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rallamajoopFinally up to the new parts!
Title: Let Slip the Dogs of War
Summary: War wasn't telling the whole truth about what happened to the Deadpool of his universe.
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, guest staring the New Avengers
Chapter: 6 / 8
Word Count: 1600
Rating: R
Warnings: Not explicit, but contains references to torture, non-con and assorted other Evil Overlord AU-related staples. Also: Contains Deadpool.
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
The mood after Deadpool left was sombre. The idea of this mission being a chance to do some 'real Avenging' after months of mind-numbing politics and internal conflicts seemed more ironic by the minute. Teleporting themselves to a parallel universe to steal an irreplaceable piece of technology had been hard enough to get past their consciences as appropriate behaviour for the world's most prominent superhero team. Relying on what amounted to germ-warfare had been no better. Being forced to depend on the help of someone like Deadpool was just as questionable, and now that it had come to sending one of their number to (literally) get in bed with the enemy, the whole experience had come to bear more resemblance to an uncomfortable metaphor for everything they'd been trying to avoid back home than the welcome reprieve it was meant to be.
When Luke Cage got sick of this and decided he wanted a word with Cable, the latter was sitting alone on the camp perimeter. The spot he'd picked sat a pointed thirty degrees diverged from the place where Deadpool had given them all a jaunty wave and taken off towards War's fortress, but there was no hiding where his thoughts lay. Every now and then his eyes drifted to a device in his lap that was programmed to set off an alarm as soon as the virus spread far enough through War's system for it to detect the signature of destabilising T.O. mesh. So far it had made not so much as a warning beep, but this soon no-one would have expected anything else.
Luke took a seat next to him and made himself comfortable. Cable made no comment either for or against this unexpected company.
“Couldn't help but notice you didn't seem all that surprised by what your evil twin had been doing with 'Pool,” said Luke.
Cable gave him a sideways look. “Is this leading into a question about my sexual preferences?”
“Like whether they're wide enough to include mouthy, ugly and batshit insane?”
“They stop a long way short of imprisonment, rape and torture, if that's what you're worried about.”
“What I'm worried about is whether there's something going on that might've made you bit too quick to trust him to carry off that crazy plan. Rest of us never woulda considered it if you hadn't been for it.”
“Cage,” said Cable, evenly, “I just sent a close, personal friend – who has already suffered months of abuse at the hands of an alternate version of myself – off to suffer yet more abuse, under the questionable justification of 'the greater good'. Believe me when I say that any deeper feelings I might ever have experienced for any version of Deadpool did not make that any easier.”
Cage scratched his neck, not fully convinced but forced to accept that as a perspective he'd missed on the subject.
“If you're accusing me of bias on this matter,” Cable went on, somewhat less comfortably, “then you should be more concerned that I haven't become so determined to see War defeated as to be willing to contemplate any means, no matter the morality of it.”
Cage appeared to consider this. “Seeing yourself warped that far,” he offered, “would be hard not to take that personally.”
Cable's mouth flattened in a manner that bore little semblance to a smile. “Before we left, Captain America asked me point-blank how much of my motivation for this expedition came from my own sense of responsibility for the crimes committed by my alternate self. I admitted to him that played a very real part. Knowing that there's a version of myself like War only a thin wall away from our reality has been preying on my mind for some time.”
Cage shrugged. “Hate to say it, but shit like this happens to the best of us in this business.”
“And what is that but a sign that we don't take enough responsibility for it? The last year has shown us all too well how easily the public opinion can be shifted against people like you and me. But that's beside the point. I've tried to be realistic about my bias with regards to this mission, but I assured Captain America I hadn't let it overrule my better judgement on the risks we'd be taking. His response was to tell me – after a certain amount of argument on tangential topics – he hoped that was true. There's a part of me that's still hoping the same. We've crossed a number of lines just by coming here, and I don't know whether what we've just done crosses one too many.”
“Summers, every one of us has been wondering which side of the line we're on every day since this whole damn registration mess raised its ugly head. If we imagined this job was gonna be any simpler that's just to show how screwed up our lives have been lately. In the meantime, the rest of us have still gotta worry whether Deadpool's gonna pull this off or screw up and give the whole game away.”
Cable gave a wry smile. “I'd be foolish to imagine there isn't a very real danger he's going to screw it up. But his odds of success are still much better than any other means to infect a powerful telepath with a slow-acting virus without his knowledge, let alone our odds of defeating him without the virus. It may not say much that I trust Deadpool more than the rest of you, but he's the best hope we've got. And Spider-Man,” he added, “just because I'm no longer telepathic doesn't mean I haven't noticed you eavesdropping back there.”
“I wasn't eavesdropping!” Spider-Man protested. “I was waiting for a good time to join the conversation!”
“You both realise the ideal time to raise all these objections would have been before Wade left, don't you?” said Cable, sounding tired.
“It slipped my mind!” Spider-Man insisted. “I was too busy trying not to picture anything involving him and War to remember it! But right before that meeting, Deadpool was saying all this stuff that sounded like really bad news!”
“That sounds like Wade,” Cable observed.
“No, really bad news!” Spider-Man reiterated. “War wasn't keeping him down in the dungeon full time, he'd been taking him out to kill people!”
“He what?” said Cable, head snapping up sharply.
“Son of a bitch,” Cage exclaimed. No-one thought to ask who exactly he was referring to.
“I'm not talking about just making him watch either, Deadpool was joining in. He was telling me all about it!”
“Peter,” said Cable, dangerously, “if there are any details you're glossing over...”
“Deadpool thought it was part of some kind of Stockholm-brainwashing thing,” Peter explained. “Y'know, bad treatment to wear him down, then rewards promised for good behaviour, where good behaviour meant slaughtering innocent people on command. He didn't sound thrilled about doing it, but he reckoned as long as War would've killed them whether he helped or not, it didn't matter. Deadpool may be morally challenged on a good day, but how do we know the reprogramming didn't work?”
Cable's mouth had become thin, hard line. He didn't immediately respond.
Cage raised his eyebrows. “You still happy with your stance on how far to we should be trusting the guy?”
“I... don't know,” Cable admitted. “His hatred for War – that much I don't doubt, but if War has that much influence over him... I worry we don't know even the beginning of what War's put him through, or how much damage it's done.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I wish I'd come sooner.”
“Aw, that's real sweet, Nate,” said a gravely voice. “But last I checked, the exchange rate on wishes was still pretty fucking miserable. Check back next month.”
Everyone turned. Deadpool was crouching on a tall heap of rubble, just beyond the nominal camp perimeter.
“Wade?” said Cable, startled. “You're back? Did you...” A glance at the device in his lap showed that it continued flashing the lights that showed it was functioning, but it remained stubbornly silent.
The second warning sign was the state of Wade's costume. Gone were the tell-tale gaps left where the fabric had failed to regenerate along with his hands and feet; the suit he now wore was clean and new. While Deadpool had left armed with only a single, modestly-sized gun loaned from Cable, he'd come back armed to the teeth, two guns on his belt and his customary twin katanas strapped to his back. In a world like this one, the possible sources where Deadpool could have acquired armaments like that was heavily limited, and the only probable option was one Cable did not want to consider.
“Yeah, 'bout that,” said Deadpool, unholstering a gun and levelling it casually at the Avengers, “Sorry guys. Change of plan.”
Before anyone could make up their minds how to respond, the armoured monstrosity of War was levitating up behind Deadpool in all his glory, grinning a grin that glowed with bloodlust and power.
“Hard to believe, coming from him, isn't it?” he said to the Avengers, an eerie trace of fondness in a voice that promised murder with every other syllable, “For once in his life, Wade has managed to be guilty of understatement.”
Part 7
Title: Let Slip the Dogs of War
Summary: War wasn't telling the whole truth about what happened to the Deadpool of his universe.
Characters/Pairing: Cable/Deadpool, guest staring the New Avengers
Chapter: 6 / 8
Word Count: 1600
Rating: R
Warnings: Not explicit, but contains references to torture, non-con and assorted other Evil Overlord AU-related staples. Also: Contains Deadpool.
Previous Parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
The mood after Deadpool left was sombre. The idea of this mission being a chance to do some 'real Avenging' after months of mind-numbing politics and internal conflicts seemed more ironic by the minute. Teleporting themselves to a parallel universe to steal an irreplaceable piece of technology had been hard enough to get past their consciences as appropriate behaviour for the world's most prominent superhero team. Relying on what amounted to germ-warfare had been no better. Being forced to depend on the help of someone like Deadpool was just as questionable, and now that it had come to sending one of their number to (literally) get in bed with the enemy, the whole experience had come to bear more resemblance to an uncomfortable metaphor for everything they'd been trying to avoid back home than the welcome reprieve it was meant to be.
When Luke Cage got sick of this and decided he wanted a word with Cable, the latter was sitting alone on the camp perimeter. The spot he'd picked sat a pointed thirty degrees diverged from the place where Deadpool had given them all a jaunty wave and taken off towards War's fortress, but there was no hiding where his thoughts lay. Every now and then his eyes drifted to a device in his lap that was programmed to set off an alarm as soon as the virus spread far enough through War's system for it to detect the signature of destabilising T.O. mesh. So far it had made not so much as a warning beep, but this soon no-one would have expected anything else.
Luke took a seat next to him and made himself comfortable. Cable made no comment either for or against this unexpected company.
“Couldn't help but notice you didn't seem all that surprised by what your evil twin had been doing with 'Pool,” said Luke.
Cable gave him a sideways look. “Is this leading into a question about my sexual preferences?”
“Like whether they're wide enough to include mouthy, ugly and batshit insane?”
“They stop a long way short of imprisonment, rape and torture, if that's what you're worried about.”
“What I'm worried about is whether there's something going on that might've made you bit too quick to trust him to carry off that crazy plan. Rest of us never woulda considered it if you hadn't been for it.”
“Cage,” said Cable, evenly, “I just sent a close, personal friend – who has already suffered months of abuse at the hands of an alternate version of myself – off to suffer yet more abuse, under the questionable justification of 'the greater good'. Believe me when I say that any deeper feelings I might ever have experienced for any version of Deadpool did not make that any easier.”
Cage scratched his neck, not fully convinced but forced to accept that as a perspective he'd missed on the subject.
“If you're accusing me of bias on this matter,” Cable went on, somewhat less comfortably, “then you should be more concerned that I haven't become so determined to see War defeated as to be willing to contemplate any means, no matter the morality of it.”
Cage appeared to consider this. “Seeing yourself warped that far,” he offered, “would be hard not to take that personally.”
Cable's mouth flattened in a manner that bore little semblance to a smile. “Before we left, Captain America asked me point-blank how much of my motivation for this expedition came from my own sense of responsibility for the crimes committed by my alternate self. I admitted to him that played a very real part. Knowing that there's a version of myself like War only a thin wall away from our reality has been preying on my mind for some time.”
Cage shrugged. “Hate to say it, but shit like this happens to the best of us in this business.”
“And what is that but a sign that we don't take enough responsibility for it? The last year has shown us all too well how easily the public opinion can be shifted against people like you and me. But that's beside the point. I've tried to be realistic about my bias with regards to this mission, but I assured Captain America I hadn't let it overrule my better judgement on the risks we'd be taking. His response was to tell me – after a certain amount of argument on tangential topics – he hoped that was true. There's a part of me that's still hoping the same. We've crossed a number of lines just by coming here, and I don't know whether what we've just done crosses one too many.”
“Summers, every one of us has been wondering which side of the line we're on every day since this whole damn registration mess raised its ugly head. If we imagined this job was gonna be any simpler that's just to show how screwed up our lives have been lately. In the meantime, the rest of us have still gotta worry whether Deadpool's gonna pull this off or screw up and give the whole game away.”
Cable gave a wry smile. “I'd be foolish to imagine there isn't a very real danger he's going to screw it up. But his odds of success are still much better than any other means to infect a powerful telepath with a slow-acting virus without his knowledge, let alone our odds of defeating him without the virus. It may not say much that I trust Deadpool more than the rest of you, but he's the best hope we've got. And Spider-Man,” he added, “just because I'm no longer telepathic doesn't mean I haven't noticed you eavesdropping back there.”
“I wasn't eavesdropping!” Spider-Man protested. “I was waiting for a good time to join the conversation!”
“You both realise the ideal time to raise all these objections would have been before Wade left, don't you?” said Cable, sounding tired.
“It slipped my mind!” Spider-Man insisted. “I was too busy trying not to picture anything involving him and War to remember it! But right before that meeting, Deadpool was saying all this stuff that sounded like really bad news!”
“That sounds like Wade,” Cable observed.
“No, really bad news!” Spider-Man reiterated. “War wasn't keeping him down in the dungeon full time, he'd been taking him out to kill people!”
“He what?” said Cable, head snapping up sharply.
“Son of a bitch,” Cage exclaimed. No-one thought to ask who exactly he was referring to.
“I'm not talking about just making him watch either, Deadpool was joining in. He was telling me all about it!”
“Peter,” said Cable, dangerously, “if there are any details you're glossing over...”
“Deadpool thought it was part of some kind of Stockholm-brainwashing thing,” Peter explained. “Y'know, bad treatment to wear him down, then rewards promised for good behaviour, where good behaviour meant slaughtering innocent people on command. He didn't sound thrilled about doing it, but he reckoned as long as War would've killed them whether he helped or not, it didn't matter. Deadpool may be morally challenged on a good day, but how do we know the reprogramming didn't work?”
Cable's mouth had become thin, hard line. He didn't immediately respond.
Cage raised his eyebrows. “You still happy with your stance on how far to we should be trusting the guy?”
“I... don't know,” Cable admitted. “His hatred for War – that much I don't doubt, but if War has that much influence over him... I worry we don't know even the beginning of what War's put him through, or how much damage it's done.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I wish I'd come sooner.”
“Aw, that's real sweet, Nate,” said a gravely voice. “But last I checked, the exchange rate on wishes was still pretty fucking miserable. Check back next month.”
Everyone turned. Deadpool was crouching on a tall heap of rubble, just beyond the nominal camp perimeter.
“Wade?” said Cable, startled. “You're back? Did you...” A glance at the device in his lap showed that it continued flashing the lights that showed it was functioning, but it remained stubbornly silent.
The second warning sign was the state of Wade's costume. Gone were the tell-tale gaps left where the fabric had failed to regenerate along with his hands and feet; the suit he now wore was clean and new. While Deadpool had left armed with only a single, modestly-sized gun loaned from Cable, he'd come back armed to the teeth, two guns on his belt and his customary twin katanas strapped to his back. In a world like this one, the possible sources where Deadpool could have acquired armaments like that was heavily limited, and the only probable option was one Cable did not want to consider.
“Yeah, 'bout that,” said Deadpool, unholstering a gun and levelling it casually at the Avengers, “Sorry guys. Change of plan.”
Before anyone could make up their minds how to respond, the armoured monstrosity of War was levitating up behind Deadpool in all his glory, grinning a grin that glowed with bloodlust and power.
“Hard to believe, coming from him, isn't it?” he said to the Avengers, an eerie trace of fondness in a voice that promised murder with every other syllable, “For once in his life, Wade has managed to be guilty of understatement.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 05:11 am (UTC)that is the idea of cliffhangers *g*I'm aiming to have the next part done by later this week, so hopefully I won't have you waiting too long. ;)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-28 10:43 pm (UTC)Wade, what have you done?!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 05:00 am (UTC)(Random trivia: this part has actually been written for a while, but I thought it would be kinder to leave the GIANT CLIFFHANGER until after I was done with the long job of reposting everything. ^^; )
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 11:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 03:16 am (UTC)whaaaaa! this is so dramatic! D:
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 04:15 am (UTC)Will be clinging to the edge of my chair until pt 7.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 05:57 am (UTC)re: Let Slip the Dogs of War
Date: 2009-09-29 06:54 am (UTC)Re: Let Slip the Dogs of War
Date: 2009-09-30 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 11:37 am (UTC)I can't say that's totally unexpected but I really wasn't expecting that. Wade are you THAT bonded with the ceiling?
Please don't hang us on the cliff for long...
no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 01:56 am (UTC)Will try not to keep you waiting long - should be on a twice-a-week posting schedule between here and the end.