Chapter Text
Nathan had seen a lot of battle aftermaths. He knew even the victories could be hard on people. In those moments, he was used to putting the combat firmly behind him and kicking back for a couple beers with his comrades as if nothing had happened. Well, that was fucked now. He could have imagined after-combat drinks with Domino, all charm and confidence and enough raw skill to make him kind of want to buy her drinks all night and talk shop, not sex. Or the big Russian fucker. He looked like one of those by-the-book guys who took things serious, which Nathan respected, and he probably crushed vodka like a pro. Hell, he would even grudgingly sit down with Wilson. Wilson was a psycho, but Nathan had already decided he was worth keeping around, sealed that decision in the flow of the timestream, and lead, and blood. Wilson had found a solution to this whole mess, and if he could do that, then his fucked-up perspective was clearly unique enough to be useful. Wilson would flirt and natter at him in turn all night while they drank, and Nathan would let him, and each successive drink would make it easier to imagine Wilson filling the void of his wife, Louise, who nattered just like that in her wonderful way. Now so far away, but safe, and safer if he kept away from her. Separated by a couple decades. Yeah.
But then there was the fucking kid. Wedged in between him and Domino in the back of Dopinder’s (now rather bloody) yellow cab, all hunched up and quiet.
In the end, the X-contingent had taken Domino’s magic schoolbus back to the Mansion to negotiate getting Wilson and the kid taken off whatever official shit-lists Xavier might have power over and figure out what to do with several dozen shellshocked and traumatized mutant kids, which left Cable and Domino and Wade and Russell to get a ride with Dopinder back to the old blind lady’s apartment, because Wade had apparently blown his own apartment to shit not too long ago.
At first Russell had seemed to derive some kind of peace from the death of that creepy kidfucker headmaster. Domino had put an arm around him and murmured, “We outlived the bastard, honey, it’s gonna get better now,”. And Russell had grinned up at her with a little too much of a glint in his eye, making Nathan reach for the stuffed bear to reassure himself the thing was still free of ash and blood. Maybe the chubby little motherfucker wasn’t a mass murderer any more, but he still had a vengeful streak.
And Wade Wilson, thus far a necessary buffer between Cable and his quarry, had the audacity to fall asleep in the front seat on the way back. Domino soon followed, declaring that she could cat-nap anywhere. So now it was just Nathan and Russell fucking Collins, in uncomfortably close proximity, while Dopinder played some kind of self-help motivational bullshit at very low volume in the front seat. Russell had gone from animated to silent and overwhelmed-looking, and he kept casting nervous little glances in Nathan’s direction. Nathan, meanwhile, glared.
The kid was not what he had expected. The Firefist of Cable’s own time was close to a hundred years old, though he was effectively ageless thanks to the work of a bodysculptor mutant in his inner cadre. One of these huge six-foot-seven Pacific Islander guys, just built like a brick shithouse. Well, either future Firefist had been cheating with the bodysculptor for height and muscle tone or puberty was going to hit this kid like a fucking meteor. At this point in the time stream he was maybe five-foot-two in shoes and about as physically unintimidating as it was possible for anybody with flamethrowers in their hands to be. The scared brown eyes that peered up at Nathan through a fringe of sweat-flattened hair had purple bruises around them like he’d been slugged recently. If not for the powers and the weird-ass Kiwi accent, Nathan would have thought he had the wrong guy.
But as he’d had time to observe the kid, he’d seen the beginnings of Firefist’s resourcefulness and determination, and his ability to pull powerful people into his orbit (seriously, how the fuck had he managed to escape an ultrasecure prison transport truck and get the Juggernaut in his back pocket in one swoop?). And the anger. Oh, yes. The anger had been more than enough to convince Nathan he was too far gone, but Wade had known, somehow. And Nathan couldn’t say he wasn’t grateful. Future warlord or not, he didn’t want to have to kill a fucking kid. But that didn’t mean he had to trust Russell a single inch – no, he was going to be watching that little fucker, lest he drift back over the line and become the future monster all over again.
“Are you still gonna kill me?” asked Russell, out of nowhere, as if he’d plucked the thought from Nathan’s brain.
“Nah.” Nathan stretched, dropping his glare hastily away. Maybe an explanation was owed. “Future you was on my shit list, but I think we changed time streams when you didn’t kill the pervert.”
“I wanted to.”
“Ya didn’t.”
“What did I do to you?” He chewed his lip momentarily. “Er. Will I do? Was I going to have done?”
“Yeah, I don’t think English has tenses for this shit.” Nathan sighed. He realized abruptly that he didn’t want to tell the kid he was, or even would have been, destined to become a monster. But he’d never been one for mincing words. “Long time from now. You kill my family. Wife and daughter. Burn them to death.”
The kid turned away, staring at his hands. “I was afraid of that,” he mumbled, in a thick voice. Oh, god, I made him fucking cry. Yep, the kid’s face was all scrunched up and there was moisture glinting in his eyes. And it was some kind of primordial physiological bullshit that made Nathan react the same way he would to his daughter Hope’s tears. Awkwardly. But wanting more than anything to fix it. So he held out the teddy bear.
“Do you see soot on this thing?”
Russell shook his head, not looking up. “I was just so angry, I-I didn’t – I don’t want to be like him-”
“So don't be,” said Nathan, a little too gruffly. On the other side of Russell he saw Domino crack a golden eye open in silent warning, and winced. Okay, try again. “You just need to keep… deciding not to murder people.”
This was probably even worse, but Russell stopped whimpering just long enough to arch an eyebrow at him. “No killing ever? That’s fucking hypocritical.”
“Huh.” Nathan took a moment to try to figure out how to articulate the need for dispassionate action in his line of work and how not one in ten soldiers actually had that quality but sometimes you could fake it with extreme discipline, took one look at the kid, and gave up. “You’re fourteen.”
“I’ve seen some shit. I’m basically an adult.”
“No you’re not.” Nathan sighed. “It’s not your responsibility to kill people like him.”
“Whose is it then?” Russell stared at the road up ahead, scowling.
“Mine,” put in Dopinder.
“That was dope.” The memory seemed to get a bit of a smile out of the kid. It didn’t last. “But we were in that place because everybody in the whole world thought we were somebody else’s problem.” Russell’s eyes had gone steely. “People knew, y’know. Essex wasn’t a fucking secret. People could have stopped him and nobody did shit.”
Christ. He had something like a point there, even if Nathan couldn’t afford to admit it. “Yeah. The system failed you. Thing about killing, though, kid. The first time you do it it feels good. But it eats you up inside after. The thrill ain’t worth the guilt. But every time after that it gets a little easier to take, and pretty soon it’s all thrill, no guilt. And in the face of that, you gotta keep hold of your morals. Nobody your age should have to work against that. ‘Specially not you.”
“Because I’ll fuck it up,” the kid surmised, bleakly.
“Yep. Not your fault, really. Just how it is.”
“I knew I’d never be a superhero.”
Nathan relented a little. “Come back in eight years when you know what you’re doing with your powers and maybe we’ll talk. Maybe.”
Russell made a frustrated noise and knuckled the tears out of his eyes, burrowing into Domino’s side for a cuddle. Nathan let his grip on the unblemished teddy bear relax a little. Alright, maybe watching the kid like a hawk would be overkill. He’d… keep an eye on him.
-
They spent the next day or so at Althea's apartment, nobody quite sure where they were going to go next. Nathan had long since perfected the military art of not appearing to give a shit about his physical circumstances, so their accommodations didn’t bother him, but he kept to himself, kept closed-off and quiet. He had been mentally prepared for death, or for going home to his family and to the familiar bittersweet guilt of an ugly victory. Not for this... horrible lukewarm limbo. He'd made the decision to save Wade Wilson, and even now, he didn't think it was the wrong one. His family were alive, and safer now that he was too far away to make them a target. He had an opportunity to fix the past and give his daughter the kind of life he'd never had. He just... might not see them again until he could get the time travel device fixed, and that might be years from now. Or never. So Nathan gritted his teeth and worked on gun repairs and made Plans, and tried to think about anything other than how Louise would have hit it off so well with Domino, or how Hope would have been amazed at the scrubby daylilies that bloomed in the front yard (real flowers were the stuff of fairytales in his time, gone the way of most green things you couldn't grow in underground vats).
Domino, who told him her real name was Neena, was a quiet blessing, a thoughtful cup of coffee or word of encouragement offered without excessive sympathy. Wade was too, in his own weird, twisted way. His burble of seemingly random commentary ended up being a very necessary distraction. He wanted to talk X-Force, and correcting Wade's various tactical blunders was a real intellectual exercise, but he also wanted to introduce Nathan to the wonders of the early 21st century. Nathan liked video games. The blam-blam stab-stab kind, mostly. Or The Sims. That game was like inhabiting the pages of a nostalgic, dreamlike history book where you could also make hideously ugly people and then drown them in a pool just by removing the fucking ladder. Great shit.
Russell's presence was grating. The kid was behaving, more or less, minus some bickering with Wade over shit that had gone down in the icebox and some standard teenaged whining about being made to help Althea with cleaning, but he didn't need to do anything to piss Nathan off. He was the reason Nathan had been forced to come back here in the first place. Any way you sliced it, future mass murderer or permanently redeemed, he was still the catalyst that had separated Nathan from his daughter. He should have been with Hope right now. His bright, effervescent daughter with her mother's beautiful eyes and her clever questions and the endless optimism of a summer's day. And instead she'd been supplanted by a mean-spirited, overweight juvenile delinquent, like the swapping of the infant Esmeralda for changeling Quasimodo.
Don't be fucking mean, Nathan reminded himself, when a reproachful look from Domino made him realize he was glaring. Kid's an orphan. And abused. Probably in ways you don't want to think about. But at least he wouldn't have to grow up in a hellscape like Hope would. Well, fuck. It was his responsibility to prevent Firefist's future reign of terror, it was not his responsibility to like the kid. Which he explained to Domino when they were alone in the kitchen that evening, over weak beers that felt stronger on an empty stomach.
Dom just shrugged, looking nonplussed. "I get it. You miss them."
Nathan grunted, in what Louise would have called 'the hypermasculine-emotionally-closed-off version of a yes'.
"And anyway, he has Wade," she added, and for half a second there was the barest trace of a smirk in her eyes, before it disappeared into a look of complete poker-face sincerity.
Ah, yes, Wade Fucking Wilson, mercenary and occasional coke-head with obvious psychoses and a soul rubbed as raw and bloody as Russell’s was. Not a bad guy. Nathan kind of liked the chatty freak, despite himself. But not father material.
“Wade, are you fuckin’ serious about this family shit?” Nathan asked him through gritted teeth, when Wade padded in for a beer and Russell was safely out of earshot.
Wade’s brown eyes looked almost hurt. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I know me and ‘serious’ go together like Roseann Barr and twitter’s abuse policy, but this actually matters to me. Everybody else wrote that kid off. Including you. And the only thing I took from ninth grade English class aside from the precise, perfect shape of Mr. Hawthorne’s ass was that The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was about a self-fulfilling prophesy and if you treat someone like a villain they'll become one.” Seeing the look on Nathan’s face, he frowned. “Right, you wouldn’t have read that book, you’re American. Future-American. Hey, how’s Canada doing in the future, by the way?”
“Shitty. The climate went to hell, your major cities flooded or got eaten by glaciers.”
“Is Ben Mulroney still alive? No, don’t tell me, nothing can kill him, he’s too powerful. ANYWAY. I fully intend to be the tragically disfigured dad that adorable little arsonist never knew he wanted.”
The really fucked-up thing was that Nathan believed him. Shaking his head in horrified amazement, he followed Wade to the living room, where he and Russell were halfway through some kind of... musical theatre film. Something evidently set even further into the past than 2018, which the case proclaimed to be Les Miserables. Wade plonked down next to Russell and gave the kid’s hair a short, tentative little pet.
To Nathan’s surprise, the kid not only let him, but rested his head against Wade’s shoulder.
Nathan shrugged, and sat down to watch. And was disturbed to find that it was giving him Emotions.
They killed the video over the last belted harmonic chorus, and Wade turned to Russell. "So, kid, what did you learn?"
"Fuck Russell Crowe. That cunt abandoned New Zealand and he can’t even sing."
"Excellent,” said Wade, with evident pride. “Not to mention he’s the reason we had to get discount Thanos, so fuck him, but like, morals?" Wade turned to Cable and Dom and flashed a thumbs up and a look how well parenthood is going grin.
Russell considered this for a moment. "...Instead of fighting my enemies, convince them to commit suicide?"
"I probably shouldn't have showed you Oklahoma! before this."
Christ. Nathan put his head in his hands. "All that shit about redemption and fatherhood and the futility of war and sparing the cop's life and that's all you two chucklefucks have to say?"
Wade grinned at him. "Whoah, so much depth! I could just dive into you, Terminator 2. You be Javert, I'll be Wolverine, we can get our Foe Yay on."
He felt like he’d just been either insulted or propositioned, but he wasn’t sure which. “I don’t want to be Russell Crowe,” Nathan objected, a little helplessly. Maybe he ought to have just been grateful the kid wasn’t in a murderous rage over the Thenardiers.
Russell shrugged, apparently unmoved. "Wade, have you got anything to eat?"
"Yeah, I keep some cereal above the sink."
Nathan raised his head, in time to watch with dawning horror as the kid got up, filled a huge bowl with milky Lucky Charms and settled back down on the couch. Nathan knew Lucky Charms. They were still selling them in his own time. Probably the same recipe and everything. They were, as far as he could tell, 90% sugar and 10% wood shavings. His daughter loved them and was not allowed them ever. "Wilson, you can't just give him fuckin' Lucky Charms for dinner."
Both Wade and Russell looked up at him with a mixture of offense and genuine confusion. Nathan didn't know why he was even surprised. Russell would take whatever he was given, and Wade was still a fucking child himself, so why on earth would he know any better? "It's not food."
This won him even more confused looks. "Sure it is," Wade argued, hopping up to investigate the box. "It's got... niacin, that sounds important, right?"
Nathan growled. A frustrated growl of defeat. Of responsibility. He turned and opened the fridge to conduct a rapid inventory of items he'd need to replace for Althea later. "I'll cook something. Wade, take that shit away from him. Russell, set the table."
"He cooks! Sweet Bea Arthur I'm in love."
"We haven’t even got a table,” Russell pointed out, glowering at his bowl of cereal as Wade snatched it away and started eating it himself.
“Well – set something. And go wash your hands.”
He was alarmed to realize he’d used the same autopilot Dad Voice he used on Hope when she was being difficult. To his surprise, it worked; Russell gave up trying to paw the cereal back from Wade and went off to dig up knives and forks.
“What voodoo was that?” asked Wade, staring with interest as Nathan chopped vegetables.
“It’s called parenting,” Nathan growled back. Too harsh, maybe, but now he was pissed off. Wade had said he was serious, and sure, Nathan had known not to expect actual good judgment out of him, but the kid deserved better than this, dammit.
He didn’t know when exactly he’d decided that the kid deserved anything besides a bullet in the spleen, but apparently he had. Probably the fucking musical making him soft.
-
Russell could not stay with Wade, in the end. There was a place for him at Xavier’s, thanks in no small part to Colossus and his two young wards. Xavier’s could offer him stability, training, education, and a huge extended family of almost aggressively supportive mutants; it was very clearly the best possible place for him. Nathan would have put his foot down if he’d needed to, but Wade seemed to accept and understand this, demonstrating more maturity and self-awareness than anyone had dared to expect. It helped that he’d been given carte blanche to visit whenever he wanted. The Professor hadn’t been happy about a known killer lurking the halls of his house - right up until, at the end of his very first day at the Academy, Russell had a sudden, apparently causeless freakout and nearly blew a hole through the handsome oak-panelled walls in sheer panic. Only Wade had been able to talk him down, eventually coaxing from the kid a panicky stream-of-consciousness babble of an apology.
“-They gave me my own room and there’s mutants using all their powers and everybody smiles at me, Wade, it’s a fucking trap, isn’t it, or – or I’m dreaming, that’s it, right? It can’t really be this good – Fuck, I don’t belong somewhere this nice, I’m gonna burn something by accident and get thrown out -”
Nathan had to leave halfway through because it was all a little too Emotional, but not before he got the basic picture. Russell, who’d accepted getting the crap beat out of him in mutant prison without batting a blackened eye, didn’t know how to deal with people being even minimally nice to him. Wade did an admirable job calming him down with a stream of jokes and weirdly sincere reassurances and more jokes, and nobody was questioning the need to keep him around after that.
Wade’s visits suited Nathan just fine, too. He’d been offered a place to stay for a couple months, and a part-time job to boot. Charles Xavier, who was every inch the serene all-knowing bastard the history books made him out to be, sat him down and told him, teach the students the skills they may someday need to survive. But more importantly, teach them not to make the mistakes that bring about a world where those skills are necessary. Teach them to fight wars by preventing them. And try not to let Cyclops know your real name, hm, Mr. Summers?
So basically the students knew him only as Cable, and he was their own personal warning oracle from the future slash hardass gym teacher. It was a useful day job. Put him in an excellent tactical position for moonlighting X-Force plans.
Today, Wade, in full red condom-wrapper suit minus the usual surplus of weaponry, found him at the edge of the Mansion’s running track, sweating in the summer noon sun and watching twelve teenagers do laps. And naturally the first thing that caught Wade’s attention was the pair of running shorts Nathan had on for the day. They were, admittedly, a little shorter than he was entirely comfortable with. It was hot out. And he hadn’t known Wade was coming, dammit.
He’d suspected, but that wasn’t the point. Wade tried to snap the waistband on him. Nathan broke his wrist.
“Oww. You know, I was gonna say the Richard Simmons look wasn’t ‘you’, but it’s really growing on me. ‘It’ being my erection. This is probably a conversation we shouldn’t have in front of running teenagers, huh?”
Nathan wasn’t touching more or less all of that. He stared straight ahead, face stoic. “Thought Canadians said ‘eh’, not ‘huh’.”
“Urban myth. The thing about the syrup heist is true, though. How’s our boy doin’?”
On the running track a hundred yards away, Russell was pulling up the very rear, red-faced and dragging his feet. “Swear the chubby little fucker’s never run a day in his life before this,” grunted Nathan, and then called out in the direction of the track, “Let’s see some hustle, Russell!”
Russell groaned and flipped them both the bird, but not before he picked up the pace.
It was hard to tell, behind the red mask, but Nathan was pretty sure Wade was staring at him. “Was that… was that… it was.”
“What?”
“A goddamn dad joke.”
Nathan played dumb. It was all he could do.
When Wade’s cackling had run down, he tilted his head at Nathan, managing to look imploring behind the surface of the mask. “Will you teach me? I want to know the Ways of the Dad. Ideally in a quick training montage to the tune of Cat’s in the Cradle. I want to barbecue and play catch and call him ‘sport’ and embarrass him in ten years by developing regressive political ideas.”
“Get yourself a fanny pack,” Nathan deadpanned.
“I knew it was a fucking fanny pack!”
“They’re better for lumbar weight distribution than a backpack,” Nathan grumbled. He wore one because he was getting old, his joints rebelling, and he did not give a flying fuck what anyone thought of him. And yet, with Wade, he felt the need to justify the damn thing. “I’m a pretty shit dad, Wade. Don’t make me your model.”
“You’re good with Russell,” Wade pointed out. “He does what you say even when he’s being a pen in the ass. Pain. I meant pain.”
“Yeah, well, discipline’s easy. Russell was a foster kid for ages before Essex got him. Needs structure, bad.” Discipline was easy, for an army joe like him. With Hope, he had always been the strict one, the parent who laid down the law. Although, funny, it was still him she always came to when she really wanted something. “I can’t do any of that emotional shit though. Louise was always sayin’ I wasn’t ‘present’.” He scrubbed at his face with his hand, mopping away summer sweat. “She was right. First couple years of Hope’s life I was one frigid son of a bitch to her. And now I’ve abandoned them to fix the past. Talk about a deadbeat.”
“Uh, you had to do that to save me,” Wade pointed out. “So really you abandoned your family for a man you’d just met, yet had unforgettable chemistry with – huh, I guess that’s worse, isn’t it?”
Nathan nodded, grimacing. It was probably too late to bother trying to convince Wade he hadn’t consciously decided to keep the merc around. “Worst thing is I kinda like it here. This era. Doing what I’m doing. What kind of father…”
“Oh my gooood.” Wade groaned. “I thought they were abandoning the whole messiah complex thing from the comics when you decided to kill Sarah-Connor-in-the-first-movie-before-she-could-do-chinups! Are you seriously beating yourself up about abandoning your family? Just Chronicles of Narnia that shit! As soon as you get your time travel McGuffin fixed just go back to the exact moment you left!”
“Huh.” He had known he could do that, obviously, but it hadn’t really sunk in that weeks or months or even years spent here, with Wade and Russell and Dom, didn’t need to change a thing for his family. If anything, his arrival time would be more precise if he delayed, as the time gap slowly shrank. Sure, he’d be a couple years older when he got back, but it wasn’t old age that was gonna kill him. “I guess.”
“See? Not a shit dad.”
“I’m still crap at the whole…” Nathan gesticulated vaguely, not sure how to say it. “…Emotional Vulnerability stuff.”
“Ahh, yes, you’re a repressed alpha male. The strong, silent, toxic masculinity type.”
That irritated him. “Go fuck yourself, Wilson. At least I’m fucking trying. It was always hard with my daughter. I learned to do it. Way too late. Russell, though? I look at that kid and I have no idea what he’s feeling.”
“It’s usually rage,” said Wade, helpfully.
“You said you’d been in his shoes.”
“Oh, Jesus, yes.” Incongruously, Wade laughed. “He’s a pyro, I’m trigger-happy, we get each other. Hell, there’s even national similarities. He was parentally abandoned in New Zealand, or as I like to call it, Down Canada.” It was unclear whether the implication that Wade had also been parentally abandoned was intentional. Prism of humour again. Wade burbled on. “Y’know, If we do get your time travel thingy fixed I want to re-do the orphanage fight again just so I can kill more pedophiles with a brick. It was therapeutic.”
“I think he needs you.”
Wade shut his mouth, turned, tilted his head. The wide-eyed, grateful surprise was visible even through the mask. “Vanessa said the same thing.”
Nathan smiled. Just a little. “Look, tell you what. You keep going with the bonding, touchy-feely-”
“-But not inappropriately,” Wade cut in, sing-song-
“-All that shit. You’re actually pretty good at that stuff. And I’ll stick around to make sure he does his homework and occasionally eats something green.” Nathan rolled his eyes. “God knows I don’t fuckin’ trust you to.”
“You mean… co-dad? Dad Team? Russell gets two dads?” Wade made a little high-pitched noise, leapt into the air and actually fucking clicked his heels. “DAD TEAM! DAD-FORCE!”
Nathan groaned. And to think, Hope had always said he was the embarrassing parent. “Can you not?” But Wade was already bounding towards their boy to tell him the good news.
Nathan still would have preferred to be home, all things being equal. But all things were not equal. If he was Jean ValJean, then these idiots were his Cosette. They needed him, and maybe he could use the second chance.