Anyone who has read the Deadpool comics will recognize how am adapting Deadpool's comic-self into the story and mixing it with movie Deadpool's story. But it should still be pretty clearly DP even if you haven't read his comics.

NB: Not beta read, all errors are mine.

...that your life used to be in, so you thought you'd shed a layer, maybe try on some new skin.

Deadpool hadn't blipped.

It wasn't even that he'd turned to dust and then somehow fucking regenerated, no, he just hadn't blipped at all. Thanos, that motherfucker, his little universal spring cleaning trick had skipped over Wade entirely. And having not blipped, meant Wade had spent the following five -horrible, isolated, maddening- years in a half empty world wishing desperately that he had, wishing that just once the universe hadn't royally fucked him over and left him out, left him behind to suffer.

Wade had wanted to die plenty of times, like, so many times he'd lost count. After he'd lost Vanessa he'd tried to kill himself in many fun and creative ways, and after he'd gotten over that, he'd often let himself get injured to the point it should have killed him just to keep things interesting and see what would happen, but he'd never, ever been able to die in that nice permanent way that other folks did. And then the snap happened...the snap that could have finally killed him, once and for all, but nope, not him, never him. He could never get what he wanted, not one single time, something would always go wrong.

And so he'd been left behind again… except this time it was worse, because he'd been completely alone.

It wasn't like after losing Vanessa, where he'd still had some people. No...there'd been no one.

By some twist of the fuckiest, shittest, crappiest luck ever, everyone close to him had blipped.

Weasel, Domino, Al, Dopinder, Russel, Colossus, Negasonic and even cutie patootie Yukio...all fucking gone. And Cable had long since returned to his future after his time travel doohickey had been fixed up, but with his luck, Wade was sure that had Cable still been around, he'd have somehow blipped too.

And you know what, Wade wasn't even sure the snap would have worked on him, because blipping had been dying as far as he knew, and having blown himself to pieces that one time in order to die, only to come back to life in the process of regenerating -which hurt like a bitch bee tee dubs-, Wade was fully aware of the fact that fuckbag Francis had been right; if there wasn't enough of him left to grow back parts, then parts grew him back. So would turning to dust have been permanent? Would any of those teeny tiny dust particles somehow have just regenerated him? He had no idea, but he would like to have had the opportunity to find the fuck out at least. I mean, come on, give a guy a fucking chance to die!

Because the alternative of that, what he'd been left with, had been enough to send him spiraling into dark places that even being tortured for months in a dark cliché villain-esque underground lab hadn't achieved.

See, the thing is, there were a few things that no one knew, or maybe just didn't care to consider, about Deadpool, about what it was like being Deadpool, being in his mutated body...things that even Vanessa had never known because she'd never asked and Wade had never found himself wanting to tell her or explain to her.

For one, he still had fucking cancer, it just couldn't kill him anymore, and also it was far less aggressive than it had been back when he'd still been pretty and dying, but only because his healing factor kept it on a leash. Despite his healing factor however, having cancer still hurt like balls, and it didn't ever stop hurting.

Wade had always had a high threshold for pain at least, and so when he'd acquired his healing factor, the perpetual pain of having undying cancer in spades just all-fucking-over, coupled with his rapid regeneration, had gone a long way to increasing his already high pain threshold, building up a sort of natural pain block in his brain. Which ultimately meant that wounds, no matter how extreme or severe, didn't affect him in quite the same way it would other people.

So, when he got stabbed in vital organs, riddled with bullets, lots whole limbs, was blown up or ripped in half by massive -scarily awesome- mutants like Juggernaut, he could usually still remain conscious most of the time. And yeah sometimes he'd pass out when his pain receptors were too overloaded, but whenever he actually 'died' he'd come back pretty quick. On the surface, it would usually seem more like he had a few aches and pains instead of having lost limbs or having multiple bullet wounds or massive internal hemorrhaging. And yeah, medication helped too…and drugs, drugs were good, even though they didn't last long.

But all that led up to his second point, see, because at the same time as none of the people who knew him where aware that he was always in pain on some level, due to the way he handled pain, they also seemed to have formed the opinion that he just didn't feel, or barely felt, physical wounds.

But that...that was just not fucking true.

And sure, going slightly nuts had been beneficial in the way that Wade had been forced to learn how to compartmentalize like a pro, all so that he could still make fun of fucking Francis and his manly lady friend while the motherfucking super son of a bitch was torturing him for shits and giggles and science. But as great as compartmentalization was, there first needed to be things for him to compartmentalize in order for him to keep the really dark, really festering, fucked up, awful, broken and twisted mental, emotional and physical feelings and pains that he lived with at bay.

And when the snap happened, when the people Wade prioritized as 'reasons to pretend to be okay' all disappeared, and half of the rest of the world went with them, when everything from the bustle of people, the stock markets, the noise and congestion of traffic, shops, vendors, the sheltered and homeless people, the bad TV shows and pop music, the criminals, the super heroes...when all of it just became less, there had been no escape from it. There'd been nothing to compartmentalize, nothing to distract Wade from his already empty existence, especially not when after the snap it became a vacuous black hole that nothing, not even light, could escape from. Everything was just gone, just like that, a void, and he was left with nothing but memories and pain.

Even the fucking climate of the world changed when the population was halved, which made sense scientifically and all, but shit. It had really driven the point home.

And it all kind of sent him over the edge...okay, not kind of. Truth is, it fucked him up.

Everything had started to hurt, the ways in which he'd managed to mentally block pain before the snap just failed to work for him anymore, and so every day had been painpainpain and it had started to make him feel literally crazy. Unfortunately for what was left of the human race, one of things he'd found that helped him combat his own pain, was the pain of others. Because their screams of pain made him feel better about his own screams of pain.

Wade spent five years learning that within him existed a level of sadism, cruelty and viciousness that was far more disturbing and intense than it had previously seemed when he'd been masking it with fake humor and fake friends.

In those five years, the pain was ever present and his humorous side -when it made an appearance- was more twisted for insult to injury than it was for comedy relief, because the punchline to every single joke was the life of whatever sorry motherfucker turned up on the list at Hellhouse.

Hellhouse being the new name of Sister Margaret's.

In Weasel's wake had come a short, old man named Bob Stirrat, who was known amongst mercs as Patch. He'd taken over and renamed the bar, picked up what was left of the business after so many NY mercs blipped out, but in under a year he'd built the business back up. And Wade took every job he could get his hands on and bullets or katanas into.

The fact that there were still criminals left behind after the snap was just fuel to the fire of his misery, and he made it a personal mission to take them all off the map, because they didn't deserve to still be there when so many others were gone. Wade didn't think that he deserved to be left behind either, but there was nothing for it. He was stuck alive, probably forever, and everyone he'd ever given even a remote shit about was gone and nothing served better as a temporary balm for the pain like spilling the blood of baddies still walking around like they had any right to.

That reasoning was not only his though, and Wade found he wasn't surprised to occasionally see Hawkeye picking up jobs too. They never did more than acknowledge one another with a glance and they never spoke more than a few empty, cursory words to one another over a beer at the bar. And whether or not Hawkeye knew that they had similar motivations for doing what they were doing, they never got in one another's way.

Wade had no idea just what Hawkeye had lost, Wade had no idea what specifically anyone had lost, he just knew that everywhere he went, loss was like a tangible thing, hanging heavy in the air.

Wade also didn't know how everyone else was coping, what they did when they went home at the end of the day, whether people were picking themselves up and moving on or drinking themselves a little closer to liver failure with each passing day…

...all he knew was that he'd talked to himself a lot in those five years; bad conversations, good conversations, hateful, bitter, self loathing, spiteful, deranged conversations. He'd lived in squalor because he couldn't be bothered to clean up even a little, just moved from place to place when the apartment or basement or warehouse he was in became entirely unlivable. He ate only every few days because hunger pangs didn't even make the top ten list of pains he was in and it couldn't actually kill him anyway. He lived without mirrors and almost never took off his mask and when night fell and the world was so much quieter with half the city's population gone, there was less need for light and some stars could be seen in the inky sky, it was so pretty and ironically peaceful.

But sleep never came for Wade.

The only 'rest' he ever got came after he'd put a bullet in his brain.

And then one day the Avengers – what was left of them- suddenly got off their asses and did something.

Wade had been regenerating from a gunshot nap at the time when it happened.

He'd woken up with a confused start when noisenoisenoise penetrated his half dead sleep. The hole in his head had still been healing, blood and brains still dripping down the wall behind his chair, some dried on his skin, and the fucking pain. Jesus Christ. Not yet, not yet, it had been too soon to be conscious yet, but because there had been so much fucking noise all of a sudden he'd woken up sooner than usual.

Wade had looked around blearily, head spinning and pain receptors screaming at him, thinking that it was like the world had been on mute one moment and then the volume was suddenly turned all the way up...

And after he'd picked up one of his guns and stumbled over to the window of his fifth floor apartment, looking out to see where the noise was coming from, he'd seen people, people everywhere in the streets. People where cars would have been parked or in the process of driving, and on the curb sides, and behind the windows of closed down shops and in the windows of the building across from his own apartment building.

They'd all looked like they were panicking and confused and Wade...Wade had started to internally panic, too.

Because what the fuck else was he supposed to have done!?

In the next moment he'd barely refrained from shooting the couple who'd suddenly appeared on the floor of his apartment, where maybe a sofa had once been. He'd only just managed to stop himself from pulling the trigger because they'd looked so pitifully confused, and then terrified when they'd seen his ugly, bleeding face. They'd screamed then, but their screams weren't like the ones of criminals dying, those kinds of screams calmed him. No, the couple's screams were like they'd just woken up from a horrible nightmare, only to find another nightmare, in the form of a strange, scarred, armed man, in their apartment.

It had been too much for him to deal with at the time, confused, still healing raw and feeling a little manic, and even though he'd known it was wrong, he'd threatened them at gunpoint to get out of the apartment. They hadn't hesitated and after they'd fucked off he'd locked the door, closed all the windows to block out the influx of sound from everywhere and he'd just sat cross-legged on the floor of his messy bedroom, covered his ears with his hands and rocked back and forth telling himself he wasn't crazy for what could have been hours...before he'd given in with tears in his eyes and shot himself in the head again.

A part of him had been so sure he'd been dreaming, or having a nightmare of his own, maybe even a hallucination, as if maybe he'd finally, really and truly lost his absolute fucking mind.

But when he'd woken up from regeneration in the early morning of that same day, with a splitting headache and the usual pain everywhere like it always was, making his nerves raw and putting him in a very bad mood, he'd turned on the TV and discovered it had not been a dream or a nightmare.

The Avengers had done it again, they'd saved the world...no actually, the universe.

The population was back.

A second invasion had been thwarted.

Thanos was properly dead.

Tony Stark was dead.

And it was all very, very real.

You'd think that would have made it okay again, even just a little.

But no, Wade had already lost too much of himself in five years, and the sudden come back of everyone? It only made him feel crazier.

He felt more lost in the world than when he'd come back from Weapon X.

He felt more lost than after everyone had disappeared.

Because, see, when he walked down the formerly empty streets of the past five years, it was unsettling to see that all of the people who had come back from the snap where just 'going back to normal'. The shops were being cleaned up to be reopened, people were walking around like nothing had changed, moving into the empty apartment's in the buildings, new vendors were setting up, even a few more cars were on the roads...but it was all bullshit, because under the surface everything was different and wrong, at least for Wade it felt that way.

How could anyone just go back to normal?

But they were. People were everywhere, putting their lives back together, getting in touch with other people and family from before the snap. They were all finding family members who had once been younger were now older, finding new brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, adopted family members and new pets and just accepting that shit like it was a-o-fucking-kay.

People were smiling somehow even after everything, they were happy...and yeah, he could figure they had a reason to be. But Wade wasn't happy.

Wade hadn't aged, he'd stopped aging after his mutation. So for him it felt like there was no proof in his life or in his body to show that the past five years had really happened, aside from the fact that he had lived almost like a fucking hermit slash hobo and had spent far too long being his own company for it to be healthy. But that was it. In the past five years he hadn't made any new acquaintances or 'friends', he hadn't become familiar anywhere or with anyone, not even for sex. Hell, prior to the snap it'd been real difficult to find a prostitute who would accept his money for sex, and post the snap, when half the population had still been gone, it'd been impossible. He'd stopped trying in the first year. So, it'd just been him. Him and him and him.

Now everyone was back and he had nothing to show for it, zip, nada, and to make matters worse, walking down streets that should have felt familiar and comfortable just seemed to feel alien to him. Even masked and covered up in layers of jeans, boots and a hoodie, he felt out of place.

And bumping into people on now crowded streets made his skin crawl so bad, and it took a few times for him to realize it, but Wade eventually acknowledged, with some shock, that he hadn't been touched normally by anyone, even just by being bumped into, in over four years.

It was horrible to realize it.

It was all so fucking horrible.

And Wade wasn't able to cope. So he went dark.

Wade decided to be just Wade for a year.

He buried Deadpool for a while in order to get his shit straight and decided to spend at least twelve months trying to find a balance between who he had been and who he was presently, because they were two very different people.

It started with him finding a new apartment, ten stories off the ground, bought in cash and furnished quickly so he could start to settle in. He resolved not to let it go to shit either, so he lived in his new apartment like he'd lived a long time ago, back when he'd been 'normal', before and just after he'd become Deadpool, when he'd been with Vanessa. He kept the place clean enough, didn't put bullet, stab holes in the walls, and he didn't let rats and roaches move in. He paid all the utilities on time and glared at all of his neighbours so they'd know to keep their distance.

He didn't go outside though, except for walks and exercise in the dead of night or twilight hours. He had enough money from his mercenary work to easily live without working, so he did. He did all of his shopping online, which had become much more efficient since the world was back online again. He bought proper groceries and he ate properly -not necessarily healthily- but properly, taking full advantage of the many Mexican food places that were around, old and new.

He started maintaining his hygiene again too, and he discovered just how much he'd missed showering regularly, wearing clean clothes, and having clean teeth. And now that he was taking care of those things again, he realized just how far gone he'd been that he'd let himself become so disgusting in the first place. He counted himself lucky for his healing factor in that he couldn't even so much as get sick or get cavities from poor hygiene, or he'd have been regretting the last five years on a whole new level.

He paid all his bills and bought clothes and other things online, too, and kept up to date with the latest news online and through television. There was a lot to keep up with since the world was building half the population back up. So much was happening.

He watched it all either feeling nothing or feeling anxious, but one thing, in fact the only thing, in the news Wade found himself smiling about, was that Spider-Man was back and protecting NY again. That was great. The kid had been snapped away with so many other heroes, to see him back was worth smiling about.

Seeing Spider-Man made Wade think of Dopinder though, and by extension, everyone else he'd known, or he knew rather. But Wade would not go anywhere near Hellhouse, not in the year he was taking for himself , and he'd purchased his apartment with one of his fake ID's in order to stay off the grid. He knew Weasel -at the very least- would try to look for him, and he wasn't interested in being found. Not yet.

He wasn't the same anymore, and not just on the outside like before, he was all fucked up inside now too. So he wasn't ready, he could feel it. And when he finally stepped out into the world again, he wanted to be ready. He wanted to be able to compartmentalize again.

So, his allocated twelve months would be dedicated to re-acclimating to the world being back to 'normal'.

But after a little more than a year, when he finally re-emerged into the world proper, he did so as Wade the first few times and found out that he'd been wrong. Five years of a missing population had come and passed, yes, but while he'd thought it would be different, in the end nothing had changed, even after being 'dead' for five years, people hadn't changed at all.

Because when he walked down the street in his hoodie, jeans and boots, people still gave him a wide berth or stared at him like he was an eyesore. Some made unsubtle faces of disgust or snickered, and a kid even started crying one time.

So, no, he'd changed...but nothing else had.

Still though, after a long year, he'd sort of pieced himself back together as much as he could. He'd roughly filled in most of the cracks and fractures in his body and mind from being so broken for so long, and he'd started to manage his pain again, he'd even started to make jokes – to himself- that were still inappropriate but not quite so dark anymore.

He still hated mirrors, but he had one in his apartment, just for glances to make sure he appeared at least mostly human and put together, even if it was only half true, half the time.

So, even though he struggled with himself now after six years, more than he'd ever done before.

Even though the second locked bedroom in his apartment, furnished with only a big comfortable recliner, a small side table and a suppressed Glock 17, served as his own personal suicide retreat.

Even though he felt manic under the surface of his forced 'normal' Wade persona.

Even though he wasn't okay, he looked like he was.

On the surface he seemed mostly how he had been before the snap, the only difference being that it was just way, way worse and ten times more difficult to maintain.

But Wade wouldn't give up, only because he literally couldn't die, so it wasn't even an option.

So, after facing the world maskless and finding himself still a nightmare for other people to witness, it was the easiest thing he could ever have done to slip back into his spandex, leather and kevlar, and just be Deadpool.

After all, being Deadpool was the only thing that wasn't a struggle for him. Polishing and sharpening up his weapons, strapping them on, concealing several more on his person; it all came so naturally.

Also, he looked hot as fuck in his suit.

And yeah, no, he wasn't the same and he wasn't okay, Wade wasn't okay, Deadpool wasn't okay, nothing for him was ever really okay. But the world seemed okay, or at least was apparently mostly unchanged, and Deadpool was still Deadpool. He was still a mercenary, a fucking excellent mercenary, and there were always assholes who needed to be introduced to Bea and Arthur.

For that reason, one late evening on a Fall night, Deadpool stepped out into the world, hailed a random cab and made his way to Hellhouse.

Wade found that he was not at all surprised to see Weasel show up at Hellhouse looking for him a week after he was officially back in the merc business.

He'd just returned from a job to collect his money and there was Weasel, waiting to see him.

Wade was also not surprised to find that he didn't have much to say to Weasel, at least nothing besides sarcastic comments and a joke at Weasel's expense here and there. He amused himself that way in between the other man's bitching and complaining about losing Sister Margaret's and his apartment and all other money and assets he'd owned.

Weasel also glared at Patch through his thick glasses every chance he got while drinking alcohol on Wade's tab and saying how much he despised what the man had done to his bar.

And yeah, okay, Wade didn't like Patch either, he reminded him too much of a living-breathing garden gnome, and Wade had often wanted to shoot him, but as far as the bar went, nothing much had changed about the appearance of the place during Patch's tenor, except for it being more brightly lit and the toilets being dirtier.

During their 'conversation', Weasel had attempted to find out what Wade had been doing for the past six years, and Wade had said a lot of words about a lot of things, but he hadn't actually answered any of Weasel's question properly and they both knew it. However it took Wade flat out telling Weasel to 'drop it', in a tone of voice Weasel was unfamiliar with and was sufficiently intimidated by, to eventually cease all questioning.

Then, in order to clear the sudden unease he'd invoked in his long time buddy, Wade had slapped Weasel on the back hard enough to hurt and proceeded to offer Weasel a job as his handler, since he was so very unemployed and Wade was still so very wealthy.

Needless to say, Weasel had accepted, even though it had stuck in his throat to accept working for Wade when once upon a blip he'd been his own boss.

And would you look at that, something's had changed in the end.

Word eventually reached Domino that Wade was around and a few weeks later she showed up at Hellhouse as well. Turned out she was an X-person now, not even in training, nope, she was a fully accredited and accepted member of the X-Men.

Wade had thought he'd feel jealous about that, but he'd actually just felt annoyed when thinking about what hypocritical and discriminative assholes the X-men were and had always been. Dom's news actually helped him to realize that he had no actual interest in seeing any of the X-Men he'd known again any time soon, let alone becoming one. So, he wasn't a mutant and they'd never really wanted him, not the big shots of the X-men at least. Well fuck 'em. Colossus and Negasonic were better off staying out his life anyway.

After six years and all the shit he'd been through, he was about as interested in them as he was in the Avengers, he felt like they would just make his already shitty life even worse and he would probably do the same for them. He mostly felt the same about Blind Al, he had no interest in reinserting himself into her life. During his re-acclimation period he'd looked her up, and then he'd broken into her temporary blip lodgings one night and left a duffle bag full of cash where she'd find it -i.e: trip over it- and that had been that. She was a good person – in her own drug using, foul mouthed granny way- and he didn't want to be a burden to her anymore. By that point he was used to being alone anyway, there was no need for a roommate.

He was genuinely happy that Domino was doing well at least. He really liked her, always had from the first time her lucky ass signed up for the X-force team. She was a good person too and that really counted in his book.

Good people were the people that deserved to live in the world. Everyone else was optional.

So he'd congratulated slash made fun of her for being an X-Woman in an X-Man world and he'd bought her a drink. Weasel had congratulated her too, although Wade was 122% sure the four eyed bastard had been grinding his teeth before and after the words left his throat.

Wade had found it very amusing to watch Weasel seethe.

When they'd parted ways for the night, Weasel skulking off to his newly acquired apartment -since Wade had paid him a decent advance so the man would stop whining about sleeping in a hostel-, Wade hadn't been prepared for Dom telling him she was glad to have seen him again, right before she'd hugged him.

It had been intensely awkward, because Wade didn't hug her back and he had been as stiff as a board, bent down to accommodate her arms around his neck while not otherwise touching her in any way. Considering Wade had used to flirt with her now and then and had once slapped her ass right before she'd punched him in the balls, his reaction to her hug was unexpected…for both of them.

After six years of not having been touched in anyway whatsoever beyond the barest of unavoidable human contact out in the world -and even that had been scarce – being hugged made his skin beneath his suit crawl in both a good and bad way. As if he wanted more contact but at the same time didn't want anyone touching him.

When Domino had removed her arms and had stepped back after the very awkward moment, she'd frowned while smiling and had apologized to him in a skeptical way, because neither of them had understood his adverse reaction to a simple hug. Wade had tried to laugh it off, claiming that he was self conscious of smelling bad, but they'd both known it was a bullshit excuse. Because while he had been in one of his Deadpool suits, he had come to Hellhouse straight from home, freshly showered and his suit was clean; they'd both been able to smell the cologne on him.

She'd shrugged it off though and had bid him a smiling goodnight.

Wade had gone home, changed into some sweats and a wife beater, he'd eaten a bag of potato chips while watching the Cartoon Network, and when his mind still hadn't quieted from all of his racing and conflicting thoughts and feelings, he'd gone to his second bedroom and locked himself in.

It was rare that it happened, but one very normal Wednesday as Wade was walking down a busy street in his usual hoodie/jeans/boots combo with his hood up, carrying a few grocery bags and a new unicorn plushie that somewhat diverted the attention of the people he passed from staring his face, he looked up and saw Spider-Man swing by overhead.

The red and blue suited superhero came at high speed from around a corner up ahead, the backdrop of traffic and skyscrapers not doing anything to detract from his lean, lithe, tight little body in that form fitting, and very much new and sexy, suit. And Wade had watched with a smile as he'd swooped low on his web, just above the roofs of all the traffic and then he'd arched high and shot another web out as he went by.

Some people who noticed shouted greetings up to him, to which the sweet little peach actually responded with enthusiasm and a friendly shout of 'hey guys'. Most of the other New Yorker's didn't care though, and Wade couldn't blame them. NY was like weird-shit and super hero central after all.

He personally took a moment though, to watch Spider-Man careen by, appreciating to the full extent the sight of the sexy super hero in all that tight spandex, knowing just what a cutie he probably still was underneath that mask and suit, even now that he was older. Especially now that he was older. And that new suit he was wearing, Wade noted with a quiet hum to himself, did wonders for showing off that perfect ass far better than the red pajama pants he'd been wearing the night they'd first met on Coney Island.

Yeah, it was rare that it happened, but whenever Wade saw Spider-Man swinging around, his day seemed a little better for it. He walked the rest of the way home with a smile on his face.

It didn't take long for the two people from Wade's past, who had re-entered his life of their own accord, to start distancing themselves from him as much as they could. It was easier for Domino since she didn't work for Wade and didn't need to hang around Hellhouse, but Weasel eventually started to withdraw from him too.

Wade wasn't surprised by it, especially since he'd known all along that the things that were different about him since the blip would eventually come to the surface.

He had a good handle on things, but even he slipped up on bad days.

The first thing he'd done that had caused an immediate sense of unease in both Dom and Weasel when they were around him, happened on one night almost six months after they'd all become reacquainted. They'd been having drinks at Hellhouse together, Weasel and Dom had been there, and Negasonic too, since she was now both old enough and not old enough to drink after the blip. She'd opted to be old enough for the night, however and she'd tagged along when Dom had invited her.

At some point during drinks, Dom and Weasel had both pointed out that they never saw Wade without his mask completely off anymore. Wade, making a self-deprecating joke as he usually would, had pointed out that no one wanted to see that, and he'd flashed a scarred, white toothed smile at the three of them. He'd been about to take a sip of his beer afterward when another merc near the bar had commented loudly enough to hear, that yes, Wade was right, his ugly mug was not something anyone wanted to see.

Promptly and without looking away from the table and his companions, he'd unclipped his thigh holster, withdrawn his Desert Eagle, turned off the safety and had aimed off to the bar where the voice had come from before firing a shot. It had been a perfect head shot, as Wade had intended, and it had been loud and jarring enough, that despite almost everyone in the bar being used to the sound of gunfire, a few people gasped and shouted in alarm. Everyone stopped to stare, looking from Deadpool to the dead merc, but the music just continued to play, even as the unknown merc's body slumped into the bar and then down onto the floor, bleeding out.

It only took a moment longer, as Wade reholstered his weapon and sipped his beer, before everyone had gone back to what they were doing, albeit a little more warily than before. But truthfully, even though it had been a while, they were not unused to Wade's actions, a lot of the people in the bar knew he was trigger happy and that he had killed more than a few dickhead mercs over the years for pretty trivial shit.

There was no deadpool board hanging up in the bar anymore, not since Patch took over and did away with it. So these days, when someone died in Hellhouse, it was not because someone wanted to collect money, it was just because someone wanted to kill them, and it was far from the first time Wade had killed someone in Hellhouse just for annoying him.

But it had been the first time he'd done it in front of Weasel and Dom.

Patch could be heard cursing about Deadpool being a loose canon as Wade had finished off his beer.

Negasonic had stared at him with wide eyes and an incredulous scowl on her face for almost a full minute before she'd gotten up and walked toward the exit. Wade had wiggled his gloved fingers in a wave as he'd bid her a 'not so teen-angst filled evening' and she hadn't even deigned to give him the finger. He'd immediately known he wouldn't be seeing her again. And that was for the best, because she was a good person and he was not. She needed to stay the fuck away from him.

Weasel, who had gulped noticeably a few times, downed the rest of his drink in one long swig and kept his eyes down on the tabletop. And Dom said she had to go after Negasonic, so she had left a minute later, but not without giving Wade a raised brow look of 'what the actual fuck'.

They'd only been so shocked because they'd all known Wade in the past to take insults about his appearance with a pinch of salt, but that was the past, and Wade didn't tolerate that shit so easily these days.

The second incident that caused a more permanent rift between himself, Dom and Weasel, and more clearly affirmed that Wade no longer accepted random insults about his appearance, came over a month later.

They were at Weasel's place that time. Wade had taken on a quick job that day and Dom had tagged along since there was no killing required. It had only required as much discretion as possible to obtain some expensive information, and Dom was better at discretion than Wade was so she'd come in handy.

The job had been mostly successful in the end, and afterward they'd both gone to Weasel's place because as Deadpool's handler, he was now the middleman for Wade and he would be the one to pay up on behalf of the client.

But from the moment they arrived, Weasel had been complaining non-stop about how Wade had shot up the place and that there were a few mafia casualties and about how it was not what the client wanted. Domino shrugged and half-heartedly explained that things had gotten a little complicated so a gun fight hadn't been entirely unavoidable, which was almost but not quite true, since he could have killed them without guns.

But who gave a fuck anyway?

Wade, who had taken five bullet wounds too many that night, because it was hard to dodge machine gun fire, was already pretty annoyed and just wanted to get his money, go home, shower, eat and take a lead-nap.

So being as he was so on edge, when he told Weasel to just shut up and give him his money, Weasel made the bad decision to revert back to their old dynamic. He started spitting out words about how he should take a cut off of Wade's pay for the grief the client had given him and then he followed it up with a comment about Wade's appearance.

Wade honestly didn't even remember exactly what Weasel said, but it triggered the side of him he valiantly repressed on a daily basis, and in a quick and precise movement he grabbed Weasel by his greasy blonde hair and shoved him face first down onto the kitchen table they were standing around, sending the money piles fluttering and a half empty coffee cup falling to the floor with a heavy shattering clatter. Wade then easily unholstered one of his Desert Eagles and pressed the barrel to Weasel's temple where he held the blonde man down, his face smooshed against the gray linoleum.

Domino had stepped back, looking wide eyed as Weasel knocked more money off the table with his scrambling hands while cursing in pain since his nose was bleeding and blood was smearing onto the table surface. Wade stopped his squirming when he cocked the hammer on the gun and then Weasel was still and breathing heavily and he had his wrists on the table but hands raised as much as he could in surrender. He started to say something, but Wade spoke first in a no bullshit but cheery tone,

"I don't negotiate my fucking cut. Period."

He then told Weasel to count out his money and put in his duffle bag, on the double, or else he'd find out how much it hurt to be pistol-whipped, repeatedly.

Weasel agreed pretty pathetically and without hesitation as expected and Wade let him up.

He stood by, Domino too, although a little further back than before, as Weasel quickly and shakily packed stack after stack of green notes into Wade's duffle bag, blood still dripping from his nose, some of it onto the money, but Wade didn't care. His money often had blood on it, always figuratively but also sometimes literally.

Once his cut was in the bag Wade zipped it up, ruffled Weasel's hair, ignoring how the man flinched away from him, and then he turned to leave. He said a pleasant goodbye to Dom but she ignored him, just staring at him as he left while Weasel stood doing the same.

Before, Wade would never have hurt Weasel, or any of them, no matter what they might have said to him. And as much as he knew he shouldn't have manhandled and hurt Weasel in that instance, he couldn't say with any certainty that he wouldn't do it again at some point if Weasel pissed him off again.

Hurting people just came easier to him since the snap, or blip or whatever. When he got angry, he tended to be more severe and violent in his reactions, whereas in the past he'd been careless and impulsive. Nowadays, If someone pissed him off, he reacted before he joked, which was the opposite of how he'd been before, when everything had been something to joke about.

Wade didn't find much to laugh and joke about these days, but he was trying.

Still, Weasel and Dom finally got the new memo that he wasn't the Wade or the Deadpool they'd once known, and after that second incident, Dom stopped coming around to Hellhouse and Weasel did business with Wade in a weirdly professional way, whether over the phone or in person. Weasel barely reacted to him, even on good days when Wade was able to muster up his old personality and he'd try to lighten the atmosphere, Weasel was unmoved.

Wade supposed putting a gun to a friend's head would fuck up any friendship.

It bothered him, on some level, in some way, that his 'friends' were afraid of him, that they didn't trust him...that he couldn't always trust himself. But in the end it didn't matter, because those five years had fucked him up and he was doing his best with what he had left of himself.

Anyway, it's not like he needed anyone to be close to him, he really was used to being alone, and these days he believed he was better off that way.

Now that's out of the way,
Next Chapter: Deadpool and Spider-Man meet again...