[Cable & Deadpool] Summers'son (7/9?)
It turns out that opiates = not necessarily as much fun as you've heard they are. They work for the pain (which hasn't been that bad thus far anyway) in a general sort of way, but I'm pretty sure they're the main responsible party behind me spending most of the last couple of days either asleep or more woozy than is really pleasant, and euphoria-inducing they are certainly not. Urgh.
But on the upside of being post-Supanova and post-surgery, my beta reader and I now have some free time again, which means I finally have a high school AU fic update to share. (Actual post about Supanova still in progress. Shh.)
Speaking of which, in case you missed them I would just like to take a moment to draw everyone's attention to a short epilogue-thing to part 6 which I wrote on a whim in the comments over here, and yet another over here, not to mention some rather adorable fanart of teen!Nate and Wade which epiqabdr drew for me over here. :3 Okay? Okay. On to the new part.
Title: Summers’son
Summary: Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.
Chapter: 7/?
Characters/Pairing: Nate/Wade
Rating: PG (this part, NC-17 overall)
Word count: 5470
Previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: Although this chapter is labelled '7', this is NOT a continuation of chapter 6, and this would be a good time for me to take a moment to explain why. You see, the central problem of this AU since conception is that it has no plot. It is so far from having a real plot that when I sat down in the gap between chapters 1 and 2 to consider the subject of where the story was going, I came up with not one but several distinct and incompatible possible directions the idea might take, none of which showed much sign of developing into something with well-defined conflict and a middle and and end and all of that stuff you need to bridge the gap between a concept and a fully-realised story. What I have instead are a bunch of assorted scenes which might (or might not) have happened to young Nate and Wade somewhere in their not-too-distant futures, many of which contradict each other in major and irreconcilable ways. Eventually, I decided to write them all down anyway. Suffice to say that in every world we'd be interested in, one way or another Wade will eventually have to discover both Nate's secrets and that he's not so human himself, and Nate will have to have his little revelation about his feelings for Wade - the means and order by which they get around to all these things, however, leaves plenty of different possibilities. We are now in the territory of sharing AUs of an AU fic. Strap yourselves in.
Just to clarify, the last three chapters (4, 5 and 6, plus epilogues) comprise what I like to think of as as universe 1. The first scene you are about to read below is an alternate continuation from chapter 3 (back before there had been any confessions, psychic sex, or Nate had had any of his big revelations about why he liked hanging out with Wade so very much). The second is a snapshot of events from somewhere in the future of (probably) yet another possible universe. The rest can wait for later chapters.
ii.
Inevitably, some days are worse than others.
Most of the time now, coping is something Nathan does without effort. He can be surprised from behind in a crowded corridor and the instinct to retaliate is no more than a twinge in the back of his mind. He wakes in the morning to see all his furniture in the same places it stood the night before. He can even hang around Wade without hearing a whisper of what his friend is thinking about him, unless he lets himself get curious. But the fact still remains that every time he and Scott think they've found his new limits, something in him shifts, and the same weight he'd been struggling to raise inch by inch only the day before will go sailing away from him like a bottle cap in the wind, and he's having to feel out his boundaries all over again.
If it had simply been a smooth increase with practice that would be one thing but Nathan's psychic abilities jump around in fits and starts. It happens less now than it did at first; with each jump the interval to the next gets a little longer, the process of acclimatising himself to the changes a little faster and a little easier, but the shifts themselves still throw him badly, and in that aspect practice has done him little good. No matter when the next one comes he's never ready for it, no matter how many he goes through there's always that little part of him that thinks surely, this one will be the last, only to be disappointed time and again.
Even now it's hard enough for Nathan to make himself believe that any of this is really happening to him. This power is his destiny - all his life he's been raised in preparation for this day, but after so many years of disappointment, the time had come when he'd stopped saying 'maybe tomorrow'. In wartime hope can be all that keeps you going, however faint or irrational - but on the shorter term he'd learned not to pin his strategy on reinforcements who'd never given an ETA. He'd been prepared, somewhere deep inside, for the possibility they'd never find him a cure at all; he'd been prepared for the real chance that even if they did his powers might never recover, crippled by the strain like a spring crushed under too much weight. Even when they'd found the cure he'd kept his expectations low, hedging his bets on maybe a moderate improvement at best. He'd never prepared for the possibility that the strain of the TO might have made him stronger.
If he's honest with himself, the truth behind that part of him always saying surely this will be the last time is that already his powers have grown far past where he has any idea what to do with them. Nathan never knows his own strength anymore; simple telekinetic tricks he'd mastered years ago take four times the concentration for half the precision he used to boast, and the frustration of that would be bad enough, but growing harder to ignore beneath that is a thread of something far too much like fear. For all Scott's assurances that this is a perfectly normal part of mutant puberty his father can't hide the fact that even he's starting worry just how much more powerful his son may become, not least because they're running out of things large enough for him to practice on. At last check Nathan's weight limit was hovering somewhere around the scale of 'small landmark', and they're both uncomfortably aware that 'minor international incident' can't be far away. More than once he's caught himself imagining that the true reason he'd been packed off back to this time as soon as the TO infection was cured has less to do with saving the world than it does with the danger that without this padded room of a world to get used to his new powers in they'd very probably have gotten him killed by now.
Even if the next shift is the last the damage has been done. All his life Nathan's learned to fight and survive with little more than his muscles and his wits, and he's done it well. It's been a matter of pride that even with barely the talent to levitate forks or skim surface thoughts he's taken on opponents with a dozen times his talent and won. What good is it that he's spent long hours learning how to deactivate an enemy locking mechanism with a few well-placed thoughts if he can blow the door down with a thought, if not lift the whole facility off its foundations and shake its contents out into the dust?
He knows these powers are his birthright - nothing but the same gifts he was always meant to have - proof of everything the prophets foretold. But he also knows, or at least feels deep inside, on a level so fundamental that ignoring it is unthinkable, that the moment he lets himself believe he has any right to the power of a god it'll be all over.
Most days, coping is something he does without effort, but all that means is that he can, for a time, forget how many ways he's not coping at all
His telepathy, if anything, gives him even more grief.
He'd known he was in for a bad day from the moment he woke up that morning with the whisper of a hundred thousand voices buzzing in his head, leaving him raw and out of place in his own body. On days like this it can take an hour of meditation before he makes it out of bed, mind shielded behind blocks so thick he feels like he's seeing the world through a layer of cotton wool. He was already in the doorway before he remembered this was the day they were all expected to attend the district's annual interschool sports carnival, the kind of event that would be a strain on his senses even on a good day, packed beside thousands of strangers for hours on end. But instead he'd made the mistake of assuming it would be a relaxing day sitting around outdoors without anything too pressing to focus on; that he'd be fine, there was no need to miss school over a minor episode - probably the perfect opportunity to prove to himself he could still function through something like this.
By a couple of hours in, it was becoming apparent just how much of a miscalculation this had been. Nothing stokes the tepid heat that usually passes for school spirit like a good dose of officially sanctioned rivalry; students who hate school, hate sports and loathe every last one of the school's star athletes would stand up in their seats and cheer to see them win today, and even that had nothing on the mood directed towards their competitors. It doesn't matter that there's no more at stake than a handful of chrome-plated medals - the hostility surrounding Nathan is palpable, and there is nothing that could have wrecked his careful blocks faster or more thoroughly than being stuck in a crowd full of people who have convinced themselves to see him and anyone else in his school colours as the enemy.
Stubborn to the last, it had taken Wade just about dragging him bodily over to the nurse's office to make Nathan admit that maybe he wasn't actually coping so well. There, the nurse had delivered her expert medical opinion that he looked white as a sheet, taken his temperature and made him swallow some water and lie down, and there he'd been left while she was hurried off to see about someone's twisted ankle or something, Wade sitting by the bed in a spare office chair chattering away about nothing in particular. It does help somewhat to have one familiar mind between himself and the rest of the noise outside, though that may be more of an excuse than a reason to let Wade stay. He'd do himself more good in the long run with half an hour of quiet meditation, but before he can get that far he's going to have to make peace with the subject of just how foolish he's been this morning, and even knowing he only compounds his problems in avoidance he's not quite ready to tackle that just yet. Besides, in a way it's comforting having Wade around, to be able to give someone else that warm glow of contentment just by telling them you want them to stay.
He's been having that kind of reaction around Wade a lot recently; some time soon he's really going to have to sit down and have a think about just how much of that is no more than ordinary empathy, where the line between 'not discouraging' and 'encouraging' actually falls, and just which of them he's been the more guilty of leading on of late When you're telepathic it can sometimes be a little too easy to get more caught up in someone else's feelings than is good for you, but Nathan knows his own feelings well enough to recognise them, and even blocking Wade out they never quite go away.
But all that had better wait until he doesn't have this headache to contend with. It's made some difference already to be lying down in the cool and quiet but his head feels bruised from the inside out and the sick bay's walls can only do so much to keep out other minds. For the moment it's getting no worse as long as he stays put but after most of an hour he's feeling no more steady than when Wade dragged him in, and he still has to make it home later. He could have someone call Scott to pick him up, but admitting weakness is something he's never been very good at. The main effect of coming to see the nurse thus far is to give him the space and time to properly appreciate just how badly he's screwed up today, and even if the worst ultimate victim is only? his pride it's going to be a good long while before he can forget this one.
...Has it gone quiet in here all of a sudden?
“Uh, Nate?” says Wade, his tone a warning that reaches Nathan too late, “Don't look now, but you're kinda... glowing.”
“Shit.” Nathan slams a hand down over his left eye. It shouldn't be doing that; normally it takes a huge expenditure of telekinetic force to get so much as a wink out of it. Pure telepathy's never done that before - well, alright, he doesn't think it has, it's a bit late now to realise it's not as though he's in the habit of practising in front of the mirror. If he doesn't even know what's triggering it then he has a problem, not least that he still has to find a way to get home like this.
It's only on second thoughts that it sinks in that Wade hadn't actually mentioned what was glowing, but he'd definitely have seen Nathan's reaction, and that makes getting home far from the most immediate problem on Nathan's list.
“Okay,” says Wade, drawing out the word in that way that mean not okay actually, “I take it you're going to let me know if this means I have to call the nurse or hit the fire alarm or something?”
“Nothing like that. It's just something that happens to me sometimes.” In his head Nathan's still hanging on to the idea that he can talk his way out of this like any other minor slip; but out loud it's harder to ignore what a woefully inadequate answer this was. Wade talks the way some people breathe, so when he does go quiet, even for the few moments that follow, it's deafening..
“So,” Wade says, after the silence has gone on just long enough to get uncomfortable, “I guess this is the part where I find out that the occasional glowing eye is another symptom of your mystery medical thing?”
“I don't know what else to tell you, Wade.” The fact that this is an honest answer doesn't make it any less wrong than his last was. Nathan is in no state to make the judgement call on whether this is the moment he needs to come clean to Wade. He's barely got the concentration to register the fact that actually, there's a real likelihood he hasn't even begun to realise the full scale of how big today's screw up is about to get.
The silence this time isn't as long, but with the leftover discomfort of the last to build on it doesn't need to be.
“Okay,” says Wade again, staring at the side wall. “You've got your secrets, probably none of my business.” Maybe black belt martial arts is a standard part of physical therapy and your medical thing is so new and exciting it's not even on google yet, he thinks, and in Nathan's head it's louder than words. “I just would'a liked to think we were the kind of friends who could, y'know, maybe tell each other if one of us was an alien mutant cyborg time-traveller or something.”
Nathan remembers only too late what a bad idea sitting up sharply is right now, his head seems to keep moving long after the rest of him stops. Through the rush of nausea, he gasps out, “What?”
“Sheesh, Nate,” says Wade, eyes making the long journey back from the wall, “I was only kidding...”
On that last word their eyes catch and lock, and in the silence that follows, Nathan clearly feels any hope he might have had of passing off his reaction as anything other than what it was trickle away.
“You are an alien mutant cyborg time-traveller,” Wade pronounces, unimpressed. “Huh. Well doesn't that just take the whole biscuit.”
“Oh Mother Askani,” Nathan breathes and slumps back down onto the bed. “Wade, I...” He trails off; he has absolutely no idea where he was going with that. Of all the times he's imagined what it might be like when he finally comes clean to Wade about his secrets, this is a scenario he'd never prepared for.
“Nate?” Wade's voice is steady, almost calm, but psychic insight is wasted when Nathan can see he's practically vibrating with betrayal underneath it, seething like a pot on the boil. “Maybe I dunno what I'm getting into here, but even if the next thing out of your mouth next is 'you already know too much and now I'm going to have to ask you to look closely at this red flashy thing', it'd damn well better be the truth.”
He's right, unfortunately. Nathan needs to be incredibly careful about what he says next, but as much as he hates that they've come to it like this, there's only one option left that won't compound his mistake.
He takes a deep breath. “I'm not an alien.”
“Well, that's good to know.”
“But we're pretty sure the techno-organic virus I was infected with as a child was... alien in origin.”
“Was with you right up to around to around the 'we' there, Nate,” says Wade, without missing a beat.
“Techno-organic,” Nathan repeats, “it means it was slowly converting my body into living metal.”
“So that gives us 'cyborg',” says Wade, keeping pace with an ease that Nathan finds a little unnerving.
“With today's technology it should have been incurable. It would have killed me,” Nathan explains. “So when my parents were offered the opportunity to send me to the far future in the hope a cure could be found there, they took it. They didn't know then if they'd ever see me again.”
“And here I thought I was just making shit up when I threw in the 'time traveller' bit,” says Wade, not un-bitterly.
“Even there, for a long time the best they could do was to help me slow it down. The mesh had spread to most of the left side of my body by the time we found a real cure. It's been a lot for me to adjust to, having ordinary flesh there again. But with it cured, they could finally send me home. That only happened a couple of months before I met you.”
“So that explains your little episodes,” says Wade. “You left out 'mutant'.”
“There's a reason I was targeted,” says Nathan. “My parents were members of the X-Men.”
Wade freezes in the middle of nodding along with this last bit. “Your Dad was an X-Man? Your Dad? I-was-born-to-teach-trigonometry-and-wear-skivvies Summers?”
Even here, Nathan has to smile at that. “He used to lead the X-Men. He retired after my mother died.”
Wade shakes his head but doesn't press the subject. “Right, mutant dad, mutant mum, we are talking the kind of mutant with mutant superpowers, aren't we?”
Nathan hesitates. He'd known the question was coming and the last thing he should be doing is to compound his sins with another half-truth, but now is the worst moment he could possibly have chosen to come clean about the fact that one of his powers involves being able to read Wade's mind.
“I'm telekinetic,” he mutters. “Means I can-”
“Move objects with your mind, yeah, I know the word. You... seriously?”
Nathan breathes out, hopes and prays he's not going to regret doing something like this in his current state, and nods Wade towards the empty glass he'd left sitting beside his bed as he levitates it gently upwards to hover between them.
Wade stares in rapt fascination which quickly turns sour. “You dick,” he grumbles, “no wonder I could never beat you.”
Nathan nearly drops the glass. “What? No! Wade, I have never used my powers in a match against you.” On this count at least he's damn well going to defend himself.
“Uh-huh.” Wade's tone suggests he'd go outside and check if Nathan told him the sky was blue right now.
“Wade, I have never needed to use my powers against you. You wanted to know where I learned to fight? No, I haven't been entirely honest, but where I grew up, those skills aren't a hobby you take up on weekends, to help you build up confidence, they determine your survival. The future I arrived in wasn't the utopia my parents were hoping for.”
Wade meets his gaze, unflinching. “Well, sure, why shouldn't I take your word for it?” and Nathan deflates, anger evaporating. He flops back down to the bed, arm over his eyes. It had occurred to him, in some of those scenarios where he'd admitted the truth to Wade of his own accord that Wade might not exactly be happy to learn how much Nathan had lied to him about. If he's honest with himself it's a not inconsiderable part of what made the lies come so easily, but from the day they met Wade has been so much in love with him he'd forgive Nathan almost anything. He's never had Wade this angry at him before, and it's a shock to find himself so unprepared to deal with it.
“Sorry,” he says. “I... you have every right to be suspicious.”
“You think?”
Nathan breathes out, not quite a sigh, and turns to look at Wade more gently. “You're taking all of this remarkably well, considering.”
“Not completely stupid, thanks, I do watch the news. The Avengers deal with crap this weird twice a week and three times on Sunday. Still pretty amazed you managed to rack up alien, mutant, time traveller and cyborg, but you gotta admit it explains a lot.”
“For what it's worth, Wade,” says Nathan softly, “I never wanted to lie to you. I was made to promise I wouldn't tell any of this to anyone.”
“And when a grown-up tells you to do something, you do it, right?” From anyone else that would sound petty, but Wade has built his whole moral code around the idea of us-against-the-world.
“It's a little more complicated than that,” Nathan tries.
“I'm not saying you had to spill it all on our first date, Nate,” Wade spits, and it says too much about the state he's in that he can use a metaphor like that without embarrassment, “just that a guy might think that by now you'd at least have got around to mentioning you're a mutant. They send us to fucking week-long special ed classes these days about how mutants are people too and did you know hardly any of them have mind-controlling death-ray powers really and let's all sing kumbaya it's a big old sparkly rainbow biosphere. Even the south goes whole months between mutant lynchings nowadays. Being a mutant is practically trendy.”
There's no good answer to that one. “I did want to, Wade, I just...” the truth would be, I didn't tell you sooner because I was waiting for you to get over me before I dropped the bombshell about reading your mind, then when you didn't get over me, I was waiting until I'd had more time to make up my mind about how I felt about that, but he can't admit that, “could never make up my mind whether telling you half the truth would be better or worse than nothing at all.”
Wade looks decidedly skeptical, and Nathan can't find it in himself to blame him; when he adds, “I always meant to ask if you'd ever wondered if you were a mutant,” it's as much a lame attempt to change the subject as it's an attempt to defend his character.
“No.” The sharpness of Wade's tone is startling.
“But-”
“It's a skin condition, not the next step in fucking human evolution.”
“Wade, hear me out,” says Nathan, focusing keeping his tone even, “How many doctors have you been to? Have any two of them even been able to agree on what kind of 'skin condition' you have? Not everyone gets glamorous powers out of the mutant gene, you have to admit it's possible that-”
“And if I was a mutant, so what?” Wade throws the words back at him. “The guys down the hall get to yell 'mutie' instead of 'freak'? Yeah, that would really do so much for my quality of life. Or hey, maybe they could pull me out of this joint and send me to one of those special mutant schools! I bet all the other mutant kids who got the fluffy wings and the fancy eye lasers would be so much more understanding about how I got the mutant gene for a face like the wrong side of an autopsy. That would be so worth another round of being shunted through the quack circuit.”
In short, Wade has thought about it. Considerably more than Nathan has. There's an argument to be made about secondary mutations, about mutant-specific illness and knowing for your own peace of mind even if you tell no-one else, but Wade has made it very clear this is neither the time or the place.
“I'm sorry,” says Nathan, though it's not even the beginning of enough, “I guess I hadn't thought about it that way.”
Wade snorts derisively, but a fraction of a second later he has Nathan fixed with an angry glare. “Nate, if you've been hanging out with me all this time because you thought I was a mutie, then you can-”
“No! God no, I... Wade, I won't say it didn't cross my mind when I met you, but that was never the only reason. It was easier - getting to know someone else who didn't fit in. I never lied about that.” Nathan's already steeling himself to see Wade brush this off with the same suspicion he's treated everything he's said so far in his own defence, but there's no comeback this time, just a sharp look from Wade and silence as he digests this.
“Just everything else, huh?” says Wade, mollified, if grudgingly so.
“Just - a lot of other things,” Nathan admits, lamely, and they both fall silent.
It's the price of being psychic that Nathan knows that Wade will forgive him, given time. Already there's a voice in the back of Wade's mind that's telling him he's overreacting, a quiet one that he's far too busy being angry to take notice of yet, but from the moment he walks out that door it's going to start getting louder. He's going to realise how completely out of his depth he is and how ridiculous it is to get hung up on loyalty when he can't even begin to imagine what kind of life Nate's lived. It's going to hit him that Nate has admitted to being a freedom fighter from the future and he is going to freak the fuck out. Sooner or later it's got to occur him that having a best friend who can move things with his mind could maybe be mindblowingly cool. It's going to take some time for everything to percolate through and settle down, and probably some grovelling on Nathan's part, but they'll get through it; this won't cost them their friendship. But even when Wade does forgive him nothing between them is ever going to be the same again, and the reality of that arrives in Nathan's awareness somewhere deep and personal that rests at the base of his chest, well inside all his defences.
It's far too late to realise that he could have come to Wade with all of this of his own volition at any time and Wade would have accepted it, least of all because even given the chance to live all this over again he's not sure he could have brought himself to do anything different, other than to be more careful not to let his secret slip.
“So, the future,” says Wade after a bit, “Kind of a shithole, huh?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Figures,” Wade mutters.
When the nurse bustles back in a few minutes later, Wade makes a quick excuse and leaves.
Some days, Nathan really doesn't cope at all.
iii.
A moment after the psi-dampeners blow the whole world comes rushing into Nathan's head, and for once he doesn't fight it. There are five other minds still living in the old warehouse and he hardly waits to note that they're all armed and hostile before each and every one blows clean out the back of its owner's skull.
By the time Wade's body hits the floor it's all over, one second and a million years too late.
Two seconds ago Nathan had had no idea he could do something like that to another human mind but he doesn't care; he'd bring each of them back to life and kill them all again if he could - if it would make any difference to Wade. Even as the soldier in him is running through first-aid essentials, reminding himself of every devastating battlefield wound he's ever seen proven non-fatal, reminding himself that while there's life there's always - always - hope, that's all against the knowing that the same fury that had blown the psi-dampeners into shrapnel had been triggered in the moment where he'd felt Wade's heart stop beating.
Not twenty feet between them and the time it takes to reach Wade's side is an eternity, and the worst of those five dead bodies is that now the only person left to blame is himself. Hadn't he known Scott's idea he could have a 'normal' life here was never more than a happy fiction? How could he have forgotten that they'd come for him - that anyone who got close to him would be a target? No identity could be secret enough; it's his fault Wade was targeted, lured here to draw him out in turn. Nathan can kill five men in the space of a heartbeat but his powers can't knit flesh or fuse bone, can't keep a heart beating when it's been torn open. The sniper's shot was perfect, entry and exit wounds clean through and over before you know you're hit, Wade's body lying on the warehouse floor in a spreading pool of red. He's limp as Nathan falls to his knees beside him and tears his shirt open, it rips straight through at the bullet hole and comes off with hardly a whisper of resistance. How many battles, how many fallen comrades he's seen, and still he doesn't think he's ever seen so much blood before, and for a desperate moment he wonders if there's still a way that his mind could stop the flow, keep Wade's blood circulating, make his lungs work again - things he knows he hasn't a fraction of the practical skill or knowledge to do, that he'd never consider had he any reason to believe there was any other hope.
It's a desperate moment that lasts as long as it takes for him to really look at the broken body he can't think of as Wade and register what it is he's seeing.
Underneath the mess that covers Wade's chest his flesh is knitting before Nathan's eyes, like watching a time-lapse video of months of healing compressed into minutes; already the bleeding has stopped, in half a minute the wound has closed to the dull red of an old scar, in another he's all but lost the spot completely. When he lifts Wade half into his lap, less carefully than he probably ought, there's nothing under his fingers on Wade's back but unbroken skin, and he presses an ear to Wade's chest in time to hear Wade's heart start beating again.
He wonders, is it me? - not a minute ago he hadn't known he could blow psi-dampeners with a thought or a mind out with another, but it doesn't seem right - before the understanding reaches him about what he's seeing: Wade's own mottled skin closing over the wound - Wade's own wonderful, beautiful skin. It's not him, it's Wade. Everything he'd seen in Wade the first time they met, that he'd forgotten in knowing him - that someone like Wade couldn't be human and had never been. Askani forgive him, he'd known Wade's skin didn't bruise; he'd had all the pieces all along and still this is what it took for him to put it together. Every third mutant Nathan's ever met has had something about them that heals a little faster, but to come back from a bullet to the heart makes Wade nothing less than a miracle.
Nathan is there to feel it as Wade's mind wakes up again, coasting back on what will shortly be the greatest endorphin rush of his life. There's nothing else like relief - a man can run past the limits of endurance on naught but adrenalin and inertia and the first word of good news will be what brings him to his knees - and it's washing over Nathan in waves that leave him giddy and breathless, and never greater than when Wade finally stirs against his shoulder.
“Nate?” Wade slurs, arms shifting tentatively against the fabric of Nathan's shirt, “That you? Wha' happened?” then words fail him and it's left to Nathan to listen to the ones he doesn't have the strength to voice yet, Is... issat Nate hugging me? Oh - I get it, know I remembered getting shot... this must be heaven.
The laugh that escapes Nathan's lips startles him almost as much as Wad's thought did, but he doesn't let go. “No, Wade,” he whispers in his friend's ear, “What happened is you lived.”
Later, this is going to be a mess; he's still got to explain to Wade what this means - what he is, what they both are, how sorry he is they had to find out this way, and then he's going to have to clean up a warehouse with five bodies and a litre of Wade's blood cooling on the floor, but now there's nothing but the euphoria.
By this time tomorrow, everything between him and Wade will have changed irrevocably, and Nathan wouldn't want it any other way. This is it, in its purest, undiluted form - this is victory.
Further Author's Note: Before anyone asks, yes, we shall most definitely be coming back to events in the universe from the first scene here - we just have a few more odds and ends from other possible futures to get through first.
Part 8
But on the upside of being post-Supanova and post-surgery, my beta reader and I now have some free time again, which means I finally have a high school AU fic update to share. (Actual post about Supanova still in progress. Shh.)
Speaking of which, in case you missed them I would just like to take a moment to draw everyone's attention to a short epilogue-thing to part 6 which I wrote on a whim in the comments over here, and yet another over here, not to mention some rather adorable fanart of teen!Nate and Wade which epiqabdr drew for me over here. :3 Okay? Okay. On to the new part.
Title: Summers’son
Summary: Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.
Chapter: 7/?
Characters/Pairing: Nate/Wade
Rating: PG (this part, NC-17 overall)
Word count: 5470
Previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: Although this chapter is labelled '7', this is NOT a continuation of chapter 6, and this would be a good time for me to take a moment to explain why. You see, the central problem of this AU since conception is that it has no plot. It is so far from having a real plot that when I sat down in the gap between chapters 1 and 2 to consider the subject of where the story was going, I came up with not one but several distinct and incompatible possible directions the idea might take, none of which showed much sign of developing into something with well-defined conflict and a middle and and end and all of that stuff you need to bridge the gap between a concept and a fully-realised story. What I have instead are a bunch of assorted scenes which might (or might not) have happened to young Nate and Wade somewhere in their not-too-distant futures, many of which contradict each other in major and irreconcilable ways. Eventually, I decided to write them all down anyway. Suffice to say that in every world we'd be interested in, one way or another Wade will eventually have to discover both Nate's secrets and that he's not so human himself, and Nate will have to have his little revelation about his feelings for Wade - the means and order by which they get around to all these things, however, leaves plenty of different possibilities. We are now in the territory of sharing AUs of an AU fic. Strap yourselves in.
Just to clarify, the last three chapters (4, 5 and 6, plus epilogues) comprise what I like to think of as as universe 1. The first scene you are about to read below is an alternate continuation from chapter 3 (back before there had been any confessions, psychic sex, or Nate had had any of his big revelations about why he liked hanging out with Wade so very much). The second is a snapshot of events from somewhere in the future of (probably) yet another possible universe. The rest can wait for later chapters.
ii.
Inevitably, some days are worse than others.
Most of the time now, coping is something Nathan does without effort. He can be surprised from behind in a crowded corridor and the instinct to retaliate is no more than a twinge in the back of his mind. He wakes in the morning to see all his furniture in the same places it stood the night before. He can even hang around Wade without hearing a whisper of what his friend is thinking about him, unless he lets himself get curious. But the fact still remains that every time he and Scott think they've found his new limits, something in him shifts, and the same weight he'd been struggling to raise inch by inch only the day before will go sailing away from him like a bottle cap in the wind, and he's having to feel out his boundaries all over again.
If it had simply been a smooth increase with practice that would be one thing but Nathan's psychic abilities jump around in fits and starts. It happens less now than it did at first; with each jump the interval to the next gets a little longer, the process of acclimatising himself to the changes a little faster and a little easier, but the shifts themselves still throw him badly, and in that aspect practice has done him little good. No matter when the next one comes he's never ready for it, no matter how many he goes through there's always that little part of him that thinks surely, this one will be the last, only to be disappointed time and again.
Even now it's hard enough for Nathan to make himself believe that any of this is really happening to him. This power is his destiny - all his life he's been raised in preparation for this day, but after so many years of disappointment, the time had come when he'd stopped saying 'maybe tomorrow'. In wartime hope can be all that keeps you going, however faint or irrational - but on the shorter term he'd learned not to pin his strategy on reinforcements who'd never given an ETA. He'd been prepared, somewhere deep inside, for the possibility they'd never find him a cure at all; he'd been prepared for the real chance that even if they did his powers might never recover, crippled by the strain like a spring crushed under too much weight. Even when they'd found the cure he'd kept his expectations low, hedging his bets on maybe a moderate improvement at best. He'd never prepared for the possibility that the strain of the TO might have made him stronger.
If he's honest with himself, the truth behind that part of him always saying surely this will be the last time is that already his powers have grown far past where he has any idea what to do with them. Nathan never knows his own strength anymore; simple telekinetic tricks he'd mastered years ago take four times the concentration for half the precision he used to boast, and the frustration of that would be bad enough, but growing harder to ignore beneath that is a thread of something far too much like fear. For all Scott's assurances that this is a perfectly normal part of mutant puberty his father can't hide the fact that even he's starting worry just how much more powerful his son may become, not least because they're running out of things large enough for him to practice on. At last check Nathan's weight limit was hovering somewhere around the scale of 'small landmark', and they're both uncomfortably aware that 'minor international incident' can't be far away. More than once he's caught himself imagining that the true reason he'd been packed off back to this time as soon as the TO infection was cured has less to do with saving the world than it does with the danger that without this padded room of a world to get used to his new powers in they'd very probably have gotten him killed by now.
Even if the next shift is the last the damage has been done. All his life Nathan's learned to fight and survive with little more than his muscles and his wits, and he's done it well. It's been a matter of pride that even with barely the talent to levitate forks or skim surface thoughts he's taken on opponents with a dozen times his talent and won. What good is it that he's spent long hours learning how to deactivate an enemy locking mechanism with a few well-placed thoughts if he can blow the door down with a thought, if not lift the whole facility off its foundations and shake its contents out into the dust?
He knows these powers are his birthright - nothing but the same gifts he was always meant to have - proof of everything the prophets foretold. But he also knows, or at least feels deep inside, on a level so fundamental that ignoring it is unthinkable, that the moment he lets himself believe he has any right to the power of a god it'll be all over.
Most days, coping is something he does without effort, but all that means is that he can, for a time, forget how many ways he's not coping at all
His telepathy, if anything, gives him even more grief.
He'd known he was in for a bad day from the moment he woke up that morning with the whisper of a hundred thousand voices buzzing in his head, leaving him raw and out of place in his own body. On days like this it can take an hour of meditation before he makes it out of bed, mind shielded behind blocks so thick he feels like he's seeing the world through a layer of cotton wool. He was already in the doorway before he remembered this was the day they were all expected to attend the district's annual interschool sports carnival, the kind of event that would be a strain on his senses even on a good day, packed beside thousands of strangers for hours on end. But instead he'd made the mistake of assuming it would be a relaxing day sitting around outdoors without anything too pressing to focus on; that he'd be fine, there was no need to miss school over a minor episode - probably the perfect opportunity to prove to himself he could still function through something like this.
By a couple of hours in, it was becoming apparent just how much of a miscalculation this had been. Nothing stokes the tepid heat that usually passes for school spirit like a good dose of officially sanctioned rivalry; students who hate school, hate sports and loathe every last one of the school's star athletes would stand up in their seats and cheer to see them win today, and even that had nothing on the mood directed towards their competitors. It doesn't matter that there's no more at stake than a handful of chrome-plated medals - the hostility surrounding Nathan is palpable, and there is nothing that could have wrecked his careful blocks faster or more thoroughly than being stuck in a crowd full of people who have convinced themselves to see him and anyone else in his school colours as the enemy.
Stubborn to the last, it had taken Wade just about dragging him bodily over to the nurse's office to make Nathan admit that maybe he wasn't actually coping so well. There, the nurse had delivered her expert medical opinion that he looked white as a sheet, taken his temperature and made him swallow some water and lie down, and there he'd been left while she was hurried off to see about someone's twisted ankle or something, Wade sitting by the bed in a spare office chair chattering away about nothing in particular. It does help somewhat to have one familiar mind between himself and the rest of the noise outside, though that may be more of an excuse than a reason to let Wade stay. He'd do himself more good in the long run with half an hour of quiet meditation, but before he can get that far he's going to have to make peace with the subject of just how foolish he's been this morning, and even knowing he only compounds his problems in avoidance he's not quite ready to tackle that just yet. Besides, in a way it's comforting having Wade around, to be able to give someone else that warm glow of contentment just by telling them you want them to stay.
He's been having that kind of reaction around Wade a lot recently; some time soon he's really going to have to sit down and have a think about just how much of that is no more than ordinary empathy, where the line between 'not discouraging' and 'encouraging' actually falls, and just which of them he's been the more guilty of leading on of late When you're telepathic it can sometimes be a little too easy to get more caught up in someone else's feelings than is good for you, but Nathan knows his own feelings well enough to recognise them, and even blocking Wade out they never quite go away.
But all that had better wait until he doesn't have this headache to contend with. It's made some difference already to be lying down in the cool and quiet but his head feels bruised from the inside out and the sick bay's walls can only do so much to keep out other minds. For the moment it's getting no worse as long as he stays put but after most of an hour he's feeling no more steady than when Wade dragged him in, and he still has to make it home later. He could have someone call Scott to pick him up, but admitting weakness is something he's never been very good at. The main effect of coming to see the nurse thus far is to give him the space and time to properly appreciate just how badly he's screwed up today, and even if the worst ultimate victim is only? his pride it's going to be a good long while before he can forget this one.
...Has it gone quiet in here all of a sudden?
“Uh, Nate?” says Wade, his tone a warning that reaches Nathan too late, “Don't look now, but you're kinda... glowing.”
“Shit.” Nathan slams a hand down over his left eye. It shouldn't be doing that; normally it takes a huge expenditure of telekinetic force to get so much as a wink out of it. Pure telepathy's never done that before - well, alright, he doesn't think it has, it's a bit late now to realise it's not as though he's in the habit of practising in front of the mirror. If he doesn't even know what's triggering it then he has a problem, not least that he still has to find a way to get home like this.
It's only on second thoughts that it sinks in that Wade hadn't actually mentioned what was glowing, but he'd definitely have seen Nathan's reaction, and that makes getting home far from the most immediate problem on Nathan's list.
“Okay,” says Wade, drawing out the word in that way that mean not okay actually, “I take it you're going to let me know if this means I have to call the nurse or hit the fire alarm or something?”
“Nothing like that. It's just something that happens to me sometimes.” In his head Nathan's still hanging on to the idea that he can talk his way out of this like any other minor slip; but out loud it's harder to ignore what a woefully inadequate answer this was. Wade talks the way some people breathe, so when he does go quiet, even for the few moments that follow, it's deafening..
“So,” Wade says, after the silence has gone on just long enough to get uncomfortable, “I guess this is the part where I find out that the occasional glowing eye is another symptom of your mystery medical thing?”
“I don't know what else to tell you, Wade.” The fact that this is an honest answer doesn't make it any less wrong than his last was. Nathan is in no state to make the judgement call on whether this is the moment he needs to come clean to Wade. He's barely got the concentration to register the fact that actually, there's a real likelihood he hasn't even begun to realise the full scale of how big today's screw up is about to get.
The silence this time isn't as long, but with the leftover discomfort of the last to build on it doesn't need to be.
“Okay,” says Wade again, staring at the side wall. “You've got your secrets, probably none of my business.” Maybe black belt martial arts is a standard part of physical therapy and your medical thing is so new and exciting it's not even on google yet, he thinks, and in Nathan's head it's louder than words. “I just would'a liked to think we were the kind of friends who could, y'know, maybe tell each other if one of us was an alien mutant cyborg time-traveller or something.”
Nathan remembers only too late what a bad idea sitting up sharply is right now, his head seems to keep moving long after the rest of him stops. Through the rush of nausea, he gasps out, “What?”
“Sheesh, Nate,” says Wade, eyes making the long journey back from the wall, “I was only kidding...”
On that last word their eyes catch and lock, and in the silence that follows, Nathan clearly feels any hope he might have had of passing off his reaction as anything other than what it was trickle away.
“You are an alien mutant cyborg time-traveller,” Wade pronounces, unimpressed. “Huh. Well doesn't that just take the whole biscuit.”
“Oh Mother Askani,” Nathan breathes and slumps back down onto the bed. “Wade, I...” He trails off; he has absolutely no idea where he was going with that. Of all the times he's imagined what it might be like when he finally comes clean to Wade about his secrets, this is a scenario he'd never prepared for.
“Nate?” Wade's voice is steady, almost calm, but psychic insight is wasted when Nathan can see he's practically vibrating with betrayal underneath it, seething like a pot on the boil. “Maybe I dunno what I'm getting into here, but even if the next thing out of your mouth next is 'you already know too much and now I'm going to have to ask you to look closely at this red flashy thing', it'd damn well better be the truth.”
He's right, unfortunately. Nathan needs to be incredibly careful about what he says next, but as much as he hates that they've come to it like this, there's only one option left that won't compound his mistake.
He takes a deep breath. “I'm not an alien.”
“Well, that's good to know.”
“But we're pretty sure the techno-organic virus I was infected with as a child was... alien in origin.”
“Was with you right up to around to around the 'we' there, Nate,” says Wade, without missing a beat.
“Techno-organic,” Nathan repeats, “it means it was slowly converting my body into living metal.”
“So that gives us 'cyborg',” says Wade, keeping pace with an ease that Nathan finds a little unnerving.
“With today's technology it should have been incurable. It would have killed me,” Nathan explains. “So when my parents were offered the opportunity to send me to the far future in the hope a cure could be found there, they took it. They didn't know then if they'd ever see me again.”
“And here I thought I was just making shit up when I threw in the 'time traveller' bit,” says Wade, not un-bitterly.
“Even there, for a long time the best they could do was to help me slow it down. The mesh had spread to most of the left side of my body by the time we found a real cure. It's been a lot for me to adjust to, having ordinary flesh there again. But with it cured, they could finally send me home. That only happened a couple of months before I met you.”
“So that explains your little episodes,” says Wade. “You left out 'mutant'.”
“There's a reason I was targeted,” says Nathan. “My parents were members of the X-Men.”
Wade freezes in the middle of nodding along with this last bit. “Your Dad was an X-Man? Your Dad? I-was-born-to-teach-trigonometry-and-wear-skivvies Summers?”
Even here, Nathan has to smile at that. “He used to lead the X-Men. He retired after my mother died.”
Wade shakes his head but doesn't press the subject. “Right, mutant dad, mutant mum, we are talking the kind of mutant with mutant superpowers, aren't we?”
Nathan hesitates. He'd known the question was coming and the last thing he should be doing is to compound his sins with another half-truth, but now is the worst moment he could possibly have chosen to come clean about the fact that one of his powers involves being able to read Wade's mind.
“I'm telekinetic,” he mutters. “Means I can-”
“Move objects with your mind, yeah, I know the word. You... seriously?”
Nathan breathes out, hopes and prays he's not going to regret doing something like this in his current state, and nods Wade towards the empty glass he'd left sitting beside his bed as he levitates it gently upwards to hover between them.
Wade stares in rapt fascination which quickly turns sour. “You dick,” he grumbles, “no wonder I could never beat you.”
Nathan nearly drops the glass. “What? No! Wade, I have never used my powers in a match against you.” On this count at least he's damn well going to defend himself.
“Uh-huh.” Wade's tone suggests he'd go outside and check if Nathan told him the sky was blue right now.
“Wade, I have never needed to use my powers against you. You wanted to know where I learned to fight? No, I haven't been entirely honest, but where I grew up, those skills aren't a hobby you take up on weekends, to help you build up confidence, they determine your survival. The future I arrived in wasn't the utopia my parents were hoping for.”
Wade meets his gaze, unflinching. “Well, sure, why shouldn't I take your word for it?” and Nathan deflates, anger evaporating. He flops back down to the bed, arm over his eyes. It had occurred to him, in some of those scenarios where he'd admitted the truth to Wade of his own accord that Wade might not exactly be happy to learn how much Nathan had lied to him about. If he's honest with himself it's a not inconsiderable part of what made the lies come so easily, but from the day they met Wade has been so much in love with him he'd forgive Nathan almost anything. He's never had Wade this angry at him before, and it's a shock to find himself so unprepared to deal with it.
“Sorry,” he says. “I... you have every right to be suspicious.”
“You think?”
Nathan breathes out, not quite a sigh, and turns to look at Wade more gently. “You're taking all of this remarkably well, considering.”
“Not completely stupid, thanks, I do watch the news. The Avengers deal with crap this weird twice a week and three times on Sunday. Still pretty amazed you managed to rack up alien, mutant, time traveller and cyborg, but you gotta admit it explains a lot.”
“For what it's worth, Wade,” says Nathan softly, “I never wanted to lie to you. I was made to promise I wouldn't tell any of this to anyone.”
“And when a grown-up tells you to do something, you do it, right?” From anyone else that would sound petty, but Wade has built his whole moral code around the idea of us-against-the-world.
“It's a little more complicated than that,” Nathan tries.
“I'm not saying you had to spill it all on our first date, Nate,” Wade spits, and it says too much about the state he's in that he can use a metaphor like that without embarrassment, “just that a guy might think that by now you'd at least have got around to mentioning you're a mutant. They send us to fucking week-long special ed classes these days about how mutants are people too and did you know hardly any of them have mind-controlling death-ray powers really and let's all sing kumbaya it's a big old sparkly rainbow biosphere. Even the south goes whole months between mutant lynchings nowadays. Being a mutant is practically trendy.”
There's no good answer to that one. “I did want to, Wade, I just...” the truth would be, I didn't tell you sooner because I was waiting for you to get over me before I dropped the bombshell about reading your mind, then when you didn't get over me, I was waiting until I'd had more time to make up my mind about how I felt about that, but he can't admit that, “could never make up my mind whether telling you half the truth would be better or worse than nothing at all.”
Wade looks decidedly skeptical, and Nathan can't find it in himself to blame him; when he adds, “I always meant to ask if you'd ever wondered if you were a mutant,” it's as much a lame attempt to change the subject as it's an attempt to defend his character.
“No.” The sharpness of Wade's tone is startling.
“But-”
“It's a skin condition, not the next step in fucking human evolution.”
“Wade, hear me out,” says Nathan, focusing keeping his tone even, “How many doctors have you been to? Have any two of them even been able to agree on what kind of 'skin condition' you have? Not everyone gets glamorous powers out of the mutant gene, you have to admit it's possible that-”
“And if I was a mutant, so what?” Wade throws the words back at him. “The guys down the hall get to yell 'mutie' instead of 'freak'? Yeah, that would really do so much for my quality of life. Or hey, maybe they could pull me out of this joint and send me to one of those special mutant schools! I bet all the other mutant kids who got the fluffy wings and the fancy eye lasers would be so much more understanding about how I got the mutant gene for a face like the wrong side of an autopsy. That would be so worth another round of being shunted through the quack circuit.”
In short, Wade has thought about it. Considerably more than Nathan has. There's an argument to be made about secondary mutations, about mutant-specific illness and knowing for your own peace of mind even if you tell no-one else, but Wade has made it very clear this is neither the time or the place.
“I'm sorry,” says Nathan, though it's not even the beginning of enough, “I guess I hadn't thought about it that way.”
Wade snorts derisively, but a fraction of a second later he has Nathan fixed with an angry glare. “Nate, if you've been hanging out with me all this time because you thought I was a mutie, then you can-”
“No! God no, I... Wade, I won't say it didn't cross my mind when I met you, but that was never the only reason. It was easier - getting to know someone else who didn't fit in. I never lied about that.” Nathan's already steeling himself to see Wade brush this off with the same suspicion he's treated everything he's said so far in his own defence, but there's no comeback this time, just a sharp look from Wade and silence as he digests this.
“Just everything else, huh?” says Wade, mollified, if grudgingly so.
“Just - a lot of other things,” Nathan admits, lamely, and they both fall silent.
It's the price of being psychic that Nathan knows that Wade will forgive him, given time. Already there's a voice in the back of Wade's mind that's telling him he's overreacting, a quiet one that he's far too busy being angry to take notice of yet, but from the moment he walks out that door it's going to start getting louder. He's going to realise how completely out of his depth he is and how ridiculous it is to get hung up on loyalty when he can't even begin to imagine what kind of life Nate's lived. It's going to hit him that Nate has admitted to being a freedom fighter from the future and he is going to freak the fuck out. Sooner or later it's got to occur him that having a best friend who can move things with his mind could maybe be mindblowingly cool. It's going to take some time for everything to percolate through and settle down, and probably some grovelling on Nathan's part, but they'll get through it; this won't cost them their friendship. But even when Wade does forgive him nothing between them is ever going to be the same again, and the reality of that arrives in Nathan's awareness somewhere deep and personal that rests at the base of his chest, well inside all his defences.
It's far too late to realise that he could have come to Wade with all of this of his own volition at any time and Wade would have accepted it, least of all because even given the chance to live all this over again he's not sure he could have brought himself to do anything different, other than to be more careful not to let his secret slip.
“So, the future,” says Wade after a bit, “Kind of a shithole, huh?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Figures,” Wade mutters.
When the nurse bustles back in a few minutes later, Wade makes a quick excuse and leaves.
Some days, Nathan really doesn't cope at all.
iii.
A moment after the psi-dampeners blow the whole world comes rushing into Nathan's head, and for once he doesn't fight it. There are five other minds still living in the old warehouse and he hardly waits to note that they're all armed and hostile before each and every one blows clean out the back of its owner's skull.
By the time Wade's body hits the floor it's all over, one second and a million years too late.
Two seconds ago Nathan had had no idea he could do something like that to another human mind but he doesn't care; he'd bring each of them back to life and kill them all again if he could - if it would make any difference to Wade. Even as the soldier in him is running through first-aid essentials, reminding himself of every devastating battlefield wound he's ever seen proven non-fatal, reminding himself that while there's life there's always - always - hope, that's all against the knowing that the same fury that had blown the psi-dampeners into shrapnel had been triggered in the moment where he'd felt Wade's heart stop beating.
Not twenty feet between them and the time it takes to reach Wade's side is an eternity, and the worst of those five dead bodies is that now the only person left to blame is himself. Hadn't he known Scott's idea he could have a 'normal' life here was never more than a happy fiction? How could he have forgotten that they'd come for him - that anyone who got close to him would be a target? No identity could be secret enough; it's his fault Wade was targeted, lured here to draw him out in turn. Nathan can kill five men in the space of a heartbeat but his powers can't knit flesh or fuse bone, can't keep a heart beating when it's been torn open. The sniper's shot was perfect, entry and exit wounds clean through and over before you know you're hit, Wade's body lying on the warehouse floor in a spreading pool of red. He's limp as Nathan falls to his knees beside him and tears his shirt open, it rips straight through at the bullet hole and comes off with hardly a whisper of resistance. How many battles, how many fallen comrades he's seen, and still he doesn't think he's ever seen so much blood before, and for a desperate moment he wonders if there's still a way that his mind could stop the flow, keep Wade's blood circulating, make his lungs work again - things he knows he hasn't a fraction of the practical skill or knowledge to do, that he'd never consider had he any reason to believe there was any other hope.
It's a desperate moment that lasts as long as it takes for him to really look at the broken body he can't think of as Wade and register what it is he's seeing.
Underneath the mess that covers Wade's chest his flesh is knitting before Nathan's eyes, like watching a time-lapse video of months of healing compressed into minutes; already the bleeding has stopped, in half a minute the wound has closed to the dull red of an old scar, in another he's all but lost the spot completely. When he lifts Wade half into his lap, less carefully than he probably ought, there's nothing under his fingers on Wade's back but unbroken skin, and he presses an ear to Wade's chest in time to hear Wade's heart start beating again.
He wonders, is it me? - not a minute ago he hadn't known he could blow psi-dampeners with a thought or a mind out with another, but it doesn't seem right - before the understanding reaches him about what he's seeing: Wade's own mottled skin closing over the wound - Wade's own wonderful, beautiful skin. It's not him, it's Wade. Everything he'd seen in Wade the first time they met, that he'd forgotten in knowing him - that someone like Wade couldn't be human and had never been. Askani forgive him, he'd known Wade's skin didn't bruise; he'd had all the pieces all along and still this is what it took for him to put it together. Every third mutant Nathan's ever met has had something about them that heals a little faster, but to come back from a bullet to the heart makes Wade nothing less than a miracle.
Nathan is there to feel it as Wade's mind wakes up again, coasting back on what will shortly be the greatest endorphin rush of his life. There's nothing else like relief - a man can run past the limits of endurance on naught but adrenalin and inertia and the first word of good news will be what brings him to his knees - and it's washing over Nathan in waves that leave him giddy and breathless, and never greater than when Wade finally stirs against his shoulder.
“Nate?” Wade slurs, arms shifting tentatively against the fabric of Nathan's shirt, “That you? Wha' happened?” then words fail him and it's left to Nathan to listen to the ones he doesn't have the strength to voice yet, Is... issat Nate hugging me? Oh - I get it, know I remembered getting shot... this must be heaven.
The laugh that escapes Nathan's lips startles him almost as much as Wad's thought did, but he doesn't let go. “No, Wade,” he whispers in his friend's ear, “What happened is you lived.”
Later, this is going to be a mess; he's still got to explain to Wade what this means - what he is, what they both are, how sorry he is they had to find out this way, and then he's going to have to clean up a warehouse with five bodies and a litre of Wade's blood cooling on the floor, but now there's nothing but the euphoria.
By this time tomorrow, everything between him and Wade will have changed irrevocably, and Nathan wouldn't want it any other way. This is it, in its purest, undiluted form - this is victory.
Further Author's Note: Before anyone asks, yes, we shall most definitely be coming back to events in the universe from the first scene here - we just have a few more odds and ends from other possible futures to get through first.
Part 8