[Dreams of the Waking Man: Seventh Dream] Understanding
a little Irene.
warnings: slash. light angst. humor. au with 616 references. spoilers for Messiah War. language: g.
pairing: Nate/Wade, reference to one-sided Irene/Nate.
timeline: November 20th, 2011.
disclaimer: marvel owns Cable & Deadpool, disney owns marvel. on the up-side, i no longer own a smoking habit, as i've once again kicked it for a sugar habit in the aftermath of Halloween.
notes: 1) this isn't quite a fill to a prompt i saw that intrigued me -- somebody wanted an Irene who doesn't understand why Nate likes Wade so much but slowly sees the light. 2) there are two kinds of pigeons: the ones in most of New York, which have a habit of staring at you with their evil, beady little eyes like you're food and they're only waiting for you to drop your guard, and the ones in Central Park, which look like the fat inbred cousins of the others. XD it's technically illegal to feed most of the pigeons in NYC (littering), but some of the vendors and restaurants in CP actually sell breadcrumbs and birdseed, and i've never seen a cop so much as raise an eyebrow at seeing people throw all manner of food at the pigeons there. 3) She-Hulk as Hope's favorite superhero. XD *singing* Single Female Lawyer! Jen is totally a symbol of feminine-but-empowered. if you can't guess who Rachel and Wade want Hope's favorite hero to be, you may be experiencing cerebral flatulence. i imagine them fighting over Hope like the two fairies in Sleeping Beauty with the pink/blue feud. XD 4) Des Artistes is one of the best restaurants/cafes in the CP area. i love it to death. and if you drink enough coffee and tip well enough, they really will let you stay for three hours while your friends see Wicked.
Understanding
(Excerpt from recorded interview, 11/20)
Irene Merryweather: Okay, recorder on. From here on out, it’s all fair game.
Cable: Ah, I see. So your invitation to ‘catch up and maybe grab a coffee’ was a clever ruse to procure headline-worthy secrets. I warn you, Miss Merryweather, SHIELD and the United States Government don’t take kindly to having their scandals spilled anywhere but Fox News. It’s one thing to work for the Daily Bugle…I don’t think you want to work for Fox.
IM: Oh, Nathan, you’re so clever. (pause) All the same, thanks for meeting me.
Cable: You are my chronicler, and you have missed seven-going-on-eight years of my life.
IM: And clearly, some things have changed. What’s with the doll?
Cable: You’ve met Dollpool, haven’t you?
IM: Er…yes.
Cable: I’m supposed to be keeping him company while Hope plays.
IM: She certainly has you trained.
Cable: I’m told it’s a natural stage of fatherhood that lasts from the birth of the first female child until the father’s death from exhaustion.
IM: …point taken.
Irene isn’t paying attention. It doesn’t matter too much, with the recorder nestled in her palm capturing every word Nathan says.
The words flow over her like the scent of damp dead leaves and the distant music of the carousel. Wastelands, post-apocalyptic nightmares, monsters and tyrants and murderers. A woman. A war. A blackened sky over burned soil.
She didn’t like or trust Deadpool when she first met him (not that she’d trusted Nathan at first, either). Even after he saved her at the end of Providence, she couldn’t fathom why Nathan spends so much time and effort on him, bends over backward for him, trusts him with a child.
But the more she watches Wade with Hope, the more she thinks she might see what Nathan sees.
They’re sharing a bag of popcorn, occasionally throwing pieces to (more like at) the pigeons-unlike their more street-wise brethren, Central Park’s pigeons have spent the last century being fed by children and little old ladies, so they are sluggish and slow to react to projectile food attacks. Wade’s marksmanship is expert, even in the late November chill, and he’s teaching Hope the knack of flicking popcorn with her thumb (because when your hands are cold, he tells her, the thumb is the last digit to lose coordination).
The smiles Hope gives Wade are trusting and adoring, even more than Theresa’s smiles for him, and he gives her the same smiles back.
“Irene?”
She jumps a little, like a child caught red-handed. When she glances at Nathan, he grins wryly. “I’m sorry, Nate, my mind wandered.”
“You had a funny look on your face, like you were thinking very hard about something.”
“I was just wondering why you…” she starts to answer, before she can stop herself.
“Love him?”
She scoffs (again, before she can stop herself). “Love doesn’t make any sense, Nate, and I don’t pretend it does. Wondering about that wouldn’t do me any good. I only wondered why you’d trust him around her. If the two are related, I’ll call you an idiot and leave it at that.”
Nathan shrugs a little. “When Barat was murdered, and it was decided that only Wade could have killed him…Wade said he couldn’t remember doing it, and didn’t know why he did it.”
“Right,” she says, trusting that he has a point.
“Did you believe him?”
“I didn’t when he said it,” she admits. “But it didn’t exactly make sense for him to kill even the world’s most wanted terrorist. He’d always been a model citizen on Providence before that. Didn’t even litter. People didn’t treat him like a monster or talk to him like a simpleton. He had a nice apartment where he didn’t have to pay rent. And I’m pretty sure you were sleeping together at the time. Why would he risk losing all that? Boredom?” She shakes her head. “Even before you fixed his brain, he wasn’t that far gone.”
Hope pauses in feeding the pigeons to throw a piece of popcorn at Wade, who catches it in his mouth-she claps and cheers, and her breath makes a thin little cloud between them.
Nathan shifts. “I didn’t believe him, either,” he says. “When I was young again, and my powers were strongest, I could actually make some sense of his mind. I could read him. Even Xavier can’t do that, you know.”
Irene waves a hand. “I remember what you said-like trying to watch TV while someone’s mashing the channel buttons.”
“And suddenly, it was like seeing everything properly laid out at once, with each channel given its own screen so that I could look from one to the next as I chose.” He sighs. “There were so many holes…so many blanks…so many things that were wrong or fake or nonsensical…”
She frowns at him. “So…it really was as bad as he said it was?”
Nathan shakes his head. “Much worse. He didn’t even notice how much time he was losing, or how many of the things he remembered weren’t real. The point is that he was being perfectly honest with us, he had good intentions, and we all just assumed the worst.”
A squeal of childish laughter startles Irene-Wade is pitching pieces of popcorn at Hope’s mouth and intentionally hitting her nose. Irene can’t suppress a smile. “Well, he did run, which sends a pretty bad message. I don’t think I understand how that has anything to do with what I was wondering.”
“Yes, you do. You’re being intentionally obtuse because you think you can make me admit things about myself.”
She chuckles. “You’re not a mind-reader anymore, Nathan. And you’re wrong-knowing something and understanding it are two different things. I know that Wade is perfectly capable of being harmless, even protecting people. Hell, he’s saved my life more than once. But I also know he’s been a murderer for hire for as long as he can remember. And when I consider those two things together, I still can’t understand how you can trust him with any child, let alone a child who may be the key to saving the world. You always seemed so certain that he could and would betray anyone, given the opportunity and a sufficiently large paycheck.”
Suddenly, he looks tired and regretful. “I’m not getting any younger, Irene,” he says softly, and it hurts to hear him say it.
“This time,” she jokes.
He doesn’t smile. “I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve lived more than my fair share of years. She’ll still need a protector when I’m gone, and I’ve seen him accomplish some truly great things, especially when he’s protecting someone.” He pauses, looking at the stuffed doll Hope left in his charge (and Irene notes that Dollpool is in remarkably good repair, for a handmade toy that gets dragged all over Manhattan by a little girl and a psychopath). “I repeated my mistake, Irene. Every word he’s said to her, every place he’s taken her, every amazingly precious normal experience he’s given her has told me that he would never hurt her-that he would die to protect her-and I didn’t believe him.”
She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry as a desert. “And what changed your mind?”
“Hope yelled at me,” he says, and that wry grin is back. “She reminded me of what’s truly important…and what really tells you how a person feels and whether you can trust them. Just look at them together-they’re inseparable.” He gestures a little, and she follows his gaze.
They’ve run out of popcorn, it seems. Wade holds Hope up at the right height to use the drinking fountain. When she’s done, he lifts her onto his shoulders and chases pigeons while she makes laser noises and tells him that they need to make another strafing run to get the last of the Imperial walkers. Hope’s scarf-purple and green, because (in spite of Rachel’s and Wade’s separate efforts to the contrary) Hope’s favorite superhero is She-Hulk-has started to unwind and trails behind them like the tail of a kite. They both have big, carefree smiles on their faces.
“I do want to protect her,” Nathan goes on. “And I’ve gotten pretty fond of her over the years. I’ve had wives and lovers, and children of my own-but I have never loved anyone as much as he loves her. Do you understand now?”
“I, um…” She swallows again. “…yes.” When she looks at Nathan again, there’s a deep sense of peace in his eyes that she’s never seen when he talks about Domino. He really is in love with that manic moron, and it’s taken him all this time to figure it out. She shakes her head with a sigh. “Oh, Nathan. You idiot.”
“What?” he asks, puzzled.
Just then, Wade limps over. “I think there’s something wrong with my leg,” he says, and turns to one side, where a giggling Hope is wrapped limpet-like around his knee.
“I see,” Nathan replies. “Well, there’s your problem, you’ve been attacked by a rare Hope-lamprey. It’s particularly hard to get them to let go. You have to tickle them.”
“Ohhhh, okay.”
“No!” Hope squeals as Wade begins to tickle her ribs through her coat. “No fair!”
Wade picks her up while she’s still giggling, sits her on Nathan’s knee so that he can collapse onto the bench himself. “That was a close one. I coulda lost my leg. Not much of a market for one-legged mercs.”
“It would’ve grown back,” Hope points out, retrieving Dollpool from Nathan. “And Sandi wouldn’t let Mister Hayden fire you; she says you’re her favorite boss ever.”
“Ever ever?”
“Ever ever. Besides, it would be a scandal, and then Irene would write all about it and they’d have to give her back her old job, and Sandi would never let that happen, because she says the Daily Bugle is full of crap and Irene deserves to write for a real newspaper.”
Irene smiles a little and tightens her hand around her recorder.
“Well, good for Irene, then,” Wade says, and stands back up. “Know what time it is?”
“Skin o’clock,” Hope replies, pushing up her sleeve and looking at her bare wrist.
“Time to buy you a watch,” Wade chuckles. “But besides that, it’s time to get going if we wanna sneak in to see Wicked.”
“Yay!” Hope cries, jumping off Nathan’s knee.
Wade seizes her hand, swings her back up onto his shoulders. She sets Dollpool on her own shoulders.
“Meet back here?” Nathan asks.
“Nah,” Wade dismisses, leaning in for a kiss (Hope giggles and keeps her balance easily, as though she’s gotten used to this sort of thing). “Go someplace warm. Even when I forget where I left you, I always find you.”
“All right. Have fun.”
“Don’t I always?” Wade salutes and sets off toward Broadway.
“Sneak in, huh?” Irene says with a grin.
“Wade has very particular ideas about paying to see plays and musicals,” Nathan tells her with a slight wince. “Hope understands that the actors need to make a living, so they compromise by buying tickets afterward if they liked the show.”
“You let him get away with setting such a terrible example?” she teases.
He makes that sad, distant face again, and looks up at the pale, chilly sky. “He’s been getting worse again. His memory, I mean. Sandi tells me it started when I left, but it got particularly bad about a year after. It’s hard to say whether it’s trauma, or if his brain was tampered with…or if what I did was really nothing more than a bandage. Some days, his memory is perfect. Others, he’ll forget what he said ten seconds ago.”
She doesn’t have anything to say to that. She thinks it must be very painful to love someone who may not remember you in five minutes.
He folds his hands together tightly. “All I can give him are moments, Irene. I want those moments to be the happiest he’s ever had, so that if he happens to remember them, he’ll be glad he’s alive. If that means occasionally skipping school to let them play in the park, I think it’s a pretty small price to pay.”
Irene looks at her recorder, thinks about turning it off, but decides that she might want to listen to his next answer later. “There are some people who would say…in that kind of situation, you should be spending those moments with them. Maybe tell him how you feel. Don’t you think that would make him happy?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t tell if it makes him happy or sad. He’ll accept affection, and our sex life is fine-”
“Didn’t need to hear that,” Irene quickly tells him.
“-but hearing that I love him only seems to upset him. So I don’t say it very much.”
“Why would it upset him? He’s probably almost as crazy for you as he is for that ludicrously cute kid of yours.”
“You and I both know the answer to that, Irene.”
But she isn’t sure that what she thinks the answer is matches up with what Nathan thinks it is. She decides to take the chance that she knows what he’s thinking (the rule of thumb is to find the path of greatest martyrdom, and it’s served her pretty well so far). “You’re such an idiot,” she snorts. “It’s not because of the way you treated him. It’s because he thinks he’s not worthy of somebody who tried to single-handedly stop war and world hunger.”
The startled look on his face tells her that her guess was right. “That’s ridiculous, of course he’s…” He grins and heaves a thick sigh. “Oh, Wade.”
She laughs. “It’s a good thing you two morons have Hope to take care of you. I swear, you never would’ve gotten back together without her.”
“And that’s a good thing?” he says slyly. “You wouldn’t have preferred to step in and play foster-parent yourself?”
Now she does turn the recorder off. She slips it into her pocket and stands. “I wasn’t what you wanted. Domino wasn’t what you wanted. Wade was. I’ve understood that for going on three years, Nate. I think the two of you might be the last ones to get the memo, in fact. They’ll be about three hours, unless they get bored before the show’s over-Des Artistes won’t kick us out if we keep buying coffee.”
.End.
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