing and crying everywhere.  Ugh.  And then I want a shower.  You could use a good scrub yourself, couldn’t you, Mac?”

Wade finishes his beer.  “Well, just lemme know if you need anything, Doc.  I’ve gotta have a chat with some commanders about knowing when the crazy white cat makes a move.”

.End.

Chapter Text

Tactical Advantage

“I don’t like this,” Scott complains for the eighth time.

“We need the tactical information,” Tony replies automatically.  He seems to have a long, well-thought-out list of responses to Scott’s gripes—probably so he’ll have them to use on Steve later.

“You don’t have to be here, Scott,” Emma says.  “Since you’re not one of the Commanders, you can leave if it bothers you all that much.”

He just grumbles and crosses his arms and sulks.

~They have made contact,~ Eight-ball announces, and two separate viewscreens flicker to life.

One picture shows Schmooples and her puppet in the enormous chair from the ultimatum broadcast.  The other shows what looks like some military bigwigs and the Cabinet Secretaries.  Simon Trask seems to be calling the shots.

~“Ah, hello there, Mithter Trathk,”~ the girl says, and pets the cat in her lap.  ~“A shame about your eatht coatht.  That didn’t have to happen, you know.”~

Trask folds his hands together on the table in front of him.  ~“Why did you tell the Chinese and North Koreans to attack us?  Is it because of our recent mutant regulation policies?”~

She laughs, and the cat coughs.  ~“Oh, Mithter Trathk, you’re tho droll.  Mutant, human…all are lether beingth before Schmoopleth.  Why exthactly do you worry yourthelf tho much over mutantth, Mithter Trathk?”~

~“Mutants are dangerous,”~ he says fervently.

Scott mutters something in a threatening tone under his breath.

The cat purrs, and the girl utters a low chuckle.  ~“But ithn’t it correct to thay that you yourthelf are in control of a large and devathtating nuclear arthenal?  With jutht a push of a button, you could wipe forty million people off the fathe of the planet.  Wouldn’t that make you one of the motht dangerouth men in the world, Mithter Trathk?”~

He doesn’t reply, but he looks unhappy at the comparison.

“Chew on that, ya snobby prick,” Wade grunts.

“Shh!” says Tony, flapping a hand.

~“In anthwer to your quethtion, Mithter Trathk, the nuclear thtriketh were thimply the promithed conthequenthe for failing to deliver Deadpool by the thpethified date.”~

~“So this Deadpool character is to blame.”~

“What?” Wade squawks.  “How is this my fault?  You’d prefer it if I gave a fluffy white cat and her evil minions a universe-ending super-computer?!”

“Shhhh!” hiss Luke, Tony, and Reed.

~“Retaliate againtht whomever you like, Mithter Trathk, the outcome ith the thame in the eyeth of Schmoopleth.  Her only conthern ith that you not dethtroy the object she theekth.  Should you be unfortunate enough to allow thuch a thing, her wrath will be ath thorough and inexthorable ath it wath thith time.  A war hath begun, and there are two thideth—thothe therving Schmoopleth, and thothe being ground to dutht under her metaphorical heel.”~  The cat growls in agreement.  ~“I advithe you to choothe your thide quickly, ath thothe who take no thide in war often find themthelveth playing the victim of all thideth.”~

Trask clenches his hands together.  ~“And what would…Schmooples…have our great nation do?”~

The girl frowns, and the cat closes its eyes.  ~“What you didn’t do before, Mithter Trathk.  It’th not very complicated; all you have to do ith everything I tell you to do.  Nothing could be thimpler.”~

~“Fine,”~ he says grudgingly.  ~“Where do we start?  We have the most powerful army in the world, thanks to StarkTech weaponry.”~

Everyone looks at Tony.

“Oh, like I knew we’d be starting up an independent country,” he mutters.

~“You’re not paying attention, Mithter Trathk.  They have a helicarrier fleet.  Againtht an airborne enemy, ground thuperiority ith thomewhat moot.  Your firtht thtep will be to retreat to a fortified location with ground-to-air defentheth.”~

~“And then?”~

The girl frowns again.  ~“Have humanth really become tho uthelethly mutton-minded?”~ she asks sharply.  ~“Then you will build a thkyfleet.  Schmoopleth will be obtherving your progreth…clothely.  That ith all.”~  Then the cat reaches out and pushes a button on the remote lying before her on the table, and the transmission ends.

Silence reigns in the war room for several seconds.

Nate sighs.  “Well, we knew the United States government would be inclined to shift the blame onto the meta-human community.”

“‘Community,’ that’s a cute word,” Wade says sourly.  “Me.  They’re blaming me.  What the fuck, Eight-ball?”

~Nathan is more correct; by forming the Meta-human Flotilla, you have distributed blame.  If you’d simply fled to Utopia as I originally suggested, no one would have been the wiser.~

“Especially the hundreds of thousands of refugees who would never have been warned,” Scott puts in.  “No, we did the right thing.”

A burst of light moves across Eight-ball’s surface briefly.  ~Your moral quandaries are ridiculously self-defeating.  By taking the course of shared blame, you’ve leveled the branches with the highest planetary population one thousand years from now.  In fact, you’ve effectively reduced the projected population by 10%.~

Emma scoffs.  “Working for the long-term greater good almost inevitably leads to short-term atrocity.”

~Oh, certainly.  I’m not arguing that.  But my goal is not the ‘greater good.’  There’s no reason to attempt to transform your world into some—what was it Julian said last month?  Kumbaya hippie-vangelist day-spa?  My goal is the ‘greater stability,’ which often has little to do with morality.  Please, look at your Supreme Commander.  Does that look like a man who would endorse the long-term greater good?~

They all stare at Wade.

He pouts.  “I could.  In theory.  At some point.”

Luke waves a hand.  “Naw, it’s better if you don’t.  Like Frost said—greater good has a tendency to turn into sacrificing freedoms and persecuting misunderstood minorities.  A bunch o’ futurist bullshit.”

“I wasn’t endorsing ‘greater good,’” Tony says pointedly.  “I was endorsing ‘appeasement to avoid a state of martial law and genocide.’”

“Settle down, kids, or I’ll turn this helicarrier right around,” drawls Wade.  He stares at the bare surface of the conference table for a moment, thinking.  “We need to run some more damage control, and we need to negotiate permission for the refugees to return to the States if they want.  And start redistributing the populations of the carriers—the Avenger is running a bit heavy.”

“Should we tell the refugees about the supply situation when we offer to get them back in the country?” Emma asks.  “Knowing that we can sustain them indefinitely will certainly affect their decision-making process.”

Tony shakes his head.  “Bad idea.  If we don’t tell them, they’ll think a lot harder before they decide to stay.”

“Agreed,” says Clint.

“Then we go on as before,” Wade declares.  “The supply situation is still SHIELD-only privileged information.”

.End.

Chapter Text

End Loop, Jump to Start

Hope is oddly calm, when the time comes.  She’s known for years now what was coming (not exactly what, but her part in it).

In a way, everything she knew is already gone.  It’ll probably be easier to get it over with now, before she can get used to the way things have become.

She wants to remember Billy smiling (he doesn’t anymore) and Weasel making a PSP do things it’s not supposed to (he went home to London after he finished the timeslide module) and Neena’s apartment with the food fight stains in the corner of the kitchen ceiling (long gone now, and the woman herself barely talks anymore).

She doesn’t want to watch any more of her friends and family die.

And she promised she’d be brave.

She’s memorized the temporal coordinates (can say them in her sleep).  All that’s left is to punch them in and go.

Her eyes drift over the only people allowed to know when she leaves and when she’ll arrive.  Laura.  Nathan.  Wade.  Laura might be there on the other side of the slide…there’s always that chance.  Nathan can’t be on the other side, because his control chip is fried and he can’t get there the long way like Laura and Logan and Wade can.  Wade will be there; Wade has to be there.

At some point, Wade will realize that he’s going to outlive everyone he’s ever known.  Hope isn’t brave enough to face that moment, or the moment when Nathan dies, or Neena, or Irene…  She doesn’t believe in God (or gods), but she prays he’ll have the strength to make it through.

Laura gives her a nod and an encouraging smile.

“I’m going on ahead,” she says, pressing the buttons to program the module (so that she doesn’t have to look Wade in the eyes until she’s ready).

He smiles, and he looks so proud, and it’s like sitting with the Traveler all over again.

That’s my good girl.

She swallows the lump in her throat.  “Wait for me, okay?  And take care of Nathan.”

“Yeah,” he says softly, nodding.  “I will.  I promise.”

Nathan puts an arm around Wade and says, “Goodbye, Hope.  Good luck.”

“I love you both so much,” Hope whispers, and presses the slide button.

In a dizzying whirl of motion-but-not-motion, she leaves a world behind, all the while thinking only one thing:

Please be there, please be there, please be there.

She wants to throw up when she lands (it’s why she didn’t eat breakfast), but she holds Nathan’s plasma pistol steady (just in case).

There are black-clad people with weapons (spear-like things that look lethal and efficient), but their faces show only wonder and amazement.  In their midst stands a man she’s known across centuries and dimensions—the only man she’s ever been able to consistently rely on.

“Daddy!”

.End.

Chapter Text

(Holding on to) What I Haven’t Got

I know what it takes to move on
I know how it feels to lie
All I wanna do is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

~Waiting for the End, by Linkin Park

“Repeat extrapolation.”

Wade thinks absently that he may be obsessing.

It’s pointless to ask for the same extrapolations over and over.  Numbers like those don’t change with an hour, a day, a week.

Eight-ball flashes crimson for the hundredth time.  ~You’re not listening to me, Wade.  Only one course of action leads to anything other than total annihilation.  I wish I could tell you differently, but there it is.~

“Just shut up and repeat the extrapolation from the current point,” Wade hisses.

A branch-like shape forms in white light, obscured quickly by a thick red swath.  At the edge, a narrow thread glows blue.  ~Nate must pass on his unique hybrid strain of the techno-organic virus to the central computer of the Federated Skyfleet, and must do so within the next three days.  If he doesn’t, they’ll successfully transmit a control virus to the entire Meta-Human Flotilla that will crash every helicarrier.~

“But if he does, it’ll take over his brain, assuming the FS don’t bomb him to kingdom come.”

~Yes.  And they will.~

Wade clenches his jaw.  “He—the other me, the Traveler—said you might try to get rid of Nate.”

~That’s fucking ridiculous.  Nate’s the one who’s always so fucking trigger-happy with that martyr complex of his.  If I could lock him up in a padded cell for the rest of his life and still do my job, I would.  He has to do this, and if you try to stop him, I’ll be required to send an alarm to the Network, and somebody with the balls to let him go will come back here and knock you out until it’s too late.~

Wade slowly rubs his hand over his face.  “And you can’t lie.  You can only withhold information and give creative answers.”

~I can’t tell a direct falsehood as dictated by my reasoning and extrapolations.~

“So as far as you know, you’re not lying.”

~Yes.  The optimal time period for action is thirty-four hours.  After that, the chances of Nate’s success drop steeply.  Now can’t you just…I dunno, support his suicidal world-saving endeavors?  Just once?  I think he’d like that.~

“Fuck what he’d like,” Wade mutters bitterly.  “I’ll let him do it, but I’ll be damned if I’ll smile and wave and say ‘good job, honey, go knock yourself dead.’”

Eight-ball dims, casting the room into darkness.  After a moment of shadowy silence, a tiny spark of golden light flickers across the Node’s surface like a shooting star.  ~I know,~ Eight-ball says very gently, and for the first time, Wade feels something like sympathy from its tone.

“I promised her I’d take care of him.”

And, ~I know,~ it repeats softly.

He bites his lip and watches the white glow strengthen again until the light is bright enough to sting, and he uses it as an excuse for the moisture in his eyes (and thinks maybe that’s the point).  “Get him on the comm,” he says at last.

Fifteen seconds later, Nate’s voice resonates through the room.  ~“Sorry, I was reviewing weapon calibr—you don’t care.”~

“Sure I do,” Wade lies.

~“Mm.  You know how I feel about you lying to spare my feelings.”~

“You find it incredibly sweet and romantic.”

~“I find it quirky, guilt-inducing, and generally bad for our relationship.  Something’s wrong, don’t even try to deny it.”~

Wade digs under a fingernail.  “The FS is working on a nasty computer virus that endangers all seven carriers.  Our only hope of having an immediate survival rate higher than about twenty-eight percent involves infecting their bio-computers first.”

~“The same bio-computers that have proven completely immune to purely electronic infection.”~

“Yeah.  Those.  We’ve got thirty-four hours to get it done.”

~“I see.  I can be aboard Providence in two hours.  How soon can you convene the other Commanders?”~

“About the same; Greymalkin and the Avenger are the farthest out.”

~“Let the record reflect that Subcommander Laura Keller will now assume command of helicarrier Greymalkin.”~

“The Supreme Commander acknowledges the change in command,” Wade says.  All done.  All nice and official.

Congratulations, you just acknowledged the fact that your boyfriend is about to go on a mission from which he’ll probably never return.

Shut up.

“Seeya in a coupla hours, Nate,” Wade says, and closes the channel.

~I’ll call the other Commanders,~ says Eight-ball.

“Do that.  And then give the lightshow a rest until they get here.”

He loses two hours to sitting in hushed gloom and thinking about numbers, probabilities.  His mind wanders briefly to other Wades.  More capable Wades with ominous names.  Traveler.  Auditor.  What would they do?

Stupid question.  They’d have sent Nate as soon as they verified the extrapolation.

Another golden spark.  ~It’s time.~

He reaches out, touches the metal wall of his private quarters, runs his fingers over the dips and grooves of carved names.  There are forty-eight now, and the first is still the biggest.  When they have confirmation that the FS has been annihilated, he’ll add Nate’s name.  He never even knew half of the people who belonged to those names.  He wonders how long it’ll be before he runs out of wall.

He’ll run out of wall decades (centuries?) before they run out of wars.

~You’ve procrastinated long enough.~

For a moment, Wade wants to throw the thing across the room.

No.

It’s not Eight-ball’s fault.  In fact, it (he?) is doing its job.

So Wade picks up the Node and heads for the war room.

His footsteps echo against the metal walls.  SHIELD personnel clear the corridors and salute as he goes by.

Maybe a uniform would make decisions like this feel easier.  Maybe then he’d stop thinking about the things he wants and only think about what’s best for their little flying sovereign nation.  Forty-eight names.

Get your shit together.

It’s a mess of Avengers and X-Men when he walks in, all talking at once and speculating.  They shut up when they see him.

“So what’s the big emergency?” asks Clint.

The others in the room respond with a chorus of like-minded curiosity.

“We have approximately thirty-two hours to infect the central computer of the Federated Skyfleet with my particular strain of the T-O virus,” Nate announces.

Everyone falls silent.

“If we don’t, they’ll have the opportunity to unleash a computer virus that will crash every carrier in the fleet, and the best chance we have of countering that computer virus is something like twenty-eight percent.”

~There’s a 28.4% chance that Commander Richards and Commander-General Stark will be able to counteract the virus in time to save three of the carriers,~ Eight-ball confirms.  ~There is no branch where they save all seven carriers.~

“And we don’t have time to evacuate,” Nate finishes.

Wade ignores the stab of guilt from not having shared the information a week ago.

“I have to get into the AI core of their flagship to do this, and I’ll probably succumb to the virus myself in the process.”

“This is…” Rachel says, shaking her head.  “It’s so sudden.  I mean…do you have to go right now?  You said thirty-two hours…”

Nate grins wryly.  “I should know, there’s no time like the present.  I’m getting old, Rach’,” he says.  “Let me have my blaze of glory, okay?”

No one mentions the fact that Nate doesn’t do goodbyes.

“Okay,” says Luke.  “What can we do to help?  What do you need?”

“It’s a suicide mission,” Nate says grimly.  “But I can’t do it alone.  I need a volunteer to hold off the Federated troops for me.”

They all know the stakes.  They all know that Nate’s volunteer can’t be part of the chain of command.  They all know that Nate’s volunteer will have to survive long enough to get him in and get the job done.  It narrows the list considerably.

Logan is in the middle of standing up from his seat when someone pushes through the solemn crowd.

“Me,” says Billy.

A collective indrawn breath.

Wade stares hard, but he doesn’t even see Billy’s face—he sees that first name carved on his wall, huge and deep so he’ll never forget that these people are his responsibility.

“Me,” Billy says again, as unsmiling as he has been for the past four years.  “I’ll do it.”

“We’ll do it,” Teddy corrects, taking his place by his husband’s side.  “Bill can get you in and past all their security measures, and I can be one a hell of an immovable object when I want to.”

Nate nods at them.  “I’d be honored, gentlemen.”

“We all would,” agrees Steve.  “Good luck, Avengers.  And Godspeed.”

“Wade—” Nate starts, but Wade shakes his head.

“Don’t say it.”

So Nate smiles, holds up his hand, folds down the middle two fingers.

“Smartass,” Wade whispers as they vanish in an inappropriately pretty twinkle of blue.

No one speaks or moves for several seconds—just bowed heads and sad faces.

~This is not the end.  The next forty-five years are critical.  You need to focus on making sure there’s still a world when Hope lands.~

So Wade takes a deep breath and stands a little straighter.  “You all heard the evil empty snowglobe.  Let’s get back to work.”

.End.