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When it all begins–when he gets the cancer diagnosis, “you have six months to live,” when he finds himself caught in a program worse than the cancer while every other test subject around him dies in agony, when Weapon X scours his genome and the healing factor brings his body to sudden peak genetic state and then warps it horribly all at once–
–When his mind and body are irrevocably destroyed, Wade Winston Wilson is eight years old.
His father doesn’t talk on the drive back from the doctor’s office. Instead, he storms silently back into their house, takes up his whiskey, and sits at the kitchen table, staring at the hospital bills that are all that remains of Wade’s mother. Wade wishes desperately for someone, anyone, to cling to, but there is no one. He knows he’s sitting with a death sentence over his head, and he wishes there was anyone at all who cared.
The next morning, his father drives him to an orphanage several cities away. He turns to Wade in the front seat. He tells him: “Your name is Wade. Just Wade. You don’t point those bastards at me, you tell them you ran away from home or something. If they haul you back to me, I’ll make you regret ever being born, boy.”
And then he shoves Wade out of the car.
In his back pocket, Wade has a Captain America wallet. It contains two dollars and a photograph of his mother. That, and the clothes on his back, are the only things he has.
His father dies of a heart attack a year later. Wade never hears about it; by then Weapon X has scooped him up from a pediatric oncology ward, and law enforcement performs only a cursory search before writing him off. They’re too busy to waste time on one orphan kid who’s only got a few months left and nobody in the world who cares. When the police eventually break down the door to find the his father’s body, there’s no evidence pointing to where little Wade Wilson went. The case sits cold.
After Weapon X, Wade doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s abruptly caught in an adult body too big and too strong and too ruined for him to understand: one moment, he’d been eight and in agony; the next, his healing factor had decided to mend his ills by bringing his body to genetic peak as a thirty-something superhuman. But the cancer had made it all go wrong. Instead of being a dying eight year old, Wade finds himself an immortal adult with a face that frightens even him, no education, and no survival skills.
For the first few months, the only thing that keeps him from starving to death is the healing factor.
But eventually he stumbles into the only work he’s suited for: fighting. It doesn’t matter how many times he screws up, because he always heals and eventually he’ll get it right. After a while, he scrounges up enough money for a little shithole apartment, and stumbles through renting a place under the table. He buys all the junk food he eyed enviously before, and spends his days reading comics and watching tv. He spends his nights bloodying his fists for anyone who will pay.
He doesn’t bother telling anyone his name. They call him plenty of things–slow, stupid, freak, monster, demon. Deadpool. Wade doesn’t know if he’s slow or not, but he only knows as much as his nine years have taught him, and there’s so much about being an adult that he doesn’t understand. He tries, but even at his most earnest, the travesty of his looks makes a mockery of his best intentions.
Wade is pretty sure they’re right about him being a monster though.
Wade was six when he told his mom he wanted to be a movie star when he grew up. Looking in the mirror at nine, it’s just another dead reminder of things he used to dream about.
He makes a name for himself after a while; there’s a lot to be said for a superhuman who is literally unstoppable. He learns how to use swords because they’re flashy and fun and maybe more memorable than his face, and they don’t need reloading when he’s down to just one hand. He talks all the time; to himself, to other people, to inanimate objects. It doesn’t matter if anyone answers, he’s long since lost the art of conversation. Wade’s words are a relentless babble, a self-soothing stream of nonsense that aggravates everyone around him. But at least aggravation is some sort of response.
By the time he hits twelve, still looking exactly the same as he did the day Weapon X and all its records burnt to ash around him, he can pick and choose the jobs he wants.
He picks the ones that pay most.
Wade doesn’t care who he kills. If there are good people in the world, he’s never met one. Anyone who winds up on the business ends of his swords probably had it coming.
(To be fair, Wade himself catches the sharp ends of his katanas pretty regularly. He figures he has it coming too.)
At thirteen, a beyond-classified special ops group offers him a small fortune to work for them. Wade is bored of assassinations and theft, and takes it as much for the change of pace as for the money. The other operatives are strange–mutants and metahumans, specialists and maniacs. Some of them are even kind, in the gruff way damaged people are. Wade, for the first time in his life, feels as though he fits in. Feels as though he might have a family of sorts.
When someone high in the brass goes dirty and tries to cover his tracks by wiping out the classified operatives as well as the classified files, Wade goes–
–well. He goes a little crazier.
Wade’s father used to fly into drunken rages. He would hit Wade and his wife with anything he had handy until they just stopped moving; the concussions, as much as any stroke, are what killed Wade’s mother.
Wade doesn’t like to think he’s anything like his father. But after he finds himself standing in the home of a general with blood on his fists and bodies he doesn’t remember dropping littering the floor, he has to wonder.
After that, he goes straight. Not really–straighter? By fourteen, he’s at least discerning in his targets, does his research before a hit. But having had such a bitter taste of loss, he finds himself more wary of what and who is left behind in the aftermath of one of his jobs. It’s enough to move him onto a “Potential Asset” list somewhere in the SHIELD databases. Not that Wade hears about it–he’s quite busy travelling the world with his slightly-cleaner blood money.
At least the trail of bodies he leaves behind aren’t all dead.
He’s in Tokyo when he first hears about Spider-Man, and at the time he doesn’t think much of it. It’s in New York, two weeks later, watching a very incompetent robber try to stick up a bank that things change. Spider-Man swings in through a broken window and webs robber, bag, and gun to the ceiling in less than a second. He’s a skinny streak of red and blue, hyperflexible and uncanny in a way that should be very off-putting. He spits terrible puns and one-liners to cover nerviness the whole time. Afterwards, he clips a building as he swings away, and wobbles awkwardly as he catches himself.
Wade thinks he’s in love.
If he’s going to make friends with Spider-Man, he’s going to have to clean up his act. Wade gets even pickier about what jobs he takes, and after a month of wiping out human-trafficking rings and providing mob bosses with cement shoes, SHIELD approaches him with a job. Just a trial run, to see how he does.
Wade doesn’t think he’s tried so hard to please an authority figure since the first day of kindergarten, before he figured out that the kids with rich parents never got in trouble and the ones with asshole alcoholics for dads never got picked for show-and-tell. But it pays off. He’s pretty sure Coulson likes him.
His next SHIELD mission is with Clint Barton. It goes–well. It goes.
Wade counts it as a win.
Clint introduces him to Natasha, and only the power of Wade’s excessive whininess convinces her to hook him up with an introduction to Spider-Man. He gets the Thighs of Death three times in the process, but at this point Death is the closest he has to family, and it’s sort of nice to catch up. Plus he has to sit through the “Spider-Man is young and impressionable (we think) and you’re a terrifying adult assassin/mercenary: be nice” lecture with Clint AND Natasha AND Coulson. He thinks about correcting them about him being an adult, but decides that it’s a pretty minor point when compared to the murdering for money thing.
And it’s totally worth it when Natasha finally caves and gives him a rooftop address. Apparently Spidey likes to grab a snack after patrols some nights and hang out for a while.
Wade gets a sackful of tacos and waits on the roof. For the first three nights, his only company are the pigeons, and he eats the tacos alone. But on the fourth night, Spidey shows.
Wade is so excited he trips off the edge of the roof while trying to introduce himself. It’s extremely embarrassing. He’s fifteen, he should be better at this stuff by now, except that his human interaction is mostly limited to 1. people who want him to kill other people and 2. people he’s killing.
Wade wakes up in the alley to the quiet sounds of Spider-Man freaking out about the dead guy. For a moment, Wade is confused, and then he remembers that he’s the dead guy. After that he’s pretty touched.
He winds up having to call Clint to vouch for him before Spidey will touch any of the tacos though.
Wade keeps count: he’s down 132 tacos by the first time Spidey agrees to an official team-up, instead of Wade just showing up and helping.
(Although they’ve had to agree to disagree on what exactly “help” is.)
It’s a roaring success, by Wade’s measure. He only looses one foot, and he takes three bullets for Spidey, and at the end of the mission there’s a whole pile of heroin dealers stacked up outside the police precinct and a warehouse at the docks has been exploded.
(They’ve had to agree to disagree on what exactly a “success” is, too.)
Spidey’s got a metabolism that burns through food nearly as fast as Wade’s–and Wade is always hungry–so it’s no shock that he’s down 1,372 tacos by the time Spidey tells him he’s actually Peter Parker: photographer, high school student, Stark intern, and adorable nerd.
Wade thinks he’s in love.
Wade doesn’t voluntarily show Peter his face. There’s a fire, and Wade comes out with nothing but his bones and muscle–not even his skin. But the way Peter looks at the two trapped kids who are alive because of Wade gives the merc enough courage to endure the same eyes looking up on the wreckage of his regenerating face. And when he finally meets Peter’s eyes, there’s nothing but kindness and pride and respect there.
For the first time in years, Wade wonders if maybe he isn’t a monster after all.
Between Natasha, Clint, and Peter, it’s only a matter of time before he winds up helping out with the Avengers. The differences in morality make things a little rough, but Wade honestly likes all of them, and that makes things easier. And he gets to meet Captain America.
But he’ll admit that the “Spider-Man is young and impressionable and you’re a terrifying adult assassin/mercenary: be nice and don’t do anything inappropriate” lecture stings a fair bit more when it’s being delivered by someone who has actually watched Wade jump on literal grenades for Peter.
And getting sent on suicide missions with no thanks isn’t really great either, but Wade expects that sort of thing, he’s used to it really, so it’s not so bad.
Most of the Avengers aren’t as good about Wade’s looks as Peter is. Wade can tell they try, though, and that means a lot. But there’s a reason Peter is his favorite.
Wade’s pretty sure he’s seventeen when Peter changes his life again. Sometimes Wade doesn’t remember things from before Weapon X well, but he’s pretty sure he’s got his birthday right, and he’s pretty sure it’s passed.
There’s nothing special about the day–Wade is lazing about, watching Dog Cops with Clint on the common floor while he waits for Peter to finish his internship hours. They’ll start patrol as soon as Peter is free. Wade is itching to work off excess energy, to work out the burn in his skin, so when Peter and Bruce and Tony step out of the elevator, Wade springs to his feet.
Peter makes him sit back down again before he’ll tell Wade the news: they’ve cooked up a cure. A cure for Wade’s skin, for Wade’s over-aggressive healing factor.
He might loose some of the healing factor–it might work slower, or it might not change at all–but in return, he’ll be free of the cancer.
Wade doesn’t even have to think about it.
None of them are expecting how gross it is.
Wade’s skin is usually a mess of scars and sores, and sometimes there’s ooze. He hates it. But when the cure sets to work, it’s like his whole body is trying to shed the scarring right off, and it’s disgusting. And it itches. And it hurts.
By the time it stops, Wade is so covered in gore that it’s impossible to tell if the cure even worked. But he can feel it–the absence of pain for the first time in ten years is euphoric, and he’s running hands over filthy, smooth skin in disbelief. He feels over his face and he has eyelashes, he has hair–
Wade runs directly into the nearest bathroom to make use of the mirror. Peter, Tony, and Bruce trail behind like ducklings, flapping and squawking, trying to get him to slow down. But Wade is already turning to the shower, wanting to clear the gore off his skin so he can see himself.
When he steps out of the shower, still fully clothed, all four of them are struck silent. Wade is golden blonde and gleaming, clean and unscarred. His costume hangs off him; it had been sewn for a thirty-something adult frame that his seventeen-year-old body didn’t fill. Wade’s eyes are clear of clouding and they’re blue. Straight white teeth that had always seemed grotesque in the scarred twisted mess of his mouth are now perfectly set in a face that’s just past peach fuzz.
Tony and Bruce start spluttering. It’s something about how old he is, how fucking young are you, what the fuck–
But Wade doesn’t hear it. Peter’s looking at him the same way he always has, kind and respectful and proud, and all Wade can do is grab him and laugh.
Later, he’s sure there will be a lot of talking. Wade is beginning to suspect his age is more of an issue that he always assumed it was, but for now, Wade’s head is quiet and he doesn’t hurt, and Peter is hugging him back.
He really couldn’t ask for more.