InsaneJournal

Madeline had collected something of a motley crew for the mission to rescue Deadpool, and Nathan wasn’t entirely sure if it would work. It was one thing to gather in people that had worked with Deadpool before, and knew what they were doing. But Nathan’s attention kept being drawn towards Bobby and John - Iceman and Pyro, he knew the names. They were in the history books, but their friendship hadn’t been. One day, they would be formidable, but watching them now, he just couldn’t imagine it. They had no concept, no idea what the future held for them. Or might hold for them, he wasn’t sure where things would go for this timeline.

Presuming, of course, they survived today. This moment was a pivotal one, even in his timeline, and he didn’t know what stopping Killebrew would change. The remnants of Wade’s sanity, yes, and the mad scientist’s experimentation would halt here. Would that make much of a difference? Nathan didn’t know, but he didn’t feel any compunction about changing this moment.

He let Inez take the lead, gunning down the guards at the gates of the property the warehouse rested on. He hid a smile at her whooping, pressing a finger against his lips to remind her they were trying to be quiet. He scanned the area, locating the rest of the security staff. He took the lead, waving for Inez to join them. When they’d dealt with the guards he could find, then he’d signal for Madeline to join them, and -- well, the kids could stay on look-out, he didn’t care too much, as long as they were out of the way.

Carefully unlocking a side entrance with his telekinesis, Nathan slid the door open, taking point. Inez could take a bullet easily enough - better than him, when it came down to it. But he couldn’t help but feel a little bit protective of her, who knew if Killebrew could create something that would pierce even Inez’s dense hide. He’d yet to find something that could pierce one of his tk shields, and it was with that in place that he moved forward, treading silently. He knew Inez would be following impatiently, itching to unload the contents of her weapons into the creeps working here.

It wasn’t long before she got her chance. The guards found them -- and just as quickly, the guards weren’t a problem anymore. Once Nathan was sure the warehouse was empty, he contacted Madeline and the boys.

The warehouse is clear. There’s a lower level, most of the guards had no idea what is down there. But Wade isn’t the only thing Killebrew is working on here. There’s -- some sort of drug production going on. We need to make sure that is destroyed before we leave.

Bobby and John may have been the wild cards in this rescue, but they weren’t just tagging along to be dead weight or willing targets. It would be too generous to call them formidable -- they were young, they still had much to learn about their powers and capabilities -- but somehow, they’d had plenty of opportunities already to learn how they worked as a team. This wasn’t the same as the New Orleans rescue, or storming a half-empty Weapon Plus facility, but the change didn’t affect their ability to wreak havoc. John had been antsy outside the facility with Madeline, flicking at his lighter in that annoying habit of his, but even Bobby had seemed uncomfortably eager to leave the look-out post and into the fray where they could do something useful. Wade was a friend, or something like that. A companion. Keeping watch for potential reinforcements wasn’t either of their idea of helping.

“I thought you said we were going to blow something up,” John snapped at his friend, and Bobby glanced at Madeline before shooting him a warning look. He was opening his mouth to reply when the telepathic message came through, loud and clear.

“Now will you stop bitching?”

They made their way through the hallways that the foreguard had already covered. There was very little left standing in their way; John kept his lighter palmed just in case, and Bobby’s hands were already blue and icy enough to leave a faint trail of dry smoke in the air behind them, but there weren’t any targets for them to focus on as they followed the telepathic directions being relayed to them from Nathan. Making their way downward, they followed the trail of bodies until their path diverged en route to the lower level. Out of habit, John blew away the security cameras that they passed with carefully aimed fireballs that left the electronics blackened and twisted, and Bobby made short work of each door by freezing them off their hinges and kicking them in. The last set of doors were thick metal, however, and it took both of them together to get through, with John’s fire eating into the steel even as Bobby weakened the foundation around them.

Inside, the real destruction began. Bobby stopped for a moment to look around at the complex mess of tubes and vials, but John went straight for the unstable chemicals. He was snarling with the savage joy of it as he blew up everything in his path in controlled explosions that spewed toxic smoke even as Bobby’s body turned shiny and blue with ice. Together, they razed the entire set-up, leaving nothing unturned and everything that they destroyed encased in an unreachable shield of ice. When they were finished, the place barely looked like a lab anymore.

“Uh, we’re done here,” Bobby said out loud as they looked at their handiwork. Hopefully, Nathan and Madeline were listening.

It wasn’t clear to Madeline how much of the coppery tang in the air, hanging like the taste of old blood or the metallic foreboding before a thunderstorm, was her doing, but it seemed appropriate. She was radiating heat where she stood, concentrating on Wade’s presence nearby as if in a fever dream. Communicating her state of mind to the two young men at her side was not at the top of her priority list, despite the fact she was grateful in her own way for their presence on a mission far more sparsely populated than she’d anticipated, so she remained silent, shifting her weight in the shadows as she waited.

Nathan’s signal banished whatever anxious thoughts remained in her head, and she began her approach, hardly touching the ground when she moved. She split off from the boys when they entered the facility, assuming distantly they were going after the drugs Nathan had mentioned without really caring. It was an important task, no doubt, but the fact remained that Madeline had only come here to do one thing.

The air pulsed with force whenever she encountered a new obstacle--a stray guard or a set of locked doors--and the path behind her soon became littered with tiny spots of fire, the bodies of crumpled caretakers, and the twisted remnants of steel barriers, tossed to the side like tissue paper at Christmas. Distantly, she could hear the sounds of internal alarms and panic, but she knew there was no one they could call for help. This facility was as off-the-map as they were. Madeline followed Wade’s weak signal like it was a lighthouse guiding her home.

She found him in the chair. Like a perverse scene from some sort of macabre dentist’s office, flickering lights and all, Wade was strapped to a chair that was extended back until it was nearly an operating table in its own right. A gaping gash in his side was stitching itself up before her eyes, lethargic tendrils of flesh stretching across the abyss of his chest cavity as he healed himself for the umpteenth time that horrific week. Madeline glanced at his restraints; they sprang loose even as she rushed to him and cupped his face in her hands. For the moment, for an instant, revenge was forgotten.

“Wade.”

And then, as though it had been timed, a rattle. A metallic shiver--a slouching sort of creeping sound, as though someone with too much change and too many surgical instruments was slipping towards the door. Madeline whirled, her hair now loose, and pinned Dr. Killebrew to the wall like a bug on a sheet of felt.

“You.” Her voice was eerily calm, as though some higher intelligence was dictating directions from a great distance, and she was just the conduit.

“I wish I had the time to give you the turn you deserve.”

There was a long pause. Killebrew’s lips glistened with spit and shook with the effort it took to speak through the fear. She canted her head to one side, robotic and perfunctory.

“P-plea--”

But he didn’t get to finish. His final word was cut off with a scream that sounded as though he was being burned alive from the inside out. Microwaved. He burst into flames a moment later.

The smell was the first thing to waft through the room like a horrific barbecue gone wrong. The muscles were a sickening fried beef or pork roast; the blood sizzled in the man’s veins, reeking of copper and metal. The organs were burnt liver. There was another musky, perfume-like scent heavy in the air -- cerebrospinal fluid, but neither of them had the capacity to knew that. The burning skin contained hints of charcoal before it turned nauseating: sweet, putrid, steak-like, charred, leathery.

That was what brought Wade back like a punch to the gut.

Even his well-trained iron stomach reacted; he automatically gagged on the thick smell, tasting it in the back of his throat, his eyes slowly cracking open. Then, as he swam back to consciousness, he was assaulted with the crackling, popping noises of human immolation. And it was a beautiful sight. An absolutely beautiful sight. Killebrew’s bones lit up like a Christmas tree, glowing from the inside with a warm, syrupy orange light -- which soon turned white as Madeline tore the man’s molecules apart. It took Wade a long moment to realise what was happening and to understand the lightshow in front of his eyes. And when he finally understood, his gut twisted with a malicious satisfaction. Spontaneous human combustion. Unpleasant. But heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

As he was unbuckled from the chair, sliding off and slumping in his rescuer’s arms, his thoughts immediately ran free. The still-sizzling corpse sent his uncoupled train of thought screeching off its tracks. How to stop an exploding man. Heroes. Season one finale. Back when it was still good. Dude, you've got some Arzt on you. LOST. Season one finale. All conclusions and endings.

Released from this sordid laboratory, detached from the chair which had been his home for the past week. I'm your dentist and I enjoy the career that I picked I'm your dentist and I get off on the pain I inflict--

He didn’t even have the energy to quote them. Wade was uncharacteristically silent as Madeline hefted him out of the chair. He wanted to thank her. He wanted to comment, to remark, to narrate, to say something about the finale of this arc. I'm mercenary Wade Wilson, and today is the longest day of my life. Even Jack fucking Bauer had managed to rip out his captor’s throat with his teeth and escape on his own. Why hadn’t he?

But if he had to be rescued -- if there was one person who was allowed to pull him from the fire by lighting others -- it was, without a doubt, Madeline Pryor.

Wade caught flashes of their surroundings as they moved. Thirteen of his own fingers arrayed across a countertop. His own blood across the floor. Madeline’s face, grim and determined. Then, later: Bobby, encased in that familiar frozen shell. John, with some ashes smudged on his cheek. A jaunty tip of Inez’s hat. A brief, dazed glimpse of a grizzled and grey-haired man. --Wait, what? Who was that-- I feel an inchoate sense of attraction towards him--

The small, mismatched group extracted themselves from the rundown warehouse and its second-hand laboratory. Wade was practically comatose, more than half of his weight leaning on a telekinetic crutch which held him up, gently buffeted and carried along. Madeline and John were at the centre of a maelstrom of fire and flame. Behind them, the warehouse crumbled and sagged on its own foundations, walls cracking and splitting. Fireworks. Fourth of July. Guy Fawkes. His entire hellish macabre nightmare going up in smoke.

It was beautiful.

He didn’t say a single word.