There was a fine line between 'Wade hadn't come home yet' and 'Wade never came home' but Peter could feel the difference deep within his gut the moment the situation became the latter. Normally it would be a simple as following the tracker Peter had put on Wade's cell phone; usually within hours Spiderman could be there to put the kibosh on the situation Deadpool had created but that was impossible anymore now that Wade was working with X–Force.

The fact that Peter wasn't supposed to even know about X–Force made the situation more difficult, but really, did Wolverine expect Deadpool to be able to keep his mouth shut about it? If anything, Wolverine owed Peter for keeping Wade from telling anyone else.

And apparently Wolverine was repaying him by sending his boyfriend home in pieces.

Peter knew what Deadpool was and what his body was capable of enduring, but when Deathlok delivered his dismembered body in a bag that had since gone stiff with dried blood it wasn't hope that made it possible for Peter to take the bundle, but pure shock. That same shock enabled him to play a macabre puzzle game where for hours he put Wade's body back together on top of their bed.

Completing the project and still seeing no signs of life was hard, but seeing Wade opened his eyes for the first time was unbearable.

"Wade? Can you hear me?" Peter asked to what soon became obvious was an involuntary response; one the corpses were prone to and Peter hadn't been fooled by for years.

It made him sick, physically and emotionally.

It made him rage and cry.

It made him leave for days at a time, and abandon the man he had promised never to let down.

It was weeks before Wade was coherent and when he asked, albeit jokingly, if Peter had stayed by his bedside, Peter lied and said he had. The sheer fact that Wade remained silent meant more than an accusation would have; he knew Peter was gone, he knew Peter had left him to drift in and out of consciousness and unimaginable pain all by himself, trapped in a dark room that had previously held some of their best memories together.

"I'm sorry."

Peter had meant to apologize, but Wade was eventually the first to do so.

"They should've left me in X Cavern."

"Don't say that. You're safer at home," Peter lied again