[Cable & Deadpool] Let Slip the Dogs of War - Part 8
Since I've consitently forgotten to mention it so far, belated thanks are owed to velithya for finding time to get whole monster betaed for me (in between making last minute arrangements for spending a couple of weeks out of the country, even). <3
Title: Let Slip the Dogs of War
Summary: War wasn't telling the whole truth about what happened to the Deadpool of his universe.
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, guest staring the New Avengers
Chapter: 8 / 8
Word Count: 2420
Rating: R
Warnings: Not explicit, but contains references to torture, non-con and assorted other Evil Overlord AU-related staples. Also: Contains Deadpool.
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Understanding of what had just happened made its way gradually through Cable's body from the top down. After a few seconds it reached as far as his legs, and he had to sit down heavily before they gave out under him. Deadpool reloaded his gun and studied War carefully for any signs that outside forces like character popularity or publishing pressures might lead to a case of not-being-totally-dead.
“You okay, Nate?” he asked, gun still trained on War's body. Behind his usual flippancy was just a trace of real concern.
“You had me worried for while there,” Cable admitted.
Deadpool shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry 'bout that. Change of plan.” Cable shook his head half unbelieving, and laughed silently into his metal hand.
“Do you think we should we be burning the body?” suggested Deadpool, turning back to War. “Cutting his head off? Cutting all his bits off and burning them in different places? Maybe do some genetic checks to make really sure it's him and not some robot-clone-twin-thing? They could still invoke supernatural forces to bring him back whatever we do, but at least we can say we tried. It's the Summers-Grey family we're talking about here - you can't be too careful.” Wade appeared to think for a minute. “Or we could go the whole hog and lug him to the nearest nuclear testing site, but the writers would probably just take that as a cha-”
Deadpool cut off because Luke Cage's fist had just connected with his head. Spider-Man was only a second behind him, and quickly had Deadpool wrapped in enough web that he was almost spherical before he'd hit the ground.
Cable was back on his feet in an instant. “WAIT!” he hollered, stopping both of them in their tracks as sure as one of War's psychic commands.
“The hell?” Luke complained, freezing with a fist raised in mid air.
“War is dead!” Cable informed them, pointing at the body both Avengers had missed in their hurry to reach Deadpool. “Furthermore, dead at Deadpool's hands. He never betrayed us - I'm guessing,” he went on, turning to Deadpool, “what we just witnessed was no more than a performance to buy time while the virus took effect?”
“Aw, Nate, I knew you'd understand!” Deadpool practically wept. “Oh man, didn't you guys see me cap War? I have my most awesomely badass moment ever, and no-one saw?”
“We saw,” said Captain America, making his way to join them. With one arm he was supporting Tony Stark, who was leaning heavily on him, dressed only in his metallic under-suit and looking a little pale, but otherwise not too much the worse for wear.
“Cable's right,” he continued. “Cage, Spider-Man, stand down.”
Both the aforementioned swiftly came up with personalised varieties on the theme of relaxing while somehow coming to attention at the same time.
“And then perhaps Deadpool would like to explain to us all why he felt the need to deviate so far from the plan,” Cap finished.
“Hey, I had to!” Deadpool protested. “War called my bluff, like, the moment I showed up! I had to improvise!”
“Called your bluff?” Luke echoed.
“The part where I was going to pretend like I thought I could sneak in and kill him without being caught? Maybe you guys thought I was dumb enough to try it - ”
“It was your idea,” said Cable.
“Okay, maybe I thought I was dumb enough to try it. But War caught me the second I got there, and the first thing out of his mouth was, 'I hope you don't expect me to believe you're dumb enough to sneak in and try to kill me,' so I was like, 'No?' and then I had to think real fast 'cause...”
“I think we get the idea,” said Tony.
“It got me laid, didn't it?” said Deadpool, raising the general level of awkwardness in the area back up by several notches. “I told him I was selling you all out and he bought it.”
“Most of us bought it too,” said Cap, dryly.
“I couldn't have him reading the old plan out of your heads, could I? I had to keep you all so mad at me for turning traitor that no-one was going to think too clearly about what I was supposed to be doing with War.”
There was a short pause while the others digested all this.
“That made sense!” exclaimed Spider-Man, sounding faintly traumatised. “Should I be scared by how Deadpool's making sense? Wait, you mean you were telling the truth about triple crossing War?”
“Kinda?” said Deadpool. “I probably would've said it anyway, but it was mostly the truth.”
“Well done,” Cap pronounced, and if there was any strain to his sincerity you would have needed superpowers to identify it. “You've gone... far above and beyond the call of duty for us today.”
“Aw shucks, Cap,” piped Deadpool. “Sure I was mostly just doing it for revenge, and you did pull me out of his dungeon and all - well, most of me, but who's counting? Just hook me up with the Olsen Twins sometime and we'll call it even.”
“Wilson...”
“Oh, fine. But I have to get an honorary Avengers' Membership Badge out of this, right?”
There was yet another of those slightly-too-long pauses.
“I don't think we've got any,” Tony said diplomatically.
“Geez you guys drive a hard bargain - fine, I'll settle for Web-Boy over there untying me - got this thing about being tied down lately, you may be surprised to hear - plus full boasting rights. For the rest of ever.”
As Spider-Man hurried over to comply, the general mutterings among the Avengers came to the effect that while they themselves were never going to be admitting exactly how they defeated War aloud to any other party for the rest of their lives, no-one among them was going to begrudge him that.
***
The rest of the process of retrieving the components Cable needed was pleasantly uneventful. The fight with War collectively left them with nothing worse than a few burns and bruises and one sprained ankle (Tony's, and by far the most painful part was Deadpool's insistence on making constant damsel-in-distress jokes about it until the Avengers' remaining good will towards him ran very thin). They broke camp - a job mostly consisting of figuring out which of the equipment they'd brought was still salvageable - and walked the distance to War's fortress on foot. Constructed from blackened parts of what had once been Providence and before that Greymalkin, the interior remained familiar enough to give Cable little trouble finding them what they needed. The few living servants War kept about the place made no attempt to impede them.
***
By the time Tony Stark was down to the second last item on his list of crucial diagnostic checks to be run on the salvaged components before they left, Cable could feel the clock counting down. The best and worst thing about teleporting home was that it could be done on a dime - not more than seconds of prep time required, but he hadn't yet figured out how he was going to say goodbye. He was still pondering when Deadpool sidled up and took the matter off his hands.
“So,” Wade began, awkwardly, “this is it?”
“We've achieved everything we came here to do,” Cable replied, a trifle apologetic. “We can't justify staying much longer. This is it.”
Wade nodded and fidgeted a little. “So, the Wade from your world - how's he doing these days?”
It was a question Cable had been expecting ever since they arrived, so answering it was easier than it should have been. “The Wade in my world... died. A few months ago.”
It didn't get him quite the response he was expecting. Wade spent several seconds watching him like he was waiting for the punchline.
“But he came back to life, right?” Wade prompted. “Who hasn't done that, like, half a dozen times? We X-Men don't take death lying down!”
“No, Wade. You - he - didn't.”
“But that doesn't mean he won't - are you really sure? Was it one of those things where they (dumdumdum) never found the body? Maybe he's just got amnesia and he's lost up in the wastes of the Swiss Alps thinking he's a lumberjack or...”
“It wasn't like that, no.”
“Oh. Well. Did you find all the bits? Even the little ones? You're sure one of them isn't, y'know, growing back...”
“Wade, no,” Cable was realising it had been far too early to declare that this was going to be easy - or even achievable without dredging up far more of those memories than he had any desire to relive, “the reason you died - your healing factor wasn't working.”
“...but you do mean that in a 'but it could kick back in at the last second' kind of way?” Wade suggested hopefully.
The look on Cable's face shut him down.
“Oh. So, if the healing factor was on the fritz, then, uh, the cancer, it wasn't...”
“No, you made it very clear that no matter what happened, you weren't going to go that way. I tried to find a way to help you but we... weren't on the best terms, after the Civil War.”
Wade's expression was one of mixed disappointment and curiosity. “So how did I go?
“There was an explosion - on Providence.”
“Not the one where the US...”
“No, this was well before that. You were there. I think you were trying to make a point.” Cable paused. “Either that, or you got yourself caught in the blast by accident. I never found out which. The comm link cut out a few minutes too soon for me to hear the end of what you were trying to say.”
“Ouch. You mean I blew myself up again? That is just so me it's not even funny.... maybe a bit funny.”
“You did save Providence,” Cable offered. “The blast would have been much worse without the difference you made. We just never knew for sure whether that was deliberate or not either.”
“At least,” said Wade hopefully, “I probably went out a hero?”
“In every way that mattered.”
“And, are you really, really sure I'm not coming back?”
Cable hesitated. “There was something you said just before the comm link cut out - something about someone you were expecting to see again if the worst happened; you didn't mention a name. I don't know if that means more to you than it did to me.” He'd agonised over it afterwards longer than he had any rational excuse for, going over lists of every deceased acquaintance of Wade's he could uncover (including certain recently deceased elderly celebrities), but had never convinced himself that anyone among those names fit the bill.
Wade showed no sign of having any better luck. “That's weird, I can't think of anyone who that would be... wouldn't be him, couldn't be him...”
“You referred to them as a 'she', if that helps.”
Wade suddenly lit up. “Wait, she as in her? It would have to be if he's seriously down for the count at last, but damn. That's not so bad. That puts a whole different spin on things if the other me's with her.”
Wade trailed off, and Cable was just about to ask him to explain, when Wade asked, “So, you and the other me, you were never...?”
“We were never intimate.” We never got that far.
“Shame. Not that I'm not a little jealous of where he is, but that's a real waste... So basically,” Wade straightened, all that fidgeting and nervousness dissolving at once, “I've got to have a shot with you, right?”
During the several seconds Cable spent staring at him while his brain kept refusing to admit it had really heard what it had just heard, Wade took the opportunity to add, “He sure can't complain I'm muscling in on his territory, not where he is. Lucky bastard.”
“Wade, you...”
“And you're not going to tell me I can't come!” Wade snapped, stabbing a finger at Cable, “Piece of Providence gets blown up, you go find a new one no-one's using. Deadpool gets blown up, you go find a new one no-one's using! I could be your whole mission objective! And don't you even try convincing me you're from the one universe out there where you're too straight for that, because not even my life sucks that hard -”
“Wade,” Cable cut him off, and managed to get in a deep breath he badly needed. “After everything I put you through in this world, are you sure you want that?”
Wade gave a hunched sort of shrug. “I gave War a pretty bad rep, but it wasn't all bad. Always made time to torment me, never made me share him with other prisoners, and the sex was pretty good. Ah, who am I kidding, the sex was great. It's just that once in a while,” he went on, with some rather more emphatic hand gestures, “a guy wants to be able to say 'not tonight dear, I'm not in the mood' or 'I have a headache - y'know, from where the back of my skull just grew back' or 'hey, you know what, how 'bout we don't see if I bend that way?' Also call me unreasonable, but imprisonment and torture - that's a deal breaker for me.”
He gave Cable a nervous look. “I did mention the sex was good?”
“You did.” Cable was fighting off a lot of distracting mental imagery.
“Anyway,” said Wade, more confidently, stabbing that finger at Cable some more. “You need someone around to keep an eye on you and make sure you don't go the way War did, and I am the reigning expert on that stuff.”
Cable stared at him, six feet of scarred muscle in only slightly torn red and black spandex, suddenly made tangible and - obtainable, in a way he hadn't let himself see Deadpool since he arrived here, and realised just how ridiculous every objection he'd been about to make really would have been.
“You make a compelling argument,” he admitted, through the edge of a smile.
“And I didn't even have to shoot anyone! Aren't you proud of me?”
“Any objections?” Cable said, louder, addressing the rest of the room, who had all spent the last several minutes finding things on far walls to study intently, and thinking to themselves about distracting, unrelated topics so loudly you could almost hear them doing it.
And for once, the silence was nothing but welcome.
So, now I've gotten this far, this would be where I mention that although the main story's done, the 'X/8' chapter numbering thus far has probably been a bit misleading - because there are two epilogues still to go before I'm done with this 'verse. ;) Been seriously toying with the idea of writing up the missing scene between Deadpool and War between parts 5 and 6 as a side story too.
And if anyone with a bit of a longer association with Marvel canon than me would like to share their thoughts on a few canon related ponderings I've run into in the process of working on another fic, that would be totally awesome too.
ETA: Epilogue 1
Title: Let Slip the Dogs of War
Summary: War wasn't telling the whole truth about what happened to the Deadpool of his universe.
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, guest staring the New Avengers
Chapter: 8 / 8
Word Count: 2420
Rating: R
Warnings: Not explicit, but contains references to torture, non-con and assorted other Evil Overlord AU-related staples. Also: Contains Deadpool.
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Understanding of what had just happened made its way gradually through Cable's body from the top down. After a few seconds it reached as far as his legs, and he had to sit down heavily before they gave out under him. Deadpool reloaded his gun and studied War carefully for any signs that outside forces like character popularity or publishing pressures might lead to a case of not-being-totally-dead.
“You okay, Nate?” he asked, gun still trained on War's body. Behind his usual flippancy was just a trace of real concern.
“You had me worried for while there,” Cable admitted.
Deadpool shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry 'bout that. Change of plan.” Cable shook his head half unbelieving, and laughed silently into his metal hand.
“Do you think we should we be burning the body?” suggested Deadpool, turning back to War. “Cutting his head off? Cutting all his bits off and burning them in different places? Maybe do some genetic checks to make really sure it's him and not some robot-clone-twin-thing? They could still invoke supernatural forces to bring him back whatever we do, but at least we can say we tried. It's the Summers-Grey family we're talking about here - you can't be too careful.” Wade appeared to think for a minute. “Or we could go the whole hog and lug him to the nearest nuclear testing site, but the writers would probably just take that as a cha-”
Deadpool cut off because Luke Cage's fist had just connected with his head. Spider-Man was only a second behind him, and quickly had Deadpool wrapped in enough web that he was almost spherical before he'd hit the ground.
Cable was back on his feet in an instant. “WAIT!” he hollered, stopping both of them in their tracks as sure as one of War's psychic commands.
“The hell?” Luke complained, freezing with a fist raised in mid air.
“War is dead!” Cable informed them, pointing at the body both Avengers had missed in their hurry to reach Deadpool. “Furthermore, dead at Deadpool's hands. He never betrayed us - I'm guessing,” he went on, turning to Deadpool, “what we just witnessed was no more than a performance to buy time while the virus took effect?”
“Aw, Nate, I knew you'd understand!” Deadpool practically wept. “Oh man, didn't you guys see me cap War? I have my most awesomely badass moment ever, and no-one saw?”
“We saw,” said Captain America, making his way to join them. With one arm he was supporting Tony Stark, who was leaning heavily on him, dressed only in his metallic under-suit and looking a little pale, but otherwise not too much the worse for wear.
“Cable's right,” he continued. “Cage, Spider-Man, stand down.”
Both the aforementioned swiftly came up with personalised varieties on the theme of relaxing while somehow coming to attention at the same time.
“And then perhaps Deadpool would like to explain to us all why he felt the need to deviate so far from the plan,” Cap finished.
“Hey, I had to!” Deadpool protested. “War called my bluff, like, the moment I showed up! I had to improvise!”
“Called your bluff?” Luke echoed.
“The part where I was going to pretend like I thought I could sneak in and kill him without being caught? Maybe you guys thought I was dumb enough to try it - ”
“It was your idea,” said Cable.
“Okay, maybe I thought I was dumb enough to try it. But War caught me the second I got there, and the first thing out of his mouth was, 'I hope you don't expect me to believe you're dumb enough to sneak in and try to kill me,' so I was like, 'No?' and then I had to think real fast 'cause...”
“I think we get the idea,” said Tony.
“It got me laid, didn't it?” said Deadpool, raising the general level of awkwardness in the area back up by several notches. “I told him I was selling you all out and he bought it.”
“Most of us bought it too,” said Cap, dryly.
“I couldn't have him reading the old plan out of your heads, could I? I had to keep you all so mad at me for turning traitor that no-one was going to think too clearly about what I was supposed to be doing with War.”
There was a short pause while the others digested all this.
“That made sense!” exclaimed Spider-Man, sounding faintly traumatised. “Should I be scared by how Deadpool's making sense? Wait, you mean you were telling the truth about triple crossing War?”
“Kinda?” said Deadpool. “I probably would've said it anyway, but it was mostly the truth.”
“Well done,” Cap pronounced, and if there was any strain to his sincerity you would have needed superpowers to identify it. “You've gone... far above and beyond the call of duty for us today.”
“Aw shucks, Cap,” piped Deadpool. “Sure I was mostly just doing it for revenge, and you did pull me out of his dungeon and all - well, most of me, but who's counting? Just hook me up with the Olsen Twins sometime and we'll call it even.”
“Wilson...”
“Oh, fine. But I have to get an honorary Avengers' Membership Badge out of this, right?”
There was yet another of those slightly-too-long pauses.
“I don't think we've got any,” Tony said diplomatically.
“Geez you guys drive a hard bargain - fine, I'll settle for Web-Boy over there untying me - got this thing about being tied down lately, you may be surprised to hear - plus full boasting rights. For the rest of ever.”
As Spider-Man hurried over to comply, the general mutterings among the Avengers came to the effect that while they themselves were never going to be admitting exactly how they defeated War aloud to any other party for the rest of their lives, no-one among them was going to begrudge him that.
***
The rest of the process of retrieving the components Cable needed was pleasantly uneventful. The fight with War collectively left them with nothing worse than a few burns and bruises and one sprained ankle (Tony's, and by far the most painful part was Deadpool's insistence on making constant damsel-in-distress jokes about it until the Avengers' remaining good will towards him ran very thin). They broke camp - a job mostly consisting of figuring out which of the equipment they'd brought was still salvageable - and walked the distance to War's fortress on foot. Constructed from blackened parts of what had once been Providence and before that Greymalkin, the interior remained familiar enough to give Cable little trouble finding them what they needed. The few living servants War kept about the place made no attempt to impede them.
***
By the time Tony Stark was down to the second last item on his list of crucial diagnostic checks to be run on the salvaged components before they left, Cable could feel the clock counting down. The best and worst thing about teleporting home was that it could be done on a dime - not more than seconds of prep time required, but he hadn't yet figured out how he was going to say goodbye. He was still pondering when Deadpool sidled up and took the matter off his hands.
“So,” Wade began, awkwardly, “this is it?”
“We've achieved everything we came here to do,” Cable replied, a trifle apologetic. “We can't justify staying much longer. This is it.”
Wade nodded and fidgeted a little. “So, the Wade from your world - how's he doing these days?”
It was a question Cable had been expecting ever since they arrived, so answering it was easier than it should have been. “The Wade in my world... died. A few months ago.”
It didn't get him quite the response he was expecting. Wade spent several seconds watching him like he was waiting for the punchline.
“But he came back to life, right?” Wade prompted. “Who hasn't done that, like, half a dozen times? We X-Men don't take death lying down!”
“No, Wade. You - he - didn't.”
“But that doesn't mean he won't - are you really sure? Was it one of those things where they (dumdumdum) never found the body? Maybe he's just got amnesia and he's lost up in the wastes of the Swiss Alps thinking he's a lumberjack or...”
“It wasn't like that, no.”
“Oh. Well. Did you find all the bits? Even the little ones? You're sure one of them isn't, y'know, growing back...”
“Wade, no,” Cable was realising it had been far too early to declare that this was going to be easy - or even achievable without dredging up far more of those memories than he had any desire to relive, “the reason you died - your healing factor wasn't working.”
“...but you do mean that in a 'but it could kick back in at the last second' kind of way?” Wade suggested hopefully.
The look on Cable's face shut him down.
“Oh. So, if the healing factor was on the fritz, then, uh, the cancer, it wasn't...”
“No, you made it very clear that no matter what happened, you weren't going to go that way. I tried to find a way to help you but we... weren't on the best terms, after the Civil War.”
Wade's expression was one of mixed disappointment and curiosity. “So how did I go?
“There was an explosion - on Providence.”
“Not the one where the US...”
“No, this was well before that. You were there. I think you were trying to make a point.” Cable paused. “Either that, or you got yourself caught in the blast by accident. I never found out which. The comm link cut out a few minutes too soon for me to hear the end of what you were trying to say.”
“Ouch. You mean I blew myself up again? That is just so me it's not even funny.... maybe a bit funny.”
“You did save Providence,” Cable offered. “The blast would have been much worse without the difference you made. We just never knew for sure whether that was deliberate or not either.”
“At least,” said Wade hopefully, “I probably went out a hero?”
“In every way that mattered.”
“And, are you really, really sure I'm not coming back?”
Cable hesitated. “There was something you said just before the comm link cut out - something about someone you were expecting to see again if the worst happened; you didn't mention a name. I don't know if that means more to you than it did to me.” He'd agonised over it afterwards longer than he had any rational excuse for, going over lists of every deceased acquaintance of Wade's he could uncover (including certain recently deceased elderly celebrities), but had never convinced himself that anyone among those names fit the bill.
Wade showed no sign of having any better luck. “That's weird, I can't think of anyone who that would be... wouldn't be him, couldn't be him...”
“You referred to them as a 'she', if that helps.”
Wade suddenly lit up. “Wait, she as in her? It would have to be if he's seriously down for the count at last, but damn. That's not so bad. That puts a whole different spin on things if the other me's with her.”
Wade trailed off, and Cable was just about to ask him to explain, when Wade asked, “So, you and the other me, you were never...?”
“We were never intimate.” We never got that far.
“Shame. Not that I'm not a little jealous of where he is, but that's a real waste... So basically,” Wade straightened, all that fidgeting and nervousness dissolving at once, “I've got to have a shot with you, right?”
During the several seconds Cable spent staring at him while his brain kept refusing to admit it had really heard what it had just heard, Wade took the opportunity to add, “He sure can't complain I'm muscling in on his territory, not where he is. Lucky bastard.”
“Wade, you...”
“And you're not going to tell me I can't come!” Wade snapped, stabbing a finger at Cable, “Piece of Providence gets blown up, you go find a new one no-one's using. Deadpool gets blown up, you go find a new one no-one's using! I could be your whole mission objective! And don't you even try convincing me you're from the one universe out there where you're too straight for that, because not even my life sucks that hard -”
“Wade,” Cable cut him off, and managed to get in a deep breath he badly needed. “After everything I put you through in this world, are you sure you want that?”
Wade gave a hunched sort of shrug. “I gave War a pretty bad rep, but it wasn't all bad. Always made time to torment me, never made me share him with other prisoners, and the sex was pretty good. Ah, who am I kidding, the sex was great. It's just that once in a while,” he went on, with some rather more emphatic hand gestures, “a guy wants to be able to say 'not tonight dear, I'm not in the mood' or 'I have a headache - y'know, from where the back of my skull just grew back' or 'hey, you know what, how 'bout we don't see if I bend that way?' Also call me unreasonable, but imprisonment and torture - that's a deal breaker for me.”
He gave Cable a nervous look. “I did mention the sex was good?”
“You did.” Cable was fighting off a lot of distracting mental imagery.
“Anyway,” said Wade, more confidently, stabbing that finger at Cable some more. “You need someone around to keep an eye on you and make sure you don't go the way War did, and I am the reigning expert on that stuff.”
Cable stared at him, six feet of scarred muscle in only slightly torn red and black spandex, suddenly made tangible and - obtainable, in a way he hadn't let himself see Deadpool since he arrived here, and realised just how ridiculous every objection he'd been about to make really would have been.
“You make a compelling argument,” he admitted, through the edge of a smile.
“And I didn't even have to shoot anyone! Aren't you proud of me?”
“Any objections?” Cable said, louder, addressing the rest of the room, who had all spent the last several minutes finding things on far walls to study intently, and thinking to themselves about distracting, unrelated topics so loudly you could almost hear them doing it.
And for once, the silence was nothing but welcome.
So, now I've gotten this far, this would be where I mention that although the main story's done, the 'X/8' chapter numbering thus far has probably been a bit misleading - because there are two epilogues still to go before I'm done with this 'verse. ;) Been seriously toying with the idea of writing up the missing scene between Deadpool and War between parts 5 and 6 as a side story too.
And if anyone with a bit of a longer association with Marvel canon than me would like to share their thoughts on a few canon related ponderings I've run into in the process of working on another fic, that would be totally awesome too.
ETA: Epilogue 1