the Savant takes Wade to the Core to be a lab rat.
warnings: crossovers everywhere plus my Fateverse (dimension-hoppy sci-fi), rampant dad-mode!Wade. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s***).
pairing: in general, The Blood And Tears Progression is Logan/Wade (only obliquely mentioned in this part).
timeline: right after Visitation.
disclaimer: marvel owns all recognizable characters.
notes: 1) Timbuk 3 reference, lol. 2) Sam Elliott's mustache is the mustache all other mustaches aspire to be. it's the king of mustaches. 3) while there is a near-constant stream of identity verification in the Fidelis District, most of those are quick scans of a subdermal imprint of some kind (no, i don't know how they would make something like that work for regenerators, but they somehow did, at least temporarily). only a few key points would use a full-on chronometric scan. 4) the non-blue Beast here is the Nicholas Hoult version. 5) oh, look, some fluffy pre-Quevan… 6) "maybe you won a cruise" is a Fifth Element reference. 7) i'm thinking D'Onofrio!Fisk and Gunton!Owlsley here. 8) have some AoA!Loki and some America. 9) "puto" is a terrible spanish pejorative specifically aimed at a man and implying that his machismo is lacking. 10) "rica" means cute/pretty/good in a way that would be kind of diminishing to a badass inter-dimensional superhero like America. 11) gagh is a classic Klingon dish. google it to find out why someone would categorically refuse to eat it.
A Quick Jaunt
The future is as bright as Wade remembers.
So bright, I gotta wear shades.
He kind of hates it.
A guy with a mustache (a Serious Mustache, like, possibly stolen straight off Sam Elliott's face) calmly punches some buttons on a control panel. "Confirm the record," he says. "Conduit transfer completed as scheduled, Core Standard fifteen-hundred nineteen hours. Authorization Transporter 1008. Keepers 056 and 188 on-site with Node 098 Ragnarok."
The room's computer gives a beep. ~Confirmed.~
The Savant leads the way out of the room, grump mode fully engaged. They get in a lift, go down a few levels, then board some kinda subway-shuttle-thing. It's creepily clean, and none of the other passengers give them a second glance.
When they get off, there are a couple of guards lounging beside some kind of checkpoint, watching absently while each person holds a wrist over some kind of scanner before moving on.
"Keeper 056 bringing a non-imprinted subject through," the Savant tells the guards.
He scans through. Skye scans through.
Wade wonders if he should just walk, or hold his wrist out, or what.
"Come on, dumbass," the Savant grunts. "Just walk. We'll get you a subdermal after you meet the mad scientists."
The scanner makes an angry beep when Wade passes, but a guard swipes his own wrist and says, "Escorted subject, authorization Warder 22503."
And away they go.
"Stay close," Skye warns him. "Since you've been authorized under escort, the automated systems won't react as long as you're within two meters of us."
"And if I lag behind?"
"You'll get zapped, and we'll have to fill out a lot of paperwork. It's not fun for anybody, so I don't advise it."
Another lift down, some kind of courtyard with a bamboo grove on one side and a koi pond on the other, a long corridor.
They stop next to a door with a nice, big, easy-to-read sign.
Chrononeurology: Special Projects
Henry McCoy NC212-δ
Skye touches the panel next to the door.
~"One moment—I'm just—oh, dear—"~
Something small and hollow clatters to the floor.
When the door swishes open, a non-blue Hank McCoy is standing there in a coffee-stained lab coat, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Never mind, I'll have Moira bring another cup. Traveler, Savant, it's very exciting to meet you both. Dr. Wilson, I've read so much of your work, it's just—it's an honor, sir."
"Bones. The fanboying can come later. Let's get this show on the road. The mook needs to be fully registered and given an ident imprint so that Skye can get the ball rolling on his accommodations. He's consented to six months of study, subjective time."
The precious little nerd wilts a little. "Oh, is that all? I—I mean, excellent, yes, good. I'm sure we'll learn a lot. Um. Len isn't due for another ten seconds, and it's technically illegal to start without him, so I'm just gonna go ahead and stall a little longer—"
"You're early," says a guy with a long green ponytail.
"I walk fast," the Savant tells him unrepentantly.
Clearing his throat, the green-haired dude shakes Wade's hand. "Traveler. I'm Leonard Samson, Head Proctor. I'll be serving as ethical oversight during this study. If you have any concerns about your treatment or any of the experiments being performed on you, don't hesitate to inform me."
McCoy startles. "Oh! I'm so, so sorry, I didn't actually introduce myself…" He seizes Wade's hand and shakes it enthusiastically. "Hank McCoy, Head Medic. Of course you've met Dr. Wilson—he's the Network's foremost Chrononeurologist. He knows more about the effects of trans-universal travel on brains than, um, pretty much anybody, ever. I promise, you are in very good hands with us. Over the course of the study, we'll probably be calling on the expertise of a few other specialists, all with excellent records and credentials."
"I've actually had that grumpy bastard on a ride-along," Wade says tapping his own temple. "Guess it's only fair, though, since I've hitched a ride in his brain, too."
This lab is somehow devoid of that eerie, unsettling quality that was layered neck-deep in the labs back at the X-Mansion when Storm made him get checked out. There's sunshine, and a lived-in, professorial kind of atmosphere that makes him think of Pete and MJ's room in Avengers Tower (he'd gotten a peek when Pete proudly showed off his Captain America comic book collection).
This version of Moira (Medic 2110) is petite and sassy, and brings enough coffee for everybody (and enough sugar for a pair of Wades). They all sit drinking while she drags a weird medical tool across the inside of Wade's wrist that tickles somewhere under his skin.
Like an amateur with a razor blade.
"That's not funny in this context."
Aw, sure it is. Remember, down the block, not across the street!
"Seriously. Stop."
Moira ignores him. "All right; that'll scan your ident at any Network facility or checkpoint now. We can't let you leave the district, however, so it will ping a lockdown alert if you attempt to cross one of the bridges."
"Shall we begin?" McCoy asks brightly.
"Right," says the Savant. "We have the detail scan Six took when we aced the Hunter, and Skye very thoughtfully scalped the computer servers at Avengers Tower when we came to pick you up, so we have the broad strokes of how your brainware operates. We're gonna start out with some low-power signal interpretation capture; with any luck, we can trigger a jump and get a resonance scan of your brainslide."
"Oh, here we go again," Wade mutters under his breath. He has a mental image of Moira in a Vanna White getup, waiting while McCoy tells Wade to spin the wheel. "Can I buy a vowel?"
They all look at him.
Skye pats him on the shoulder. "I'm gonna get back to work now—good luck with your Wheel of Random Destinations."
McCoy gestures to a cushioned, ergo-whatsit-shaped reclined lounge thing. "If you would please sit over here? I promise there are no needles or scalpels involved. This is completely non-invasive, and Dr. Samson will make sure we don't do anything untoward while you're gone."
The space-age chair turns out to be super comfortable. Wade wants to distrust that, but if he's going to spend six months in a chair, he figures it might as well be a nice one.
"Okay, we should be able to tell right away if you brainslide," Moira tells him as she pokes some kind of computer pad.
"Well, just be careful," he replies. "Sometimes my body…wanders off while I'm gone."
"I'm sure there's nothing to worry ab—"
Evan is fifteen and crying. Wade usually tells him he cries too easily (really only because seeing his kids cry makes him want to cry; Hope and Ellie hardly ever cry, thank God).
There's a bloody scrape on Evan's knee, sluggishly closing up. There's a bloody towel in his left hand: he's sitting on the edge of his bed and dabbing gingerly at the wound.
That much blood on a regenerator means the wound used to be a lot worse. Like, compound fracture worse. Shotgun to the kneecap worse. Nearly-severed limb worse.
Wade has a gun in his hand before he really processes the fact that he's angry. "Who did that to you?"
"Please, don't," Evan says thickly, sniffling. "It's not that bad—look, it stopped bleeding."
"Just tell me which one of those little fuckers—"
"Don't. Please, Wade, you'll just be proving them right. Sometimes, the only way to win is to bleed. You taught me that."
"I'm pretty sure this isn't what I meant."
"Well, it's what the Professor meant. It's what Headmaster Logan means. Maybe I'm a freak, but I'm not a monster."
"I am."
"You're not. And if you can spend a decade proving everyone wrong, I can survive high school."
Wade sits down on the floor and hates himself. "You're a good kid, Ev."
With one more cautious dab at his bloody knee, Evan moves from the bed to the floor and leans his head on Wade's shoulder. "You're a good godfather, Wade."
Just as he's about to make some kind of denial, someone startles them by banging on the door.
"Hey, freak!" someone calls. "What's with the blood trail? You didn't murder anybody, did you?"
Wade nudges Evan with his elbow. "Your boyfriend's worried about you."
"Shut up, he's not my boyfriend," Evan hisses, but his cheeks are a hilarious shade of bright violet.
"I know you're in there!" the other boy says crossly, pounding on the door again. "Evan, what the hell is going on? I'm gonna give you to the count of three before I blast the damn door. I swear, if you're dying in there, I'll beat the crap outta you!"
"You'd better go," Evan says, getting to his feet.
Wade snorts, but climbs out the window.
"—two, thr—"
"Quentin, please don't blow up my door," Evan says.
The pink-haired brat casts a suspicious glare around the room. "What's with the blood? And you better not say something lame like you 'fell down the stairs.' I take my job as Student Body President pretty seriously."
"Out of spite."
"It doesn't get much more serious than the spite of a telepath."
Evan beams. "I'm okay now, I promise. Look—good as new."
"Yeah, well, you shouldn't let people hassle you when there's proper authori—"
Someone's cell phone rings.
Wade wakes up on the funky chair in McCoy's lab.
"Fascinating," the nerdy guy says with a huge grin.
The Savant takes the computer pad from Moira. "We tracked the transmission, identified the branch. Don't know what sent him back, though. Something here? Something there? Electro-mag transmission? Psychosomatic trigger? Maybe we should get the Cartographer's array in place…"
McCoy waves a light in Wade's eyes one at a time. "Well, if you could perhaps just warn us when you try the next triggering frequ—"
Some guy is cowering at swordpoint under Wade's boot.
Awkward.
A phone is ringing.
"Is that me?" Wade wonders.
"It's m-m-mine," squeaks his captive.
Wade waits.
The cowering guy whimpers.
The phone keeps ringing.
"You wanna answer that? Could be important. Maybe you won a cruise."
With shaking hands, the guy pulls out his phone and answers. "H-hello? Um. I'm k-kind of in the middle of something." He listens. "Y-yeah. Uh-huh. How did you—o-okay. Uh, it's for you." He holds it up.
Wade blinks. He takes the phone. "Yello?"
~"I can see you're not a man to be trifled with, Deadpool. You'll get your money."~
"Wait, I'm confused." Wade takes the blade away from his captive's throat, but keeps him pinned. "Who is this, exactly?"
The dude on the other end of the line growls a little, like he thinks Wade's jerking his chain. ~"This is Wilson Fisk. Now, if you'll leave my accountant alone, I'll arrange for the rest of your fee to be remitted."~
"Good," Wade says, trying to remember whether he's ever been to this universe. "Right. Because Deadpool is not a man to be trifled with. I'll, uh…I'll ace your whole bureaucratic cabinet if you try this crap again. Y'know. 'Bitch betta have ma money,' and all that." He shrugs at the guy under his boot, because he really doesn't have a clue how he ended up in this situation.
Kingpin is quiet in that special way that makes Wade think the veins in his face are bulging out. ~"I would expect nothing less. Good day."~
The call cuts out.
"Huh. Coolio." Wade tosses the phone back to his sniveling pal.
"My bad," the Savant drawls, deadpan.
"You did that on purpose," Wade accuses him.
"Right, but we learned a lot. Next!"
"Hateyousomuch—"
"One of us is gonna have to go out there," Loki decides, inspecting the blood on his hand before putting pressure back on the wound in his side. "Of the three of us, you're the best choice. While the idiot's arm will reattach long before I can be back in fighting form, it'll take time, and we're standing targets until then."
America clenches her hands together between her knees. "I'm afraid," she hisses. Her eyes are wet, and her lips tremble.
"That's good," Loki tells her. He spits blood to one side (thoughtfully not the side where Wade's sitting). "That means you're not stupid."
"Puto, sometimes I wanna punch you so hard the All-Mother will feel it."
"I get that a lot."
Wade listens to the muted grinding noise of severed bone growing back together, and the wet squelch of muscle and skin following suit. "He's right, Rica."
"My name's not Rica," she hisses (for probably the dozenth time, if the tone's any indication). "My name is America. You know: land of the free, home of the brave?"
"You can't be brave if you don't start out afraid."
Loki points with his free hand. "Listen to the imbecile."
Wade draws a breath. "America, he's right. You've gotta go out there."
"But Kate—"
That's right, Hawkeye's about to get her soul nommed.
How do I know that already? I just got here.
"Don't worry about Kate. I'll get Kate. But I need you to distract those guys, or I'll never make it to her. We've asked a lot of you kids, I know…and I understand if you wanna quit after this. I'll be proud of you no matter what you do when we get outta here, but first I need you to help me save your girlfriend. What if it was the other way around? What if they had you, and Kate was stuck with us invalids? She wouldn't just give up on you."
"Kate's braver than I am."
"Bullshit she is. You tried to save your whole dimension when you were six."
She bursts to her feet. "It's easy to be brave when you're a kid—your world is tiny, and you don't know how impossible it is to save!"
Loki laughs, chokes, coughs up more blood, spits again (so charming, really). "Dear girl, your world is going to have her soul devoured in about ten minutes. My shield will shatter in three, and a hundred skrulls will rush in here and drag us all out there to join her. If you can just distract them while the moron brings her to me, I can take back the shard that makes her so very appetizing in the first place. Easy, right?"
Wade grimaces through the stinging burn of nerves waking back up. "You heard 'im. I need another five minutes, and we've only got three."
"What if I fuck up? What if I fail, and we all die anyway?"
"Why are mortals so tiresome?" whines Loki.
"Okay," says Wade. "Okay, super-fast pep talk, maximum effort. You'll get a kick outta this, since you're all cosmopolitan and interdimensional. If we count every single resonant iteration in the central portion of the timestream, there are about two hundred and fifty trillion of me. That's twenty-five with thirteen zeroes after it."
"I know that—I can see, like, a quarter of them."
"But get this: there are eight of you. Eight! The universes need a whole bunch of me, so there are a whole bunch of me. If they only need eight of you, America, how much do you think each one of you can get done? How many skrulls do you think you can punch in one day?"
"I hate to rush you," drawls Loki. "But I am, in all likelihood, about to lose consciousness. Best of luck, group selfie when we win. Please don't draw things on my face."
America flexes her fists and takes a deep breath.
Wade nods at her. "Hey, Ri—America?"
"Yeah?"
"You ever try punching a regenerator with a portal the size of a softball? Juuuuust big enough for, say, a shoulder joint, or a kidney, or a pre-frontal cortex?"
She flashes him a fierce grin as the first skrulls start to break through their shitty, haphazard barricade.
"He's back," Moira announces as she squints at Wade's left eye and scribbles things on her datapad.
"I feel tired," Wade notices with some concern. "I've done six hops in a day and not felt tired."
"In light of this aberration, I would like the research to stop for the day," the green-haired dude says.
The Savant fiddles with his portable for a bit. "Okay, we'll stop here, then. I'll take the data and put my head together with Mimi and Six, and maybe the Old Man."
McCoy looks surprised at that. "The Old Man? But—but you hate the Old Man. You hate the Fridge. You hate Doctors."
Wade doesn't know how he knows there should be a capital letter there. 'Doctors' like 'Doctor Who' time-traveling crazies?
"We're scientists, for fuck's sake," growls the Savant. "I can get past personal hang-ups for science. You understand this shit is my goddamn life's work, right?"
Cowed, McCoy adjusts his glasses and pretends to be busy with some kind of control panel. "Right, yes, of course. Um. Traveler, we'll escort you to your accommodations. Depending on how you feel in the morning, we'll either try some more signal capture or simply analyze your cerebral structure."
Now that he has a subdermal-whatever, Wade scans through all the checkpoints just fine. The scanner at the door of the housing building is much bigger and shinier, and identifies him by his subject designation: Subject Designate Wade Wilson WM562-Omega – Welcome home, Keeper 188.
Apparently, even temporary housing for Keepers is posh as hell. He's got a furnished suite like something out of a Park Hyatt: bedroom, enormous bathroom, sitting area, kitchenette (which really just consists of a food synthesizer, a nifty future microwave thing, and a cold storage drawer full of fresh fruit and veggies). The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the sitting room is nothing but ocean and sky, as far as the eye can see.
Classy.
He misses Jamie.
The hell with our girlish figure, let's see what these assholes have in their replicator banks.
He starts systematically ordering up and tasting absolutely everything on the food synthesizer's menu.
Except gagh. He skips that. Even the chocolate-covered version.
.End.