Louisiana, 1987
A young couple brave the bizarre weather, the streets reek of rotting seaweed and salt, rain and ocean water pelt the two as they walk briskly from shanty house to shanty house, a bundle is held in the young mothers arms, she holds it with an air of contempt.
The water on the poor cobbled streets is raising slowly, the couple swashes as it reaches their ankles, the wind picks up violently and the mother has half a mind to drop the bundle and be done with it. The young father is horrified at the idea, he takes the bundle and his young wife's hand and leads her towards his mother home. A large dingy old plantation home further ahead.
A short figure stands by the gate, his mother. She is hunched and of creole decent, just like her son.
"The Gods are angry." The nana whispers, accepting the bundle without a second glance at her soaked son and daughter in law, "This is a blessing within a blessing."
The son nods and the daughter in law feels tears sting her eyes, and she does not know why. The two part and the nana disappears down the long pathway to her home. The bundle shrieks as loud as the wind.
New York, Present Day
Two figures crouched in the field of cattails and reeds of Southern Westchester's Long Island Sound. They were a long ways away from the glowing jungle of concrete and steel that was New York City. Far away from any more backup if things went sour with this mission.
The marsh land of Long Island Sound kept the two covered as they staked out David's Island. The unoccupied island had served as a military base a few years back and seems to be the target for squatters. They've been getting reports that a certain organization has been showing quite an interest in the rocky land.
The smaller of the two, a women, laid on her stomach in the tall reeds, binoculars covering a good deal of her face. She watched the island vigilantly while her partner complained at her side.
"Vendetta, when you told me we'd be rolling around in the mud this wasn't what I pictured. This is just awful."
Perhaps bringing him along wasn't the smartest move on her part, but she needed someone she trusted watching her six. As crazy as it sounds, she trusted the man at her side more than any agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. Still...
The infamous merc with a mouth did have a point.
"I know, Wade."
Bernadette, Vendetta was more so a nickname, signed impatiently as she lowered the binoculars. David's Island was still visible on the horizon, barely.
"What's with all the busy work anyway? Isn't that usually for interns?" Wade spoke absently, he was too preoccupied with trying to balance his trench knife off his pointer finger.
"Something about proving my worth before they initiate me into the Avengers program,"
At least, something like that. Fury had debriefed her on the situation once but, she had other things on her mind at the time. She wasn't even one hundred percent sure why he insisted she proved herself, she wouldn't be the first mutant joining the Avengers.
"Why don't you just go freelance like I did? Pays good, you choose your own jobs, you get to kill a lot of people." Wade dropped the knife and caught it on his boot, "And the team-ups come with all kinds of perks."
In fact the perks with teaming up with Bernadette included a free ride and stopping for drive-through on the way home. Which was a great end to a horrible mission.
Bernadette took a sharp breath through her nose, the only time she had ever killed someone was in self defense when she was working alone and she ended up incarcerated by the MRD. She wasn't exactly eager to get into that life of vigilante justice again.
That's why she was trying to make her way into the Avengers, she needed those in a team to help her make the right moral dissension. She didn't like to admit to it but she can't make her own. After her mishap the first time she doubted the X-Men would even take her back, well, they might but they wouldn't respect her like they did. Probably, she left so fast she couldn't really say.
"You know I can't do that," Bernadette turned to face Wade and froze.
She didn't see a man garbed in black and red at her side, she saw nothing but the endless sea of reeds and cattails. Wade was tall, even if he was crouching she'd surly see him or his katanas poking through the maze.
She was utterly alone.
"Deadpool?"
Using real names was too risky, what if something happened? What if someone snagged him? She slowly brought herself to her knees, reaching for the gun at her hip.
A hand gripped her wrist hard and she hissed in surprise, she wouldn't scream, she wasn't up to giving who ever this was that kind of satisfaction. Bernadette felt her body turn numb, she was putting herself into defense mode.
An inky off black with an under hue of blue coated her skin, she could feel her body take on the translucence of her mutation, her ability to become ethereal. It also made her skin icy to the touch, even when it wasn't active, and prone to put other in a brief state of paralysis if touched.
The hand released her at once. Bernadette turned towards the owner fists raised, ready to fight, only to sigh in a mix of relief and disbelief.
Wade held his limp hand with the other and smiled behind his mask, "See? You have the reflexes to make it on your own."
Bernadette stared with glassy, off red eyes. She was still in a defensive stance.
"What's got your panties in a knot? You got a abandonment issues?"
Bernadette's eyes widened.
Louisiana, 1996
A young girl stands at the gate of her grandmothers plantation house. She wears black, just as the others attending her grandmothers funeral are. She had ran from the ceremony as she spotted her parents. It shouldn't have upset her as much as it did that they had a new child, they hadn't wanted her.
"Bernadette?"
Her fathers voice.
Bernadette looks up at him, tears stain her cheeks. She asks the question that all who are attending the funeral are thinking, "Where will I go now?"
Her father looks incredibly uncomfortable at the question, he furrows his brow and hesitantly holds out his hand, "Let's just...get you back to the ceremony, Bernadette."
Bernadette takes her fathers hand and he falls to the ground. She stares in horror as her mother screams, running up to the gates with her five year old son. Her fathers eyes move wildly in his head looking around, wondering what had happened. He had felt a cold chill before collapsing and now he was unable to move.
Bernadette has never ran so fast in her life. By the time she stopped she was at the pier overlooking the sea and was contemplating jumping in and letting the waves take her.
She would have too, had a voice told her not to. A man was speaking to her but she couldn't see him, he told her to take a step back and a breath, his name was Charles Xavier and he would help her get through this.
Bernadette sat at the pier and waited for him like he'd asked.
Wade sounded sincere but Bernadette's heart was still pounding from the shock of being left alone and it left her fuming.
"Edaw, on."
A side effect of the mutation, she could only speak backwards in this form.
"You know I can't understand you when you use that Devil speak."
The inky off blue melted from her mouth.
"Shut up, Wade."
{Authors Note; I pray I'm not biting off more than I can chew with this, here's hoping I can update it regularly.}