Author's Note: Fandom is most fun when it is interactive, and I really enjoy discussing stories as they come together. Everyone that takes the time to review, I appreciate you. This author's note is directed to the guest reviewers (I'm talking to you Black Cat if you're reading this). You have left some very kind, thoughtful and often question-filled reviews to multiple stories. I would love to respond, but will not be making author's notes to do so. PM me, sign in to review, or hit me up at deanine29 at gmail dot com. Otherwise, the Sheldon Cooper in me that hates the incompletion inherent in an unanswered question will have to find a way to deal.

Peace! :)


Chapter 3 – Coo Coo Ca Choo

Over the course of the next few days, Peter and Al developed a rhythm. She prepared three square meals a day, good healthy, tasteless MREs and Peter explored the rats nest of a house while trying not to get himself electrocuted. He mostly succeeded.

By the fourth day, there really wasn't anything left to explore and the smattering of tools he had found were utterly useless at getting the metal cuffs off, so Peter set to work trying to fix Al's television. Every day about ten in the morning she mentioned her show. If her show was something she looked forward to after years being a forced houseguest to a psychopath, then Peter could try to fix it for her. She seemed pretty firm in her decision not to help him escape, but maybe a good turn would change her mind?

Peter took the guts from three broken televisions that he'd found amongst the clutter for spare parts and started tinkering. It was nice to get lost in the puzzle of fried electronics. He could almost forget that this wasn't his bedroom, and he wasn't patching together another of his dumpster-found treasures. Of the three busted sets, one had been shot and it had the most viable innards. With some better tools he might have been able to fix things pretty. As it was, the now working inside, didn't completely fit in the old casing, so Peter wrapped the whole mess in a load of duct tape and with fingers crossed, turned the set on.

When the television came on and didn't immediately catch fire, Peter cheered. The picture was more than a little grainy and shifted up with a black bar down the middle, but Al was blind and the sound was coming through perfect. "I think I fixed it," Peter announced.

"Oh you are a brilliant boy," Al said. "Where's the clicker?"

Peter handed her the remote that should work based on the sensor in the box. They sat together on the lumpy old couch and watched her show. Apparently Matlock reruns were her jam. As Peter had never seen a Matlock episode, it was all new to him.

There wasn't any great warning that the status quo was about to change. Al stiffened beside him and clicked off the television. "You remember what I said about not getting yourself killed?" she asked. The dull click of Deadpool's portal had just sounded and while Peter heard it, he didn't yet understand the significance.

"I smell burnt hair," Deadpool announced. "Ah, bunny rabbit, did you try to escape? Didn't Al tell you not to do that?"

Peter tried to follow Al's advice, he really did, but when his adrenaline was up and a criminal was snarking off to him, Peter's mouth developed a mind of its own. "What can I say, I have issues with authority when it comes to kidnappers and their colleagues—also, not a rabbit."

"Not a rabbit? But you have those big sad herbivore eyes, all helpless and innocent." Deadpool tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I bet you're vegan. Did he eat the meat in the MREs, Al? Enquiring minds want to know."

"Don't be an ass. Did you bring dinner or would you like me to cook?" Al asked. "We have MREs and MREs and I think a couple of left over MREs." Al headed for the kitchen, not sparing the mountain of muscle behind her any special attention.

Peter stood, and moved to stand between Al and their captor. Maybe she had been riding this rollercoaster for years, but he didn't like the idea of this man menacing the relatively nice old lady he had spent the better part of a week with. It was so much easier to stand up to people when he had his suit and could disappear into the anonymity and reputation of Spider-Man. God, but he felt small looking up into the masked face of the man Al had spent the better part of a week warning him about. "Look, you can't just imprison people against their will. So, you should release me and Ms. Al immediately."

Deadpool slowly and deliberately poked Peter in the chest with his extended index finger. "Make me."

It was a bad idea, trying to fight the scary, muscled guy that had already successfully drugged and captured him once, but acting on bad ideas had gotten Peter pretty far in the grand scheme of his life so far. It was Deadpool's territory and he didn't even have his web-shooters, but Peter attacked, punching the big guy in what turned out to be rather hard abs and bounced onto the wall. "Look, I don't want to hurt you, but I will."

"The bunny rabbit is going to hurt me." Deadpool grinned manically. "You have a lot of lessons to learn while you're here. The first one is that you don't have the skills to hurt shit. You wander around Queens stopping muggings and rescuing lost tourists and think you're prepared to fight me? I am a one man killing machine. You show me what you got. I want to see it."

"You asked for it." It wasn't a long exhibition between them. Peter had been pretty sure he was doomed to failure from the moment he landed that first punch. Deadpool wasn't just a strong, well-conditioned human; he was enhanced. Peter fought anyway. Deadpool let him bounce around and even let him get a shot or two in, then he attacked. Moving as fast if not faster than his quarry; he jerked Peter off the ceiling and pinned him to the ground with a knee in his chest.

"You're an idiot, but I like you. You're going to be spending your summer here. It would be a shame to waste the time, so we're going to work on getting your bunny rabbit ass into a more respectable fighting shape."

Panting, Peter shook his head. "This is insane. You kidnapped me and now you're going to teach me better fighting moves? Thanks but no thanks. I've got loads of mentors in my life these days."

"Ah Peter, I don't recall giving you a choice." Deadpool patted him on the head. "You're what we call a pawn in the grand scheme of things. Think of yourself as my toy, my very own action figure. Me and your favorite billionaire are probably going to be hashing things out for a while, what with him playing innocent, acting like he can't understand my very concisely worded requests. I really hate that asshole."

Deadpool bounced to his feet, pulling Peter up with him. Lifting from the neck of his shirt like Peter was a rowdy kitten, he escorted his captive to the kitchen and deposited him in a chair. "I suppose formal introductions are in order. I'm Wade Wilson, more commonly known as Deadpool."

He kicked Al's chair, making her jump. "Introduce yourself."

"It might surprise you to know that in the week he's been here, I already introduced myself," Al snapped.

"Of course you did. What was I thinking?" Wade pulled his chair up to the table, rolled his mask up past his nose, and started shoveling his serving of dinner down. "I love meat in sauce with yellow stuff that is supposed to be macaroni."

Peter looked for a long moment at the ground beef consistency skin that had been hiding under Deadpool's mask. It was bad manners to stare at or to bring up someone's disfigurement. It was probably suicidal to do either of those things to Wade Wilson, so Peter stared at his food instead. Nursing his busted lip, he glanced between Al and Wade, acutely aware that the only person at this table that didn't know his name and dual identity was his fellow captive. "I'm Peter Parker, less commonly known as Spider-Man."

"Got it," Al said. "I'll try to stop calling you kid but after a week, the habit may be stuck."

"My own fault if it is," Peter said. With far less enthusiasm than Wade, he started eating his serving of the tasteless, indefinable food.

"This is going to be so much fun," Wade said around a mouth full of mystery meat. "It's almost like having a puppy."

Al sighed, imaging that she could hear the teenager across the table bristling. She wished she could whisper to the kid that this was the best side of Deadpool, gleeful and manic. If he turned dark or brooding, he might forget that his teenage hostage had value and do something unfortunate, but there was no way for her to explain any better than she already had. "As if you ever owned a dog," Al deflected resolutely.

"Just cause I didn't keep the pet alive long enough to prove it, doesn't mean I never owned a dog." Wade leaned across the table, blocking his face from Peter with a hand and stage whispered to Al. "Don't undermine me in front of the bunny rabbit."


Tony's workspace had never been particularly tidy. An idea would spur him to redecorate with a few gigajoule laser array that would perhaps not be cleared away until he needed room for his new experimental Ironman thrusters. Recently one of the walls had gained a unique collection of artwork. Looking at the colorful drawings and notes sketched in crayon, it would almost seem that Tony had the work of a grade school class on his wall, at least until you started reading the notes.

Deadpool had proved harder to track than Tony had planned on. His surreptitiously placed G.P.S. tag had not gone as unnoticed as he'd assumed, or maybe the field generated by his unusual transportation system had fried the components. Over the course of a week, Wade Wilson had literally peppered Tony with sarcastic, taunting notes. He had left a get well card for Ned Leeds at the hospital, a thank you note to May Parker for the loan of her nephew. He even sent Pepper a birthday card. Each message was hand drawn, full of profanity and incomprehensible allusions.

The only positive to all the messages was that Tony had accumulated some significant data on the strange, almost-teleportation device the mercenary employed.

"All right F.R.I.D.A.Y. run it with me. There is a minute burst of neutron radiation when his wormhole opens. If we commandeer those D.O.D. satellites that are wasting time watching China and set them to scanning for that particular wavelength of radiation, we might be able to get an idea of his base of operations," Tony said. "What are the odds we can repurpose those satellites temporarily and not get run in for treason?"

"Very low boss."

"Yeah, I guess we could ask permission, but we'll need a good cover story." Tony paced over to his now cool coffee and took a long drink of it anyway. Not staying in one place for more than a few moments, he moved back to the wall of crazy-man correspondence. Unconscious of the frenetic grace to his pacing, Tony's mind worried at the problem of Deadpool and the mystery of what he had done to anger the psychopath.

Not being directly responsible for the death or permanent damage of any unreasonably heroic teenagers was starting to look like an unattainable life goal. Assuming Peter survived his sojourn with Deadpool, he was likely already traumatized if not physically then psychologically. "He survives then I'll pay for a shrink," Tony muttered under his breath.

"Per Colonel Rhodes request, I need to remind you that it has been forty-eight hours since you last slept, boss."

"First we defraud the D.O.D. then while the satellites scan, I'll catch a nap. Who do we know at the D.O.D. that's gullible?" Tony crunched his paper coffee cup and tossed it in a neat parabolic arc that completely missed the trash can.

"Our Department of Defense contacts are not listed with integer values relating to gullibility. The Stark Industry satellites that we repurposed to search for Bruce Banner haven't made any progress. We could repurposed them again without committing treason."

"Key phrase there is that they haven't made any progress. You could argue that after a week scanning, they aren't likely to find that green blip of gamma radiation we're looking for, but Banner might know what this psychopath actually wants." Being locked in a hostage crisis with a man so crazy he couldn't seem to properly request the ransom he wanted, officially qualified as the simultaneously most terrifying and frustrating situation in Tony's adult life. "We're not repurposing those satellites. Display a list of D.O.D contacts. I'll pick the gullible one."


It wasn't that Peter didn't believe Deadpool when he said he was going to train him, he just got the impression that his captor was a bit easily distracted. Something else shiny would catch his attention and Peter would spend another uneventful week with Al, watching Matlock on the repaired TV, leaving him plenty of time to look for a viable escape plan. Aunt May had to be worried out of her mind.

A light doze was the best sleep he could manage on the old couch, while his brain was on high alert for whatever might happen next. When Deadpool set off an airhorn next to his exposed ear, Peter literally jumped to the ceiling and clung there. "Are you trying to deafen me?" Peter gasped, covering the offended ear with a hand.

"Don't be a baby." Wade unsheathed his swords and brandished them with a wide grin. "We're going to work on cardio today. I call this game, don't lose a limb. Ready?"

"No?" Peter answered. It seemed that the question was more rhetorical than literal as Wade came running at him swinging his rather sharp looking weapons. The close quarters in the cluttered home both worked for and against Peter. It made it hard for Deadpool to swing his swords properly, but there were only so many places to run that wouldn't get him electrocuted.

It became clear pretty quickly as Peter scampered that losing limbs wasn't actually an outcome Deadpool intended. Scraped, slightly skewered, and bruised were all on the table. When he was forced to flee to a exterior wall to dodge a swing and experienced electrical restraint Deadpool-style for the seventh time in a relatively short period of time, Peter hoped that all this electroshock wasn't scrambling his brains before losing consciousness altogether.

An unclear amount of time later Peter came around, lying on the lumpy couch, his head resting on what appeared to be Al's lap while the theme song to Matlock played in the background. "Morning kid. Let me finish my show and I'll fix something to eat. You just lie there and get your bearings."

"Is he still here," Peter asked quietly.

"He isn't far. Deadpool is building you a training box, a place that he can work with you that's secure but that won't result in quite so much interruption from the shock-restraints. He's worried you won't learn anything if he electroshocks the memories out of you."

Al patted him on the head fondly and Peter hated her a little. She accepted her role as captive in some massive Stockholm Syndrome nightmare and had precious little perspective for what was happening to him it seemed at the moment. "I have a family that has to be worried, that needs me. I have friends to miss me. Please help me get out of here before that maniac gets annoyed with his new toy and breaks it. Please?" Peter completely missed the soft click of Deadpool's portal but he felt the tingle of his spider-sense and cut himself off mid-plea.

"Oh bunny rabbit, I thought begging would be beneath you. I'm disappointed. You really don't want to be disappointing me on our first day training. Apologize," Wade ordered.

Peter managed to regain his feet and respond on as close to eye level as the two were capable of at their respective statures. "Sorry, not sorry."

"Oh you bastard, quoting vile pop songs at me? That is it—the last straw. Deadpool pulled out one of his handguns and rested it directly on Peter's forehead." He turned to the wall and addressed it as though someone else was there and talking to him. "You really think I should give him another chance? You may have a point. It's not like he quoted New Kids on the Block or started dancing disco. It's just, how do I respect him after that?"

Deadpool shoved his gun back in its holster and leaned close so that they were basically nose to nose. "You get one more chance. I think we should work on your healing factor a bit. See if a little exercise can get it up to speed, yeah? It may hurt a little, but no pain no gain, am I right?"

"That's not how healing factors work," Peter whispered, wishing he had listened better to Al's warnings that Deadpool might kill him on a whim. The cool gun muzzle against his skin had brought that reality into crystal clear focus.

"Oh bunny rabbit, I'm an expert on healing factors and yours is capable of learning. I taught it quite a few things back in the day. Or is it forward in the day? Time travel makes everything so fucking complicated sometimes."