Chapter Text
First, Wade wanted it to be perfectly clear that this whole Infinity Affair business was a shitty deal. Even if it did get him voted as New York City’s Top Superhero by the Daily Bugle 2 years in a row, his was the superior movie, and he went through a lot of fucking trouble to earn that credits scene retcon. No one was fridging his girl, especially not his coward fucking writers.
Then Thanos happened. Losing Vanessa that second time? It really made him lose what little was left of his marbles--and he’d only had the two left anyway. Ever since Francis, they sat delicately on the edge, like a cup that an asshole cat was about to knock over.
And boy, were they knocked over. Vanessa was about 90% of his impulse control and, without her in flesh or spirit, without a lost cause and a lost kid like Russell to focus on, Wade went fucking postal. He went after Thanos a 1000% stronger than he ever went after Francis. Maximum. Fucking. Effort,
So. He went to New York, leaving Boston with enough firepower to take over a third world country. Or a small alien colony. He wasn’t picky. He’d like to say he found himself on the journey over. That he had a character building road trip with his goofy but sincere sidekicks. That his found family kept the jagged pieces of him together just long enough for him to start healing on his own, start grieving on his own without leaving (more) dead bodies in his wake.
Ha, Freaking. Ha.
The truth of the matter was that he was alone the entire fucking time. And maybe that was the worst part of it. (Or the best.) He was accountable to no one. Responsible to no one. (Cared about by no one.) Not that it mattered, in the end.
When he finally got to New York, there was not much there but scared citizens holed up in their buildings, an incompetent and half-crippled military trying to build a perimeter, and an army of aliens rummaging around for shiny things and shiny people to take back to their spaceships.
What happened next could only be described as a lot of goddamn catharsis and maybe even a bit of murder-therapy. (Okay, not a bit. A lot. A fuckton, even--was that an accessible unit of measurement? Asking for a friend.) Whatever a “fuckton of murder therapy” meant in real terms, the pleasant side effect was New York City being freed from alien occupation.
Yup. Him. Deadpool. Go figure.
Oh, he was definitely going to take credit for it, but he wasn’t going to lie and say that it was his intention. Or even that he was happy to do so. After all that effort, the only things he figured out were that a, Thanos wasn’t on Earth anymore, and b, the aliens he was fighting were merely drones, little better than moist meat bags.
But Wade didn’t exactly have a backup plan. He didn’t have a Jiminy Cricket--or a Colossus--on his shoulder. He didn’t have a dead girlfriend giving cryptic information from the great beyond. He didn’t even have Dopinder there to give him free rides or, more importantly, general hope for humanity.
He just had himself--Wade Winston Wilson. And that guy fucking sucked.
So for 18 long months, he killed, and he killed, and he fucking killed. And somehow, in the eyes of New Yorkers, that made him a hero. Nuts, right? It turned out the people like killing when the killing was aimed at the right targets, a lesson he’d somehow forgotten since his 6-year stint in Special Forces.
But the fringe benefits were super, and the discounts were real. Plus, thanks to his openness to selfies with the normies, #Deadpool was trending for, like, ever--so suck it, Iron Man. The newfound adoration and fame almost made up for being mistaken for some spider-themed, style-stealing spandex do-gooder.
All that aside, though… Whether you were a hero or villain or normie, life sucked for everyone after space Barney ruined the universe, and Wade wasn’t just saying that because he was lonely.
But yeah, he could have used someone. A role model. A frenemy. Anyone to convince him that a bullet to the brain was not the best way to induce sleep at night. But there was no one. That single finger snap didn’t just rip Vanessa from his life. It decimated everyone. The only one it spared was Cable, who made like a deadbeat dad and left for greener pastures and his more photogenic family.
(Again, to be fair--because being fair was a hero thing, damnit--there was something in there about Cable’s explanation that involved saving the future and needing to stave off the impeding Lord of the Flies situation brewing at Prof McWheely’s house now that there were no adults. But Wade missed most of it, too busy at the time making a long fart noise with his mouth. Fuck Brolin, anyway. Who murders their daughter?)
But Wade was Wade, and Wade was a survivor even before Francis made him functionally immortal. So he found a rhythm to it--by day, murder. By night, suicide. He enjoyed the praise. He enjoyed the fear. He embraced the loneliness and god-awfulness of it all, and he did it without hesitation.
Because, in the end, what choice did he really have? There was no out. Not for him.
This was the end of the line, pal, and there was no Herbal Essence model there waiting for him. Wade was gonna be like this, alone, until someone figured out how to finally kill him.
So 18 months into the mess, he was biding his time and waiting for the shiny spit polish of his reputation to fade as he hunted down the last of the aliens on the east coast. If they didn’t have any new information for him, he had a bad feeling that his next target would have to be the limping, wounded Avengers.
Vanessa would have kicked his ass for it. She was sweet on Captain America. So was Wade, to be honest. But he never let personal feelings get in the way of an assignment, so if he had to go after Steve Rogers, he damn well would.
Fortunately, Wade didn’t have to test that resolve, because 18 months and three days in, 3.3 billion people suddenly roared back to life with a collective scream.
It was a nightmare. Total chaos and pandemonium, even in the little town Wade was in. People fell from the sky. Windows shattered. Cars and buses crashed. And beyond all of that, a steady whine of cop and ambulance sirens rose to deafening decibels, beating out the usual drone of distant motors and conversation inherent to suburban life.
It took him way, way too long to figure out what that meant.
-
Peter was unmade 4 months shy of his seventeenth birthday on the planet Titan. It was… bad? Yeah, bad. It wasn’t every day your enhanced super senses screamed out a warning to the end of half the universe a full minute before it took you out too.
But it wasn’t the end of things. Not really. Because seemingly seconds later, he was choking his way back to existence.
He was alone, flat on his back on orange dirt, writhing under a phantom pressure. He gasped and gasped and gasped, tears running down his face as he flopped inelegantly on his stomach, trying and failing to drag oxygen to his withered lungs.
As it was, Peter had just enough air to watch Dr. Strange stagger to his feet, fiddle with his hands, and disappear through a portal. It snapped closed behind him with a finality that made Peter’s stomach twist in unrealized dread. He clutched at the dirt, wheezing faintly.
“Oww...”
That wasn’t him. Peter dragged his eyes away from the empty space to blink at one of the space ladies. She was clutching her forehead with a grimace, antennae wiggling through her fingers. She dragged her head up, blinking large liquid black eyes at the sky.
Duty reasserted itself as his number one priority. Shake it off, Peter lectured himself. Shake it- He pulled himself to his feet, knees rattling. He went light headed immediately and grabbed blindly at someone who wasn’t there. He turned his head left and right, looking for a telltale gleam of red and gold.
He couldn’t find it. The dread he felt seeing Dr. Strange’s cloak slip through the portal intensified--not quite like his spidey sense, but close. Like maybe his lizard brain had picked up on something his developed brain was ignoring out of stubbornness and self-preservation.
Still, May didn’t raise an impolite nephew. He lurched forward. “You okay?”
The space lady didn’t seem to know what to do with his arm at first. After a beat, she grabbed it. “We lost,” she said in a small voice. He helped her stand. Her hand lingered on his forearm, lightly grasping at the metal. As flexible as the new armor was, he couldn’t feel a thing. She seemed as weak-kneed as he was feeling and leaned on him to compensate. He didn’t mind.
“Don’t lose often, huh?” He looked out across the war torn landscape, doing a quick head count of groaning allies. There was the gray guy and the half-human, but no blue lady. No Mr. Stark either. That strange lizard-brain dread surged forward again.
Peter blinked rapidly. “Where’s everyone else?” he croaked. He could feel the vein in his neck fluttering quickly, tight heat swamping his face.
The Earth guy stood up first. “They’re not our priority,” he said brusquely, his voice shifting into a I-am-a-leader-so-listen-now tone.
“Not even Nebula?” rasped the gray guy, who was rubbing the back of his neck. Peter grimaced. He really had to work harder on remembering the names of these guys.
The Earth guy’s expression crumbled slightly, his veneer of leadership dulling slightly. “No. Yes. Maybe. What the hell, Drax.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “She’s not a priority right now. She’s not”--he did a wide, circular motion towards them--”one of us. Not a guardian. Guardian-adjacent, maybe.”
“Then who is our priority, Peter Quill?” the lady challenged, arms crossed over her chest. She glared. Peter jerked slightly, then swung his gaze to his name twin.
Peter Quill wasn’t having a great day. His jaw was jumping. He was a big guy, a tall guy--much taller than Peter Parker, for sure--but he seemed smaller now, diminished in a way that Peter himself could only identify as grief.
Quill didn’t make eye contact with anyone. “Gamora,” he breathed finally.
After a long beat, Quill made a sharp motion with his hand. Stronger, he said, “I’m not going to leave her body on some backwater-” Quill breathed deep through his nose, then lifted his red eyes from the ground. He gazed at his friends, imploring. “Help me find her. Help me find the planet Thanos left her on. Then we figure out how to find Groot and Rocket.” Drax opened his mouth. “And Nebula.”
A lone gust of wind stirred the dirt around them, strong enough to push at some of the lighter bits of debris on the ground. Peter dropped his foot on one such piece, then removed it. Scratched red and gold paint greeted him, hollowing him out. He picked it up, rubbing a thumb over the metal.
Quill hesitated for a moment, watching Peter, then turned around and walked off. Drax immediately followed him. Peter kept staring at the ground, eyes jumping from mud caked Iron Man piece to mud caked Iron Man piece, mind racing, spinning, and discarding theories. No, no, no, no-
Then a hand touched his arm--the lady. It shook him out of his head like nothing else could. “Oh, hi, miss.”
“My name is Mantis,” she offered, with a patient smile, like she thought he was a little dumb.
It was okay. Peter was a little dumb. He felt even dumber like this. “Hi, Mantis.”
“Thank you for saving me,” she said sincerely, grasping one of his hands in hers.
Peter winced. “I… tried?”
Mantis cocked her head to the side, frowning suddenly. Her antennae were glowing. “Mr. Spider-Person-”
Almost about to correct her--he was Spider-Man, not Spider-Person! Very important distinction--he stopped and yanked his hand away from her, staggering back. Her face was reflecting everything he felt, every aching piece of it, and he hated it. Seeing it in her amplified everything in him, and it was almost too much--too much!--to deal with.
All at once, he was swamped with everything he was feeling. His eyes were burning. His chest was tight. He was drowning under a suffocating sensation of being forgotten, being left behind, being lost like some stupid kid at a mall who really should have been keeping an eye on his aunt and uncle but wasn’t because he was stupid, stupid, stupid-
“Sorry,” he said flatly. He shuddered. "The gloves, they’re, um, thinner.”
A wizard like Dr. Strange could have teleported him home. Why didn’t he say anything?
“I’m fine,” he insisted, answering a question no one was asking. He felt half his age, suddenly. It wasn’t great. 0/10, would like to not feel again.
Mantis’ mouth was quivering, her eyes luminous. “You’re not fine, you’re-”
“Mantis!” Quill barked, voice echoing across the graveyard of a planet.
She shot a conflicted look over her shoulder at the shout, and Peter pounced on it. “No, no, it’s all okay, see? Mr. Stark will be back soon. Or Dr. Strange. Right? I just saw him. He'll be back in a second.” He forced a smile. “Hey, I’ll even keep an eye out for your blue friend, okay? Nebula, right?”
“Mantis!”
Mantis jumped a little at that. Reluctantly, she pulled away, tentatively convinced by Peter’s smile, his shooing gestures, all of which faded quickly when the last of her hair whipped around a crumbling building.
He stared after her longer, longing and wishing for someone to--remember him? Worry about him? Drag him, an odd and dangerous stranger, along for some mission that was clearly very personal? Guardian business?
Dismissed. Unimportant. Ignored. Nothing new, in the end. When Ned asked him what space was like, he was going to say “high school” and laugh. And he was going to laugh now too.
Any minute now.
Peter rubbed a rough hand over his face, watching dully as a spaceship shot up in the air before tearing towards the horizon with a burning glow.
Then it was gone.
The wind picked up again, dry and heavy with ash and dust. He rubbed at his face again, letting out a shuddering sigh. He wasn’t making a mistake… was he?
No.
This was what you were supposed to do when you were lost. Stay where someone saw you last. Peter wasn’t going to make Mr. Stark or Dr. Strange’s job any harder by following the only friendlies he’d seen off of this planet, no siree. He’d stay put, and he’d wait, and when he’d waited long enough, Mr. Stark would tell him what a good job he did, how he wasn’t being reckless and how he was thinking about others and not putting people in danger-
Peter smothered a sob in his palm. Angry at the break, he forced his mask back in place. His senses immediately, thankfully, dulled. Titan lit up with information through his lenses. Temperature, air flow, elements, materials, matters of interest--Karen marked them all, and, for a moment, Peter was distracted.
He sat under a pillar, eyes darting from identified dangerous item to identified dangerous item. There were animals here, he discovered. Predators and prey, and almost indistinguishable from the surrounding areas. As fascinating as it was, it was also- it was-
Okay, he could be honest here, right? It was just him and Karen. Karen was a bro. She wouldn’t judge him. She wouldn't look down on him for being afraid.
Peter let his head fall back with a dull thud. “Karen, tell me I did the right thing,” he rasped. “Tell me I didn’t make a mistake.”
Karen hesitated. “Peter,” she said soothingly. “You did the right thing. You didn’t make a mistake.” Peter nodded wordlessly, pulling his knees to his chest. “Mr. Stark will be here shortly. He will know why you are back, and he will know where to find you.”
Peter laughed unsteadily. “Right. Right, of course. If this just happened, Mr. Stark must have just beat Thanos. I have to- I have to give him time. To remember me. To find me. I can- I can be patient?”
Karen hesitated again. “Yes, Peter.”
Peter was nodding relentlessly, bobbing his head over and over, and sliding his gauntleted hand through soft dirt. All Peter had to do was wait. And, in the meantime…
He could go ahead and collect those pieces of the Iron Man suit that Mr. Stark left behind? Boy, wouldn’t he like that! Mr. Stark was probably super pissed that half of his suit got ripped apart by that jerk Thanos. He was probably gunning for the planet right now to protect his invention.
Peter would be home soon. Mr. Stark wouldn’t leave his suit behind. Probably wouldn’t leave Peter behind either.
Probably. And if he did, well, May would kill him, if she hadn’t already.
-
Time passed. The world--the universe--was on the mend.
Vanessa resented it just a little. She never considered herself lucky, certainly not with the kind of luck that followed Domino around. But that didn’t mean she was unaware of how fortunate she had been, really. Being remade wasn’t quite an uncomplicated blessing for everyone. Several hundred thousand died that day. Several million had been injured--maybe more.
(Sometimes, she sat up at night, thinking about those people who were minding their own business in a plane 18 months ago, only to appear seemingly seconds later with nothing but open air underneath them. She always fucking hated heights.)
No, Vanessa had been lucky, if she could use that word. Her apartment was, for all intents and purposes, still there. Nothing had changed besides the owner.
It had been her day off. She’d slept in and spent the afternoon idly flipping through various news coverage of the clusterfuck in New York and Wakanda. Then she stepped into her bathroom for a shower.
She procrastinated then, though she couldn’t really remember why. Something to do with the thoughts in her head--playing through the events of the day, maybe? Making a plan for her work later that night? The content didn’t matter so much as where she was at physically, because when she disappeared? She wasn’t in the shower. She was in front of her mirrors.
Maybe that was the worst part, the body horror bit she couldn’t quite process, even with an immortal fiancé who could regrow entire limbs. She’d been a captive audience for her undoing, watching from three different angles as her fingers, then her arms, then her torso and face fell. Into. Ash.
(Reforming in the same place seemingly a moment later didn’t really take the edge off.)
But she wasn’t afraid of it. No. She fucking loathed it. She hated that she remembered it at all, that feeling of fading--physically as much as mentally. She hated waking up in a panic, so sure she was disappearing again. She hated being so convinced she was dying, she nearly put her hand through a wall twice trying to convince herself it was real. She hated that she picked at it like an open wound, envying and pitying people who fell asleep and woke up 18 months later with no fucking clue what happened.
But it wasn’t just the fading she was obsessed with. It was the… after. The space between being unmade and remade--she could remember that too. Barely, sure, but it was there, lingering and forcing its way to the forefront of her mind when she least expected it.
Vanessa couldn’t explain it to someone even if she tried, so she didn’t. Instead, she chased it, that floaty-tight-nauseated feeling of nonexistence. There was pieces of the experience all over--at the bottom of a liquor bottle, at the top of a roller coaster, during the first drag of a cigarette after swearing off them for who knows how many years.
And now it was in this too. Here, in her bathroom. Splotches of sensations and images assaulted her--spinning colors, blurring world, pressure on her chest. Water swirled over her head like an eddy, one of Wade’s rubber ducks bobbing along for the ride.
Shifting, she gripped the edge of the tub, squeezing until her joints cried out, trying to stay calm as her chest struggled with the desire to breathe. Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges. Her lungs swelled, burning.
But still, she waited. It was in places like this that she best remembered the in-between, could best pull up images, sights, sensations. Memories.
She mostly remembered... the gold. It was thick like ink all around them but as light as air. She remembered hands--small, normal, seeking, pulling, wanting. It was… euphoric?
Pockets of air bubbled out of her mouth as she squirmed, eyes clenched tight.
No. No, it wasn’t euphoric. It was awful. In that gold inked world, something lurked, the reason why not all of them came back. Her oxygen-deprived mind suddenly threw up a sense memory--feet pounding on gold ground, screaming at her back. Hands pushed, bodies jostled, and above them, it swelled, cold, terrible, and hungry-
All they could do was run and run and run-
A pair of hands suddenly slammed on her shoulders, an iron, implacable vice, and before she knew it, Vanessa was being yanked out, up and over the lip of the tub, her nose and eyes burning at the speed of it. Coughing harshly, she barely registering the slosh of water over red leather, or the careful movement of gloved fingers to pull sodden hair away from her mouth.
Being pulled out of the golden world was jarring. It took long seconds for the disorientation to clear her brain, long seconds for her to recognize her shitty bathroom with the three mirrors, long seconds to realize she was naked, wet, and half curled on her favorite mercenary’s lap.
“W-Wade?”
Wade didn’t say anything for a long moment. He had a hand pressed flat on her spine, pushing her up into his torso. His nose was digging in the hair above her left ear. The longer he was quiet, the more she dreaded what he was about to say.
“Don’t go where I can’t follow,” he said finally, his voice jovial. His grip on her belied his tone.
After a beat, Vanessa banged a loose fist against his shoulder tiredly. “Don’t quote Lord of the Rings at me, you nerd.”
God, she could already feel the bruises forming. She shifted uncomfortably, and he adjusted himself accordingly, hands moving to hold rather than to grip, and she found she… missed it. But she missed his eyes more, and he wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t-
Wade wasn’t supposed to be back yet, but here he was--kneeling in a centimeter of water. His mouth was pressed in a thin flat line. His mask, half on, was bunched over his nose in a thick fold that couldn’t be comfortable. He wasn’t looking at her still, had his attention trained somewhere on the wall behind her.
His unusual reticence and silence made Vanessa’s throat go dry.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” she blurted out. Even as she said it, she was aware of all evidence to the contrary--the whiskey bottle, half drained to soothe her nerves, the barricaded door. The same door was swinging forlornly at an angle, hanging loose by the top bracket.
Wade rubbed a hand soothingly over her thigh. “I know, babe.”
Vanessa let out a harsh noise, hating that he wouldn’t fight her about this--because she wanted to fight. She wanted to scream and yell about it. But Wade accepted what she was doing, and you can’t get worked up and angrily disagree with someone who was being so agreeable.
Except agreeable wasn’t the right word for this, was it?
There was a defeated slouch to Wade’s shoulders. The slow way he rubbed at his face spoke of bone deep exhaustion--and not the physical kind. A chill went over her as she considered what she’d almost did--not just to her and her obsession, but also to him and the future they were trying to build.
Vanessa sat up, pushing him back. “Wade, I don’t want to have kids yet,” she confessed lowly.
Wade tensed. In the next moment, he relaxed. “Your choice, babe.”
Vanessa laughed meanly. “Choice? No. Responsibility.” She stood on shaky knees, taking in the sight of the bathroom with fresh eyes. God, what had she almost left him to come home to? She wasn’t suicidal. She wasn’t.
But, then again, neither was her mom. “I don’t want to be the kind of fucking parent who leaves her kid to clean up after- after-” She flapped her arm around the room demonstratively. She’d found her own mother, dead for a week, mouth glued to the floor by her own vomit and surrounded by a forest of beer bottles.
And, god, did she really almost do that to Wade? After hating her mother so much for doing the same? Apple didn’t fall far from that tree, did it? Vanessa crossed her arms tightly under her breasts, nails digging restlessly into the skin above her elbow.
Wade stood with her, finally peeling his mask the rest of the way. “You weren’t trying to kill yourself.”
“Does it fucking matter?” she rasped at him, shoving at his shoulder. What was she doing? God. What the fuck was she doing? What was she chasing?
Vanessa dug her nails into her scalp for a moment before coming to a decision, nodding once. She pivoted and walked out of the bathroom, sliding past the ruined bathroom door.
Behind her, Wade called out waveringly, “Gonna- gonna put some clothes on, babe?”
Vanessa ignored him, stalking up to the counter. Here was her obsession on display: brochures extolling the wonders of sleep deprivation, listings of doctors facilitating recreational electroconvulsive therapy, groupons for sensory deprivation sessions, bungee jumping, and back alley LSD trips. Her first pack of smokes in ten years sat on top, the broken wrapper still curled loosely around the box. Just under it was a ziploc baggie of the new designer street club drug--allegedly “out of this world.”
Vanessa’s mouth twisted. She swept all of it off the counter in one big motion, hitting the pedal on the trash just in time for the lid to fly up and accept the offering. Then she rooted around in the drawers until she found matches. She lit five of them at once and dropped them in the can.
Fuck you, and fuck the temptation you represent, she thought silently at the flickering flame. Her face was wet. She was trembling still. There was nothing about this that felt good.
And yet...
She leaned back at the feeling of a forehead pressing against her hair. Wade’s body long and warm against her, and he wasted no time looping a thick arm over her belly.
“Let me in your head a little,” he whispered.
Vanessa’s mouth pulled up at the corner. “Kinky. Didn’t think you were into lobotomies.” She turned in his arms, sliding her hands over the interestingly textured skin of his neck.
She could only seeing this expression only twice before--once, right after his cancer diagnosis. The other was a random day in November after he literally disappeared before her eyes after murdering a guy with a cream cheese knife. She stood there, stupidly, trying to process the mess in her doorway, when Deadpool stumbled out of the room to her left, flinging off a smoking pocket watch, then his mask.
He’d picked her up, smelling of sauerkraut, ozone, and tar, and he kissed her. He kissed her like they were dying and sharing the last bit of rich asshole’s oxygen tank, and they were about to die like they lived--horny and bitter and salty.
Wade didn’t do serious, but when it did, it was like a gut punch.
Eyes burning, she laced her fingers with his and pressed them to her chest. “This feeling? It’s going to go away.”
“Oh, repression,” he said with a sigh, fingers curling around hers. “Because that always works.”
“Hey, I am more than what my shitty brain tells me I am.”
Wade quirked a helpless smile at her. “Sounds like our anthem.” He kissed her fingers. Then he winced. “But you, um.” He dipped his head in a boyish way, eyes narrowed apologetically. “You didn’t really think this one through, did you?”
Not understanding, she stared at him wordlessly. Was he really questioning her on his? No, he couldn’t be. But the corner of his mouth was cutting tightly into his scarred cheek, and his eyes were filling slowly with suppressed mirth.
She broke first, unable to ignore the elephant in the room any longer. “It-” She leaned into him, letting out a wheezing laugh.
“It. Smells. So. So. Bad.” Behind her, the fire had eaten its way through the trashcan, releasing more of that awful smell.
Wade's smile broke into a mega grin. “Like Satan let out a fart after eating 17 Hondas.”
She clutched to his torso, giggling helplessly. She laughed harder when the fire alarm went off and Wade pulled out a gun and unloaded six bullets into it. He hugged her loosely, the arm with the gun draped over her shoulder.
Then there was a banging from their floor--their lower neighbor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she called out, wiping the tears of her face.
Wade stomped back. “Don’t worry,” he yelled cheerfully, “my fiancee is just emerging from her 2007 Britney moment. Go back to your regularly scheduled furry porn.”
She shoved him, mouth stretching in a wide, wide grin. “Ass.” Like she wouldn't look amazing with a buzz cut.
“What? You know that fucker spanks it to Judy Hopps.” He pointed a finger at her face. “Don’t challenge me on this, Vanessa.”
Meanwhile, the fire spread to the wallpaper.
Oh well. It sucked anyway.