Chapter Text
Wade isn’t one to mince words, so if anyone were to ask him, he’d say it outright: he’s fucking great at his job. It’s like he was built for mercenary work. People tend to think that means he’s just really good at killing people—and yeah, okay, he is—but it’s more than that.
Mercenary work is complicated. It’s about learning your mark inside and out; doing the investigatory legwork necessary to execute the plan with irreproachable efficiency. Then, you know, executing that plan irreproachably, because the best laid plans go to shit if you can’t physically accomplish them. And on top of all of that, it’s about learning and executing everything without getting hesitant about eventually killing the target.
Wade excels at all of those demands. He isn’t afraid to spend hours stalking someone to learn their schedule or researching their life. He knows how to glean insane amounts of personal intel from scant sources, how to schmooze (read: annoy) info out of anyone, all of it. And, well, it’s safe to say he’s a dab hand at the killing. He has no reservations about deadifying someone, so long as the job request passes his basic requirements: He doesn’t hurt kids, he won’t do anything sexual, he won’t go undercover.
(This last one is less a preference for him and more a necessity. He’s got a past, an ugly one that’s left equally ugly scars behind. He operates exclusively in his standard uniform, and red and black leather doesn’t work well undercover.)
This mark definitely meets the requirements. Bartosz Dakowicz is, by all accounts, a promising young upstart in some Polish gang making waves in New York’s organized crime scene. “Promising young upstart” meaning, of course, that Barty’s a ruthless murder machine with a fondness for leaving behind just enough body parts to make it gruesome. Wade can respect that. But, unfortunately for Ol’ Bartotron, he left the wrong body part in the wrong place, and now Wade has to kill him.
Well, no. Wade’s getting paid to kill him, to be fair. But the fact that Bartroglodyte left a victim’s dick in his daughter’s bed makes the job way more appealing. There are good Godfather references and bad ones, and this is the worst one yet.
Wade tails Bartman for two weeks to learn his schedule and identify essential staff. A handy-dandy gadget Weasel cooked up lets Wade’s phone hack into a bodyguard’s earpiece, which (1) makes him a fly on the wall for all of Bartodendron’s conversations, and (2) gives him something to listen to during long stake-outs. It’s like a really bad, sometimes Polish podcast. With occasional pissing noises, because apparently these dumbfucks don’t turn off their earpieces in the bathroom.
Beyond that, there’s not much more to glean from spywork. The dossier was actually helpful, for once, so as soon as Wade knows when and where will work best, it’s murder time.
In the end, it’s almost embarrassingly easy. Barto the Wonder Boy eats, sleeps, and shits with armed guards, but he sends everyone away for a very specific half hour each night, or a full hour if he’s with one of his various, buxom armpieces. Wade’s not opposed to taking out the guards, too, but there’s a beautiful irony to things when he sneaks into Bartocles’ pad and finds the guy alone, dick in hand, with—
“Oh, this is my favorite!” Wade cries, admiring the gay porn projected on the wall. Bartopotomous yelps and spins around on his bed while a pornstar moans loudly in surround sound. Wade ignores him while he scrabbles at his nightstand, probably for a gun or whatever. “My favorite part is when Johnny Coxville takes it from Austin Danger and Logan Maxx at the same time. What can I say? I’m a DP kinda guy. Get it? DP?”
Bart the Fart points a .38 at Wade with one trembling hand while the other fumbles to hide Barty Crouch Jr. “Who the fu—how did you get in here?”
“Door,” Wade responds, pointing to—obviously—a large vent on the ceiling. “You got real roomy pipes in this place, you know that? Johnny could take notes on how roomy these pipes are. You know. For the DP action.”
Finally, the DP joke registers and Bartantula’s face goes pale. “You’re him.”
“Well, I’m not ‘her!’” Wade cries jovially, hooking his thumbs into his belt and swinging his hips forward. “Not with this package. I’d offer to show you, but I think you’d like it too much, and we can’t have that. What will they say when they learn that the famous Bartosz Dakowicz likes his pizza with extra sausage?”
Barthur the Bardvark swallows hard. “What are they paying you? I’ll double it. Triple it.”
Wade gets that offer a lot, which is pretty stupid considering his reputation as a reliable hire. Sometimes he humors those marks just to watch the hope build and then congeal on their faces before he offs them, but this time he doesn’t even try.
“See, that could have worked if you hadn’t done what you did to Bianca,” Wade says mock-remorsefully. At Barteleon’s blank stare, Wade rolls his eyes with his whole head, to make it obvious through the mask. “Don Giamatti’s kid? The one you sentenced to a lifetime of therapy? That was a big five-inch mistake, amigo.”
Bart Attack, like a true idiot, scoffs. “You tellin’ me Deadpool’s got a soft spot for the kiddos? Jesus, and I thought you were a real threat.”
Wade’s good humor drops away. When he speaks, his voice is flat and deadly. “I am.”
He withdraws a gun, aims, and fires, and Dakowicz drops before he can so much as cock his own gun. Blood begins seeping from the hole between his eyes and soaks into his rug.
“Shame,” Wade sighs, approaching Dakowicz’s body to confirm the kill. “That looks like a genuine Persian.”
He checks for a pulse, and when he doesn’t find one, he snaps a picture for proof and heads back to the vent to leave the way he came.
There’s a gasp from the doorway behind him.
Wade turns to find a small, weathered woman entering from the hallway. She holds an arthritic hand up to her mouth and says something in Polish.
“Sorry, hot stuff,” Wade says, looking around for something to use as a stepstool. “Hablo inglés. I’ll be out of your hair in just a sec.”
“American,” the woman responds coldly in a thick accent. “Of course.”
“Canadian, actually,” Wade replies conversationally. There, an armchair, perfect. He heaves it across the floor. “If it makes you feel any better, whoever put the hit out really thought Bartopher, here, was a threat. Hired the best of the best to take him out.”
“And this is you?” The old woman takes two slow, hobbling steps into the room. Wade has to give her credit, she’s got balls of steel for a granny. “You think you are best?”
“I am the best,” Wade corrects, climbing onto the chair. He grins under his mask. “And I’m a pretty fuckin’ good mercenary, too.”
“You are nothing,” the old woman spits. She claps her knobby hands together and Wade collapses to the floor, suddenly and startlingly immobile. “Scum like on shoe.”
He—he can’t move. He can’t move.
What the fuck? he shouts, but nothing comes out. He fights to shift a leg, an arm, a pinky, anything.
He’s stuck.
Wade exhales—his respiratory system and eyes seem to have avoided the paralysis, at least. He blinks, thinking fast. How did she manage to paralyze him without even so much as a dart? It’s like she’s—
Oh. Oh, fuck. She’s a mutant.
“No,” the old woman hisses, ambling forward on stiff legs. “Not mutant. Worse.”
And she reads minds, too? Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Not good.
The old woman closes her eyes for a second and tilts her head as if listening to something. “Pathetic,” she says after a moment. “Alone, sad, pathetic man. No one to love you, no one to miss you. No one alive, anyway.”
Vanessa.
Wade would chop this woman’s head off in a blink for making him think about Vanessa, if he could reach his swords.
“And you think you are so great? Pah!” The old woman stands over Wade and draws her knotted hands through the air. “Arrogant man who thinks nothing can touch him. You want to be cocky? Fine. Be cocky.”
She draws a circle through the air with two arthritic fingertips, and an orange, sputtering line forms in their wake. She shoves the palm of her hand through the center, muttering something in a language that Wade is pretty sure ain’t Polish.
There’s a loud, visceral crack as Wade’s right leg flares with pain. Another crack for his left. More cracks follow as bones break without reason or cause. Wade would scream, if he could. Magic, he thinks wildly in the space between blinding sears of agony. Fucking—magic. Which isn’t real, but neither were mutants a hundred years ago. Whatever the fuck this ba-bitch-ka is doing to him, if it ain’t magic, it’s the next best thing.
With all his major bones shattered, the magic spreads to the rest of him, breaking him apart in wet, meaty pops. His mind is screaming, his thoughts are screaming, his world is screaming.
But his frozen voice isn’t, so he hears every word of what the old woman says next. “The old ways are not so cruel as you. There is, how you say, balance. Cure your arrogance, end the spell.”
And just how the FUCK do I do THAT? Wade would roar at her, if he could.
“You must find the one who is best,” the old woman answers. “Believe he is best, and have him see best in you. This is how you come back.”
Come back from WHAT?
If she can hear his thoughts this time, she ignores them. There’s a crack in his neck. Another in his jaw. His nose. His eye sockets.
“Goodnight, cocky man.”
Crack.
Wade’s world goes black.
“And your friends? How are they?”
Peter watches dust motes drift in the glow of a sunbeam, not answering immediately. It seems wrong, somehow, for the sun to shine so brightly. It seems wrong that days can be so long and so warm. It seems wrong for the world to have anything in it but cold darkness.
Dr. Patel’s office is a small, comfortable space. Heavy wood bookcases line the walls, full of titles on various types of psychology and medicine. A large, antique-looking desk takes up the back half of the room, its surface cluttered tidily with framed photos and vacation souvenirs. The rest of the floor space is devoted to hosting sessions; there’s a squashy, velvet armchair that Dr. Patel always sits in, and then another armchair and a less squashy but equally velvet chaise for patients.
Peter has sat in the armchair every week for forty-three weeks now. He can’t bring himself to try the chaise. He can’t be a caricature like that, not when he’s peeling back his bandages and exposing his swollen, bleeding heart to her as often as he is.
“Peter?”
Peter drags his eyes away from the dust motes and back to Dr. Patel. She, like her office, is small and comfortable. Her thick hair shines with silver streaks, and her eyes crease into warm, brown wrinkles when she smiles. It’s a shame that when Peter’s around her, smiling is the last thing he wants to do.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, grimacing. “What was that?”
“Your friends,” Dr. Patel prompts patiently. “Have you seen anyone this week? You mentioned in your last session that there was a birthday get-together. Was it fun?”
Right. That.
“I didn’t go.” Guilt worms deep and familiar in his gut. “I wanted to go. I put on the clothes to go. But….”
But he couldn’t make himself walk out the door. He couldn’t plaster on a smile and pretend to be normal for three hours. He had sent MJ a text, instead, making up some excuse about a stomach bug to pardon his absence. She saw right through it—she sees through all of his excuses—but she didn’t call him out.
Next time, she replied. Like next time, he’d be better, when they both know that’s not true. No, next time, it’ll be a work conflict. A problem with the plumbing. A concerningly sore throat.
He’s gotten good at making excuses. Almost as good as he is at sitting numbly on his bed, dressed in clothes to leave, with his feet stuck like weights to the floor.
Dr. Patel exhales, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I think… we need a different plan.”
Peter clenches his hands into fists in his lap. He’s been waiting for this. He knows how long it’s been—how long he and Dr. Patel have done the dance of therapy with no results to show for it. He knows how the grief has started to wear at him, turning his clothes baggy and his hair limp. He knows what that means:
Medication.
“I don’t want drugs,” Peter says brusquely. He hates that this is the most he’s emoted in weeks. Hates that this is what draws him the most out of his shell these days. “I don’t want to dope myself up.”
It’s something he’s said to her before. Dr. Patel first brought up the idea of using antidepressants around three months into their sessions; even back then, when Peter still had some hope of getting better, he’d rejected them. He doesn’t want to medicate his feelings away. He doesn’t want to rely on some stupid pill to get him through his days. It’s not what—
It’s not what they would have wanted. They wouldn’t have wanted to know that he used drugs to forget about them. It would have broken their hearts.
“I know,” Dr. Patel replies. Her eyes wrinkle when she frowns, too. “I’m not talking about medication.”
Peter takes a breath around the raw, tattered space inside his ribs. “Then what are you talking about?”
“Something you’ll like even less,” Dr. Patel jokes, smiling gently. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and looks Peter in the eye. “I think you need a change.”
She’s right: he does like that less. He doesn’t need any more information to know that he hates the idea. He doesn’t want to change. He doesn’t want anything to be different at all.
“No.”
“You still live in the same house,” she insists quietly. “Their house. You sit at their table, eating food from their fridge. Every time you come home, you are coming back to them. I understand your hesitation, Peter. I really do. But we need to start talking about what life looks like without them.”
“I’m not moving,” Peter says, coldly furious. “I’m not leaving th—”
He cuts himself off, shocked.
If anyone had asked him five minutes ago, he’d have said that staying in the house wasn’t an emotional decision, but a practical one. He saves money staying there. It’s paid off, so there’s no mortgage to worry about. The bills are reasonable. He already knows the route to work and back. It’s logical to stay.
He had no idea he’s been staying in the house to be closer to them.
But he has. That’s exactly what it is. Every night, he tucks himself into the twin-size bed he’s had since childhood, draws up the comforter she bought for him in high school, and closes his eyes to pretend for a split second that he’s young again. Unbroken. He can pretend that he hears the clatter of a toothbrush in the bathroom and the clink of plates getting stacked in the dishes rack downstairs. He can feel the rhythmic thump of work boots on the stairs. He can imagine them.
It hasn’t ever been about the expenses or the commute.
“Oh,” he says belatedly, heart sinking. His hands have gone numb. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Dr. Patel sighs. “I know, Pete.”
He gives himself four heavy, loud heartbeats before he draws in breath. “What do I do?”
“I can’t tell you what to do,” Dr. Patel replies, smiling sympathetically. “I can’t tell you how to fix this. I wish I could; I’d have a bigger office if I had grief-fixing powers.”
Peter doesn’t laugh, and she sighs again, her smile falling away.
“I can make recommendations,” she offers. “I can give you suggestions. But what you do with them is up to you. You fix you, Peter.”
“What do you suggest, then?” he asks tightly.
Dr. Patel leans back and crosses her legs at the knee. “You need to stop living in their shadow. A fresh start. Something else, somewhere else. You need space where the only person that fills it is you.”
“And if I don’t?” Peter asks, knotting his insensate fingers together and squeezing until they turn white. “If I stay?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Patel admits. “You could eventually get better, even if you stay. But frankly? Time doesn’t heal all wounds, not by itself. And we’ve already tried a lot of the smaller options. You’ve read every book I’ve recommended, you’ve tried meditation, you’ve tried picking up hobbies. My checklist is long, Peter, but it isn’t infinite.”
His knee starts bouncing. “What other options are left?”
“Other things you won’t like,” she says, one corner of her mouth curling slightly. “Medication, of course. Maybe a different doctor, a specialist. Maybe… maybe some time in a program.”
Peter drags a hand down his face. There are no more easy steps, is what she’s saying. No more cutesy fixes or casual lifestyle changes to adopt. What’s left are the heavy-hitters, the ones Peter’s been scared of all this time. He’s been willing to go to grief counseling because it demands only a few hours of his week, leaving him the rest to feign normalcy. Once he takes meds, or finds a specialist, or—fuck—checks himself into a facility… it’s his life, changed. It’s daily, constant acceptance that he isn’t okay. That he has a real mental illness.
It’s there, he knows. The illness. The things he feels, the way he feels them, the way they never stop… all of it points a huge, neon sign toward a diagnosable problem.
Out of all the things he doesn’t like, he likes the idea of a diagnosis least of all.
“Okay,” he says eventually. “I’m not saying I’ll move, but… I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” Dr. Patel nods. Her exhale isn’t a sigh this time. Her shoulders unspool, her posture relaxes. She’s pleased with him. Finally, he’s said something that pleased her.
Peter gets it. She’s been watching him fail to improve for months now, and he can tell that beyond the paycheck, beyond the pending feather in her cap for having fixed someone as damaged as him, she genuinely wants him to get better. He knows he’s a frustrating case. He’s frustrated at himself, too.
“I know we have some time left today, but I think I’m gonna go,” he says, because there’s nothing left for them to discuss, and he needs air. “See you next week?”
“Of course. See you next week.”
He goes home, takes off his shoes, and climbs fully dressed into his too-short bed. He doesn’t leave it again until he has to go to work the following morning.
Thoroughly put off at the idea of all these clinical solutions, he takes her recommendation to heart and spends the week imagining his life in a different home. It takes days for him to peer past the wall of refusal for long enough to see the other side. When he does, though, he starts seeing slight upsides. He could be closer to work, or to friends. He could pick out furniture he likes. Buy a new bed, maybe one that he can lay on straight without his feet hanging over the edge. He could put up art, maybe some photography. Get a dog.
He could do most of those things without changing addresses, he knows. But at the same time, he can’t. Changing anything here feels like a betrayal, and he’s not sure he’d be able to stand living like that. But somewhere else, away from the walls he can remember painting with her, or the old water heater he always repaired with him, he might be able to do it. Maybe.
The week passes. And another. And another. Peter starts a separate browser window on his laptop for furniture and decorations. Another week passes, and Peter downloads a real estate app.
He goes to open houses. He takes tours. He looks at one apartment after the next. Some in midtown, near work. Some near Greenwich, where MJ lives. Some downtown, near the Oscorp tower and Harry’s penthouse.
He likes none of them. There’s nothing wrong with the apartments themselves, but nothing feels right. He can’t imagine confining himself to a box with windows like that. He wants… he wants….
No, not wants. Needs.
He needs space. He needs air and light and growth. He needs movement. He needs a place that needs him back. He needs something to work on.
Which means he needs to leave the city.
This particular revelation comes like an egg cracking open and leaking into the core of him. He needs to leave the city. Staying here at all, in the streets he knows like the back of his hand, with the businesses he’s grown up supporting, won’t work. All of it is too much of the same. Not a fresh start.
Another week passes, and Peter gathers the courage to revise his real estate preferences. This time, he looks upstate.
The difference is earth-shattering. The homes he finds aren’t boxes with windows; they have stairs and yards and basements and attics and driveways. He could have a car.
This is better, he knows immediately. This is more like what he needs.
He finds the farm almost by accident.
It’s late when he finds it, so late that his eyes are starting to feel dry and his joints are stiff with fatigue. He doesn’t even remember clicking on the listing, but there it is, red barn and all.
He clicks through the pictures perfunctorily at first, as he had with the last ten listings. It’s not much. A house, the barn, a few fenced off pens, a plot of weedy land that probably used to be a garden. The place is visibly rundown, but nevertheless there’s a peculiar brand of charm about it.
Peter’s spent hours upon hours looking at places with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops and white, white, white walls. Everything has been white or gray. Sterile. This place is anything but. The kitchen is a bright, sunny yellow. The master bedroom is a soft blue. The bathroom is mint from top to bottom, including the porcelain of the aged tub. The fridge looks like something from the sixties. Nothing about this place is stainless or sterile.
It feels like life.
Okay, he must be really tired if he’s looking at cracked linoleum floors and thinking that they look like life. Peter blearily checks the clock, unsurprised when it’s several hours past his usual bedtime. Definitely time to call it a night.
Even after he sleeps a full six hours, though, the farm doesn’t leave him be. When he goes down for breakfast—which is a generous way of describing his daily mug of cheap coffee drunk while leaning against the sink—he looks around and pictures the walls as yellow. When he gets to work and sits in his desk chair, he thinks of that plot of land and how it might feel to sink his hands into the soil underneath all those weeds. When he gets on the subway that night to go home, he imagines the rumble of an old truck and the tilt of following winding roads.
He gets home, and for the first time in possibly ever, he’s disappointed in it. It’s still, lifeless, boring. There’s nothing to do here but exist. There’s nothing to look forward to about being in his own home.
And he needs something to look forward to.
“I think I want a farm,” he announces during his next session.
Dr. Patel doesn’t even bother trying to hide her surprise. “A what?”
“A farm,” he repeats. He shrugs, knowing how it must sound for a native New Yorker to even be thinking about rural life. “It’s dumb, I know, but—”
“It’s not dumb,” Dr. Patel interrupts. “Just unexpected.”
“Unexpected, then,” Peter amends. “But… I don’t know, Doc. I found this little old farm a few days ago, and I just can’t get it out of my head.”
Dr. Patel takes a deep breath, wrinkling her brow like she’s trying to wrap her head around the idea of Peter—nerdy scientist that he is—on a farm. “Tell me about it.”
So he does. He talks about the color of the kitchen, the state of the flooring (“There’s so much linoleum,” he says with an element of horrified glee), the overgrown garden, the ramshackle barn. The descriptions come pouring out of him; he’s not sure he’s ever talked so much in one of their sessions. Hell, he’s not sure he’s talked this much in a year.
By the time he’s done, Dr. Patel’s face is broad with the size of her smile. “It sounds like quite the place. Is it still available?”
“It is,” Peter confirms. He’s checked the listing every day since he found it. “It’s been on the market for a few months. It’s… it needs work. A lot of it.”
“Good,” she says, folding her hands in her lap. “The best homes do.”
“You don’t think… you don’t think it’s stupid?” Peter asks, worrying the inside of his lip. “It’s stupid, right?”
“I don’t think it’s stupid.” Dr. Patel considers him for a moment. “Can I be honest with you?”
Peter squints at her. “Do you normally lie to me?”
This is new; he never jokes around anymore. Her smile is bright enough to acknowledge the change without calling it out.
“I think buying that farm may be the best idea you’ve had since we met,” she says in lieu of a response. “I think you need something to take care of, and I don’t think you’ll ever find what you’re looking for in the city. But, that being said, a farm is a lot of work, and I think you need to be sure you understand what you’re signing up for if you put in a bid.”
Peter flushes. “I… maybe downloaded an audiobook on farming this morning.”
She narrows her eyes at him conspiratorially. “It sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind, then.”
She’s right, Peter registers—he hasn’t let himself admit it, but some part of him already sees that farm as his. If he doesn’t buy it, he won’t just be disappointed, he’ll feel like he’s lost something. Something important.
“I guess… I guess I just wanted to know if you thought it was a good idea,” he says eventually.
“Well, I do,” she replies. “It’s certainly not for everybody, but I think it’s a fantastic decision for you. Are you going to have animals?”
Peter hasn’t thought about that. He’s seen the barn and the pens, and he’s passively acknowledged that those are places for animals to live, but he hasn’t thought about the idea of actually having animals.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, taken aback by just how much he wants them. “Absolutely.”
She laughs, and for the first time in ten months, it sounds happy. “I’m glad. But, in the interest of being a good therapist, I think we should talk through what all this means for you.”
They spend the rest of the session going over the various ways Peter’s life will change once he buys the farm. He’ll have to quit his job—no huge loss there, as he has enough money from life insurance pay-outs to live off of for a decade at least—and sell everything he doesn’t want to bring with him. He’ll leave behind his friends, which, again, isn’t that big of a deal since he barely sees them as is. And he’ll leave Dr. Patel.
“I don’t do virtual appointments,” she explains. “I’ve found that it’s difficult to connect with clients by video, which makes it hard for me to respond appropriately to their needs.”
“Right,” Peter says, discomfited. This is a bigger deal than the rest. He’s grown used to her consistent presence in his life. He doesn’t have them, but he has her. If he leaves, he’ll have no one to talk to anymore. No one to check in with or confide in.
“If you give me the address, I can look for therapists in your area,” she offers, flipping open her pad. “Or I can refer you to some colleagues who hold sessions remotely.”
But Peter doesn’t want to work with anyone else. “What if… what if we just met once a month,” he suggests uneasily. “I can come back to the city. I’ll take whatever time slot would work for you, I just… would that work?”
She bites at the inside of her cheek, her pursed lips twisting slightly to the side. “I’m not sure that reducing your appointments to once monthly is the best idea. This is going to be a critical time for you.”
“Please.” Peter stares down at his lap, unable to look her in the eye when his voice sounds so desperate. “I’ll do biweekly to start, if you think that’s better. I just… I want it to be you. You know me already. I need one thing that doesn’t change. Please.”
She considers him for several slow, painful seconds. “Okay. We can do that. I see what you’re saying, and I agree that having someone familiar around is therapeutically advantageous. Biweekly to start, and if everything works out, we can drop to once monthly. How does that sound?”
“Great,” Peter says immediately, grateful. “That works perfectly, thank you.”
“Good.” Her face creases into a warm smile. “I’m proud of you, Peter.”
Peter, for the first time in ten months, returns the smile. I’m buying a farm, he thinks wildly. “Me too.”