[Cable & Deadpool] Good Intentions (5/?)
[insert shifty glance at date here] Ah well, done at last. I always knew this was going to be one of those difficult chapters, I just don't think I counted on the title developing meta-connotations regarding authorial lateness.
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: 5/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, X-Force
Rating: NC-17 (over all), PG (this part)
Word Count: 5470
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
To the general relief of Cable's team, edging along in single file with water up to their knees, the old sewer pipe took them only a short way into the hill before they reached a side passage - a proper tunnel this time, lined with ugly brown brick but certainly not built for waste water disposal. The new passage led them up a steep incline that quickly rose well above water level. Cable guessed it might have been built for smuggling - possibly well before Tolliver's time - but anyone in his line of business would have ample incentive to keep it intact in case he ever needed to make an emergency exit.
It was difficult to judge how far they'd come so deep underground, but they had to be getting close. There'd been no sign of any guards just yet, but from here they'd have to tread carefully.
“Deadpool?” Cable called, keeping his voice low. “How much can you tell me about what kind of resistance we'll meet down here?”
“Uh... I haven't exactly been down here before...” From the uncertainty in his voice, he was about to go on yet another of his spiels about his conflicted loyalties.
“Deadpool, I've been very patient with you so far, but at this point I need you here with me a hundred percent, or I need you to be out of the way,” said Cable, impatiently.
“Well, if you put it that way,” Deadpool actually sounded relieved to have the choice taken out of his hands, “I haven't been down here before, but the guys who have talked about it during company tea-breaks, y'know? Most of them wish the boss would just fridge the bitch already (no offence), 'cause they've been having hell keeping her locked up. Everything goes wrong down here - rusty locks, guards falling asleep, computers blue screening like it's going out of style, prisoners just happening to spring their handcuffs by banging them on the wall or flicking rocks across the room and just happening to hit the right key on the security system. She gets this close to making it out every other week or so.”
A smile quirked its way across Cable's lips. “That sounds like Domino.”
“So what I'm saying is, they turned this place into the highest security lock-up Tolliver's got. Lots of guards, lots of rules, they don't leave nothing to chance anymore.”
“Figures,” grumbled Boomer. “We're supposed to just walk in and pull her out of all that?”
“Lot of security for one prisoner,” said Cannonball.
“At least we know - we can go in expecting strong resistance,” said Cable. “They'll be better prepared for keeping her in than keeping us out; if we're lucky, that might work for us. We should be getting close, I'm going to see if I can contact her.” He tapped the side of his head to indicate to the others what he'd meant, then shut his eyes and concentrated on reaching out telepathically.
“Dom?”
He'd never had the power to be a very good telepath; ordinarily, something like this - finding someone blind in unfamiliar territory - would have been beyond him, but Domino was someone he knew, better than perhaps anyone else in this century - someone accustomed to hearing his voice in her head. If there was anyone he could have found down here...
“Dom, can you hear me?”
At first, there was nothing but the echo of his own mental voice coming back to him, then suddenly-
“Cable!” First contact was so loud it hurt, like a camera flash after an hour letting your eyes adjust to the darkness; the relief in her mind alone almost floored him. All the months she'd been here, all those times her luck had failed before she made it out; never knowing if today was going to be the day that bastard Tolliver came down to tell her his plan had worked... of course she'd known it would take more than a grub like him to take Cable down so easily but when you'd been stuck down here this long you'd believe anything... “Mother of God, Nate, what took you so long?”
By the time he was done wincing, she was back in control, and he'd gotten his mental 'volume' wound down to a more practical level. “I'll tell you all about it later”, he promised her. “Dom, I need to borrow your eyes. Where are you?”
“My eyes aren't going be much good to you, Nate, they've got me behind a sheet of one-way glass.”
“Not taking any chances, are they?”
“They learned the hard way.” Domino radiated a certain amount of vicious satisfaction. “The glass was only installed a couple of weeks ago. I can picture the view from before that.”
“Please.”
Cable caught a flicker of an image of a room, a little wider than the tunnel he was standing in, the far wall lined with computer equipment. Vertical bars obscured the view every couple of inches.
“Got it. That's the view from your cell? What about the inside?”
“Not good. I'm in restraints behind double cell doors, and it's hardwired so they can only unlock one at a time.”
“Good thing I wasn't planning on wasting time with locks.”
“Cable, you can't just go blowing them down. My cell's barely six foot square and I can't move!”
Cable wondered if he was that predicable. Probably true. “We won't need explosives, one of my people has superstrength. Speaking of which, are you in a position to cover your ears?”
“My ears? The way they've got me chained up I can't even scratch my nose. Why?”
“Another of my people uses sonics.”
Curiosity about these new 'people' filtered through the mental link, but she didn't bother vocalising it. “Then I can do much better than covering my ears. The glass is also soundproof. The less I know about what's going on outside, the less trouble I can be - so they think.”
“How wrong they were. What about guards?”
“Last I could see them there were at least four at all times, two humans, the others were some kind of robot.”
The security on this one cell was getting ridiculous, especially for a prisoner whom Tolliver ought to have little reason to need alive. Perhaps finding a way to keep her contained had become a matter of pride.
“How far away are you?” Domino asked.
“Not sure. We're coming up an old drainage tunnel.”
“I know the one, last time I got out I made it halfway down before they caught me. You'll come out behind a reinforced steel door. Feel free to go to town on that one, I'm nowhere near it.”
“Any danger they'll hear us coming?”
“Not likely, but I can offer you a distraction to make sure. One of my restraints has been loose all day. It's not enough to get me out, but it'll get me their attention.”
“Perfect. I'll see you soon.”
His head swam when he opened his eyes - the mental equivalent of muscle strain, with a side order of something very like motion sickness and the buzzing of the TO virus in his head, but what he'd learned had been worth it twice over.
“She's in a cell with a double door behind one-way, soundproofed glass,” he told X-Force. “Expect at least four guards, two human, the others robotic - and we don't know what kind of robotic, so assume the worst.”
“If I may offer one bitsy little correction,” chirped Deadpool, “you don't know what kind - unless you happen to have the exclusive beta-tester of said robots right here on your team. Would you like three guesses who, or would you like to use a lifeline?”
“Deadpool?” Loyalties seemed to be giving him no further conflicts.
“Dingdingding, and our main contestant got it in one! He'll be taking home a matching set of bleeding-edge AIM technology, acquired by the Mr Tolliver himself by very nearly legitimate means. Standing six-feet-five and sporting a very fashionable silver chrome finish, these babies come custom fitted with electric whips, shoulder mounted laser canons and the very latest in personal forcefield technology! (Forcefields may occasionally malfunction without warning, warranty may be voided in places where robots were 'acquired' after getting mysteriously lost in the post.)”
“Can you ever just answer a question?” Siryn complained.
“Hey, one of your ex-X-ers already turned out to be an evil duplicate today, is now really the time for me to be giving you any reason to doubt I'm the real McCoy?”
“Can you actually tell us how to get those forcefields to malfunction?” asked Cable.
“Well, I don't want to make this too technical for these plebes to handle, but in my expert opinion based on whole minutes of research, punching them a whole lot seems to do the job.”
“Good. Then I'll expect to see you putting that expert experience to use.” said Cable
“Aw shucks, now I'm going to be so embarrassed if it doesn't happen on the night.”
Cable turned back to the others. “Sunspot, your only priority is getting Domino out. Siryn, I want you to take point when we get close - do as much damage as you can with one scream before we charge. After that, you cover Sunspot while he works. The rest of us will deal with the guards. It's going to be close quarters, so watch yourselves. We leave the same way we came, and we'll port home as soon as we're done.” He hefted his gun and surveyed his troops. “Everyone clear?”
Half of them looked like they were still digesting the understanding that Domino was actually down here and a loony in a red and black bodysuit really had lead them this far, but there were no objections.
“Good. Now move.”
The door Domino had promised turned up another fifty feet further down the passage. One shell took it clean off its hinges. He had to take both hands off his gun to cover his ears while Siryn screamed, then take another second to orient himself through the dissonance between the room from Domino's memory versus the real thing from a different angle, and then there was nothing but the charge.
A robot fitting Deadpool's description met him not three paces from the entrance, humanoid in form but built all out of square metal edges and rotating joints, no expense wasted on aesthetics. Its forcefield soaked up Cable's first three shots in a crackle of pink sparks, then a high-pitched whine from the guns on its shoulders was warning him to duck before the lasers fired. It was always going to be a mistake to assume that good intel and time to plan was enough to declare the battle won before it started, but if tech this slow was the worst they'd have to face then their odds looked more than comfortable.
Details flashed through the edges of his vision; one guard out cold with blood streaming from his ears, another - a mutant? - who barely kept his feet long enough to give Shatterstar a light workout. Sunspot wrenching a cell door out of its frame, Domino, looking every bit as battered, torn and defiant as she'd sounded in his head, yelling a warning and wrenching her free arm across her body just in time to avoid a stray laser beam. He saw Cannonball drive one robot clean across the room and into the far wall, Deadpool scaling another from behind like a tree, Boomer dodging under the whip from a third...
When the count reached five he was well past the conclusion that Domino's estimate had been off, and starting to wonder (in between reloading while rolling out of the way of a wild laser and slamming his gun right up against Number Five's forcefield and holding down the trigger until the field spluttered out and the robot danced in time with the automatic fire) whether how much she'd been off by was something he had time to be worried about, when Number Five shook itself apart and Cable got a look at what was coming up behind it.
Down the staircase at the far end of the corridor marched four new robots, two by two. But what stopped him in his tracks had nothing to do with four new opponents when it had taken all their efforts to hold off the first five, and everything to do with the figure standing in their midst, grinning at them all from beneath the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. It was a grin that only widened as he met Cable's gaze and saw the recognition staring back.
“Tolliver!”
He'd allowed for this, he'd given his team instructions for this exact eventuality, but there'd been too many other concerns and no time, so it was only now that it struck him how impossibly far from ready for this he was.
“Surprised, Nathan?” Tolliver's voice was low and mocking, and the sound of it hit Cable like a punch to the gut. “You didn't think I'd let you this far into my domain without offering you a proper welcome?”
“Whoa, boss, is that you?” That came from Deadpool. “What a coincidence, I mean what are the odds I was gonna meet you here, down in your very own dungeon of your very own villa? Uh. You know, I must've rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, but somehow I never allowed for the possibility I was gonna be fighting a big robot when we had it... Soooo, you wanna play 'guess what the going market rate is for a mercenary of my calibre'? Uh-huh, I thought so too, but as it turns out...”
“Deadpool, you are going to regret choosing to side with the likes of him against me,” Tolliver promised.
“Wait, you already knew? Well now I feel all dumb about trying so hard to break it to you gently, your coatiness. I always meant to ask, was it all about your childhood crush on Dick Tracy, or do you just have a secret affection for the middle-aged-flasher-lurking-in-the-bushes-behind-the-kiddies-playground look? But let's be fair, you do make up for it with your breathtaking command of supervillain dialogue - don't be shy, Mr Tolliver, tell the audience just how hard it is for you not to end every line with 'I'll get you next time, Captain Planet!'”
Hidden cameras, Cable thought as the next robot came at him. He'd been so proud of his clever work contacting Domino from inside that tunnel he hadn't even thought.
“I will make you feel every word you uttered here today, Wilson!”
“Oooh, guys, you hear that? He used my real name, I musta really hit a nerve!” The end of this was punctuated as the head of robot Deadpool had been fighting exploded. “Aw, did I do that? Remind me, ex-boss, how much money did each of these babies set you back? Are we talking six figures, seven? Or was it more one of those things where you offer the truck driver a handjob behind the cabin while... hey - hey! I'll have you know it's unbelievably rude to run off when someone's in the middle of quipping at you!”
Robot Seven was in Cable's way; the fraction of a second it would take to look away and confirm Deadpool's words would be a fraction too long, but on the edge of his hearing he could almost convince himself he could hear the sound of heavy boots retreating away upstairs.
“Deadpool!” he yelled.
“You raaaaang?” A red-booted foot came flying through Cable's peripheral vision right and connected with Robot Seven's head, knocking it to the floor. Deadpool landed and reached for his guns.
“You think I laid it on a little thick back there?” he threw over his shoulder. “I don't wanna burn all my bridges in the professional community too soon - nothing personal there, but you gotta realise we're at about the business equivalent of a second date right now - and boy do you ever know how to show a girl a good second date, but it's still only...”
“Take over,” Cable snapped. “I'm going after Tolliver.”
“You got it bo... boss, boss, did you just leave me in charge?”
Cable was too close to being out of earshot to bother with a reply.
***
The next basement up was a storeroom, lined with stacks of crates reaching up to the ceiling. Smuggling from this villa had only stepped up in scale since the days when the sea tunnel was built. Light came from a few weakly-glowing bulbs hung around the edges of the room, interrupting the gloom and casting long shadows down the stacks. A thin line of light knifed along the roof, marking out the edges of a trapdoor-like opening, probably designed to allow cargo to be winched in and out from above, and hinting at brighter lights above. Tolliver's footsteps echoed loudly up ahead, making it difficult for Cable to judge how large his lead was.
“Tolliver!” Cable roared. There was no response. He couldn't take the deep breath he wanted before the next, not while he was moving, and the name nearly caught in his throat. “Tyler!”
Under the fading echo of his own voice, Cable heard Tolliver's footsteps come to a stop, then the slow sound of laughter echoing back to him; the tone of it different without the low, deliberate hiss Tolliver injected into his speech. It sounded older than he remembered it, but unsettlingly familiar. It wasn't until the long moment of silence that followed, and with it the fact that he could no longer hear his own footsteps, that Cable realised he'd let himself freeze where he stood.
“Well, that I never counted on,” said Tyler, still impossible to pinpoint. “When did you figure it out?”
“Just now.” However many months it had been since he'd come by that knowledge, knowing and knowing were irreconcilably different things.
“Hm. This would be my opening to ask what gave me away, but now that you know...” He gave a low chuckle. “What does that feel like, I wonder? How many years has it been for you, since you thought you'd put me out of my misery - and here I am, back to haunt you.”
Cable had no plan for this, nothing but the gut feeling he had to keep Tyler talking as long as he could. “Tyler, if you think I have it in me to be angry with you for what you've become, when I never even knew you were alive...”
“The only shame of this,” the interruption carried something sharp and brittle pushing its way into the edge of his voice, “is that I won't be there to see Domino's face when you tell her it was your own flesh and blood who held her prisoner down there - for all those months while you never even knew. Did you enjoy your time with my shapeshifter while she was gone? She was a whore long before we talked her into trying a more... lucrative line of work. I never did get to tell either of them what became of the last woman you convinced you cared for.”
Words aimed to hurt, too obvious to have much bite, but they did serve to remind Cable he was having this conversation standing in the middle of the hall and spur him to dodge around the side of the nearest stack and press his back flat against the side of a crate. He couldn't afford to assume that just because he couldn't see Tyler the reverse was the same, that he'd honour any level of truce for long. “If your purpose has always been revenge, Tyler, I'm surprised you didn't want me to know. Unless... unless it was easier for you to pretend-”
“Pretend this was never more than an old business matter gone bad? Haven't you followed Tolliver's reputation? He's killed men for less.”
“Pretend you were never my son.”
This time, the laugh from Tyler sounded more forced than natural. “Oh go on, Dad - sing me the song about how this isn't me. Let's hear how everything I've done to you is nothing more than Stryfe's doing. He lost his hold on me years ago. He's next on my list, once I'm done with you.”
Cable swallowed, tightening his already white-knuckled grip on his gun. “You won't listen to reason, Tyler, but if I have to use force to take you down-” It was definitely the wrong thing to say.
“It won't be the first time, will it, Dad? I was your son, you bastard son of a machine, and did you even hesitate when you took that shot? But since we're talking, why don't you tell me all about how the choice was taken from you; how it was the lesser of two evils to sacrifice your own child! It's been a long time for me too, why don't you refresh my memory of the true inspiration for everything I'm going to do to you.”
“Tyler...” To hear his son's voice fly so suddenly and completely into rage made something knot in Cables chest, driving home the stakes like nothing before it.
Some of his control was back when Tyler spoke next. “You'll want to be careful in here, though. You've got no idea what kind of incendiaries I might be storing in these crates.”
Cable cursed and flicked the safety back on his gun. Tyler might be bluffing but arms dealing was Tolliver's trade - there could be anything in these crates. He could win at hand to hand, but he'd have to get close, and Tyler might not let him. Even as he'd built himself a persona who could hide behind assassins and robotic guardsmen, he was bound to be armed and there'd been something in his voice that made Cable fear he might not hesitate to bring the sky down on his own head as long as he knew he'd been taking his father with him.
He reached out with his telepathy again, trying to locate the other mind in this basement, only to be hit by the psychic equivalent of a thousand-decibel scream. Already worn down from his over-long conversation with Domino, for an infinite moment Cable didn't know which way was up, points of light exploding behind his eyelids.
He should have known better. He'd taught Tyler that one too.
“Always so damned predictable,” Tyler spat.
Cable wasn't so deafened that he didn't notice that the voice was louder than the echo all of a sudden. He turned to face it - too slow, saw the silhouette of Tyler's body, arm raised to shoot. He was still dressed in Tolliver's coat, his face in shadow, but his hat was gone and the angle of the light was high enough to catch the blond of Tyler's hair.
“Send Carlyle my regards.”
The shot didn't hit him; it impacted into the side of a crate not five feet away, and under the roar of the explosion he had just the chance to reflect that on this account at least, Tyler hadn't been lying.
He was long gone by the time Cable was able to pull himself together and stagger his way to the far staircase that lead to the villa above. All that remained for him to find was the noise of a helicopter retreating away into the distance.
***
He found his team coming the other way up the lower stairs, and they met his reappearance with a chorus of startled gasps. Domino was in the lead, leaner than he remembered her, the skin around her right eye blackening in crude mockery of her left, but still as fierce and grimly beautiful as he'd ever seen her.
“Tolliver?” she demanded.
“Gone.” Cable couldn't muster the energy to go into more detail. The still smouldering corners of the storage basement would stand as proof he hadn't let Tolliver go without a fight.
Domino took it as well as anyone could have. “Next time you catch up to him, Nate, you'd better save a piece for me, and I don't mean leftovers. I have four months in that fucking cell to take out of his flesh.”
“I've no doubt he knows it,” Cable managed, but it was hard to meet her eye, his gaze drifting instead to what he recognised as one of Deadpool's guns slung over her shoulder.
“I told her how you left me in charge but, oh no, she just had to be the one calling the shots,” Deadpool grumbled, then did a double-take as he got his first look at Cable. “Uh, boss? Don't look now, but you're kinda... peeling.”
“It's worse than it looks,” said Cable, who hadn't really any idea how bad it looked, though he was probably missing most of the synth-skin on the left side of his face and both eyebrows at the very least. “Everyone accounted for?”
The chorus of affirmatives were hardly done before Cable was calling the Professor for a bodyslide home.
***
If there ought to have been any relief in making it back home without casualties he was too numb to enjoy it. In the wake of everything that had happened in Sardegna the simple familiarity of it all felt like more than he could trust. Hard to believe that only hours ago he'd fully expected his confrontation with Deadpool in the library to be the worst he'd have to deal with that day. It felt like days since he'd last slept.
It might still be hours yet before he could tear himself away, with everything left to be put to bed on all these loose ends that had come unravelled. He was sure he used to be much better than this at compartmentalising what he couldn't afford to deal with, but the ability seemed to have deserted him when he needed it. Maybe some of Tyler's barbs had sunk deeper than he'd realised.
It took him several long seconds to put it together in his head that what Domino had just said was, “Where are we?”
“Basement level under what used to be the X-Mansion,” he explained, shaking himself. “Home base - for the time being.”
Domino did not waste time asking for the tour. “So when do I get to see this metamorph who's so good she had even you fooled?”
Some nagging instinct, still on edge after the earlier revelations of the day, took that moment to warn Cable that he hadn't yet told her anything about Copycat. The more rational portion of his thoughts pointed out that even if Tolliver hadn't told her exactly what his plan entailed himself, she'd had several minutes down below with Cable's team while he was chasing Tolliver, and the subject was bound to have come up.
He started to answer, but was cut off by Rictor's voice calling, “Cable!” from up the corridor. Cable turned just in time to see him falter at the sight of them.
“What is it, Rictor?” he said, shutting down all inquiries about his condition before they started.
“Cable, it's Vanessa - the shapeshifter. You've got to come see this.”
He didn't look panicked and he hadn't been running, but Cable - beyond any hope of guessing what Rictor might have meant - hurried after him, Domino on his heels.
They'd put Copycat in the Danger Room, a steel cage just large enough for her to sit down in and a single wooden chair standing in front of it the only points of departure from the bare-metal finish of the room while inactive. Wolfsbane stood on all fours on the far side, giving herself a view of cage, prisoner and exit in one line. Vanessa's eyes barely flickered upwards as Cable came in.
“You did tell me to think hard about it,” she said, in a voice so quiet it was hard to say if she'd wanted it heard. “I guess I came back to me.” She had pale blue skin in her true form, a shock of white hair and inhuman red and black eyes, and little if any of Domino's spirit left.
Cable did not find himself much relieved that this was all Rictor had meant. Domino looked even less impressed.
“That's it?” she said, and if she sounded more incredulous than furious, Cable didn't trust it to last. “Four months you spend wearing my face and-”
“Dom, wait,” Cable grabbed her by the shoulder before she could take another step towards Copycat. She didn't shrug him off, but the tension he could feel under her skin spoke very clearly of just how close it was. “You are not going to fix this by taking what Tolliver did to you out on her.”
It took the space of a breath for her to turn all that anger onto him, but he met her gaze without flinching.
“Does this look like the time for a lecture on revenge?” she demanded.
“She's not going anywhere,” said Cable. “Give yourself the night at least; we'll deal with her in the morning.”
Domino glared at him for another few seconds of furious silence before turning on her heel and marching back out of the room. It was probably easier to blame him for making her back down than to argue a point she wasn't going to win. He didn't resent her for it.
He spared another glance at Copycat, who had lapsed back into silence, face drawn in the look of someone trying not to cry and knees curled tight up against her chest. After a minute it seemed to dawn on her he wasn't going anywhere.
“I'd thank you,” she said, bitterly, “but it would have been kinder to let her get it over with.”
“What part of this would that get us 'over with'?” Cable did not bother to temper his tone. “Yours? Hers? You've known me long enough to know I don't let my soldiers make mistakes in anger.”
“Don't you?” Copycat bit back, and that was almost enough to make him change his mind about whether Dom would have been making a mistake at all.
“Don't confuse Tolliver's methods with mine.”
“If I believed you were anything like Tolliver I'd have set that bomb months ago and gone right on sleeping like a baby every night,” said Copycat; it wasn't close to being an apology. “But if I hadn't been so damned scared of you... god, do you think it would have been easy for me to come to you with the truth?”
A sharp reminder of how little right she had to make any of this his fault was on the tip of his tongue before the hypocrisy of it caught up with him, and afterwards it was too late for any kind of effective comeback. Even if you could explain away every one of Tyler's grievances, there was probably a reason he hadn't been warned about this, and he wasn't sure it was one he wanted to examine.
Mother Askani, he was far too tired to be having this conversation.
“I sent her away because I have had too long a day to trust myself to rein her in, and because even if she doesn't hate you any less a few hours from now she'll have had time to think about whether she'd regret taking it out of your flesh. If you're very lucky, by morning I might be closer to forgetting how close I came to losing her,” Cable told her instead. “Get some rest.”
He was halfway to the door when he heard Copycat call out, “Cable, did you... is Tolliver...?”
“He got away.” Under the circumstances it would be kinder not to share Tyler's parting words.
Over his shoulder he saw Copycat lower her head and curl her hands tighter around her knees. “I am glad she's alive, you know,” she said after a second, even softer, and that, at last, sounded something like an apology.
“I hope you still feel that way tomorrow,” Cable replied, and left.
Plot Notes but mostly bitching and trivia
Good grief but Tyler is a bugger of a character to make sense of. Of the few canonical appearances he gets, his Tolliver and Genesis personas have almost nothing in common (beyond maybe a general theme of overly-dramatic card-carrying villainry) and all we get to explain how he got from one to the other is a few chapters of him wangsting about his lot in life. Sifting through all that for some kind of coherrent character basis was less productive than I might have hoped. It's not at all hard to believe he's related to Stryfe though.
The early scenes of this chapter are loosely based on X-Force #14-15 (volume 1) - though only very loosely, as I would have to admit to rewriting Tolliver's whole security system from the ground up (and very possibly getting a little carried away with it). Really, where's the fun in writing for characters with psychic abilities and luck powers if you can't let them show off?
Chapter 6
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: 5/?
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, X-Force
Rating: NC-17 (over all), PG (this part)
Word Count: 5470
Previous Parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
To the general relief of Cable's team, edging along in single file with water up to their knees, the old sewer pipe took them only a short way into the hill before they reached a side passage - a proper tunnel this time, lined with ugly brown brick but certainly not built for waste water disposal. The new passage led them up a steep incline that quickly rose well above water level. Cable guessed it might have been built for smuggling - possibly well before Tolliver's time - but anyone in his line of business would have ample incentive to keep it intact in case he ever needed to make an emergency exit.
It was difficult to judge how far they'd come so deep underground, but they had to be getting close. There'd been no sign of any guards just yet, but from here they'd have to tread carefully.
“Deadpool?” Cable called, keeping his voice low. “How much can you tell me about what kind of resistance we'll meet down here?”
“Uh... I haven't exactly been down here before...” From the uncertainty in his voice, he was about to go on yet another of his spiels about his conflicted loyalties.
“Deadpool, I've been very patient with you so far, but at this point I need you here with me a hundred percent, or I need you to be out of the way,” said Cable, impatiently.
“Well, if you put it that way,” Deadpool actually sounded relieved to have the choice taken out of his hands, “I haven't been down here before, but the guys who have talked about it during company tea-breaks, y'know? Most of them wish the boss would just fridge the bitch already (no offence), 'cause they've been having hell keeping her locked up. Everything goes wrong down here - rusty locks, guards falling asleep, computers blue screening like it's going out of style, prisoners just happening to spring their handcuffs by banging them on the wall or flicking rocks across the room and just happening to hit the right key on the security system. She gets this close to making it out every other week or so.”
A smile quirked its way across Cable's lips. “That sounds like Domino.”
“So what I'm saying is, they turned this place into the highest security lock-up Tolliver's got. Lots of guards, lots of rules, they don't leave nothing to chance anymore.”
“Figures,” grumbled Boomer. “We're supposed to just walk in and pull her out of all that?”
“Lot of security for one prisoner,” said Cannonball.
“At least we know - we can go in expecting strong resistance,” said Cable. “They'll be better prepared for keeping her in than keeping us out; if we're lucky, that might work for us. We should be getting close, I'm going to see if I can contact her.” He tapped the side of his head to indicate to the others what he'd meant, then shut his eyes and concentrated on reaching out telepathically.
“Dom?”
He'd never had the power to be a very good telepath; ordinarily, something like this - finding someone blind in unfamiliar territory - would have been beyond him, but Domino was someone he knew, better than perhaps anyone else in this century - someone accustomed to hearing his voice in her head. If there was anyone he could have found down here...
“Dom, can you hear me?”
At first, there was nothing but the echo of his own mental voice coming back to him, then suddenly-
“Cable!” First contact was so loud it hurt, like a camera flash after an hour letting your eyes adjust to the darkness; the relief in her mind alone almost floored him. All the months she'd been here, all those times her luck had failed before she made it out; never knowing if today was going to be the day that bastard Tolliver came down to tell her his plan had worked... of course she'd known it would take more than a grub like him to take Cable down so easily but when you'd been stuck down here this long you'd believe anything... “Mother of God, Nate, what took you so long?”
By the time he was done wincing, she was back in control, and he'd gotten his mental 'volume' wound down to a more practical level. “I'll tell you all about it later”, he promised her. “Dom, I need to borrow your eyes. Where are you?”
“My eyes aren't going be much good to you, Nate, they've got me behind a sheet of one-way glass.”
“Not taking any chances, are they?”
“They learned the hard way.” Domino radiated a certain amount of vicious satisfaction. “The glass was only installed a couple of weeks ago. I can picture the view from before that.”
“Please.”
Cable caught a flicker of an image of a room, a little wider than the tunnel he was standing in, the far wall lined with computer equipment. Vertical bars obscured the view every couple of inches.
“Got it. That's the view from your cell? What about the inside?”
“Not good. I'm in restraints behind double cell doors, and it's hardwired so they can only unlock one at a time.”
“Good thing I wasn't planning on wasting time with locks.”
“Cable, you can't just go blowing them down. My cell's barely six foot square and I can't move!”
Cable wondered if he was that predicable. Probably true. “We won't need explosives, one of my people has superstrength. Speaking of which, are you in a position to cover your ears?”
“My ears? The way they've got me chained up I can't even scratch my nose. Why?”
“Another of my people uses sonics.”
Curiosity about these new 'people' filtered through the mental link, but she didn't bother vocalising it. “Then I can do much better than covering my ears. The glass is also soundproof. The less I know about what's going on outside, the less trouble I can be - so they think.”
“How wrong they were. What about guards?”
“Last I could see them there were at least four at all times, two humans, the others were some kind of robot.”
The security on this one cell was getting ridiculous, especially for a prisoner whom Tolliver ought to have little reason to need alive. Perhaps finding a way to keep her contained had become a matter of pride.
“How far away are you?” Domino asked.
“Not sure. We're coming up an old drainage tunnel.”
“I know the one, last time I got out I made it halfway down before they caught me. You'll come out behind a reinforced steel door. Feel free to go to town on that one, I'm nowhere near it.”
“Any danger they'll hear us coming?”
“Not likely, but I can offer you a distraction to make sure. One of my restraints has been loose all day. It's not enough to get me out, but it'll get me their attention.”
“Perfect. I'll see you soon.”
His head swam when he opened his eyes - the mental equivalent of muscle strain, with a side order of something very like motion sickness and the buzzing of the TO virus in his head, but what he'd learned had been worth it twice over.
“She's in a cell with a double door behind one-way, soundproofed glass,” he told X-Force. “Expect at least four guards, two human, the others robotic - and we don't know what kind of robotic, so assume the worst.”
“If I may offer one bitsy little correction,” chirped Deadpool, “you don't know what kind - unless you happen to have the exclusive beta-tester of said robots right here on your team. Would you like three guesses who, or would you like to use a lifeline?”
“Deadpool?” Loyalties seemed to be giving him no further conflicts.
“Dingdingding, and our main contestant got it in one! He'll be taking home a matching set of bleeding-edge AIM technology, acquired by the Mr Tolliver himself by very nearly legitimate means. Standing six-feet-five and sporting a very fashionable silver chrome finish, these babies come custom fitted with electric whips, shoulder mounted laser canons and the very latest in personal forcefield technology! (Forcefields may occasionally malfunction without warning, warranty may be voided in places where robots were 'acquired' after getting mysteriously lost in the post.)”
“Can you ever just answer a question?” Siryn complained.
“Hey, one of your ex-X-ers already turned out to be an evil duplicate today, is now really the time for me to be giving you any reason to doubt I'm the real McCoy?”
“Can you actually tell us how to get those forcefields to malfunction?” asked Cable.
“Well, I don't want to make this too technical for these plebes to handle, but in my expert opinion based on whole minutes of research, punching them a whole lot seems to do the job.”
“Good. Then I'll expect to see you putting that expert experience to use.” said Cable
“Aw shucks, now I'm going to be so embarrassed if it doesn't happen on the night.”
Cable turned back to the others. “Sunspot, your only priority is getting Domino out. Siryn, I want you to take point when we get close - do as much damage as you can with one scream before we charge. After that, you cover Sunspot while he works. The rest of us will deal with the guards. It's going to be close quarters, so watch yourselves. We leave the same way we came, and we'll port home as soon as we're done.” He hefted his gun and surveyed his troops. “Everyone clear?”
Half of them looked like they were still digesting the understanding that Domino was actually down here and a loony in a red and black bodysuit really had lead them this far, but there were no objections.
“Good. Now move.”
The door Domino had promised turned up another fifty feet further down the passage. One shell took it clean off its hinges. He had to take both hands off his gun to cover his ears while Siryn screamed, then take another second to orient himself through the dissonance between the room from Domino's memory versus the real thing from a different angle, and then there was nothing but the charge.
A robot fitting Deadpool's description met him not three paces from the entrance, humanoid in form but built all out of square metal edges and rotating joints, no expense wasted on aesthetics. Its forcefield soaked up Cable's first three shots in a crackle of pink sparks, then a high-pitched whine from the guns on its shoulders was warning him to duck before the lasers fired. It was always going to be a mistake to assume that good intel and time to plan was enough to declare the battle won before it started, but if tech this slow was the worst they'd have to face then their odds looked more than comfortable.
Details flashed through the edges of his vision; one guard out cold with blood streaming from his ears, another - a mutant? - who barely kept his feet long enough to give Shatterstar a light workout. Sunspot wrenching a cell door out of its frame, Domino, looking every bit as battered, torn and defiant as she'd sounded in his head, yelling a warning and wrenching her free arm across her body just in time to avoid a stray laser beam. He saw Cannonball drive one robot clean across the room and into the far wall, Deadpool scaling another from behind like a tree, Boomer dodging under the whip from a third...
When the count reached five he was well past the conclusion that Domino's estimate had been off, and starting to wonder (in between reloading while rolling out of the way of a wild laser and slamming his gun right up against Number Five's forcefield and holding down the trigger until the field spluttered out and the robot danced in time with the automatic fire) whether how much she'd been off by was something he had time to be worried about, when Number Five shook itself apart and Cable got a look at what was coming up behind it.
Down the staircase at the far end of the corridor marched four new robots, two by two. But what stopped him in his tracks had nothing to do with four new opponents when it had taken all their efforts to hold off the first five, and everything to do with the figure standing in their midst, grinning at them all from beneath the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. It was a grin that only widened as he met Cable's gaze and saw the recognition staring back.
“Tolliver!”
He'd allowed for this, he'd given his team instructions for this exact eventuality, but there'd been too many other concerns and no time, so it was only now that it struck him how impossibly far from ready for this he was.
“Surprised, Nathan?” Tolliver's voice was low and mocking, and the sound of it hit Cable like a punch to the gut. “You didn't think I'd let you this far into my domain without offering you a proper welcome?”
“Whoa, boss, is that you?” That came from Deadpool. “What a coincidence, I mean what are the odds I was gonna meet you here, down in your very own dungeon of your very own villa? Uh. You know, I must've rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, but somehow I never allowed for the possibility I was gonna be fighting a big robot when we had it... Soooo, you wanna play 'guess what the going market rate is for a mercenary of my calibre'? Uh-huh, I thought so too, but as it turns out...”
“Deadpool, you are going to regret choosing to side with the likes of him against me,” Tolliver promised.
“Wait, you already knew? Well now I feel all dumb about trying so hard to break it to you gently, your coatiness. I always meant to ask, was it all about your childhood crush on Dick Tracy, or do you just have a secret affection for the middle-aged-flasher-lurking-in-the-bushes-behind-the-kiddies-playground look? But let's be fair, you do make up for it with your breathtaking command of supervillain dialogue - don't be shy, Mr Tolliver, tell the audience just how hard it is for you not to end every line with 'I'll get you next time, Captain Planet!'”
Hidden cameras, Cable thought as the next robot came at him. He'd been so proud of his clever work contacting Domino from inside that tunnel he hadn't even thought.
“I will make you feel every word you uttered here today, Wilson!”
“Oooh, guys, you hear that? He used my real name, I musta really hit a nerve!” The end of this was punctuated as the head of robot Deadpool had been fighting exploded. “Aw, did I do that? Remind me, ex-boss, how much money did each of these babies set you back? Are we talking six figures, seven? Or was it more one of those things where you offer the truck driver a handjob behind the cabin while... hey - hey! I'll have you know it's unbelievably rude to run off when someone's in the middle of quipping at you!”
Robot Seven was in Cable's way; the fraction of a second it would take to look away and confirm Deadpool's words would be a fraction too long, but on the edge of his hearing he could almost convince himself he could hear the sound of heavy boots retreating away upstairs.
“Deadpool!” he yelled.
“You raaaaang?” A red-booted foot came flying through Cable's peripheral vision right and connected with Robot Seven's head, knocking it to the floor. Deadpool landed and reached for his guns.
“You think I laid it on a little thick back there?” he threw over his shoulder. “I don't wanna burn all my bridges in the professional community too soon - nothing personal there, but you gotta realise we're at about the business equivalent of a second date right now - and boy do you ever know how to show a girl a good second date, but it's still only...”
“Take over,” Cable snapped. “I'm going after Tolliver.”
“You got it bo... boss, boss, did you just leave me in charge?”
Cable was too close to being out of earshot to bother with a reply.
***
The next basement up was a storeroom, lined with stacks of crates reaching up to the ceiling. Smuggling from this villa had only stepped up in scale since the days when the sea tunnel was built. Light came from a few weakly-glowing bulbs hung around the edges of the room, interrupting the gloom and casting long shadows down the stacks. A thin line of light knifed along the roof, marking out the edges of a trapdoor-like opening, probably designed to allow cargo to be winched in and out from above, and hinting at brighter lights above. Tolliver's footsteps echoed loudly up ahead, making it difficult for Cable to judge how large his lead was.
“Tolliver!” Cable roared. There was no response. He couldn't take the deep breath he wanted before the next, not while he was moving, and the name nearly caught in his throat. “Tyler!”
Under the fading echo of his own voice, Cable heard Tolliver's footsteps come to a stop, then the slow sound of laughter echoing back to him; the tone of it different without the low, deliberate hiss Tolliver injected into his speech. It sounded older than he remembered it, but unsettlingly familiar. It wasn't until the long moment of silence that followed, and with it the fact that he could no longer hear his own footsteps, that Cable realised he'd let himself freeze where he stood.
“Well, that I never counted on,” said Tyler, still impossible to pinpoint. “When did you figure it out?”
“Just now.” However many months it had been since he'd come by that knowledge, knowing and knowing were irreconcilably different things.
“Hm. This would be my opening to ask what gave me away, but now that you know...” He gave a low chuckle. “What does that feel like, I wonder? How many years has it been for you, since you thought you'd put me out of my misery - and here I am, back to haunt you.”
Cable had no plan for this, nothing but the gut feeling he had to keep Tyler talking as long as he could. “Tyler, if you think I have it in me to be angry with you for what you've become, when I never even knew you were alive...”
“The only shame of this,” the interruption carried something sharp and brittle pushing its way into the edge of his voice, “is that I won't be there to see Domino's face when you tell her it was your own flesh and blood who held her prisoner down there - for all those months while you never even knew. Did you enjoy your time with my shapeshifter while she was gone? She was a whore long before we talked her into trying a more... lucrative line of work. I never did get to tell either of them what became of the last woman you convinced you cared for.”
Words aimed to hurt, too obvious to have much bite, but they did serve to remind Cable he was having this conversation standing in the middle of the hall and spur him to dodge around the side of the nearest stack and press his back flat against the side of a crate. He couldn't afford to assume that just because he couldn't see Tyler the reverse was the same, that he'd honour any level of truce for long. “If your purpose has always been revenge, Tyler, I'm surprised you didn't want me to know. Unless... unless it was easier for you to pretend-”
“Pretend this was never more than an old business matter gone bad? Haven't you followed Tolliver's reputation? He's killed men for less.”
“Pretend you were never my son.”
This time, the laugh from Tyler sounded more forced than natural. “Oh go on, Dad - sing me the song about how this isn't me. Let's hear how everything I've done to you is nothing more than Stryfe's doing. He lost his hold on me years ago. He's next on my list, once I'm done with you.”
Cable swallowed, tightening his already white-knuckled grip on his gun. “You won't listen to reason, Tyler, but if I have to use force to take you down-” It was definitely the wrong thing to say.
“It won't be the first time, will it, Dad? I was your son, you bastard son of a machine, and did you even hesitate when you took that shot? But since we're talking, why don't you tell me all about how the choice was taken from you; how it was the lesser of two evils to sacrifice your own child! It's been a long time for me too, why don't you refresh my memory of the true inspiration for everything I'm going to do to you.”
“Tyler...” To hear his son's voice fly so suddenly and completely into rage made something knot in Cables chest, driving home the stakes like nothing before it.
Some of his control was back when Tyler spoke next. “You'll want to be careful in here, though. You've got no idea what kind of incendiaries I might be storing in these crates.”
Cable cursed and flicked the safety back on his gun. Tyler might be bluffing but arms dealing was Tolliver's trade - there could be anything in these crates. He could win at hand to hand, but he'd have to get close, and Tyler might not let him. Even as he'd built himself a persona who could hide behind assassins and robotic guardsmen, he was bound to be armed and there'd been something in his voice that made Cable fear he might not hesitate to bring the sky down on his own head as long as he knew he'd been taking his father with him.
He reached out with his telepathy again, trying to locate the other mind in this basement, only to be hit by the psychic equivalent of a thousand-decibel scream. Already worn down from his over-long conversation with Domino, for an infinite moment Cable didn't know which way was up, points of light exploding behind his eyelids.
He should have known better. He'd taught Tyler that one too.
“Always so damned predictable,” Tyler spat.
Cable wasn't so deafened that he didn't notice that the voice was louder than the echo all of a sudden. He turned to face it - too slow, saw the silhouette of Tyler's body, arm raised to shoot. He was still dressed in Tolliver's coat, his face in shadow, but his hat was gone and the angle of the light was high enough to catch the blond of Tyler's hair.
“Send Carlyle my regards.”
The shot didn't hit him; it impacted into the side of a crate not five feet away, and under the roar of the explosion he had just the chance to reflect that on this account at least, Tyler hadn't been lying.
He was long gone by the time Cable was able to pull himself together and stagger his way to the far staircase that lead to the villa above. All that remained for him to find was the noise of a helicopter retreating away into the distance.
***
He found his team coming the other way up the lower stairs, and they met his reappearance with a chorus of startled gasps. Domino was in the lead, leaner than he remembered her, the skin around her right eye blackening in crude mockery of her left, but still as fierce and grimly beautiful as he'd ever seen her.
“Tolliver?” she demanded.
“Gone.” Cable couldn't muster the energy to go into more detail. The still smouldering corners of the storage basement would stand as proof he hadn't let Tolliver go without a fight.
Domino took it as well as anyone could have. “Next time you catch up to him, Nate, you'd better save a piece for me, and I don't mean leftovers. I have four months in that fucking cell to take out of his flesh.”
“I've no doubt he knows it,” Cable managed, but it was hard to meet her eye, his gaze drifting instead to what he recognised as one of Deadpool's guns slung over her shoulder.
“I told her how you left me in charge but, oh no, she just had to be the one calling the shots,” Deadpool grumbled, then did a double-take as he got his first look at Cable. “Uh, boss? Don't look now, but you're kinda... peeling.”
“It's worse than it looks,” said Cable, who hadn't really any idea how bad it looked, though he was probably missing most of the synth-skin on the left side of his face and both eyebrows at the very least. “Everyone accounted for?”
The chorus of affirmatives were hardly done before Cable was calling the Professor for a bodyslide home.
***
If there ought to have been any relief in making it back home without casualties he was too numb to enjoy it. In the wake of everything that had happened in Sardegna the simple familiarity of it all felt like more than he could trust. Hard to believe that only hours ago he'd fully expected his confrontation with Deadpool in the library to be the worst he'd have to deal with that day. It felt like days since he'd last slept.
It might still be hours yet before he could tear himself away, with everything left to be put to bed on all these loose ends that had come unravelled. He was sure he used to be much better than this at compartmentalising what he couldn't afford to deal with, but the ability seemed to have deserted him when he needed it. Maybe some of Tyler's barbs had sunk deeper than he'd realised.
It took him several long seconds to put it together in his head that what Domino had just said was, “Where are we?”
“Basement level under what used to be the X-Mansion,” he explained, shaking himself. “Home base - for the time being.”
Domino did not waste time asking for the tour. “So when do I get to see this metamorph who's so good she had even you fooled?”
Some nagging instinct, still on edge after the earlier revelations of the day, took that moment to warn Cable that he hadn't yet told her anything about Copycat. The more rational portion of his thoughts pointed out that even if Tolliver hadn't told her exactly what his plan entailed himself, she'd had several minutes down below with Cable's team while he was chasing Tolliver, and the subject was bound to have come up.
He started to answer, but was cut off by Rictor's voice calling, “Cable!” from up the corridor. Cable turned just in time to see him falter at the sight of them.
“What is it, Rictor?” he said, shutting down all inquiries about his condition before they started.
“Cable, it's Vanessa - the shapeshifter. You've got to come see this.”
He didn't look panicked and he hadn't been running, but Cable - beyond any hope of guessing what Rictor might have meant - hurried after him, Domino on his heels.
They'd put Copycat in the Danger Room, a steel cage just large enough for her to sit down in and a single wooden chair standing in front of it the only points of departure from the bare-metal finish of the room while inactive. Wolfsbane stood on all fours on the far side, giving herself a view of cage, prisoner and exit in one line. Vanessa's eyes barely flickered upwards as Cable came in.
“You did tell me to think hard about it,” she said, in a voice so quiet it was hard to say if she'd wanted it heard. “I guess I came back to me.” She had pale blue skin in her true form, a shock of white hair and inhuman red and black eyes, and little if any of Domino's spirit left.
Cable did not find himself much relieved that this was all Rictor had meant. Domino looked even less impressed.
“That's it?” she said, and if she sounded more incredulous than furious, Cable didn't trust it to last. “Four months you spend wearing my face and-”
“Dom, wait,” Cable grabbed her by the shoulder before she could take another step towards Copycat. She didn't shrug him off, but the tension he could feel under her skin spoke very clearly of just how close it was. “You are not going to fix this by taking what Tolliver did to you out on her.”
It took the space of a breath for her to turn all that anger onto him, but he met her gaze without flinching.
“Does this look like the time for a lecture on revenge?” she demanded.
“She's not going anywhere,” said Cable. “Give yourself the night at least; we'll deal with her in the morning.”
Domino glared at him for another few seconds of furious silence before turning on her heel and marching back out of the room. It was probably easier to blame him for making her back down than to argue a point she wasn't going to win. He didn't resent her for it.
He spared another glance at Copycat, who had lapsed back into silence, face drawn in the look of someone trying not to cry and knees curled tight up against her chest. After a minute it seemed to dawn on her he wasn't going anywhere.
“I'd thank you,” she said, bitterly, “but it would have been kinder to let her get it over with.”
“What part of this would that get us 'over with'?” Cable did not bother to temper his tone. “Yours? Hers? You've known me long enough to know I don't let my soldiers make mistakes in anger.”
“Don't you?” Copycat bit back, and that was almost enough to make him change his mind about whether Dom would have been making a mistake at all.
“Don't confuse Tolliver's methods with mine.”
“If I believed you were anything like Tolliver I'd have set that bomb months ago and gone right on sleeping like a baby every night,” said Copycat; it wasn't close to being an apology. “But if I hadn't been so damned scared of you... god, do you think it would have been easy for me to come to you with the truth?”
A sharp reminder of how little right she had to make any of this his fault was on the tip of his tongue before the hypocrisy of it caught up with him, and afterwards it was too late for any kind of effective comeback. Even if you could explain away every one of Tyler's grievances, there was probably a reason he hadn't been warned about this, and he wasn't sure it was one he wanted to examine.
Mother Askani, he was far too tired to be having this conversation.
“I sent her away because I have had too long a day to trust myself to rein her in, and because even if she doesn't hate you any less a few hours from now she'll have had time to think about whether she'd regret taking it out of your flesh. If you're very lucky, by morning I might be closer to forgetting how close I came to losing her,” Cable told her instead. “Get some rest.”
He was halfway to the door when he heard Copycat call out, “Cable, did you... is Tolliver...?”
“He got away.” Under the circumstances it would be kinder not to share Tyler's parting words.
Over his shoulder he saw Copycat lower her head and curl her hands tighter around her knees. “I am glad she's alive, you know,” she said after a second, even softer, and that, at last, sounded something like an apology.
“I hope you still feel that way tomorrow,” Cable replied, and left.
Plot Notes but mostly bitching and trivia
Good grief but Tyler is a bugger of a character to make sense of. Of the few canonical appearances he gets, his Tolliver and Genesis personas have almost nothing in common (beyond maybe a general theme of overly-dramatic card-carrying villainry) and all we get to explain how he got from one to the other is a few chapters of him wangsting about his lot in life. Sifting through all that for some kind of coherrent character basis was less productive than I might have hoped. It's not at all hard to believe he's related to Stryfe though.
The early scenes of this chapter are loosely based on X-Force #14-15 (volume 1) - though only very loosely, as I would have to admit to rewriting Tolliver's whole security system from the ground up (and very possibly getting a little carried away with it). Really, where's the fun in writing for characters with psychic abilities and luck powers if you can't let them show off?
Chapter 6