[Cable & Deadpool] Good Intentions (3/?)
Title: Good Intentions
Summary: Deadpool thought killing that 'Nathan' guy was going to be a fairly routine job. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Chapter: 3/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, X-Force
Rating: NC-17 (over all), R (this part)
Word Count: 5590
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2
The news went down... about as well as could be expected.
“You did what?” said Boomer - barely ahead of the chorus of similar exclamations from those who that took a few seconds longer to get over the initial shock.
“I hired him,” Cable repeated.
Deadpool waved at the assembled team. “Hi guys. I'm Deadpool, and I will be your local merc-for-hire for this outfit! Wow, how times have changed, huh? Seems like only yesterday I was breaking in here and rubbing all your faces in the carpet...”
“That was twenty minutes ago,” said Siryn.
“...it was? Is it just me or was that a really long twenty minutes?”
Whatever the figure, it had been more than time for Boomer and the rest who'd been in the library to bring the other half of the team up to speed on what had just gone down, and the story may have grown in the telling. Rictor looked every bit as furious as the original four, Wolfsbane and Sunspot less so, but still uneasy. Domino was uncharacteristically silent, though she did not look pleased.
“As I was saying,” Cable said loudly, “that was the 'offer' he referred to earlier. There was a... misunderstanding over some of the details. We've cleared it up, and he's taking the job.”
“You call that a misunderstanding?” said Boomer. “I don't believe this, Cable, you didn't even hear the things he was calling you when he showed up!”
“A fairly big misunderstanding,” Cable clarified. “It'll be coming out of his pay.”
“It what?” said Deadpool. Cable glared at him, and for once he took the hint to shut up.
The rest of the team exchanged glances.
“Why?” said Siryn, looking very, very skeptical.
“Because I'm leading a team mostly staffed by teenaged rookies against an opponent who hires professional mercenaries. I'm taking the opportunity to stack the odds in our favour.”
“We can take a few ordinary rent-a-thugs,” argued Rictor.
“Then you'll last for as long as our enemies take to hire someone better.”
“Cable, I'm not sure if I've got this straight,” said Cannonball, trying very hard to sound reasonable, despite a frown that looked like it was about to start forming scar tissue. “He broke into the mansion, tried to kill you, nearly killed two of us, and you offered him a job?”
“I'd hardly have made the offer if he hadn't proven himself capable.” Cable looked pointedly at the back of the group. “It's worked for us before.”
Several people craned around to see who he was looking at. The target himself did not take the implications well.
“You compare your first encounter with a warrior from another world to this?” Shatterstar seethed. “Scum whose allegiance may be bought and sold?”
“He's right, Cable, that was different!” said Cannonball.
“It's always different,” said Cable, rapidly losing patience with this line of complaint. “Not everyone has the luxury of picking and choosing who they work for. Do you think I always did? Or Domino?”
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.
“I'm giving him the opportunity to work for someone better,” Cable went on. “If anyone has an actual problem with that, now is the time to speak up.”
The silence went on, broken only - and only if you were Cable - by the furious whirring of half a dozen minds.
“We don't even have any idea who he is!” Boomer tried, to a rumble of half-hearted agreement, though she'd sounded a little too desperate for the complaint to come out with much weight.
Cable raised an eyebrow. “Deadpool?”
“Yes?”
“You have a last name?”
“Oh, right. 'S 'Wilson'.”
“There you go,” Cable told the masses.
“You didn't even know his name?”
“Hey, it's not like it was going to be 'Hitler'!” Deadpool protested.
“Wade,” said Cable, “I think perhaps you should wait outside.”
Deadpool stared at him mutely for a moment, then obeyed, closing the door behind him.
It probably would have been less disconcerting if he had argued about it.
***
With Wade out of direct sight and hearing (and the freedom thus granted to, perhaps... exaggerate certain facets of the truth for the benefit of his audience), it took another fifteen minutes or so of heated discussion before Cable could send his team away, unconvinced but at least mollified into some sort of provisional acceptance that their leader knew what he was doing. It was still a long way from comfortable for all involved, and even that had nothing on seeing Domino parked firmly in her corner after everyone else was left.
Silence from someone who'd known him as long as Domino could speak volumes. He'd half-expected her to let him have it the moment the footsteps in the corridor faded out of hearing, and when she didn't, he was more than half-tempted to get out while he had the chance, but thought better of it before he could make it through the doorway. He knew she wasn't happy, she knew he knew, and there'd be no good done by letting this fester.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he offered. “Since you were good enough not to share them in front of the kids.”
“Interesting way to put it,” said Domino. “What's the going rate on your thoughts lately? Because I swear, I cannot tell what the hell you're thinking anymore. You turn that Morlock girl away at the door, but you hire that?”
Cable grimaced. Domino was very, very good at keeping emotions under wraps - even under scrutiny from a psychic - but now that he'd given her an opening she was holding nothing back. Nowhere in his plan of hiring Wade had he counted on her to react this badly. But if he couldn't be entirely honest about some of his own recent decisions, he could at least be truthful about that much. “I would've thought you of all of us would have had no problem working with another mercenary.”
“There are mercs, and there are mercs, Nate, and I shouldn't have to remind you what kind of merc changes sides for a 'better offer' at gunpoint.”
Cable turned in the doorway, matching her glare. “He was never at gunpoint. I made it clear...”
“That he could go back to Tolliver and tell him all about his failure if he didn't want to take you up on it?” Face to face with seven feet of blood and metal, and Domino didn't back down an inch. He always had liked that about her. “There's a reason why only Tolliver's kind of scum hire his type. Face it, even if this isn't one of Tolliver's plots, the only reason you give money to his kind is to pay him to stay away.”
“You never argued with how we hired Grisly.” Actually, the more he thought about that particular counter-example, the less water it held, but Domino's only reaction to it was to press her mouth into a thin, hard line.
“This isn't one of your old merc teams.” Domino advanced on him briskly as she spoke. “Put Deadpool on a team with these kids of yours and he's going to be a liability at best, the last mistake you ever make at worst.”
“That's a pretty severe judgement of a man you've spoken to all of once.”
“It's a lot more rational than deciding that what a man who's tried to kill you twice really needs is a second chance. What's this really about, Nate? Some karma thing? I've never heard anyone talk that much about 'second chances' as you just did who wasn't expecting to need one of his own.”
There was no good way to argue with that one. “I'm fairly sure I used up my second chance some years ago,” he admitted.
It sounded like an attempt to back down gracefully, though hadn't expected it to mollify her much, and it didn't. In two more steps, Domino was in the doorway with him, forcing him to lean back out of her way. “You've changed since last time we worked together, Nate, and I don't like it. You know I'm on your side wherever you take this team, but I'm giving this a week before it blows up in your face, and I'm not even going to enjoy getting to say I told you so.”
Parting blow delivered, Domino stalked away down the corridor without another word.
Cable breathed out as she left. Silently, he listed a number of exceedingly painful things that would be done to Deadpool if he didn't make up for all of this, then buried the thought somewhere it couldn't do too much damage. Wade was the last person he could afford to take this out on, deserving or not, and the less time Cable left him alone with his thoughts after the decision he'd made in the library, the better.
Harder to bury was the nagging urge to pick apart the question of what could have prompted Domino's last accusation, or whether she might have had a point. He probably had changed - if so, he'd no cause to wonder why, and very little reason to doubt that it was for the better in the long run, but the reasons he'd given her for leaving their once-relationship in the past had sounded a little weak even to his own ears, no matter how accepting she'd seemed at the at the time. Having all the answers was well and good in theory, but in real life people tended to lose patience if you couldn't show them your working out.
***
Deadpool was standing in the corridor just outside the library when Cable found him, leaning against the wall and staring at the opposite one, arms folded.
“They scheduling the mutiny yet?” he asked, when he heard Cable approach.
“Much worse than that,” Cable told him.
Deadpool looked up a bit, doing a rather mediocre job of feigning disinterest.
“I convinced them to give you a chance,” Cable finished.
“Ooh, my favourite game, living down to people's expectations,” Deadpool spat. “Hey, they don't wanna work with me, I don't wanna work with them. We'll get on great. We can all bond over how crazy our boss is.”
Cable nearly reminded him of how much of this he'd brought on himself, but in a flash of sympathy he let the opportunity pass. Poor fool. It would always be easier for someone like Deadpool to make a show of being too jaded to care than admit how much rejection hurt - even from such complete strangers as these.
“So how'd you field the 'why should we trust him?' question?” Deadpool asked.
“You were listening in?”
“No. Just happen to not be completely made of stupid.”
“The one thing you did achieve by breaking in again,” said Cable, dryly amused, “is that no-one seriously believes this could be one of Tolliver's plots to get an agent inside. I assured them I'd be keeping an eye on you. I didn't go into all the details of the incentives involved, if that's what you're asking.”
“S'pose you don't want me sharing that one around, huh?” said Wade, with only the faintest of sniggers. “Or, y'know, everyone's gonna want one...”
“I'd appreciate it if you were discrete about that aspect of our arrangement, yes.”
“Discrete, sure. I can do discrete. It's that word that means, 'things cut up into lots of little bits', right?”
“You're thinking of something else.” Cable tapped him on the shoulder and jerked his head down the corridor, indicating Wade should follow him.
“We going somewhere?”
“Still want your chance to punch me in the face?”
“Like you wouldn't believe,” said Wade, with feeling.
“Then maybe you'll get one.”
***
The door to the Danger Room was fitted with more emergency override features than any other piece of tech Cable had ever encountered in this century; nevertheless, it was still possible to lock it from the inside.
Deadpool looked around, not particularly impressed. “New age ballroom?”
“We call it the Danger Room,” Cable explained. “Did you say something?” he added, when Deadpool made a funny noise.
“Me? Nah, just waiting for the 'dundundun' sound effect. Danger Room, huh?”
The only efficient way to communicate with Deadpool involved ignoring roughly half of everything he said. “We use it to run holographic training simulations.”
“High-tech shadowboxing?”
Cable input the code to make the room resemble a conventional mat room, and watched Wade jump as the floor changed under his feet. “Very high-tech. The holograms this room generates are quite solid.”
Wade poked the floor with a toe. “You could've just said you had your own Holod...” There his head snapped up sharply. “Waiiiit, you people have your own Holodeck and you encourage it to attack you?”
Possibly more than half. “Within pre-set parameters. That is what it was built for.”
“Uh-huh. So on average, how often does this thing spontaneously gain sentience, disable its own safeties and go on a rampage of terror and destruction?”
“...is there some context I'm missing here?”
Wade spread his hands emphatically. “I'm just saying, you build yourself a super high-tech room that can make anything you like out of thin air and you teach it to simulate all your favourite enemies in high-def 4D, sooner or later it's going to get carried away and overtake the Enterprise. Well known principle.”
“Of course, Wade,” said Cable, no longer paying much attention. “And the government watches you through your computer screen too.”
Wade snickered. “Joke's on them if the FBI's watching me at the computer...”
“Perhaps we could get on with this?” Cable suggested.
“Whatever you say, boss,” said Wade, glibly. He hesitated. “What was 'this' again?”
“Well, if I'm going to make use of you,” Cable finished inputting the last of his codes, and stepped into the room proper. “I want a better look at how you operate. Weapons on the floor, for now. Let's see what you're capable of bare-handed.”
Wade shrugged, and unbuckled his katanas. On top of them went his guns, his other guns, his throwing knives, his extra-hidden throwing knives, a worryingly large pile of grenades...
By the time he was done, it occurred to Cable to wonder whether Wade might have an extra mutant power or two he didn't know about. He decided not to ask.
“So,” said Wade, making a show of stretching and cracking various body parts, “what am I fighting first?”
From the look on his face as Cable stepped forward and arranged himself in a suitably inviting stance, he'd already guessed the answer.
“Me,” said Cable, and watched Wade grin a little wider.
“Headshots totally not against the rules here, right?” smirked Wade.
“Of course not,” said Cable, and ducked one half a second later.
***
Whatever might be said for the rest of the team, Wade would have nothing to worry about when it came to meeting Cable's expectations.
A healing factor might be one of the more reactive superpowers - it didn't grant one true super-strength or speed (or even the limited invulnerability of Cable's metal arm) but not even years of steroid abuse could come close to matching what it did for the body. He'd noted as much on his first meeting with Deadpool (on quite an intimate level), and seeing that body in action - without the stress of real combat to mar the experience - was a new kind of treat. Deadpool needed no encouragement to show off. He had a way of moving that was more acrobatic than it was efficient, though that might not be much disadvantage when you had a dozen times the natural stamina of any opponent, and it meant than when you saw three of his limbs flying at once you had very little time to guess which one was actually going to hit you. At any given moment it was all but impossible to guess what he might be going to do next.
More often than not, he gave the strong impression even he didn't know what he was going to do next. He also never stopped talking.
“...so I yank it out and I say to the guy, 'excuse me, is this your dagger? I found it in my kidney,' and he takes one look at me holding it in his face and pisses himself - though that could've been me, you do not want to know what a punctured kidney smells like - ”
The power of a healing factor to enhance a man's lungs had always been wildly understated, Cable reflected, as Wade casually dodged two punches and an elbow that should have gotten him in the nose without so much as pausing for breath. If he'd been born with a little more patience, he could have defeated any mortal opponent simply by wearing them down.
“...and since I haven't had so much as a grunt to show for all my witty banter and fascinating stories in the last three flying kicks and five roundhouse punches, I'm starting to think you're ignoring me, and that's plain impolite, Nate. I do not know what it is about me that makes people do that - you'd think the least people could do is throw out the occasional 'shut the fuck up, Deadpool' to let you know you've still got their attention, but not listening, now what kind of behaviour is that? You never know when I'm going to say something like, 'next up, there will be a quick jab to the left, a feint to the right, and just when you're trying to guard the next blow, I will do the Hokey Pokey for five seconds leaving myself completely open'...”
The niggling sense that he'd missed something hovered vaguely in the back of Cable's mind as he watched Wade feint and swung up an arm to block the kick he saw coming, only to see the motion transform into some kind of twisting back-flip which flung Wade back several paces, where he proceeded, with vocal accompaniment, to stick his left foot in and his left foot out. By the time Cable had made sense of it all, he was done, and back to making his opponent duck under his next flying kick.
“...and then you'll wish you'd been paying attention, won't you?” said Wade, smugly.
“Let me guess how often you got 'attention seeking behaviour' on your report card in school,” Cable muttered to himself.
“And the DJ thanks all our listeners for choosing now to tune back into Double-Double-You FM, because yessiree, it's going to be hits, hits, hits, coming your way!” The statement was punctuated by a flurry of punches. “Don't you change that channel, folks, 'cause we've got Wade Wilson's very own Olympic Special coming right up, followed by that old favourite, the Macarena!”
The 'Olympic Special' was some kind of high-flying triple somersault that transformed into an axe-kick at the last moment, and had to be more of a show tactic than anything he could have expected to connect with what he was aiming it for. This time, Cable make a point of not throwing himself so far out of the way that he couldn't take advantage if Wade really was going to stand there and do a silly dance.
“Whoops, sorry folks, did we just put the Hokey Pokey on again by mistake? You put your right fist in, and you punch him in the mouth!”
Cable was not entirely surprised to be punched square in the left side of his jaw, though he did at least have the satisfaction of seeing Wade wince and shake his hand in pain.
“Damn, what did you make your jaw made out of?” he complained.
“You probably don't want to know.”
“Not even a hint?” said Wade, dropping seamlessly back into his earlier pattern of dodging around like a five year old at a fairground, just outside Cable's range. “You can trust me to be understanding if you've got an artificial nose or reinforced concrete teeth or a secret compartment for smuggling emergency cyanide capsules in your jaw - who hasn't? I knew this guy once who had a whole skeleton covered in adamantium, keeps calling me and complaining about how he wants his healing factor back...”
That sounded awfully familiar. “Goes by the name of Wolverine?”
“You know Wolvy?”
“Let's say I've punched him in the jaw a few times.” Cable winced internally in memory. “Dented a joint once.”
“Oh yeah, that's our Wolvy,” said Wade, fondly, and flipped suddenly upwards so that the next sentence came out upside-down, and travelling over Cable's head. “Am I getting warmer? That glowy eye of yours have a bit of internal framework?”
“The glowing is a mutant feature. Coincidentally, you're on the right track.”
“Huh. Wasn't figuring that arm of yours to be a tip of the iceberg thing.”
“I did try covering it with synth-skin some years ago.” Natural as Wade might be at keeping his movements random, there was the odd pattern that emerged from time to time. A bit of quick judgement let him land a kick to Deadpool's midsection, but he rolled with it only a split second too late, and was back on his feet again the next. Even so...
“The look didn't work for you?”
“It didn't last that long when I kept doing this with it,” said Cable, and punched Wade square in the face.
Wade staggered, holding his head. “Ow, ow, oh my stars and canaries...”
Cable made a mistake: in the face of an opponent looking genuinely stunned, he hesitated. Wade's drunken staggering abruptly sprouted a swinging fist that caught in him hard in the right kidney. Half-winded, he took too long to get his guard back up.
“Ooh, there's a fleshy bit,” said Wade, miraculously cured of all headache symptoms. “Why don't we see if it's the same the whole way up?”
The second punch to his face hit on the right side of his jaw, and that one he felt.
“Aww, was that against the rules? I would've asked if this was meant to be a clean fight, but you did say you wanted to see how I operate.”
“I did,” Cable wheezed, wondering if Wade even understood the concept of a 'clean' fight. “That makes 'a couple of times'. Feeling better?”
“Huh. I am,” said Wade, looking surprised, before readying his fists again. “Think it's a cumulative effect?”
“Who knows?” saw Nate, as the throbbing in his jaw began to dull a little, and used a telekinetic nudge to tap Deadpool on the shoulder.
It probably said a lot about Deadpool that his first impulse was to look over the opposite shoulder, but what mattered was that he was still in the act of looking back again when Cable tackled him and pinned him to the floor.
“I also wanted to give you a feel for how I operate,” he told the struggling Wade, “Did I mention I'm not just telepathic?”
It took Wade a few seconds to catch on. “You did that? You... whassaword, move stuff around too? Now that's just not fair, boss!”
“No, I suppose it isn't,” said Cable, smirking. Wade squirmed a little more, though without any real intention of escaping. After a second, he grinned back.
“We done here for the day?” he asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“So,” said Wade, noting their respective positions with what, minus the mask, would have certainly been a glint in his eye, “Whatdya want to do now?”
“Hm,” said Cable, still smirking, and leaned down, resettling his weight.
“Hee,” said Wade, catching on with no difficulty. “Gosh, boss, I had no idea you might be thinking about ending our session like this.” The tone of surprise would not have been particularly convincing even without the sensation of Wade, flexible as you please, running a foot up the inside of Cable's right leg.
“What an oversight.” Cable peeled back just the edge of Wade's suit at the join between mask and neck so he could get his mouth in there, the skin beneath warm from the exercise and just a little damp with perspiration. After his earlier observation about Wade's lung capacity, even the slightest hitch to his breath was all the more satisfying.
“Wow, right here?” said Wade, not the least bothered by the prospect. The leg wrapping itself around Cable's hips would do its bit to prevent him from doing anything else; the first foot began making its way back down again. “Lotta kids running around this place; this room's got all those big windows...”
“But the handy thing about a room decked out with sophisticated holographic technology,” Cable told him, “is that what people see from the outside doesn't necessarily have to be what's going on inside.”
“You were so planning this.”
“I like to be prepared for all eventualities.” Cable slid a hand down Wade's body between them, and confirmed for himself that Wade was coming along quite nicely. Not that a little encouragement would go to waste. The spandex of his costume left nothing to the imagination.
“Say what you like about this job,” panted Wade, as Cable's hand began to rub him firmly through his costume, “it has the best... ooh... best perks ever. Nnnnngh, you're good at that. Want you to fuck me.”
“Really?” Cable would have had to admit he'd been counting on Wade to need some convincing to try out that particular activity. “Right now?”
“Do I strike you as a patient guy, Nate? Right now, right here.” Both 'rights' were emphasised with a very deliberate upward thrust against his hand, and a breathy quality that hinted - promised, almost - at how close Wade was to willing to beg for this. “Don't get me wrong. Doing you was great, but it was so not where I was thinking we were going with me all tied up and you getting handsy. Had it stuck in my head like a damn advertising jingle. Fuck me.”
It would take a man with much more self-control than him to deny how very physically appealing he found that idea, but... “That's actually one thing I wasn't prepared for.”
“Don't care,” said Wade, working his hands inside Cable's pants. “Use saliva or whatever. Long as it ends with you sticking this in and shaking it all about.”
Even that sounded appealing, which may not have been a healthy sign. “You're sure?”
“Oh, now he wants to know if I'm sure. Sure I'm sure - I'm so sure I'm about to be sure all over you.”
“...not too immediately, I hope.”
“Could use a bit 'a help with that.” Wade let him go long enough to wriggle out of his costume, and Cable lasted all of another couple of seconds before giving up in the name of helping him get it off, as quickly as possible.
His better judgement - sounding disturbingly like Domino - promised him he'd regret this in the morning, but in the heat of the moment, Wade was more than loud enough to drown it out.
***
Some time later, with them both flat on their backs and panting, a very happy Wade said, “I am going to really, really like this job.”
Cable glanced at him out of the corner of an eye. Well, that was his secondary mission very much accomplished then, even if not quite by the means he'd intended.
“Next time we're using real lube,” he said, feeling - and sounding - a bit raw.
“Ooh, next time. I like the sound of that. What are you doing, say, five minutes from now?”
Nate groaned faintly. “This, I imagine.”
“Aww, did I wear you out?”
“Not everyone has your healing factor, Wade,” said Cable, then, perhaps against his better judgement, added “and I'm fairly sure I'm a number of years older than you are.”
“But looking very well preserved for a man of your vintage, I must say,” said Wade, which sounded more like a real compliment before he added, “why, you've even still got most of your original parts! Maybe what you need is another upgrade or two, in certain places...”
“I don't believe you just suggested that.”
“Did I mention how much I am going to love this job? Reserving all rights to change my mind completely the moment the afterglow wears off, you understand.”
“Welcome to the team,” Cable muttered.
For several seconds, Wade was uncharacteristically silent.
“Something on your mind?” said Cable - it would have obvious even to a non-psychic. When Wade didn't immediately reply, he guessed, “You're still worried about working with the rest of my team?”
“Not most of the team - okay, they hate me, I can't really argue with that,” said Wade quickly, “but there's just, y'know...”
“Wade?”
“Remember that conversation we had about how you don't expect me to spill any details about my ex-boss?” said Wade after a bit, sounding a little nervous.
Cable rolled to face Wade and propped himself up on an elbow. “Yes?”
“That wasn't a contractual thing, right? More like an, 'unless I want to' sort of deal?”
“If you want to share details about Tolliver, I'm all ears.”
“Don't know about want to, but you know where I'm coming from - I'm working for you, he's trying to put you out of business in a permanent sort of way, I care about my job security, so if I happened to know some little detail that might be a life or death issue for this outfit, and possibly just a little on the time-sensitive side...”
Cable, who'd been half-drowsing, woke up a lot very quickly. “Wade, what are you telling me?”
“You know that merc lady in the meeting room before, panda-faced sorta look going...?”
“You mean Domino?”
“Not Domino,” said Wade, emphatically. “Copycat. Ex-girlfriend, actually. Very ex, just in case you were having any jealousy there, but I gotta say, damn, you have not done jack until you've done it with a shapeshifter like 'Nessa.”
As usual, Wade took the longest way possible to get to the point, but when what he was saying added up, it came to a very worrying total. “What?”
“Real Domino is doing a Jesus impression down in Tolliver's basement. Hey, don't look at me, it was all Tolliver's plan! 'Nessa does her thing, sneaks in here, plants a bomb and blows you all to kingdom confetti. Only she's running a bit behind schedule and the boss was getting impatient, which is how come he sent me in to finish the job... you okay, Nate?”
Cable should have been telling him he was insane, should have been telling him that he knew Domino too well for any doppelganger to fool him - he was more than a little bit psychic, for Askani's sake - but all he could think was that it had made no sense for Domino to be so angry with him hiring Wade - that she hadn't called him out on bringing up Grisly.
“Wasn't going to bring this one up right away, but y'know, you called the meeting and there she was, and she knows I'm working for you...” Wade broke off as Cable, already on his feet, tossed him one of the towels that came with the mat room simulation.
“Clean up and get dressed,” he ordered, doing likewise.
“Didn't I have five minutes?”
“Five minutes are up. Time to start earning that salary - and I swear, Deadpool, if you're lying to me about any of this...”
“Sheesh, I know. Sorry, boss, truth hurts and all that jazz. We gonna go get her right now?”
So caught up in his own fury was he that Cable very nearly said 'yes' on the spot - of course they could go 'get' an enemy agent who could pull off such a convincing impersonation of a woman he'd known for years that he'd never even questioned it, and on the word of a man he hardly knew. There were barely a dozen different ways the direct approach was guaranteed to fail.
“Let me think,” he said, and proceeded to do so while pulling clothes on as fast as he could. It had been over an hour since he spoke to 'Domino', she could have done anything...
If he was lucky, he'd have one chance to get this right.
Plot Notes & Trivia
(given how much of this story is based on bits of canon which most of the audience probably isn't that familiar with, this may become a regular thing)
If I'm ever bored enough, I could put together a quite a lengthy picspam post of all the many different interpretations by different artists of just how much of Cable's body is supposed to be metal. Answers range from just the arm and nothing else to the entire left side of his body - no-one ever seems to be checking for consistency. This only gets more confusing when it's been canonically acknowledged on a couple of occasions that at least some of his skin is synthetic, and merely hides the metal underneath. Cable's reply in this chapter to why he doesn't put the same synthetic skin over his metal arm in this chapter is mere fannish speculation - we all know the real reason is because a metal arm is far too fundamentally badass for any comic creator to pass up on. (Other picspam posts I might some day get around to putting together: the many and wildly different interpretations of Cable's/Stryfe's/Nate Grey's hair before it all went grey, the many and wildly different interpretations of Deadpool's hair before he lost it all, the top five artists who should never be allowed to draw Domino again.)
As I've noted elsewhere, the 'canonical' timeline regarding the Domino/Vanessa situation is such a contradictory mess that (unless you want to start constructing wild conspiracy theories whereby Tolliver is the kind of cackling evil overlord who really does need a five year old advisor to point out all the holes in his plans) having the excuse to throw it all in the blender in the name of writing an AU is a very good thing. But if anyone's actually wondering, in this 'verse, she probably joined X-Force at least a couple of months before Deadpool first showed up.
Cable having met (and repeatedly fought) Wolverine also comes straight from canon - very early canon, within a few issues of Cable's introduction. What better way to establish your new character as an utter, complete bastion of pure badassery than to have him not only know Wolverine, but have fought him to a standstill, just for the sheer hell of it, on multiple occasions? Liefeld was, in addition to being the 'artist', responsible for outlining the overall plots in those days. It explains a lot.
Chapter 4
Summary: Deadpool thought killing that 'Nathan' guy was going to be a fairly routine job. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Chapter: 3/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, X-Force
Rating: NC-17 (over all), R (this part)
Word Count: 5590
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2
The news went down... about as well as could be expected.
“You did what?” said Boomer - barely ahead of the chorus of similar exclamations from those who that took a few seconds longer to get over the initial shock.
“I hired him,” Cable repeated.
Deadpool waved at the assembled team. “Hi guys. I'm Deadpool, and I will be your local merc-for-hire for this outfit! Wow, how times have changed, huh? Seems like only yesterday I was breaking in here and rubbing all your faces in the carpet...”
“That was twenty minutes ago,” said Siryn.
“...it was? Is it just me or was that a really long twenty minutes?”
Whatever the figure, it had been more than time for Boomer and the rest who'd been in the library to bring the other half of the team up to speed on what had just gone down, and the story may have grown in the telling. Rictor looked every bit as furious as the original four, Wolfsbane and Sunspot less so, but still uneasy. Domino was uncharacteristically silent, though she did not look pleased.
“As I was saying,” Cable said loudly, “that was the 'offer' he referred to earlier. There was a... misunderstanding over some of the details. We've cleared it up, and he's taking the job.”
“You call that a misunderstanding?” said Boomer. “I don't believe this, Cable, you didn't even hear the things he was calling you when he showed up!”
“A fairly big misunderstanding,” Cable clarified. “It'll be coming out of his pay.”
“It what?” said Deadpool. Cable glared at him, and for once he took the hint to shut up.
The rest of the team exchanged glances.
“Why?” said Siryn, looking very, very skeptical.
“Because I'm leading a team mostly staffed by teenaged rookies against an opponent who hires professional mercenaries. I'm taking the opportunity to stack the odds in our favour.”
“We can take a few ordinary rent-a-thugs,” argued Rictor.
“Then you'll last for as long as our enemies take to hire someone better.”
“Cable, I'm not sure if I've got this straight,” said Cannonball, trying very hard to sound reasonable, despite a frown that looked like it was about to start forming scar tissue. “He broke into the mansion, tried to kill you, nearly killed two of us, and you offered him a job?”
“I'd hardly have made the offer if he hadn't proven himself capable.” Cable looked pointedly at the back of the group. “It's worked for us before.”
Several people craned around to see who he was looking at. The target himself did not take the implications well.
“You compare your first encounter with a warrior from another world to this?” Shatterstar seethed. “Scum whose allegiance may be bought and sold?”
“He's right, Cable, that was different!” said Cannonball.
“It's always different,” said Cable, rapidly losing patience with this line of complaint. “Not everyone has the luxury of picking and choosing who they work for. Do you think I always did? Or Domino?”
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.
“I'm giving him the opportunity to work for someone better,” Cable went on. “If anyone has an actual problem with that, now is the time to speak up.”
The silence went on, broken only - and only if you were Cable - by the furious whirring of half a dozen minds.
“We don't even have any idea who he is!” Boomer tried, to a rumble of half-hearted agreement, though she'd sounded a little too desperate for the complaint to come out with much weight.
Cable raised an eyebrow. “Deadpool?”
“Yes?”
“You have a last name?”
“Oh, right. 'S 'Wilson'.”
“There you go,” Cable told the masses.
“You didn't even know his name?”
“Hey, it's not like it was going to be 'Hitler'!” Deadpool protested.
“Wade,” said Cable, “I think perhaps you should wait outside.”
Deadpool stared at him mutely for a moment, then obeyed, closing the door behind him.
It probably would have been less disconcerting if he had argued about it.
***
With Wade out of direct sight and hearing (and the freedom thus granted to, perhaps... exaggerate certain facets of the truth for the benefit of his audience), it took another fifteen minutes or so of heated discussion before Cable could send his team away, unconvinced but at least mollified into some sort of provisional acceptance that their leader knew what he was doing. It was still a long way from comfortable for all involved, and even that had nothing on seeing Domino parked firmly in her corner after everyone else was left.
Silence from someone who'd known him as long as Domino could speak volumes. He'd half-expected her to let him have it the moment the footsteps in the corridor faded out of hearing, and when she didn't, he was more than half-tempted to get out while he had the chance, but thought better of it before he could make it through the doorway. He knew she wasn't happy, she knew he knew, and there'd be no good done by letting this fester.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he offered. “Since you were good enough not to share them in front of the kids.”
“Interesting way to put it,” said Domino. “What's the going rate on your thoughts lately? Because I swear, I cannot tell what the hell you're thinking anymore. You turn that Morlock girl away at the door, but you hire that?”
Cable grimaced. Domino was very, very good at keeping emotions under wraps - even under scrutiny from a psychic - but now that he'd given her an opening she was holding nothing back. Nowhere in his plan of hiring Wade had he counted on her to react this badly. But if he couldn't be entirely honest about some of his own recent decisions, he could at least be truthful about that much. “I would've thought you of all of us would have had no problem working with another mercenary.”
“There are mercs, and there are mercs, Nate, and I shouldn't have to remind you what kind of merc changes sides for a 'better offer' at gunpoint.”
Cable turned in the doorway, matching her glare. “He was never at gunpoint. I made it clear...”
“That he could go back to Tolliver and tell him all about his failure if he didn't want to take you up on it?” Face to face with seven feet of blood and metal, and Domino didn't back down an inch. He always had liked that about her. “There's a reason why only Tolliver's kind of scum hire his type. Face it, even if this isn't one of Tolliver's plots, the only reason you give money to his kind is to pay him to stay away.”
“You never argued with how we hired Grisly.” Actually, the more he thought about that particular counter-example, the less water it held, but Domino's only reaction to it was to press her mouth into a thin, hard line.
“This isn't one of your old merc teams.” Domino advanced on him briskly as she spoke. “Put Deadpool on a team with these kids of yours and he's going to be a liability at best, the last mistake you ever make at worst.”
“That's a pretty severe judgement of a man you've spoken to all of once.”
“It's a lot more rational than deciding that what a man who's tried to kill you twice really needs is a second chance. What's this really about, Nate? Some karma thing? I've never heard anyone talk that much about 'second chances' as you just did who wasn't expecting to need one of his own.”
There was no good way to argue with that one. “I'm fairly sure I used up my second chance some years ago,” he admitted.
It sounded like an attempt to back down gracefully, though hadn't expected it to mollify her much, and it didn't. In two more steps, Domino was in the doorway with him, forcing him to lean back out of her way. “You've changed since last time we worked together, Nate, and I don't like it. You know I'm on your side wherever you take this team, but I'm giving this a week before it blows up in your face, and I'm not even going to enjoy getting to say I told you so.”
Parting blow delivered, Domino stalked away down the corridor without another word.
Cable breathed out as she left. Silently, he listed a number of exceedingly painful things that would be done to Deadpool if he didn't make up for all of this, then buried the thought somewhere it couldn't do too much damage. Wade was the last person he could afford to take this out on, deserving or not, and the less time Cable left him alone with his thoughts after the decision he'd made in the library, the better.
Harder to bury was the nagging urge to pick apart the question of what could have prompted Domino's last accusation, or whether she might have had a point. He probably had changed - if so, he'd no cause to wonder why, and very little reason to doubt that it was for the better in the long run, but the reasons he'd given her for leaving their once-relationship in the past had sounded a little weak even to his own ears, no matter how accepting she'd seemed at the at the time. Having all the answers was well and good in theory, but in real life people tended to lose patience if you couldn't show them your working out.
***
Deadpool was standing in the corridor just outside the library when Cable found him, leaning against the wall and staring at the opposite one, arms folded.
“They scheduling the mutiny yet?” he asked, when he heard Cable approach.
“Much worse than that,” Cable told him.
Deadpool looked up a bit, doing a rather mediocre job of feigning disinterest.
“I convinced them to give you a chance,” Cable finished.
“Ooh, my favourite game, living down to people's expectations,” Deadpool spat. “Hey, they don't wanna work with me, I don't wanna work with them. We'll get on great. We can all bond over how crazy our boss is.”
Cable nearly reminded him of how much of this he'd brought on himself, but in a flash of sympathy he let the opportunity pass. Poor fool. It would always be easier for someone like Deadpool to make a show of being too jaded to care than admit how much rejection hurt - even from such complete strangers as these.
“So how'd you field the 'why should we trust him?' question?” Deadpool asked.
“You were listening in?”
“No. Just happen to not be completely made of stupid.”
“The one thing you did achieve by breaking in again,” said Cable, dryly amused, “is that no-one seriously believes this could be one of Tolliver's plots to get an agent inside. I assured them I'd be keeping an eye on you. I didn't go into all the details of the incentives involved, if that's what you're asking.”
“S'pose you don't want me sharing that one around, huh?” said Wade, with only the faintest of sniggers. “Or, y'know, everyone's gonna want one...”
“I'd appreciate it if you were discrete about that aspect of our arrangement, yes.”
“Discrete, sure. I can do discrete. It's that word that means, 'things cut up into lots of little bits', right?”
“You're thinking of something else.” Cable tapped him on the shoulder and jerked his head down the corridor, indicating Wade should follow him.
“We going somewhere?”
“Still want your chance to punch me in the face?”
“Like you wouldn't believe,” said Wade, with feeling.
“Then maybe you'll get one.”
***
The door to the Danger Room was fitted with more emergency override features than any other piece of tech Cable had ever encountered in this century; nevertheless, it was still possible to lock it from the inside.
Deadpool looked around, not particularly impressed. “New age ballroom?”
“We call it the Danger Room,” Cable explained. “Did you say something?” he added, when Deadpool made a funny noise.
“Me? Nah, just waiting for the 'dundundun' sound effect. Danger Room, huh?”
The only efficient way to communicate with Deadpool involved ignoring roughly half of everything he said. “We use it to run holographic training simulations.”
“High-tech shadowboxing?”
Cable input the code to make the room resemble a conventional mat room, and watched Wade jump as the floor changed under his feet. “Very high-tech. The holograms this room generates are quite solid.”
Wade poked the floor with a toe. “You could've just said you had your own Holod...” There his head snapped up sharply. “Waiiiit, you people have your own Holodeck and you encourage it to attack you?”
Possibly more than half. “Within pre-set parameters. That is what it was built for.”
“Uh-huh. So on average, how often does this thing spontaneously gain sentience, disable its own safeties and go on a rampage of terror and destruction?”
“...is there some context I'm missing here?”
Wade spread his hands emphatically. “I'm just saying, you build yourself a super high-tech room that can make anything you like out of thin air and you teach it to simulate all your favourite enemies in high-def 4D, sooner or later it's going to get carried away and overtake the Enterprise. Well known principle.”
“Of course, Wade,” said Cable, no longer paying much attention. “And the government watches you through your computer screen too.”
Wade snickered. “Joke's on them if the FBI's watching me at the computer...”
“Perhaps we could get on with this?” Cable suggested.
“Whatever you say, boss,” said Wade, glibly. He hesitated. “What was 'this' again?”
“Well, if I'm going to make use of you,” Cable finished inputting the last of his codes, and stepped into the room proper. “I want a better look at how you operate. Weapons on the floor, for now. Let's see what you're capable of bare-handed.”
Wade shrugged, and unbuckled his katanas. On top of them went his guns, his other guns, his throwing knives, his extra-hidden throwing knives, a worryingly large pile of grenades...
By the time he was done, it occurred to Cable to wonder whether Wade might have an extra mutant power or two he didn't know about. He decided not to ask.
“So,” said Wade, making a show of stretching and cracking various body parts, “what am I fighting first?”
From the look on his face as Cable stepped forward and arranged himself in a suitably inviting stance, he'd already guessed the answer.
“Me,” said Cable, and watched Wade grin a little wider.
“Headshots totally not against the rules here, right?” smirked Wade.
“Of course not,” said Cable, and ducked one half a second later.
***
Whatever might be said for the rest of the team, Wade would have nothing to worry about when it came to meeting Cable's expectations.
A healing factor might be one of the more reactive superpowers - it didn't grant one true super-strength or speed (or even the limited invulnerability of Cable's metal arm) but not even years of steroid abuse could come close to matching what it did for the body. He'd noted as much on his first meeting with Deadpool (on quite an intimate level), and seeing that body in action - without the stress of real combat to mar the experience - was a new kind of treat. Deadpool needed no encouragement to show off. He had a way of moving that was more acrobatic than it was efficient, though that might not be much disadvantage when you had a dozen times the natural stamina of any opponent, and it meant than when you saw three of his limbs flying at once you had very little time to guess which one was actually going to hit you. At any given moment it was all but impossible to guess what he might be going to do next.
More often than not, he gave the strong impression even he didn't know what he was going to do next. He also never stopped talking.
“...so I yank it out and I say to the guy, 'excuse me, is this your dagger? I found it in my kidney,' and he takes one look at me holding it in his face and pisses himself - though that could've been me, you do not want to know what a punctured kidney smells like - ”
The power of a healing factor to enhance a man's lungs had always been wildly understated, Cable reflected, as Wade casually dodged two punches and an elbow that should have gotten him in the nose without so much as pausing for breath. If he'd been born with a little more patience, he could have defeated any mortal opponent simply by wearing them down.
“...and since I haven't had so much as a grunt to show for all my witty banter and fascinating stories in the last three flying kicks and five roundhouse punches, I'm starting to think you're ignoring me, and that's plain impolite, Nate. I do not know what it is about me that makes people do that - you'd think the least people could do is throw out the occasional 'shut the fuck up, Deadpool' to let you know you've still got their attention, but not listening, now what kind of behaviour is that? You never know when I'm going to say something like, 'next up, there will be a quick jab to the left, a feint to the right, and just when you're trying to guard the next blow, I will do the Hokey Pokey for five seconds leaving myself completely open'...”
The niggling sense that he'd missed something hovered vaguely in the back of Cable's mind as he watched Wade feint and swung up an arm to block the kick he saw coming, only to see the motion transform into some kind of twisting back-flip which flung Wade back several paces, where he proceeded, with vocal accompaniment, to stick his left foot in and his left foot out. By the time Cable had made sense of it all, he was done, and back to making his opponent duck under his next flying kick.
“...and then you'll wish you'd been paying attention, won't you?” said Wade, smugly.
“Let me guess how often you got 'attention seeking behaviour' on your report card in school,” Cable muttered to himself.
“And the DJ thanks all our listeners for choosing now to tune back into Double-Double-You FM, because yessiree, it's going to be hits, hits, hits, coming your way!” The statement was punctuated by a flurry of punches. “Don't you change that channel, folks, 'cause we've got Wade Wilson's very own Olympic Special coming right up, followed by that old favourite, the Macarena!”
The 'Olympic Special' was some kind of high-flying triple somersault that transformed into an axe-kick at the last moment, and had to be more of a show tactic than anything he could have expected to connect with what he was aiming it for. This time, Cable make a point of not throwing himself so far out of the way that he couldn't take advantage if Wade really was going to stand there and do a silly dance.
“Whoops, sorry folks, did we just put the Hokey Pokey on again by mistake? You put your right fist in, and you punch him in the mouth!”
Cable was not entirely surprised to be punched square in the left side of his jaw, though he did at least have the satisfaction of seeing Wade wince and shake his hand in pain.
“Damn, what did you make your jaw made out of?” he complained.
“You probably don't want to know.”
“Not even a hint?” said Wade, dropping seamlessly back into his earlier pattern of dodging around like a five year old at a fairground, just outside Cable's range. “You can trust me to be understanding if you've got an artificial nose or reinforced concrete teeth or a secret compartment for smuggling emergency cyanide capsules in your jaw - who hasn't? I knew this guy once who had a whole skeleton covered in adamantium, keeps calling me and complaining about how he wants his healing factor back...”
That sounded awfully familiar. “Goes by the name of Wolverine?”
“You know Wolvy?”
“Let's say I've punched him in the jaw a few times.” Cable winced internally in memory. “Dented a joint once.”
“Oh yeah, that's our Wolvy,” said Wade, fondly, and flipped suddenly upwards so that the next sentence came out upside-down, and travelling over Cable's head. “Am I getting warmer? That glowy eye of yours have a bit of internal framework?”
“The glowing is a mutant feature. Coincidentally, you're on the right track.”
“Huh. Wasn't figuring that arm of yours to be a tip of the iceberg thing.”
“I did try covering it with synth-skin some years ago.” Natural as Wade might be at keeping his movements random, there was the odd pattern that emerged from time to time. A bit of quick judgement let him land a kick to Deadpool's midsection, but he rolled with it only a split second too late, and was back on his feet again the next. Even so...
“The look didn't work for you?”
“It didn't last that long when I kept doing this with it,” said Cable, and punched Wade square in the face.
Wade staggered, holding his head. “Ow, ow, oh my stars and canaries...”
Cable made a mistake: in the face of an opponent looking genuinely stunned, he hesitated. Wade's drunken staggering abruptly sprouted a swinging fist that caught in him hard in the right kidney. Half-winded, he took too long to get his guard back up.
“Ooh, there's a fleshy bit,” said Wade, miraculously cured of all headache symptoms. “Why don't we see if it's the same the whole way up?”
The second punch to his face hit on the right side of his jaw, and that one he felt.
“Aww, was that against the rules? I would've asked if this was meant to be a clean fight, but you did say you wanted to see how I operate.”
“I did,” Cable wheezed, wondering if Wade even understood the concept of a 'clean' fight. “That makes 'a couple of times'. Feeling better?”
“Huh. I am,” said Wade, looking surprised, before readying his fists again. “Think it's a cumulative effect?”
“Who knows?” saw Nate, as the throbbing in his jaw began to dull a little, and used a telekinetic nudge to tap Deadpool on the shoulder.
It probably said a lot about Deadpool that his first impulse was to look over the opposite shoulder, but what mattered was that he was still in the act of looking back again when Cable tackled him and pinned him to the floor.
“I also wanted to give you a feel for how I operate,” he told the struggling Wade, “Did I mention I'm not just telepathic?”
It took Wade a few seconds to catch on. “You did that? You... whassaword, move stuff around too? Now that's just not fair, boss!”
“No, I suppose it isn't,” said Cable, smirking. Wade squirmed a little more, though without any real intention of escaping. After a second, he grinned back.
“We done here for the day?” he asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“So,” said Wade, noting their respective positions with what, minus the mask, would have certainly been a glint in his eye, “Whatdya want to do now?”
“Hm,” said Cable, still smirking, and leaned down, resettling his weight.
“Hee,” said Wade, catching on with no difficulty. “Gosh, boss, I had no idea you might be thinking about ending our session like this.” The tone of surprise would not have been particularly convincing even without the sensation of Wade, flexible as you please, running a foot up the inside of Cable's right leg.
“What an oversight.” Cable peeled back just the edge of Wade's suit at the join between mask and neck so he could get his mouth in there, the skin beneath warm from the exercise and just a little damp with perspiration. After his earlier observation about Wade's lung capacity, even the slightest hitch to his breath was all the more satisfying.
“Wow, right here?” said Wade, not the least bothered by the prospect. The leg wrapping itself around Cable's hips would do its bit to prevent him from doing anything else; the first foot began making its way back down again. “Lotta kids running around this place; this room's got all those big windows...”
“But the handy thing about a room decked out with sophisticated holographic technology,” Cable told him, “is that what people see from the outside doesn't necessarily have to be what's going on inside.”
“You were so planning this.”
“I like to be prepared for all eventualities.” Cable slid a hand down Wade's body between them, and confirmed for himself that Wade was coming along quite nicely. Not that a little encouragement would go to waste. The spandex of his costume left nothing to the imagination.
“Say what you like about this job,” panted Wade, as Cable's hand began to rub him firmly through his costume, “it has the best... ooh... best perks ever. Nnnnngh, you're good at that. Want you to fuck me.”
“Really?” Cable would have had to admit he'd been counting on Wade to need some convincing to try out that particular activity. “Right now?”
“Do I strike you as a patient guy, Nate? Right now, right here.” Both 'rights' were emphasised with a very deliberate upward thrust against his hand, and a breathy quality that hinted - promised, almost - at how close Wade was to willing to beg for this. “Don't get me wrong. Doing you was great, but it was so not where I was thinking we were going with me all tied up and you getting handsy. Had it stuck in my head like a damn advertising jingle. Fuck me.”
It would take a man with much more self-control than him to deny how very physically appealing he found that idea, but... “That's actually one thing I wasn't prepared for.”
“Don't care,” said Wade, working his hands inside Cable's pants. “Use saliva or whatever. Long as it ends with you sticking this in and shaking it all about.”
Even that sounded appealing, which may not have been a healthy sign. “You're sure?”
“Oh, now he wants to know if I'm sure. Sure I'm sure - I'm so sure I'm about to be sure all over you.”
“...not too immediately, I hope.”
“Could use a bit 'a help with that.” Wade let him go long enough to wriggle out of his costume, and Cable lasted all of another couple of seconds before giving up in the name of helping him get it off, as quickly as possible.
His better judgement - sounding disturbingly like Domino - promised him he'd regret this in the morning, but in the heat of the moment, Wade was more than loud enough to drown it out.
***
Some time later, with them both flat on their backs and panting, a very happy Wade said, “I am going to really, really like this job.”
Cable glanced at him out of the corner of an eye. Well, that was his secondary mission very much accomplished then, even if not quite by the means he'd intended.
“Next time we're using real lube,” he said, feeling - and sounding - a bit raw.
“Ooh, next time. I like the sound of that. What are you doing, say, five minutes from now?”
Nate groaned faintly. “This, I imagine.”
“Aww, did I wear you out?”
“Not everyone has your healing factor, Wade,” said Cable, then, perhaps against his better judgement, added “and I'm fairly sure I'm a number of years older than you are.”
“But looking very well preserved for a man of your vintage, I must say,” said Wade, which sounded more like a real compliment before he added, “why, you've even still got most of your original parts! Maybe what you need is another upgrade or two, in certain places...”
“I don't believe you just suggested that.”
“Did I mention how much I am going to love this job? Reserving all rights to change my mind completely the moment the afterglow wears off, you understand.”
“Welcome to the team,” Cable muttered.
For several seconds, Wade was uncharacteristically silent.
“Something on your mind?” said Cable - it would have obvious even to a non-psychic. When Wade didn't immediately reply, he guessed, “You're still worried about working with the rest of my team?”
“Not most of the team - okay, they hate me, I can't really argue with that,” said Wade quickly, “but there's just, y'know...”
“Wade?”
“Remember that conversation we had about how you don't expect me to spill any details about my ex-boss?” said Wade after a bit, sounding a little nervous.
Cable rolled to face Wade and propped himself up on an elbow. “Yes?”
“That wasn't a contractual thing, right? More like an, 'unless I want to' sort of deal?”
“If you want to share details about Tolliver, I'm all ears.”
“Don't know about want to, but you know where I'm coming from - I'm working for you, he's trying to put you out of business in a permanent sort of way, I care about my job security, so if I happened to know some little detail that might be a life or death issue for this outfit, and possibly just a little on the time-sensitive side...”
Cable, who'd been half-drowsing, woke up a lot very quickly. “Wade, what are you telling me?”
“You know that merc lady in the meeting room before, panda-faced sorta look going...?”
“You mean Domino?”
“Not Domino,” said Wade, emphatically. “Copycat. Ex-girlfriend, actually. Very ex, just in case you were having any jealousy there, but I gotta say, damn, you have not done jack until you've done it with a shapeshifter like 'Nessa.”
As usual, Wade took the longest way possible to get to the point, but when what he was saying added up, it came to a very worrying total. “What?”
“Real Domino is doing a Jesus impression down in Tolliver's basement. Hey, don't look at me, it was all Tolliver's plan! 'Nessa does her thing, sneaks in here, plants a bomb and blows you all to kingdom confetti. Only she's running a bit behind schedule and the boss was getting impatient, which is how come he sent me in to finish the job... you okay, Nate?”
Cable should have been telling him he was insane, should have been telling him that he knew Domino too well for any doppelganger to fool him - he was more than a little bit psychic, for Askani's sake - but all he could think was that it had made no sense for Domino to be so angry with him hiring Wade - that she hadn't called him out on bringing up Grisly.
“Wasn't going to bring this one up right away, but y'know, you called the meeting and there she was, and she knows I'm working for you...” Wade broke off as Cable, already on his feet, tossed him one of the towels that came with the mat room simulation.
“Clean up and get dressed,” he ordered, doing likewise.
“Didn't I have five minutes?”
“Five minutes are up. Time to start earning that salary - and I swear, Deadpool, if you're lying to me about any of this...”
“Sheesh, I know. Sorry, boss, truth hurts and all that jazz. We gonna go get her right now?”
So caught up in his own fury was he that Cable very nearly said 'yes' on the spot - of course they could go 'get' an enemy agent who could pull off such a convincing impersonation of a woman he'd known for years that he'd never even questioned it, and on the word of a man he hardly knew. There were barely a dozen different ways the direct approach was guaranteed to fail.
“Let me think,” he said, and proceeded to do so while pulling clothes on as fast as he could. It had been over an hour since he spoke to 'Domino', she could have done anything...
If he was lucky, he'd have one chance to get this right.
Plot Notes & Trivia
(given how much of this story is based on bits of canon which most of the audience probably isn't that familiar with, this may become a regular thing)
If I'm ever bored enough, I could put together a quite a lengthy picspam post of all the many different interpretations by different artists of just how much of Cable's body is supposed to be metal. Answers range from just the arm and nothing else to the entire left side of his body - no-one ever seems to be checking for consistency. This only gets more confusing when it's been canonically acknowledged on a couple of occasions that at least some of his skin is synthetic, and merely hides the metal underneath. Cable's reply in this chapter to why he doesn't put the same synthetic skin over his metal arm in this chapter is mere fannish speculation - we all know the real reason is because a metal arm is far too fundamentally badass for any comic creator to pass up on. (Other picspam posts I might some day get around to putting together: the many and wildly different interpretations of Cable's/Stryfe's/Nate Grey's hair before it all went grey, the many and wildly different interpretations of Deadpool's hair before he lost it all, the top five artists who should never be allowed to draw Domino again.)
As I've noted elsewhere, the 'canonical' timeline regarding the Domino/Vanessa situation is such a contradictory mess that (unless you want to start constructing wild conspiracy theories whereby Tolliver is the kind of cackling evil overlord who really does need a five year old advisor to point out all the holes in his plans) having the excuse to throw it all in the blender in the name of writing an AU is a very good thing. But if anyone's actually wondering, in this 'verse, she probably joined X-Force at least a couple of months before Deadpool first showed up.
Cable having met (and repeatedly fought) Wolverine also comes straight from canon - very early canon, within a few issues of Cable's introduction. What better way to establish your new character as an utter, complete bastion of pure badassery than to have him not only know Wolverine, but have fought him to a standstill, just for the sheer hell of it, on multiple occasions? Liefeld was, in addition to being the 'artist', responsible for outlining the overall plots in those days. It explains a lot.
Chapter 4