29 Chimera Court , Friday Morning
There were some days that Wade just knew some deity out there not linked to dying loved him. Today was one of those days. It was Golden Girls day on the Lifetime channel and, if you could just ignore all the fun commercials for movies starring that foxy Heather Locklear and how she overcame not one, but five abusive husbands, cancer, an eating disorder AND RLS. What a trooper.
By hour five, Wade was beginning to drop off. Bea was a goddess among women, yes, but without caffiene he wasn't going to make it to hour nine.
And the couch was just so comfy!
Even if Max was using his feet as a pillow and giving him mournful looks everytime he moved. Ahh, a life of leisure. He'd need a neato smoking jacket next. And to take up smoking for the jacket to have a purpose.
But for now? Sleep. He'd say that he was just resting his eyes for the next time Bea was on screen, really.
A hospital room faded into being, and with it, a Nate, staring contemplatively down the hall. He'd been standing there for quite a while, agonizing over some horrible choice or another that would no doubt lead him down the path of ruin or something like that.
Hey! That's not Bea! Well... if you squinted, maybe. Looks more like Nate really.
Oh. Oohhh!
Deadpool watched the scene with the detachment of a dream, like he was watching TV, but in it at the same time. Very trippy and meta.
"Put one foot in front of the other," he sang, cheerfully destroying the tune as he began to get more entrenched in the scene. And look at that! Not at all like watching TV, but now like reality. "And soon you'll be crossing the-"
If reality meant a bunch of people surrounding him and Nate, trying to kill them. (Well now, doesn't this bring back memories?)
"Arr!" He shouted, sounding very much like that accursed Pirate nemesisisis of his.
Nathan had options. He always did. He just wasn't particularly fond of the ones he had now: save his dream and give up the world, give up the dream and save the world. It was enough to spend an entire issue debating the ethics of, really. Especially considering the fact that roughly twenty percent of Providence's population was still roaming around somewhere, ready to get slaughtered like cannon fodder.
In a strange way, he hadn't really missed the telepathy all that much.
"Figures," he said, when he saw Deadpool. It was just par for the course.
Wade grabbed the guns from his thigh holsters, taking pot shots at the various ghostly attackers. Hey! Was that that Asian chick with the weird nails? He'd have to ask for her number.
"What?" He asked, glancing over his shoulder at Nate.
"I need to make a major decision," Nate said, managing to fire his guns into the masses of obscure and not so obscure villains while at the same time looking over his shoulder and keeping up an intellectual discussion, "And my subconscious drags you out."
He was Nate Summers, he could probably smush garbage between his hands and come up with a puppy that was not hairless but still hypoallergenic.
Or something.
Wade needed to stop reading those articles about him from gushing reporters.
"On account of my sage wisdom?" He asked, taking a shot at someone who kinda looked like Bucky.
"No," Nate continued, firing valiantly into the mass of bad guys that he didn't even bother to recognize, because hey, dream sequence, "On account of whatever you advise, I know to do the opposite." Because it generally wasn't a good idea to do whatever Wade came up with. Ask anyone.
Plenty of kids asked him for advice on a regular basis!
"Hardee-har-har," Wade deadpanned. "Well, it's your nickel so...?"
This was... the hard part, wasn't it? "If I do what I have to do," he said, focusing solely on the enemies approaching. Because it was easier. "I can save Providence... maybe." He shot something in the face that looked like-- well, that explained where he'd ended up, "...Maybe the entire planet."
Wade rolled his eyes at that. Always trying to save the planet. Who does that?
"No brainer, uhm... no pun intended, what with the Hecatomb and all. Hey! How'd I know all that?" The whole dream thing hadn't quite been noticed yet.
Even as he shot another C-list villain between the eyes.
"If I do that," Nate said, going for 'constipated' for old time's sake, "Rogue might die -- and I could become a slave to my powers again." These were matters of great worry to him. "I could lose..." There went another one of those C-list villains. Actually, he'd moved on to D-list. And if that didn't keep him from thinking about all of this--
"...Myself," he said, "...And everything I've worked for."
Yeah, even Wade had picked up on that fear. "Oooh, tough call then."
D-listers? Aw, they weren't even worth the bullets. Might as well let those adorable angsty little Runaways take care of them. "All I can say, Nate, is listen to what you just said..." He shrugged. "'If I do what I have to do...' Sounds like you already know the answer.."
"Yeah..." Suddenly, the enemy faded quietly into nothingness, as if they'd never been at all. Nate turned, gun pointed down slightly at a sloping angle. Rest. He smiled faintly. "I know," he said, "Thanks, Wade."
And then he smirked. "By the way," he said, "I think Bea's just about ready for you, now."
Wade blinked, clicking the safety back on his gun. "Huh?" They were back in the hallway, somewhere in Providence. Looked familiar but then again, all the hallways looked the same there. It was that wonderfully soothing blue paint that did it.
Nate was walking again and it didn't seem so unusual once more. Deadpool easily passed him, why was he going so damn slow anyway? There was work to be done!
"Let's go, our fellow X-Men are in trouble!"
Hesitation was not his modus operandi. They would expect him to choose. But to choose, he needed... he needed there to be a choice. There was Wade, calling to him. Fight. Go on. Help the X-Men.
And then there was the other voice. He twisted his head around to face it. It was Dom, desperation in her eyes, clinging to some-- semblance of a possibility. "You can try to find another way," she said, and he wanted to. He wanted to so badly. He'd always tried. "You'll lose so much," she continued, "You'll lose me."
He wanted to be selfish. He wanted to choose Dom, he wanted to fight... not to fight, to strive for the other way. But...
"You could be wrong, of course," Wade said, being the voice of reason for a change.
"He rarely is," Dom said, and he wished - just wished - that he could feel that certain about this. He could have had fun. He could have-- built something. Been something, not just another lonely tortured soldier on the front lines--
Wade fought the urge to stick his tongue out at Dom. For about five seconds.
"But he knows what he has to do. He's a lot of things, yeah, but stand up responsible is front of the line," he shot back.
"How about something for himself-- for once?" Dom practically growled in Wade's face, every inch of her screaming combat.
But someone else was screaming. "ENOUGH!" Enough. He hurtled Wade and Dom both away from him, everything-- screaming, screaming the decision--
He looked at Wade. Really-- looked. Thought. Looked.
Then he turned to Domino, and though he knew what it was, it took him... just a little while... to speak. "Dom," he said, looking her straight in the eye, and then away... "Dom. I'm sorry."
And he chased after Wade into the darkness. Into the hallway. Into combat.
Alright! He totally won that one! He'd totally do a victory dance, but...
His eyes opened suddenly, a weight on his chest and a quiet barking noise begging for attention. What the hell? Over on the TV, Bea Arthur entered the scene and parts of the dream were fading now, but others...
Yeah. What was that all about?
He scratched Max's ear, sitting up and clicking the channel, looking for something, anything about what was going on back home. He really hated these overly dramatic lead-ins to the next issue.
[[OOC: Dream bits NFB, everything else is!]]