Marie-Ange & Wade | Thursday Afternoon

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Marie-Ange goes to the mansion for her regularly scheduled MRI and meets Wade. And his stuffed animals.


Wade had a stuffed emperor penguin under one arm and a stuffed ,an'o'war jellyfish in hand as he headed down the hallway toward the main entrance to the school. If anyone asked, he'd found them and thought they deserved a good home. In reality, he'd gotten very bored a few nights ago and the internet was shiny. What was a guy supposed to do when confronted with adorable plushies of dangerous animals?

Okay, so the penguin wasn't really dangerous, but the scorpion, tarantula, and jellyfish definitely were.

Marie-Ange had only gone to the mansion for her semi-regular (which was to say, regular except that she avoided it constantly) MRI and psionic checkups reluctantly. Normally she would just have gone to an anonymous doctor and then had the MRI results forwarded to Moira, and had Emma check her for psionic damage. But she was not about to let Emma in her mind. And it was refreshing to return to the mansion and not have to check over her shoulder and make sure everyone was on the up-and-up. And the Professor had excellent taste in tea.

Plus ca change, the mansion changed always, but it never did. Always there were hyperactive children, this time with odd taste in hats, it seemed, and always there were people who made Marie-Ange stop in doorways because they were just... odd. It did not hurt that the man who was carrying what looked to be a very large stuffed poisonous jellyfish was pretty.

Wade caught sight of the lovely redheaded woman standing in the doorway and pasted on his innocent smile. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could put this jellyfish so that someone who's in need of a squishable, fuzzy thing would be able to find it, would you?" He held the man'o'war out a little, brows quirked, and then wiggled it at her.

Marie-Ange reached out and poked the thing with a finger. It was just so odd that she had to make sure it was not a hallucination first. Except that if it was, perhaps it was a tactile one. It would not be the first time she had a multi-sensory hallucination. "You are not a portent of doom, are you? Or a portent of success, perhaps. I do not know what a jellyfish would represent, much less a large fuzzy one."

Blinking, Wade pulled the jellyfish back so he could hold it up and look it in the eye. Then he grabbed the penguin out from under his arm with his free hand and held that out to the woman. "Here, I think penguins are less ambiguous. There's pretty much nothing doom and gloomy about them. Are you French?"

"No, I am just masquerading as a French national so that I can question men about their stuffed animals." Marie-Ange said, affecting a -very- artificial flat midwestern American accent. She poked the penguin as well, somewhat reassured that it was real. "Penguins represent... ah, I think that one has watched Fight Club one too many times, or that someone in your life is going to take up a career in tap dance."

"There's a grumpy Quebecois who turns up every now and again, so I figured it was best to ask," Wade said, waggling his eyebrows. "I'm not sure you can ever watch Fight Club too many times and I can't tap dance, but y'know. I don't think that's what it means, really. I think it's a portent of cute, fuzzy things to come." Reaching out with the penguin, Wade used its beak to poke the Frenchwoman in the stomach, then the side.

Marie-Ange swatted lightly at the penguin. It was indeed fuzzy. "I do not think my hallucinations have ever told me what they meant before, so I will decide you are real." She stated. "If you are not real I will be very disappointed." He was too cute to not be real. "I am Marie-Ange... Colbert, and not related to the man on the television show. Which is a shame. My actual relative is much less funny."

Holding the penguin up, Wade wiggled it at eye level for Marie-Ange. "See? The penguin portent of cute, fuzzy things to come is dancing for you. Because he loves you and wants you to take him home. He says you're pretty and he doesn't want to have to hang out with the jellyfish anymore, because the jellyfish is cramping his style, man. There is style crampage going on and that is just not allowed." Voice switching to a strangely gravelly, higher pitch, Wade continued, "Please take me away from the style-cramping jellyfish, Miss Marie-Ange Colbert, no relation to Steven Colbert. Please."

Between giggles, Marie-Ange took the penguin and held it up at arms' length. "Bonjour, Mister Penguin. Of course I will rescue you from having your style, er, cramped by a Medusaoza." She held the penguin up to one ear. "What is that, the man who bought did not give you a name? That is shameful!" She waved a finger mock-scoldingly at Wade. "Shame on you, Penguin Buying Man whose Name I do not know. I shall name the penguin Perseus. Perseus Penguin. That is a good name, yes?"

"Well, I mean," Wade said, grinning, "I was gonna name him, but I bet he likes your name better. He was gonna be Pinocchio Potato Pinguinius VI, if I'd had my way..." Offering her his now-free hand, the mercenary quirked a brow. "I'm Wade. Wade Wilson. It's nice to meet you."

Marie-Ange shook his hand, still giggling a little. "It is nice to meet you as well. That is very alliterative. Your name, that is. And the penguin's, also. Perhaps he is Perseus Pinocchio Pinguinius the Sixth? I think your alliteration should not go to waste. Did you have a name for your jellyfish too?"

"Calamari," Wade said, eyes crinkling at the corners. "I'm a fan of alliteration. My parents were, too. My middle name's Winston."

"You were going to name your jellyfish after squid?" Maybe he -was not- a hallucination, but Marie-Ange was starting to think he made about as much sense as one. "Mine are Catholic. I have all saint names. It is much less fun than yours."

"Absolutely - I couldn't call her Manny. People'd think I'd named her Maneater and she'd develop a complex or something unhealthy. This way, she just lives in fear of the deep fat fryer at the local seafood restaurant and people feel sorry for her. They're not terrified of her. Which is pretty much awesome for a jellyfish with stinging tentacles that can be up to sixty-six feet long." Wade raised his eyebrows a little, asking "Do you take after your namesakes, Marie-Ange?"

"If I try to be ridiculous and pretend that I am chaste and humble and charitable I will start laughing before I even start speaking." Marie-Ange said, matching Wade's eyebrows with a raised eyebrow of her own. "I worked for ... well, I suppose I still work for the Snow Valley Centre. None of us are anything like saints."

"Excellent," Wade said, tipping his head toward the mansion's main entrance. "How about we take Cali and Percy there out to lunch, Marie-Ange? There's an Indian place I found that has some of the most authentic chicken curry I've ever had Stateside."

Just like that he was asking her to lunch? For a second, Marie-Ange considered saying no, she had just met Wade, and for all she knew, he was actually dangerously crazy, instead of crazy in a entertaining way. And then two things happened. First, Wade draped the long tendrils of his jellyfish over his shoulder and around his neck, and second, Marie-Ange realized that even if he was dangerously crazy, it was probably in an entertaining way. "If that was a real jellyfish, you would be very sick right now. But perhaps not dead, their venom does not cause death in humans very often."

"I think Cali here'd be hurting me," Wade said, patting the jellyfish's bulbous head, "but I don't think I'd be really sick. It's part of the healing factor thing. I'm pretty resistant to that kind of thing." Which came in handy, generally speaking. "I mean, have you ever gotten shot with a poisoned dart? I got shot with six of them, once. It kinda sucked, but it didn't slow me down too much." Wade quirked an eyebrow and offered Marie-Ange his arm. He frowned and shifted the jellyfish over to his other side, the head still hanging from the tentacles wrapped around his neck. "Do you like curry and na'an?"

"I love curry. Amanda was my roommate for a very long time. Have you met her?" Marie-Ange said. She patted "Cali"'s tentacle. "And no, I have never been shot with a poison dart. I was shot once, but I do not remember any of it, which is good because I am told it was very messy." She did remember vomiting out the tubes in her throat, but that was just not suitable conversation. And besides, then you had to explain Amanda and magic and New Orleans and that led to "oh, yes, I killed people for money for six months." and that was almost always a date ender. "I would love to go to lunch. Curry after a MRI sounds like the perfect idea."

"Oh, MRIs," Wade said, shaking his head even as he wiggled his elbow at Marie-Ange so she'd hopefully take his arm. "Did they let you listen to music? Osmosis Joe put me on a classic rock shuffle or something when I had mine - it was awesome."

Marie-Ange took Wade's arm, but gave him a mildly confused look. "Osmosis Joe? I did not meet any new doctors, do we have one?" What sort of person would be named Osmosis? Perhaps, she thought, they had interesting water-based powers. "I slept. My brain does very odd things when I am asleep, and the MRI is to make sure it has not gotten any odder while I was away."

"Osmosis Joe - the big, blue guy," Wade said, opening the door so they could walk through it and then closing it behind them. "I give people nicknames, it's a thing. I haven't got you figured out for one yet, but it'll happen eventually." Happy that he'd had the forethought to leave a car out front, Wade headed for it and opened the door for Marie-Ange. "Do you dream weird dreams? Cause I have weird dreams. A taco tried to eat me last night. And the night before that an ice ax kept chasing after me but I couldn't run because I had crampons on my feet and they kept getting stuck to the ground."

"Oh! Doctor McCoy. No, I had a visit with Doctor Voight." Marie-Ange explained. "Nicknames I understand, yes. Amanda calls me Frenchie, and usually I am Angie, and not Marie-Ange. Except to my cousin, but that is okay, because I do not give him nicknames either." She was not even sure how to respond to the taco comment. "I have... ah, I am precognitive, and usually it is in dreams, although sometimes it is hallucinations. But not usually ice axes or tacos. Ravens though, sometimes."

"And ravens are bad, I'll bet," Wade said, closing the door after Marie-Ange was inside and moving around to the driver's side door. "Ravens are always bad," he continued, getting in and buckling up. He started the car and down the main drive they went.