[Fic] Sugar and Spice part 1 - Cable/Deadpool + Hope (original) (raw)
Title: Sugar and Spice 1/??
Author: Guardian
Rating: T
Characters: Cable, Deadpool, Hope
Timeline: This takes place sometime around Cable #12, in that Hope has proven that she's got survival skills, but avoiding the transition into Stryfe territory.
Disclaimer: written for fun, not profit.
Word Count: 2,270
Summary: Nearly 300 years into the future, Nathan didn't expect to run into Wade Wilson. But it's no coincidence.
Nathan Summers had never been so physically exhausted in his life. A few days had passed since he'd had so much as an hour of sleep. He had spent years on the run already. Years spent jumping through decades and centuries of time, all to keep one girl – Hope Summers, the future of mutantkind – safe.
This was just one more night when he could not afford to sleep, but Hope was too tired to keep moving. Nathan was forced to build camp - or at least a fire to cook a few skinny rats and keep his charge warm.
She was curled up nearby, sleeping. Her red hair reflected the flicker of the campfire and seemed to glow with an ember hue. At times he wondered how her power would manifest, but Nate didn't allow himself to dwell on the possibilities. He was teaching her to fight as a soldier and use her senses, her skills, and her environment to her advantage. Hope picked up on all of it quickly, but she still had a lot to learn. If she were any older, she probably wouldn't be sound asleep, completely unaware that even now they were being hunted.
Nathan cocked his gun and pointed it into the darkness, his left eye flashing in warning.
"I know you're there."
There was a tense second, a tiny fraction of doubt in which Nate began to calculate the best way to evacuate Hope from the area. Then he heard gravel shift under the weight of someone's footsteps and saw the figure of someone approaching with their hands raised in surrender.
"Geez, you telepathic again, Nate? I was even trying to be sneaky. You must've read my yellow boxes."
"Wilson?" A small shiver of relief tingled at his spine. There was no mistaking that gravely Demi-Moore voice, and the cryptic words that even he couldn't understand. But Nathan didn't lower his gun even as his old friend walked into the flickering light.
"You sound surprised," Wade said. "Expecting somebody else?"
"Not anyone in particular," Nathan answered, "but I didn't expect to see you."
"Ow," Wade clasped a hand over his chest. "That hurts me, Nate. Seriously, that's shrapnel right into the meaty part of my heart. I know I'm no buxom blonde, but I thought we were buddies."
"What I mean to say, Wade, is that we're hundreds of years into the future. Even you should be dead by now." It made Nate a little worried, wondering how much sleep he'd lost, or if he were dreaming of Wilson's ghost.
"Unless, of course, you aren't the only one with a fancy time machine." Wade tapped a mechanism attached to his belt. "You really should've picked anywhere else to hide. The whole Post-Apocalyptic Future thing has been played to death." Wade stared at Nathan, and tilted his head curiously as if he could see tenuous cables breaking in his friend's head, as if their roles were reversed and now Nathan was the crazy one. "You okay, Nate? You look pale. You not getting enough iron?"
Nathan weighed the pros and cons of putting a round into Wade's shoulder. It seemed like a waste of ammo. A shot to the throat might be worth it, though...
"Why didn't ya just pop back to the X-Men? I heard Cyclops has an ucler the size of Big Bertha from worrying about you."
"I can't go back," Nathan said, finally lowering his weapon, but keeping it at the ready. Worst case scenario, Wilson was a figment of his exhausted imagination. "The mechanism is broken. We can only go forward in time until I fix it."
Wade grinned maniacally. "Then you should be glad I'm here! Come on, Nate, I can get you and the kid back in two seconds flat. The X-Men have been pulling out all the stops to find you two."
"And they sent you with a time machine?"
"You really think the X-Men would trust me to come into the future and rescue you, much less even use one of their gadgets? And that's even if they had a gadget like this. No, this is state-of-the-art stolen tech from the future. My employers have deep pockets, you know. Like, deeper than Elijah Wood's crystal blue doe eyes. They paid me twenty mil upfront to come here."
"And do what, Wade?" Nathan asked, already knowing the answer.
"Nothing that I'd actually do."
"To do what," Nathan repeated, rising to his feet with his gun trained on Wade once again. The frightening tone of Nate's voice, like distant thunder, was what finally woke Hope. He didn't need Wade to speak – his telepathy was able to skim the answer from the mercenary's mind – Deadpool had been hired to kill Hope. "You accepted their offer?"
"Of course I did! I couldn't let anyone else get this gig."
"Nathan?"
"Get behind me, Hope," Nathan ordered, and Hope quickly complied, clinging to one of his legs. "I thought I knew you, Wilson. I knew you'd do anything for money, but I never thought you'd stoop this low."
"I thought you did know me better than that. I'm hurt, Nate, really hurt that you'd think I'd actually turn on you."
"I already have one old friend hunting us down, Wilson. Last I remember, you tend to take the side with the biggest paycheck. So you'd better clarify your intentions quickly, or it'll take your remains a week to congeal back together."
"Nate, they were asking anyone to do the job. They practically had a billboard ad in Times Square."
"Who is 'they'?"
"Dunno, really. All I know is they had a time machine and they wanted a bad-ass merc to use it to track you and the kid down."
"What's a 'bat-ass murk'?" Hope questioned.
"Not now, little one." Nathan kept his focus on Deadpool. "Keep talking, Wade."
"There were guys lined up around the block, Nate. Serious threats. Monsters who wouldn't think twice about putting down a little girl. Even a street mime. Of course I had to sign up for the job. I took out any serious competition so I'd be their only choice. Hell, I took out most of the wanna-be mercs on three continents to guarantee that they couldn't pick anyone else. I even had to take out the street mime, and not just on principle; they were gonna hire him before they'd even look at me! Turns out, they really didn't want me to have the job. Jerks. It's like they thought I'd betray them. I mean, I did, but it would have been nice for them to have a little misplaced faith in me!"
Nathan laughed – but it was a deep sound that neared relief rather than disbelief, even though he still kept Deadpool's head in his crosshairs. "So you went through all that trouble just to find me and warn me?"
"Bingo!" Wade grinned through his mask. "Best part is, I even got paid to do it."
"You came a long way just to cash a paycheck," Nathan said, almost dismissive and teasing, but he was suddenly aware that the comment hit Wade with an unexpectedly sharp edge, and the atmosphere went tense. Nate normally couldn't read Wade's mind very well, but in that instant, the mercenary's true intentions were as clear to Nathan as if they were his own.
Wade was concerned. That alone made Nate worried. Despite his joking, this had nothing to do with money, or the chance to cause violence, or getting to see Nathan again, or even the idea of having free reign with a time machine. Deadpool had heard about the hit, the resources available to make it happen, and the unseemly types who not only agreed to do it but would be damn hard to stop from doing it, and all of that had made him terrified. Terrified because someone wanted to kill a little girl.
He'd taken the job – and suffered grievous injuries from every opponent he had to go through first – purely to save Hope. Not because she was the first mutant born since M-Day, or because she was supposed to be special to human and mutantkind. Wade had gone through so much trouble simply because she was just a kid.
Nate holstered his gun, not sure of what else to think or do. 'Thank you' wouldn't begin to convey the degree of his gratitude.
"So, you gonna come back to the present with me?" Wade asked, fidgeting in Nate's silence.
"We're gonna go see the X-Men?" Hope asked, reaching up to tug excitedly at Nathan's sleeve.
"No," Nathan answered.
"Hm." Wade kicked a rock towards the campfire. "Alright, cool." And that settled it.
He walked over to their side of the fire and sat down in the dirt, sprawling out his legs so that the soles of his shoes nearly touched the hot coals. "This reminds me of when I used to be a Muskrat, but with less angry badgers. Unless that doesn't count in this continuity. Taskmaster as a female kind of freaked me out, anyway. But I wish I could've kept those sweet badges. Oooh, do I smell fire-roasted apocalypse rats? That's my fav!"
"Nay-Nay?" Hope questioned, still clinging to her guardian's leg and torn between trying to catch Nate's attention and watching Wade pick at the bony remains of their dinner.
"Hope, this is an old friend of mine, Wade Wilson," Nate said, gently prying her fingers from him and crouching down to her eye level. "Wade, this is Hope."
"Hope Summers," the little red-head amended, her voice carrying surprising authority for her age.
Wade giggled at how much the little spitfire took after Nathan. "Did she adopt all your other names, too, Priscilla?"
"Priscilla?" Hope repeated.
"Wade says funny things," Nate explained as simply as possible. "You learn to ignore them."
"He smells funny too," Hope crinkled her nose.
Nate smiled. "You learn to ignore that, too."
"Hey!" Wade pouted, and the two Summers giggled together.
/////
"Are you an X-Man, Mr. Wilson?"
"As I matter-of-fact..."
"No, he's not," Nathan interrupted.
Wade gave Nathan a murderous glare before focusing on Hope again. "Well, they wish I was on their team. I'm always too busy on top-secret missions and saving the world and stuff."
Nathan merely shook his head, amused, while Wade regaled Hope with his version of reality. Parents told fairy tales to their children all the time, Nathan reasoned. He'd just have to have a talk with Hope later about how Wade sometimes saw the world in his own... special way.
Nate had just finished a sweep of the area. After Deadpool's surprise arrival, he had to make sure that no one else had come with him, or been attracted by Wilson's chatter. He found nothing. Apparently the feeling of being hunted had been caused by Deadpool tracking them, because there were no other sentient lifeforms around for miles.
He'd been reluctant to entrust Deadpool with Hope's safety for all of five seconds before it became apparent to him that Wade was more likely to try to raise Hope himself than ever hurt her. The costumed mercenary was seriously enamored with the girl. Even pushing his telepathy to the limit trying to read Wilson's mind, all that Nathan could pick up was Wilson's desire to impress Hope, and a fascination with the word 'chimichanga'. It seemed like Wade had finally met a prospective audience for his talents.
"Did you ever meet Wolverine?" Hope asked, suppressing a yawn. She was curled against Nate's side despite insisting that she wasn't tired.
"What do you know about Wolverine?" Deadpool asked, giving her a skeptical look.
"Nathan told me about him," Hope said. "He said he's got claws that shoot out of his knuckles like, whoosh! and his skeleton is made of metal and he can heal from almost anything and he's the best X-Man ever."
"First of all, small stuff, the word is snikt, and second of all his healing factor ain't nothing compared to mine! Seriously, I'll prove it to you – hey Nate, be a pal and shoot me in the head?"
"Wade," Nate said, with infinite patience, "unnecessary gunfire will draw attention to us."
"Oh, right." Wade drew a katana from his back and handed it to Nate. "Take off the left hand, then. I've got an uneven number of spare gloves."
"Not in front of the child."
"I've seen way worse!" Hope objected. "I know how to kill roaches." In her defense, that would have been a lot more impressive if Wade knew that she was talking about six-foot-tall humanoid mutants.
"Roaches, huh? Did I ever tell ya about the time I had leeches in my ears?"
Wade chattered on through the night until Nate was the only one left reacting to his outlandish stories. Hope had long since fallen asleep against Nate's side, and Wade's volume dwindled so as not to wake her.
"I think you should get some sleep, too," Nathan finally said. "The sun will be up in a few hours, and we need to press on."
"Sleep? I never sleep. I'm jet-lagged from time-traveling. I'm not even tired," Wade babbled.
"Uh-huh." Nathan started mentally counting.
"You know, it's been forever since we've seen each other. Not sure what the official continuity on this is. Are we still divorced? And what's with the kid, anyway? It's always been something with you – Providence, Rumekistan..."
"It's hard to explain, Wade," Nate said. And he didn't have to explain, because twelve seconds later, Deadpool was curled up on his side, sound asleep.