starting from the end of Messiah War, popping through an unnamed AU dystopian future and into Earth-339. after the events in the Hypnic Twitch sequence, Nate and Hope come home.

okay, so this is really just a shameless attempt at explaining and making up for Nate's inordinate bitchiness all through Messiah War.

warnings: slash. angst. au with 616 references. spoilers for Messiah War. multiple Wade deaths. happy ending, lol. language:pg-13 (primetime tv plus s***).

pairing: Nate/Wade (Cable/Deadpool, for those just joining us).

timeline: let's say...a week or two after the end of Messiah War, from Nate 'n Hope's perspective, two years-ish after they left the present, from Wade's perspective.

disclaimer: marvel owns Cable & Deadpool, disney owns marvel.

notes: 1) i hope you feel reeeeeeally awful about yourself, Nate. 2) Dom/Laura would be another category of hotness on about the same level as Dom/Irene. 3) now Wade is king of Stryfe 'n Bishop's Happy Funland! he will feast on cookies every day and rule over the Ak'virri. he will tread the jeweled thrones of the world beneath his sandaled feet, etc. XD 4) Weas 'n Bob! XD the sidekicks of the sidekick show up for BSG night and end up seeing Messiah-lemming's homecoming. 5) Wade is so gonna love Hope to death. she will be SPOILED ROTTEN. they'll have adventures in Central Park 'n stuff. XD

Hoping Never Hurt Anybody But Me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You've been a great help," he says.

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

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

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

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

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

Nathan shakes his head. "It does," he says apologetically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I wish it didn't have to be this way."

"That's okay, I'm used to losing you by now. Go on, before their atoms chronologically destabilize 'n stuff."

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

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

"You had me at 'hello,'" Wade says, like he did so long ago on Providence, forgiving everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He knocks just as someone on the other side yells, "Aw, c'mon, she's a Cylon, too?"

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

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

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

Nathan raises his eyebrows.

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

"Seven-ish years," Nathan corrects softly, smiling as he lets Wade's babble wash over him.

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

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

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

"It's good to be home," Nathan sighs against Wade's for-once-speechless mouth.

.End.