ladies and gents, meet Wade Wilson WM343, who chose to send Nate & Hope back without killing Stryfe. with a little genetic tinkering, he'll be happy, handsome, and incredibly bored.
warnings: slash. reference to violence. Earth-339 (think of it as 'the Waking Man universe'). spoilers, i guess...for Messiah War. a little angsty emo-ing. pg-13 language (primetime tv plus f*** and s***).
pairing: Nate/Wade, Stryfe/Wade.
timeline: 3922, two days after Nate and Hope arrive in Earth-339.
disclaimer: marvel owns Cable & Deadpool, disney owns marvel.
notes: 1) a few more glimpses into the past of Earth-339. wars, splosions, crashing Helicarriers...and Laura/Julian, because they're a hilarious couple. you'll see when i get around to the Nightmare/End of Dreaming stuff. he fancies himself the bad boy, but she totally wears the pants. 2) "But I have a tool. He's seven feet tall, full of himself, and secretly likes to cuddle." *rofl*
WM343
It's early afternoon, yellow-orange brightness shifting slightly to the west. The ground is red, like the Painted Desert. A hot breeze brings the scents of dust and stale ocean. For the first time, Wade can see some semblance of beauty to Stryfe's fortress—a jagged, asymmetrical spire, gleaming silver even in the baked ash-haze of this ugly, ruined world.
It occurs to him that he's come to think of it as home (and how can that be, how can any place be 'home' anymore after Manhattan burned and Nate died and he crashed their flagship and Apocalypse took over?).
He remembers the dimension-hopping-in-search-of-Nate adventure. He remembers Phalanx-Nate and Jesus-Nate. He remembers War-Nate. They were all different, but they were definitely Nate, and that really says something about how messed up Nate's mind is, so it's not like Stryfe has the monopoly on Nate-style insanity. And since genetically Stryfe is Nate, he must have the potential for things like gentleness and kindness…and love?
"Stop it," he whispers to himself. "He has to be gone before she gets back."
But why? Who could say for sure that Stryfe wouldn't (with some work, admittedly) take care of Hope just as well as Nate had?
"Remember all the stupid fucking mind games?"
Little kids play mind games. They want to know how things work, so they poke. And Nate sure as hell played more mind games.
He wanted to change you. I only want you to be yourself.
Wade presses the heel of his palm to his temple until the pressure point aches.
Nate (his Nate, not the past-Nate behind him) is dead. He's been dead for almost two-thousand years, and he wasn't exactly Boyfriend of the Year material when he was alive. But Stryfe is here now, will be for the foreseeable future, and is actually kind of sweet in a weird, psychopathic way.
Wade only knew Nate for a couple decades, was only with him for maybe half of that. But Wade's known Stryfe for five hundred and sixty-plus years, and they've been more or less 'together' the whole time.
What if Eight-ball made a miscalculation? What if Wade asked the wrong questions? What if Q was lying (giving evasive responses) about everything?
He may be making the biggest mistake in history (next to Einstein wondering what would happen if he bashed two hydrogen atoms together) based on the assumptions that people never change (but he knows they do) and that a talking computer isn't going all HAL on him (and what are the odds of that?).
Wade hasn't found a way to die. If crashing a Helicarrier, being within a hundred meters of a nuclear explosion, and spending every day in a radioactive wasteland haven't done the trick, he doesn't really know what will. Which means…y'know. Forever. Alone. Which would suck.
Okay, even if Stryfe's looking for ways to kill him, that could have its up-side, too.
"Wade?" Nate calls.
"You guys wait here for a bit," he says, feeling vague and detached. "I gotta go check on something."
He flips on his stealth module, hurries into the fortress and through its twisting corridors.
Stryfe is indeed napping, and he looks just like Nate (maybe a little younger, plus a shave and a haircut). He looks innocent, boyish.
Wade switches off the stealth module and steps closer. "Honey, I'm home," he calls in a soft little singsong tone.
Predictably, Stryfe stirs awake and promptly turns him into a human teddy bear (he makes a muffled 'oof' as he hits the bed). "Mmgood," the conquerer sighs sleepily. "I was worried those barbarians might have bartered you away to the bandits or some other such nonsense. Then I would have to rescue you, and rescuing is vastly contraintuitive to me."
"Bet you'd be good at it if you tried," Wade says.
Stryfe chuckles and snuggles closer. "Let's not find out. I should get terribly bored and lonely without you around, my dear. At least give me a few more years to finish my research. I'm sure I'm near a breakthrough—just a little more work isolating native genes from activated genes and cancer cells, and you'll be back to looking however it was you looked before you were modified."
"What?" Wade says, and he can't keep the shock out of his voice.
But Stryfe just chuckles some more. "I'd meant it to be a surprise, but I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. Would it make you happy? When I thought about how to make you happy, it's all that came to mind."
Wade's breath comes short, and he touches Stryfe's hand on his shoulder. "It makes me happy that you actually sat down to think about what would make me happy. Nate never did that."
"Hmph," Stryfe snorts. "Yet more proof that I'm superior to him in every way. What did you end up doing with those idiots? Are they here yet?"
"I left 'em wandering," Wade says, shaking his head. "I wanted to see you. But you know…Bishop's been planning to betray you this whole time. Probably means to try to kill you."
"Then I shall have to very firmly disabuse him of such a notion."
"'Firmly' as in 'lethally,' I hope. I'll be back in a bit—off to play with the idiots some more."
And (after pausing to steal a quick kiss) he slips away and heads for the armory. Still secure, no sign of Bishop.
~Organic presence detected—welcome, Wade Wilson.~
Hope looks up from a sandwich, wipes jelly away from the corner of her mouth. "Mr. Wilson?"
"Slight change of plan, precious," he tells her, giddy and nervous and just a little bit freaked out about the way things are going. "I'm gonna be able to get you back to Nate 'n the gang just in time for you to leave this place. Sound good?"
"What's different now?" she wants to know, even as he drags her along by her tiny little hand.
"Now we have a very small window of opportunity to get you the hell outta Dodge, that's what."
"I don't understand!"
"Don't have to. All you have to know is that I was wrong about Stryfe and now my life is going to be awesome, and you get to go home with Nate and live happily ever after."
She's seriously starting to slow them down, so he picks her up and runs. At the back door, they meet Josh, Warren, and Vanisher.
"Wha—hey!" Josh says. "What about—"
Wade doesn't slow down. "With any luck, they're busy killing each other, let's go."
Back on the ridge, the others greet him with more confusion and dismay.
"What happened to Stryfe?" Neena asks.
"Trying to kill Bishop. You guys need to go now. You can't handle Stryfe, and I won't be held responsible for anybody's head getting crushed like a grape."
Nate looks at him, all suspicion and betrayal, and he's torn between being ashamed of himself and wanting to slug the jerk.
"Please, Nate," he begs, and holds Hope out to him. "Just take her and go."
Nate takes the girl and settles her on his hip. "Wade? You were so eager to kill him before…what's different now?"
Because Wade knows Nate, he knows that this is the one time he has to give the honest answer. "I don't want to see somebody who loves me kill somebody I love for my sake," he says quietly. "And he would think it was for me. He thinks you're bad for me."
"And when did you ever care about the motives of others?" Nate replies, and his tone isn't accusing but Wade feels guilty anyway.
"Since I found somebody who doesn't mind whether I'm messed up," Wade snaps, because feeling guilty always makes him angry. "That's one up on you, Nate—he likes me just fine the way I am. He says I'm perfect and amazing and a work of art. Last time I checked, you tolerated what I am."
Nate looks like a kicked puppy. "And what are you, Wade?" he asks.
"A killer. Yeah, I've been a murderer-for-hire, and a soldier, and even a revolutionary assassin, but it all comes down to the fact that I end lives. You have never stopped trying to fucking train that out of me, but you can't train away somebody's nature, Nate. God, you never understood that. People are what they are, and you can't fucking well make them into more—they have to do it themselves, and they have to want to."
After a while, Nate takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he says.
"Bull-fucking-shit."
"I am."
"So go cry to the legion of female admirers you have waiting in the wings," Wade sneers.
Neena makes an affronted noise, but Nate holds up a hand to stop her.
Wade shakes his head and continues. "But don't you dare go back and try to feed your 'oh, I love you so much' lies to your Wade, because you're just going to 'fix him,' and then you'll die in ten years and he won't be able to deal with it because Hope will be gone and his damn brain works too well for him to forget, and when Stryfe comes along fourteen centuries later, he'll be so fucking stupid with loneliness that he'll happily trot off to be the guy's pet killer." He swallows thickly and loosens a gun in its holster. "If you're really sorry, then don't turn him into me. Now get lost before I go get Stryfe and tell him that my undying happiness hinges on your horrible dismemberment."
Nate shifts his grip on Hope, and she sniffles.
"I'm sorry you had to hear all that, princess," Wade tells her gently. "And I swear I'd never let anybody hurt you. But Nate thinks he's always right, and he thinks he can make people better, and he doesn't care whether they actually want to be better or not."
Logan and Laura have drawn their claws and taken up fighting stances.
Wade realizes he's crying, and he doesn't care. "Serious as a heart-attack, Nate, you've got twenty seconds to take the kid and go."
"The module's malfunctioning," Nate blurts. "We can't go back. We can only go forward."
"Oh, for fuck's sake…" Wade mutters, grabbing Eight-ball from its pouch. "Eight-ball, can you program Nate's timeslide module?"
~There is a fatal fault in the telemetry circuit preventing backward slides.~
"Is there a way to get him back without it?"
~This unit is capable of serving as the timeslide module's telemetry circuit, and has a lock on subject designate Hope WM343's home timestream bundle.~
He thinks about that for just a second. "And after that, nobody but Wade Wilson would be able to use you?"
~That is correct.~
"Good. Do it." He tosses the glass ball to Hope, who catches it in both hands.
The two of them vanish in a flash of light, and Wade is left standing on the ridge with seven disgruntled mutants.
"Hey, look at that," he says brightly. "Nate and Hope went home. Congratulations, your mission is accomplished. Make yourselves scarce; I've got a feeling my possessive boyfriend is about to discover that I may have enhanced the truth a little to let Nate escape, and he's gonna wanna kill things."
Slowly, Laura lowers her hands. "Deadpool…"
"Three years after you marry him, you'll convince telekinesis-boy to have kids. You'll fight over whether to name her Laura or Julia—I won't spoil the ending of that one for you, because even M. Night Shyamalan couldn't have come up with a funnier twist. Please, please, please don't make Wade the godfather. I was a weird enough dad for a seven-year-old, let alone a newborn, and I think your kids might've ended up a little traumatized from my babysitting."
"…dude," Josh says, eyeing Laura.
"I wasn't going to ask about that," she says, embarrassed. "I wanted to ask…are you sure about this?"
"Little late for second thoughts now. Third thoughts, whatever. You guys are out of time. Neena—try not to let Priscilla do anything world-endangeringly dumb."
"Pfft, story of my life," Neena dismisses, and takes off her armband.
One by one, they all follow suit, disappearing as suddenly as if someone flipped a lightswitch.
Wade stands alone in the barrens and comes up with a lie that will keep Stryfe from being too depressed about Nate getting away.
.End.