Illyria woke up alone in bed with a start. Wade's clothes were still with hers all over the floor. Her cell phone, keys and .45 were on the bedside table with her glass of water. She listened for a heartbeat, before picking up the sound of the downstairs shower. He'd gone all that way so he wouldn't wake her?

She padded all the way downstairs, out of habit avoiding all the creaky floorboards and checking the house's perimeter through the windows She wanted to curse her paranoia, her alert frame of mind, for daring to come to her private place. She was still swearing at herself when she pushed open the bathroom door.

There he was, her Wade, standing in the spray, leaning against the marble with his back to her. She scented the room out of habit. What was that smell? Was that… tears?

"Wade?" She came further into the room. "Are you all right?" He spun around quickly, and wiped a hand down his face.

"Yeah, baby, I'm fine. Coming in? You know I like it when we shower."

"Shut up an tell me what's going on."

"I thought you said shut up."

"Wade… if you don't wanna talk about it, you know I won't make you." He nodded, but still opened the glass shower door for her.

She climbed in and when he sat on the marble bench, she put herself between his legs, resting her head on his chest and facing away. He would probably do better if he didn't have to look at her. Patiently, she waited for him to talk, listening to the beat of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest. She didn't push; she knew if she did he would bolt – its what she'd always done.

"The things they did… to cure the cancer? I don't think I've ever… it hurt a lot, blue. It hurt." He ran his fingertips up her arm and the spray was still warm, but she'd lowered it, so it was little more than a comforting trickle. "Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat. I think I'm back there and I've go to bite my cheek so I know I'm not… I can still see it, up here," he tapped his temple. "I can hear it, I can smell it, I can taste it. I need to remind myself, constantly that I'm still here…"

"You should have woken me." She said, her words gentle, she didn't want to startle him.

"Woken you? I shouldn't even be here right now!" That made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

"Why not?" Her voice was still level, but keeping it in check took more effort.

"Never mind… I just."

"Wade? Why should you not be here, with me?" The muscles in his torso tensed and she heard his heartbeat skyrocket. His breathing quickened just a touch, but she could hear it.

"They did things to me, Illyria, things that made me…"

"Made you what?" He rolled his head back until it hit the marble and shut his eyes. He brought hid head forward and let it hit the marble, once, twice, three times, not enough to do any damage.

"I'm not much of a man anymore, am I, Lily?" His eyes were sad when he opened them again and she felt the strangest pain in her chest, like a burning feeling that spread form her left breast through the rest of her body until it made her fingertips and toes burn.

That was the moment where she was 110% sure she was in love with Wade Wilson. The agony, the disappointment, the shame, shame, in his eyes hit her like a planet. She fell into a hamster wheel full of thoughts regarding the evisceration of all things Weapon X. She would take their heads and their hearts and display them to the world just because they had put that look in her lover's eyes. She heart herself growl, but she didn't give a fuck! And yeah, she was acting for all the world like a claimed and mated male, but she didn't care, Goddamit!

His eyes flared open and he held up both his hands I surrender.

"Okay," he said, "I'll go. It's fine." Hang on, wait, what? Her brain ground to a halt and her heart dropped to her knees.

"What? Go where? Are you crazy?" He blinked at her. "What's going on, Wade, where is this coming from?" She saw the whole process from start to finish. His eye caught hers and went glassy. Then he blinked that away, putting all his strength into building a wall tall enough, thick enough and strong enough to keep her out. "No, no, no, Wade, stop right there…" But she couldn't do more than whisper. She knew exactly where this was going. She watched his face go hard and cold, then he removed her hand from his body and stood, leaving her alone in a shower full of warm water that somehow seemed too fucking cold to live with.

By the time she'd pulled herself together, he'd already packed pretty much everything. He was taking one last look around the bedroom, and by the look on his face she knew a guilt trip was the only way to make him stay long enough for her to tell him she didn't give a fuck what they'd done to him.

"Wade, the least you owe me is an explanation!" She caught him a split second before he teleported – which was apparently a new trick of his. His big shoulders rolled with each breath, and his shaved skull looked like a scar all on its own in the morning light.

"I need to leave now, Lily. This needs to stop."

"Why? Why does it?"

"Because I'm – because… because I'm not even a fucking man anymore." He spun around to face her, the diamond-shaped scars over his eyes, and the fading lines around his lips making him look like he'd been torn at by an animal. "Look at me, Illyria! Look at me!" He shook her shoulders hard, making her wet hair stick to her face.

"You're still a man, Wade." She promised.

"I'm a fucking experiment! I'm just a slab of meat with a number that happened to have the right DNA and be dying of the right fucking disease! I'm not a man; I'm not a person! I screamed so loud I couldn't recognise the sound of my own voice!" He shot blades out of his arms, making her jump, and twisted them so she got a full on view. When he retracted them, he tore off his shirt and let her stare at the lines tattooed on his body. "How can you look at me? How can you stand to be near me? How can you touch me? How can you make love to me? LOOK AT ME, ILLYRIA!" She wanted to look away, if only because she wanted to spare him the humiliation of staring, but that would be the last nail in the coffin, so she took in all the inky black lines all over him and started to come closer.

"I am looking at you."

"Don't, Lily… don't come closer. Lily, I could hurt you…" She ignored him.

"I don't know what they did to you. You don't tell and I don't ask. But I know what it feels like to be destroyed. To be ashamed of who you are because of the actions of others." When she reached him, she traced his new black veins with her fingertips. "I know what it feels like to think you're less that who you could be. To feel dirty, used, broken. I've been there." She met his eyes, then traced the scars on his face with one hand. "You're a bad man, Wade. You're a killer and a murderer and we both know that. But you're mine; part of you will always be mine. I stole it from you, now I've got it tucked up in my heart, in a place I forgot to forget." She brought his hand up to the spot on her chest where he would feel her heart beating.

"Will you break the rules for me, Lily?" His voice was a whisper. He was ashamed and afraid and frustrated. She kissed him quickly, gently.

"I love you, Wade Wilson. The man you were a year ago, and the man you are today. I love you." She had never said the words to him before – it was against their rules. She avoided it as much as she could, because it would change things, but he wasn't a price she was willing to pay for her own security. He needed to hear it, and so she would break the rules.

His eyes were closed and the cords in his next were pulled taught.

"When you told me you were dying, I thought that was the end. It thought that would be it for you – you would slip away and I would be all by myself again."

"You have Felix."

"And for Felix I am forever grateful." She acquiesced. "I'm sorry, for what you went through. More sorry than you could imagine, and I will be here to help you through it, but so help me God, if you make me feel the way I did in that bathroom ever again, I will cut your heart out for making me cry." His lips twitched and her pulse raced - maybe she was doing something right!

"I'd grow it back."

"Then all's well and good." She joked. "Does this mean I can shoot you when you piss me off, and you'll just… get better?" He nodded.

"Lily, you need to understand something." He took her hands in his. "Stryker, he ah... he did something to my brain."

"Your brain?" This was the first she was hearing about this.

"Yeah. Somehow he wired me up to a computer thing. If he types in, on that computer, for me to do something, I have no choice."

"Like mind control, only electric?" He nodded, the fear of her rejection as clear as day in his eyes.

"Where is this computer?" she snapped straight into business mode. If Wade, the invincible, unstoppable mercenary – the mutant killer – was under the complete control of Stryker, it could be a huge problem.

"There was one on the island, there might have been one in Canada, I don't know." He shut his eyes, fighting off one of the migraines that had become common occurrence to him. "I don't know!"

"It's okay, it's okay…" She shushed him gently. "We'll find it, we'll burn it to ashes. We'll make everything all right…"

"Lily, I'm sorry…" She put a finger to his lips.

"You're not any less a man, just because you were experimented on, or changed, or manipulated." She made him meet her eyes. "You're twice the man you were because you survived." Then she placed a gentle kiss on his throat; right above one of those black veins, and enjoyed the feeling of tension leaving his body.