Chapter Text
The first thing Wade noticed was that the sky had the wrong kind of dark.
Not night. Not exactly.
Night had depth. Night had streetlights and neon signs and ugly yellow apartment windows and the occasional helicopter with somebody else's bad day strapped under it. Night had traffic. Sirens. Smog. People yelling at one another from three blocks away because humanity had never met a volume setting it respected.
This was different.
This sky looked bruised.
Wade lay on his back in a puddle that smelled like oil, old rain, and something that had died with strong opinions. His left hand twitched against the pavement. His right one had gone numb from the elbow down, which was new enough to be interesting and old enough to be inconvenient.
A car alarm went off somewhere nearby.
Then it stopped too quickly.
"Okay," he said to nobody. His voice came out rough, wet around the edges. "So. Portal. Explosion. Very rude scientist. Possibly a laser. Definitely a bullet. Maybe two bullets. I would like to file a complaint with the travel department."
Something warm slid down the side of his face and into his ear.
Blood. Probably his.
He blinked up at the sky.
No moon.
No billboards for products nobody needed.
No familiar skyline.
Wade tried to sit up and made it almost halfway before the alley tilted sideways. Brick walls leaned in. Fire escapes stretched above him in rusted black lines. Trash bags humped along the walls like sleeping animals. His stomach rolled hard enough that he had to brace one hand against the ground.
"Motion sickness," he muttered. "Dimensional edition. Love that. Five stars. Would vomit again."
His healing factor was working. He could feel it in the crawling itch under his skin, the ugly knitting pull of torn muscle and broken bone trying to remember what shape Wade Wilson was supposed to be. But something was wrong behind his right eye. Pressure pulsed there, sharp and metallic, like a nail had been driven in and left to think about its life choices.
He raised a hand to his head.
His glove came away dark.
"That," he said, squinting at it, "is not ideal."
The alley stretched long and narrow ahead of him, blocked at one end by a collapsed chain-link fence and at the other by a wider street washed in dirty orange light. Steam leaked from a grate. Water dripped from somewhere above. The buildings around him were old, cramped together, their windows either boarded over or broken out.
Not New York. Not his New York.
Maybe New York's deeply troubled cousin.
He pushed himself upright.
The world lurched.
He went down on one knee, hard enough to crack pavement.
"Okay. Taking a knee. Respectful. Patriotic. Concussed."
A sound came from the mouth of the alley.
Not footsteps.
Voices.
Male. Three of them, maybe four. The loose, excited kind of voices people got when they thought they had found something weaker than them.
Wade sighed and reached for the gun at his hip.
His holster was empty.
He looked down.
Other hip.
Also empty.
"That's theft," he said. "Or continuity damage."
His swords were still crossed over his back, which meant the universe had not completely abandoned him. He tried to stand again, got upright this time, and leaned one shoulder against the wall while the alley breathed in and out around him.
The voices came closer.
"Look at this freak."
Wade turned his head.
Four men stood near the mouth of the alley. Local color. Heavy jackets, cheap guns, bad posture. One had a metal pipe. One had a knife. Two had pistols. None of them had the good sense to reconsider.
The man in front looked Wade up and down, taking in the red suit, the blood, the swords.
"What are you supposed to be?"
Wade pointed weakly at him. "Usually that line comes with more admiration."
The man lifted his gun.
Wade watched the barrel settle toward his chest.
His head throbbed again. Vision doubled. For a second there were eight men instead of four, which felt unfair. He had not agreed to bonus enemies.
"Hands where I can see them," the man said.
Wade raised both hands.
Then lowered one slightly.
"Question. Is this a mugging, a kidnapping, a hate crime, or are we just workshopping?"
The man with the pipe moved first.
Wade saw it coming late.
Too late, which was irritating.
The pipe caught him across the ribs. Something cracked. The pain went white and bright, then dull under the deeper pulse in his skull. Wade grabbed the man's wrist, twisted, and shoved him into the wall. Brick met face. Face lost.
The other men shouted.
Gunfire filled the alley.
Wade jerked as bullets hit him. Shoulder. Thigh. Side. One punched through his abdomen and out the back. Another sparked off the brick beside his head. He staggered, grabbed the knife man's coat, and headbutted him.
Bad idea.
Pain burst behind his eyes.
The alley vanished for half a second.
When it came back, Wade was on the ground again. One hand pressed against the wet pavement. His other arm hung strangely. The men were still moving. Still shouting. Someone kicked him in the side. Someone laughed.
"Wrong alley, freak."
"Probably," Wade said through his teeth. "My map app has betrayed me before."
A boot caught him under the jaw.
His head snapped back.
The pressure behind his eye flared so hard his vision went red at the edges.
He tried to reach for a sword.
His hand missed the hilt.
The men closed in.
Then the shadows at the far end of the alley moved.
Not shifted.
Moved.
The darkness behind the broken fence rose up like something had been standing inside it the whole time and had only just decided to stop pretending.
The men noticed.
One of them swore.
Wade blinked blood out of his eye.
A figure stood past the steam and the rain and the bad light.
Tall. Massive in the shoulders. Red cape moving without enough wind to explain it. White markings cutting through a black suit. Chains sliding over brick and metal with a sound that made the men step back before they understood why.
The alley changed around him.
Not physically. Not in any way Wade could point to. The trash remained trash. The walls remained damp. The puddles remained disgusting. But the men stopped owning the space.
Just like that.
The one with the gun raised it toward the figure.
"Back off!"
The figure did not.
The chain moved first.
It snapped across the alley and wrapped around the gunman's wrist. Bone cracked. The gun hit the pavement. The man screamed, and the chain dragged him forward so fast his feet left the ground.
Wade, still on one knee, lifted a finger.
"Cool cape," he said.
Nobody appreciated the contribution.
The fight lasted less than thirty seconds.
The men tried to run. That did not help them. The red cape cut off the alley mouth. Chains caught ankles, wrists, throats of jackets. The figure moved with brutal economy, not flashy, not playful, not interested in making it interesting. He broke weapons. He broke confidence. He threw one man into a dumpster hard enough to cave the lid inward.
He did not kill them.
Wade noticed that.
The big scary shadow demon with the chains and the murder cape did not kill the four men who had been kicking an already bleeding stranger in an alley.
When the last man stopped trying to crawl away, the figure stood over him.
"Leave," he said.
The voice was low, rough, carrying the kind of weight that made the word feel less like a suggestion and more like gravity.
The man scrambled up and ran.
The others followed as well as their injuries allowed.
The alley went quiet except for distant sirens, dripping water, and Wade's breathing.
The figure turned toward him.
Up close, the guy looked even less like someone Wade should annoy and exactly like someone Wade was going to annoy. The skull-like face. The green eyes. The cape. The chains. The general aura of having murdered his own human resources department.
Wade wiped blood from his mouth.
"So," he said, "do you do birthday parties, or was this a limited-time rescue event?"
The figure stared at him.
Wade stared back.
His vision doubled again. The figure became two enormous shadow men, then one, then something between. Wade shut one eye. That helped until the alley tilted.
The figure stepped closer.
Wade tried to stand. His legs did not approve. He got halfway upright and slid back against the wall.
"Don't," the figure said.
Wade looked up. "Don't what? Be handsome? Too late."
"Move."
"Oh. That. Also too late. I have been moving for years. Some people call it fleeing. I call it cardio."
The figure crouched in front of him.
Wade did not like that. Not because of fear. Fear was complicated and mostly for people who owned matching socks and long-term plans. He did not like the crouching because it made the stranger closer, and closer meant easier to see the damage.
Most people reacted to Wade's face in stages.
Confusion.
Discomfort.
Revulsion.
Pity, if they were trying to be nice and failing.
This guy did none of that.
His gaze moved over Wade's mask, the blood, the torn suit, the places bullets had gone in and had not yet finished closing. He looked like he was assessing injuries because injuries were information, not because Wade was disgusting.
Wade shifted, suddenly aware of how much blood he had left across the pavement.
"You're very intense," Wade said. "Has anyone told you that? You have the energy of a church gargoyle that started taking night classes in violence."
"Who are you?"
"Wow. No dinner first."
The green eyes narrowed.
Wade sighed. "Deadpool. Wade if you're feeling emotionally available. Kidnapped by science, shot by science, thrown through science. Very normal Tuesday."
"Where did you come from?"
"Funny story." Wade pointed vaguely upward, then sideways, then at the puddle. "Not here."
The figure's gaze lifted toward the alley entrance, then back to him. "You were dumped here?"
"Dumped feels harsh. I prefer violently relocated."
"By who?"
"Guy in a lab coat with poor boundaries. Maybe several guys. There was a machine. Big glowing hole. People always say don't go toward the light, but no one tells you what to do when the light comes with suction."
The stranger said nothing.
Wade tried to focus on him and failed for three whole seconds. The pressure behind his eye pulsed again, ugly and deep.
He reached toward his head.
The stranger caught his wrist before his fingers reached the wound.
Wade froze.
The grip was firm. Not crushing. Controlled.
"Don't dig at it," the stranger said.
Wade looked from the hand around his wrist to the face above him.
"That sounded almost medical."
"There's metal in your skull."
"See, I knew I was becoming more interesting."
"You need to stay still."
"I almost never need that."
"You do now."
Not hard. Not soft.
Just certain.
Wade had heard a lot of voices tell him what to do. Commanders. Doctors. Torturers. Clients. Enemies. Friends who had earned temporary jurisdiction over his poor decisions. This was not like those. The stranger was not trying to own the situation. He had already taken it over without asking anyone's permission.
Wade's wrist remained caught.
The alley smelled like rust and garbage and blood.
The stranger finally released him.
Wade flexed his fingers, because that seemed like something a person did when he was not bothered.
"Are we doing names?" he asked. "Because I gave you one. Very brave of me. Could be fake. Isn't. Mostly."
The stranger stood.
"No."
"Strong start to a friendship."
"We're not friends."
"That's what all my friends said before the paperwork went through."
The stranger turned away and walked toward the alley mouth.
Wade stared after him.
The cape dragged across nothing. It did not catch on broken glass or trash or the twisted metal fence. It moved like it had its own opinions about physics and had decided physics was beneath it.
Wade pushed himself off the wall.
Bad idea number two.
His legs almost folded. He caught himself on a dumpster, breathed through the nausea, and took one step.
The stranger stopped.
"Where are you going?" he asked without turning around.
"With you."
"No."
"Okay, but counterpoint." Wade took another step. "I have no idea where I am, I have a bullet fragment making a studio apartment in my brain, and you are the first person here who didn't try to rob me, shoot me, or critique my outfit."
"That doesn't make me responsible for you."
"Sure it does."
The stranger turned then.
Slowly.
Wade smiled under the mask even though the movement tugged at split skin along his jaw.
The stranger looked at him for a long moment.
"No," he said again.
Wade swayed.
For a second he thought he had covered it. Then the wall arrived at his shoulder without permission. His hand scraped brick. The alley stretched too long. The stranger's shape blurred at the edges, cape spreading wider than the space should have allowed.
Wade heard himself laugh.
It sounded wrong.
"Okay," he said. "Tiny update. I may be less fine than advertised."
The stranger crossed the distance before Wade finished sliding down the wall.
One large hand caught him by the front of his suit. The other braced his shoulder. Wade's knees hit pavement anyway, but not as hard as they would have.
He looked up.
The green eyes were closer now.
"Stay awake."
"Bossy."
"Stay awake."
"That's less fun the second time."
"Where is the portal?"
"Gone."
"You know that?"
Wade swallowed. His mouth tasted like copper and alley water. "Felt it collapse. Big ugly dimensional snap. Like a rubber band made of screaming. Very unpleasant. Zero out of ten."
The stranger's grip did not loosen.
"So you can't go back."
"Not tonight." Wade tried to make it sound casual. It came out too thin.
The stranger heard it.
Of course he did.
For the first time, something shifted in his face. Not sympathy. Not pity. Wade would have hated pity. This was flatter than that. Recognition, maybe. The kind a person gave a collapsed building when he already knew no one was coming fast enough.
Wade did not like that either.
"You're bleeding too much," the stranger said.
"I do that. It's a hobby."
"Can you heal?"
"Usually."
"Usually?"
"Currently accepting technical support."
The stranger looked past him, toward the street.
Wade followed his gaze.
The four men were gone, but the gunshots had not vanished with them. Somewhere nearby, a door slammed. A voice shouted from a window. The neighborhood was awake now in the wary, practiced way of people who knew better than to investigate anything too quickly.
The stranger made a decision.
Wade saw it happen.
Not because the guy announced it. Not because his face softened. It did not. But his posture changed by half an inch. Weight shifted. Attention narrowed. The question of whether to leave Wade in the alley ended.
The stranger hauled him upright.
Wade's feet dragged for the first step before he got them under himself.
"Hey, hey, if you're kidnapping me, I have preferences. Snacks. Ventilation. No clowns unless they're emotionally prepared to lose."
"Walk."
"See, that is exactly the kind of vague instruction that gets people killed in escape rooms."
The stranger did not answer.
He took Wade out of the alley and into the street.
Rat City opened around them.
Wade did not know the name yet. He only knew the feeling. Buildings crowded over narrow roads. Streetlights buzzed and flickered. Graffiti layered over brick, tags over warnings over memorial names. A burned-out car sat half up on the curb. Steam rose from grates in slow ghosts. People watched from windows, doorways, under awnings, from the mouths of alleys.
They watched the stranger first.
Then Wade.
Nobody came closer.
Nobody asked questions.
A woman wrapped in a patched brown coat stood beside a shopping cart under a fire escape. She looked at the stranger's hand gripping Wade's arm, then at the blood on Wade's suit.
"He alive?" she asked.
"For now," the stranger said.
Wade lifted his free hand weakly. "Hi. I am charming when vertical."
The woman stared at him.
Then she looked back at the stranger. "He yours?"
"No."
Wade turned his head toward him. "Rude."
The stranger kept walking.
The woman's gaze followed them down the street.
Wade noticed that too.
He noticed the way people moved aside without panic. Not like they were watching a monster. Not only that. Like they were watching weather. Dangerous weather. Familiar weather. Something that could kill you, but also something you hoped arrived when the wrong people came down your street.
Wade leaned more of his weight on him than he meant to. The stranger adjusted without comment.
They turned into another alley, then through a broken service door hanging on one hinge. Inside, the building smelled like damp concrete and old smoke. The stranger guided him down a flight of stairs into a basement room lit by a single bare bulb and the green spill of something Wade did not have a name for.
There was a table.
A stained mattress.
Crates.
Medical supplies.
Weapons.
Chains coiled in corners like sleeping snakes.
Wade looked around. "Love what you've done with the murder basement."
The stranger sat him down on the edge of the mattress.
Wade immediately tried to stand.
A hand pressed against his chest and shoved him back down.
"Stay."
"Woof."
The stranger ignored him and crouched in front of a crate. He pulled out gauze, a metal dish, a bottle of something clear, and a pair of forceps.
Wade tilted his head.
The room tilted back.
"You a doctor?"
"No."
"Comforting."
"I've pulled metal out of worse."
"That's either a qualification or a confession."
The stranger came back and reached for Wade's mask.
Wade caught his wrist.
Fast.
Not as fast as usual.
Still fast enough.
The stranger stopped.
The room went quiet.
Wade's fingers tightened around the stranger's wrist. The suit's fabric stuck damply to his own face where blood had soaked through. Under the mask, the wound along his scalp still bled sluggishly.
"Mask stays," Wade said.
The stranger looked down at the grip.
Then at him.
"I need to see the wound."
"Cut around it."
"It'll be harder."
"I've been called difficult by professionals."
For a moment Wade thought the stranger would argue.
He did not.
He took a knife from somewhere at his hip, caught the edge of Wade's mask carefully near the temple, and cut just enough fabric away to expose the wound.
No face.
No comment.
No reaction.
Wade released his wrist.
The stranger worked in silence.
The first touch of alcohol burned. Wade hissed through his teeth. The stranger's hand pressed against the side of his head to keep him still, broad palm firm against torn fabric and skin.
"Don't move."
"Do you have other settings?"
"No."
"Shame."
The forceps slid into the wound.
Pain cracked open behind Wade's eye.
His vision flashed white.
His hand shot up and closed around the stranger's forearm. The armor there was cold under his glove. The stranger did not pull away.
Wade breathed in through his nose.
Out through his mouth.
Again.
"You always this gentle with strangers?" he asked.
"No."
"Special treatment. I'm honored."
"You're talking too much."
"I've been told it's part of my charm."
"It's not."
"Okay, that was hurtful."
The metal fragment came free with a wet pull.
Wade gagged.
The stranger dropped the fragment into the dish. It hit with a tiny bright sound.
Not a bullet.
A shard.
Blackened. Twisted. Still faintly warm, or maybe Wade imagined that. It looked less like ammunition and more like something that had broken off the portal machine and followed him through out of spite.
The pressure in his skull eased by a fraction.
Not gone.
Better.
He slumped forward before he could stop himself.
The stranger caught him by the shoulder.
"Stay awake," he said again.
"You need new material."
"You need to listen."
"People keep saying that."
"Maybe they're right."
Wade looked at him.
The stranger had no reason to keep him upright. No reason to patch him. No reason to drag him out of the alley when leaving him there would have been easier. Wade would have healed eventually. Probably. Maybe. He had crawled out of worse places than that alley.
But the stranger had stopped.
He had stopped when nobody else had.
Wade looked away first.
"Still not giving me a name?" he asked.
The stranger packed gauze against the side of his head.
"No."
"Fine. I will assign one."
"No."
"Too late. Cape Dad."
The stranger's hand paused.
Wade brightened. "No? Skull Batman? Chain Grandpa? Alley Gandalf? Mister Murder Blanket?"
The stranger secured the bandage with sharp, practiced movements. "Spawn."
Wade stilled.
The name settled in the damp little room.
"Spawn," he repeated.
The green eyes lifted.
"That's what they call me."
"They?"
"People."
"Do you call yourself that?"
A pause.
Small.
Almost nothing.
"No."
Wade should have let it go.
He did not.
"What do you call yourself?"
The stranger stood, taking the bloody gauze and the dish with him.
"Nothing you need to know."
That was not an answer.
It was a wall.
Wade knew walls. He had built condos out of them.
Spawn moved across the room and dropped the metal fragment into a glass jar with other bits of ugly things. Then he came back and held out a bottle of water.
Wade took it.
Their fingers did not touch.
He drank half before remembering to make it look like he had not needed it that badly.
Spawn watched anyway.
Of course he did.
"How long until you heal?" Spawn asked.
"Depends on how many souvenirs are still in my skull."
"You said there was no way back tonight."
"Yes."
"After tonight?"
Wade tightened the cap on the bottle.
That was the problem.
The big glowing, screaming, dimensional problem.
He could say tomorrow. He could say soon. He could say someone would find him. Cable. The X-Men. Strange. Somebody. Maybe nobody. Maybe the portal had not just moved him but erased the path behind him. Maybe his universe was right there, a paper wall away, and he had no fingers left that knew how to tear through.
He looked at the floor instead of at Spawn.
"Working theory," Wade said, "is that I have been promoted to local problem."
Spawn did not answer immediately.
Somewhere above them, pipes knocked in the walls. Water dripped into a bucket in the corner. Footsteps crossed overhead, slow and cautious, then faded.
"You can stay until you can stand without falling over," Spawn said.
Wade looked up.
Spawn was not looking at him now. He was checking the doorway, the ceiling, the corners. Habit, not nerves. He watched everything like the room had betrayed him before and might try again.
"That's very generous," Wade said. "And emotionally withholding."
"You leave when you're able."
"Sure."
Spawn looked back at him.
Wade smiled under the mask.
Spawn's eyes narrowed.
"You understand me?"
"Absolutely."
"You leave when you're able."
"Crystal."
"Wade."
It was the first time Spawn had used his name.
Not Deadpool.
Wade.
He sat still.
Spawn stepped closer, and the light caught the edges of his face, making the white markings sharper, the green of his eyes less human and more alive in the dark.
"I don't know what brought you here," Spawn said. "I don't know who sent you. I don't know what follows you. But if trouble comes into this place because of you, it doesn't touch the people upstairs. It doesn't touch the people on this block. You understand?"
Wade felt the beginning of a laugh in his chest.
It hurt his broken ribs.
"Wow," he said softly. "You really do collect burdens."
Spawn stared at him.
Wade lifted the water bottle in a half toast. "No judgment. Some people collect stamps. Some collect swords. I once collected novelty mugs until a helicopter exploded in my kitchen."
"This isn't a joke."
"No," Wade said.
For once, he did not add anything after it.
The silence stretched.
Then Spawn turned away.
"Rest."
"You have a guest room?"
"You have a mattress."
"Luxury."
"If you try to leave before morning, you'll fall down the stairs."
"That sounds like quitter talk."
"If you try to leave before morning," Spawn said, reaching the doorway, "I'll put you back on the mattress."
Wade leaned back on one elbow, dizzy, aching, and far too interested for his own good.
"Is that a threat or aftercare?"
Spawn left.
The room darkened after him, though the bulb still burned overhead.
Wade listened to his footsteps fade up the stairs.
Then stop.
Not gone.
Wade sat on the mattress in the damp basement with his head bandaged, ribs knitting, bullet holes closing, one water bottle in hand and no universe to go back to.
Above him, Spawn did not leave the building.