a prequel piece to Lighting Fires. a look into the mind of the man who invented brainsliding.

warnings: AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. unrequited slash leanings. angsty angst. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).

pairing: one-sided Nate/Wade.

timeline: shortly after Earth-3838 makes first contact with the Network; Native Year AD 2553, Network Operations 725 (AD 3263).

disclaimer: marvel owns all the characters.

notes: 1) the title is a reference both to the other pair of demo-squad-centric fics (Lighting Fires and A World in Flames [part of Blood & Tears]) and to the Katy Perry song "Who Am I Living For." 2) Nate's wall of notes is a big pane of LED-lit plastic, and he writes on it with white dry-erase marker. it's about ten feet tall (starting at ground-level) and fifteen feet wide. 3) "hobby...or a girlfriend" is a reference to Get a Hobby (in Blood & Tears), when the Traveler was talking with movie!Terry about getting over her mother's death.

visit The Fateverse Glossary (merianmoriarty (dot) deviantart (dot) com/art/Fateverse-Glossary-174203180) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

One Spark

Nathan sighs deeply and stands up to add another note to the wall of glowing words, phrases, and formulas.

There are monuments to him, holidays, a statue (maybe two by now; the bastards are working fast). Children are taught that he has brought their world enlightenment.

But this is his true life's work.

Finding the Network was an accident. A blip. Something that was only possible because Wade changed something in his notes without telling him, something that only actually happened because Neena was in the room and leaned on a button at the right time.

(Sometimes Nathan thinks, bitterly, that they are his good luck charms. He wishes someone could be a good luck charm for Wade. He supposes it is lucky enough that Wade has lived this long. People used to have months, not decades…if Wade's organs had failed in a different order, he would be dead now.)

He hears the low hum of the hoverchair in the door, and it stops his train of thought. Wade used to be able to sneak up on him. "How are you feeling?" he asks, stepping back to stare up at the gathered progress of more than thirty years.

(Even after all this time, he still hopes—prays—that the answer will spontaneously appear. That he has overlooked something. That this time tomorrow, Wade could be living again instead of dying.)

"Tired," Wade husks out. "You need a hobby. Or a girlfriend."

No.

No, Nathan needs a solution.

"This is more important," he says. It is his standard answer, when someone tries to take him away from this outside of his scheduled work hours.

(Since he found the Network, he has been asked to make a few public appearances, but they no longer ask him to work.)

"I don't need a hobby," he goes on. "Or a girlfriend. Just this. Here to lend your charming wit, or was there something official?"

"That guy," Wade goes on, and pauses to cough. "The. Whatshisface. Cartographer. Just arrived. Wants to talk. To you."

Nathan remembers a time when Wade would chatter nonstop, instead of in these scattered fragments and broken sentences. The pauses, the gaps in wording, the labored breaths, are all like the ticking of a clock…once Wade's lungs finally give out, they will have a maximum of five years before the strain from cancer, treatments, and mechanical organs necessitate heart replacement. As it is, they only have that much longer before the medications scrubbing his blood degenerate his marrow enough to start causing brain damage.

"About our medical research, I'm sure." Nathan sighs again, crosses out an old question on the margin of a diagram. "Isn't it ironic, that they can be so very far ahead of us in all other arenas of science, and they're still stumped when it comes to little things like smallpox and malaria?"

Wade tries to laugh, but it sends him into a coughing fit.

Nathan stares very hard at a chemical equation and hates himself.

Once upon a time, he would have rushed to his best friend's side…these days, he can barely look at Wade. Not because Wade is ugly or frightening or disgusting in his failing health, but because Nathan looks at that thin shadow of a man and can only see the warrior he used to be. Because it is another very visible sign that he still has yet to succeed. Because every day he does not find the answer is a day closer to Wade's body giving out.

"Shit," Wade finally croaks out, and clears his throat again. "Buncha fuckin'…time travelers. Woulda found…cure for cancer by now. You'd think."

Nathan shakes his head and reworks the equation (just in case). "We don't need them," he says quietly. "I'll find it—even if it's the last thing I do. Either I'll find it, or I'll find a way to get you out of there."

Wade scoffs. "Running outta…shit to replace. Whatcha gonna do? Stick my brain in a box, carry me around?"

The reminder of his constant failure stings, but he forces a wry grin. "I thought I'd make Nessa and Inez take turns carrying you. We'd call you our 'Wade-in-a-Box,' and draw a smiley on one side."

"Frowney on the other?"

"No. Wade-in-a-Box would always be happy."

"Really?" Wade chuckles. "Well…gonna go see whatshisname?"

"Unless they have a way of transferring consciousness or reconstructing physical bodies on the genetic level, he can talk to someone else. This is more important."

Wade wheezes out a sigh. "Nate—"

"Don't. Don't you dare. You are worth it."

"Gonna kill yourself, dumbass. Think I want that?"

Nathan clenches a fist. "To be perfectly honest, Wade, I don't really give a shit what you want. Not about this. If it gives us a stepping stone, if it gets us even an inch closer, it's worth it. Cross an inch sixty-three thousand, three hundred and sixty times, and you've crossed a mile."

He expects a witty rejoinder about tesseracts and hyperbolic point-to-point transition, but Wade says nothing.

In the long pause that follows, he can hear the rhythmic huff of Wade's breath and the muted conversations of people in the hall. He reaches up and erases part of a molecule, redraws it.

"Why?" Wade asks, finally.

"You know why."

"I don't."

"Then ignore it. Pretend I'm just being a stubborn, pigheaded know-it-all like always."

He does not want to say the words; they would only be a burden to Wade, who even now has half the women in the private military sector tripping over themselves for him. A world-class assassin who became a world-class physicist…a regular renaissance man, if only he could escape the crumbling prison of his body.

So Nathan settles for writing down a peptide chain in one of the tiny clear spaces left on his board. Every luminous line on the ten-foot-tall clear pane spells it out in the best, purest way he can imagine.

I love you.

I've always loved you.

Even when there's nothing left of you, I'll love you.

"You were saying something about transfer of consciousness?" someone calls from the direction of the hall.

Nathan frowns again and turns.

The blond man from two days previous stands in the doorway. The Cartographer. Stupid name, in Nathan's opinion.

"I didn't mean to eavesdrop," the man says, holding his hands up in a gesture of neutrality. "One of our Head Programmers was talking about how the bulk of memory and personality is expressed through hyperbolic chronometric resonance, and that there could be a way to use that to try copying a person's consciousness into a new body."

Nathan's mind changes gears sharply, away from the old pastime of genetics and back to physics.

Sentience. Consciousness. Resonance.

Wade has always been better with gravimetric theory and hyperbolic chronometry, but Wade does not have Nathan's background in medicine through which to screen it.

He shakes his head. "It's useless without the proper analog in which to deposit the information. I mean, if you just copied the raw data, you wouldn't have a working consciousness, you'd just have a bunch of semi-meaningless passive bytes. The soul wouldn't follow."

But his mind is already moving, speeding along now, and he needs a place to get the thoughts written down.

He does not even hesitate.

He erases a huge section of his board and begins to fill it all over again.

I love you.

Even if it kills me.

.End.