Telling Stories


Kayla learned what it was all about, before she left.  She had to—she didn’t think she could stand to pretend to be in love with a man without knowing the real reason why.  So she nosed around, picked through things that weren’t really any of her business, asked Carol, asked all those wonderfully obliging doctors.

It turned out that the Department’s scientists, especially the ones involved in the Program, were mostly very arrogant and self-absorbed.  They liked to talk about themselves, about their work, about how brilliant they were.

She could get Dr. Cornelius to ramble for hours about the beauty of splicing bits of DNA together.  Far more than his other projects, more than veiled references to bio-engineered super-soldiers and berserker drugs, he was in love with the idea of the Deadpool Program.  It was a culmination, he said, of all the Weapon Programs to-date (not that she knew much about any of those, but that wasn’t the point).  He would babble endlessly about how perfect their subject’s genes were, how receptive to modification they’d shown to be, how the subject’s dependent personality made him easy to manipulate.

There were something like a dozen doctors carefully monitoring food, drugs, sleep, physical activity, psychological health…

Keynes crowed about chemical balances, about perfectly controlled diet and nutrition that could change anything from the subject’s field performance to his moods.  Malcolm bragged that he could practically watch over his colleague’s shoulders by reading the subject’s sleep patterns.  Varrick claimed his psychoanalysis was so complete that he could influence the subject’s thoughts and actions with something as simple as a word or a color.

‘The subject.’  They always called him ‘the subject,’ or ‘Weapon Eleven,’ never mentioned his name.

So she went back to Carol, asked pointed questions, dropped veiled accusations…and Carol reluctantly answered.

Wade Wilson.

The entire purpose of Team X was furthering a whole host of mutant control projects; and the ultimate weapon of mutant control was the Deadpool Program:  a creature that could go anywhere without being seen or heard, win against almost any odds, kill without conscience or hesitation.  The whole mutant world would be cowering from every shadow.  He was meant to be a peace keeper, Carol said, but Kayla could see that even she was beginning to doubt the good intentions of her white-coated-vulture coworkers.

It was a shocking revelation.  Everything—Team X, the mutant kidnappings, the retrieval of James Logan—was about Wade, about the search for a clean genetic slate with a programmable brain attached, so that Stryker and Cornelius could build some terrible anti-mutant super-weapon.  Her sweet baby sister had been held for ransom so that a pair of bastards with God-complexes could turn some psychopathic murderer into a more efficient psychopathic murderer with a remote control.

Before that point, she had almost pitied Wade for the way he seemed to be slowly but surely going insane because of Logan’s departure.  The other members of Team X had made no secret of the fact that Logan and Wade had been, at the very least, occasional bedmates; that ‘dependent personality’ that had Varrick and Cornelius so happy must have triggered some kind of psychotic break.  He’d been used, had his mind and heart broken, would be cut up and rearranged to suit his puppeteers’ whims…but she couldn’t afford to feel sorry for him anymore, not when he was the reason Emma had been taken from her.

She set her mind to her work and pushed away all thoughts of how lost Wade had seemed just four days after Logan left, and how he’d only gotten worse after that.

It was a nothing town, the very definition of ‘middle of nowhere.’  Creed had said that was probably why Logan had picked the place.  She settled in, kept away from him for a while before slowly letting their paths cross by coincidence, to let him get used to seeing her around town.  He had to believe she wasn’t looking for him.  When they met, he had to believe it was by chance.  If he had any reason to suspect otherwise, he’d bolt, and her mission would be a failure.  Just a bump of elbows in a bar, just ‘excuse me’ and ‘no, that’s all right’ and ‘let me buy you a drink.’  Casual, underhanded tricks like beeswax chapstick and sandalwood soap to smell like fond memories (like Wade), the occasional bright smile or saucy grin (minus the manic edge Wade usually had).

It was far too easy to seduce a man without him ever noticing, all by using little bits of someone who’d already seduced him.  Somewhere in his subconscious, he would be getting messages like familiar and comfortable, but his conscious mind would only register that she reminded him of someone else.

Sometimes, she felt a little guilty about it.  Sometimes, she would catch him staring at her with a troubled and nostalgic look.  Sometimes, he would wake crying in the night and sneak away from the bed to stare up at the moon.

At times like that, she started to think that if it hadn’t been for Stryker and Cornelius…if Wade and Logan had met under different circumstances, they might have been happy together.  It was tragic, really.  But she wouldn’t let a little thing like that endanger Emma’s life.  She wouldn’t pity them.

She would do what needed to be done.  She would stay in that little cabin and keep on lying until he was attached enough that he would chase her ‘killer’ to the ends of the earth.  She was close now—a year ago, he’d told her almost his whole life story, with names left out.

“Haven’t you split enough wood yet?” she called out the side door.  “Dinner’ll be frozen solid by the time you get in here.”

“Hush, you,” Logan chuckled, propping the ax next to the door.  “Got a mouth on you almost as sassy as…”

She led the way back to the dining room, looked at him over her shoulder.  “As who?” she asked blithely, even though she knew the answer.

“…just a war buddy of mine,” he evaded with a frown.

“I’m sorry,” she said, playing the part of the sympathetic lover.  “Did he die in one of the wars?”

“No, nothin’ like that.  We just…went our separate ways.”

It must be like moving away and being forced to leave a beloved pet behind, she thought.  If he’d loved Wade—actually loved him—he wouldn’t have been able to leave in the first place, but it was plain that Wade was still very important to him.

She shrugged.  “Well…don’t you ever talk to him now and then?  Give him a call or something, catch up on old times?”

“Can’t,” Logan sighed, sitting down to the table.  “He didn’t retire when I did.  There’s no such thing as giving him a phone call or sending him a letter.”

“Do you miss him a lot?” she asked dutifully.  “If you were comrades-in-arms, I’m sure you must have been close, what with the whole ‘man beside you’ military male bonding thing.  I think getting shot at together would make me pretty close to someone.”

He lapsed into thoughtful silence while she served the food.  “Y’know, I used to tell myself I didn’t, but I’m pretty sure I’ve missed him all along.”  He shook his head.  “No use cryin’ over spilled milk.”

“Especially with hardwood floors,” she quipped.  “Better to run like hell for a sponge, before it soaks in and starts to smell.”  She said it jokingly, but it was her philosophy about most things, really—don’t just sit there when it’s too late, get off your ass and start cleaning things up.

He almost smiled, but the expression was swallowed up by one of regret.  “He probably woulda said something like that, just then,” he mumbled, picking up his fork.  “Had a habit of makin’ light of depressing situations.”

“Well, you can’t change the past,” she told him.  “You can only change the way you look at it.  Instead of ‘if only we could go back,’ make it ‘God, we had a lot of fun back then.’  Don’t think about the fact that you lost something—focus on the fact that you managed to have it in the first place.”

That seemed to cheer him up, because he gave her a fond grin and actually started eating.  “You’re right, darlin’.”

She smiled at him.

Don’t think about the fact that you’re lying through your teeth to someone who is essentially a good man—focus on the fact that he’s a killer and your baby sister has never hurt anyone in her life.

Besides, Stryker said he planned to erase Logan’s memory.  He would never remember being lied to, falling in love with her, finding her ‘dead.’  No harm, no foul.

Maybe it wasn’t something to be proud of, but Emma was worth it.

That’s what Kayla told herself, anyway.


.End.