Rachel & Wade | Tuesday Morning

[x-deadpool.livejournal.com]

Wade and Rachel discuss civilian life in the gym.


Wade had set up shop in the gym and done his usual run through - kata to warm up, kata to center himself, boxing just because, bo practice, whatever else might have caught his fancy, then kata to center himself again and now he was just cooling down. He shifted through the familiar movements, one eye on the door, the other on the slight redhead pounding the ever-living shit out of a dummy on the other side of the room. The mercenary'd let his mind drift for most of his workout, but as soon as she'd come in, she'd started whaling on that dummy and he'd let his thoughts drift in her direction.

Finishing his forms, Wade inhaled slowly, then let his breath out and dropped into a casual stance, still watching Rachel. She paused, briefly, and he called, "You hit that dummy any harder, chickadee, and the Professor's gonna have to buy a replacement."

"Wouldn't be the first one," she grunted, flicking a piece of blue hair from her sweat-sheened face and executing the last portion of her usual routine with a bit more force than necessary. Had she been alone, she would probably have kept going, but using the momentum from the roundhouse kick, she spun to face Wade. Her breaths were deep and heavy, but not uneven. "And it's not like you haven't had your fair share of destroyed gym equipment."

"That's entirely true," Wade said, acknowledging her point. Then he paused to think about that for a moment. "Though I haven't broken anything while I've been here." He shrugged, figuring she'd just surmised correctly given what she knew of his history. "What's got you in a tizzy?"

The gym equipment could be so flimsy sometimes. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that most people in the mansion had at least broken some kind of shit before. Plus, when she had the sandbags replaced the year before, all she'd gotten was a grunt from the dude in charge of that sort of thing and a handwave when she attempted to apologise. Par for the course, apparently.

"People and their expectations. And their smiles and kindness," she said, both blunt and cryptic at the same time. The redhead checked the tapes on her hands before retrieving her water bottle from the bench. Pausing for a moment to actually look at Wade, she gave him a short wave and a belated: "hi."

Wade's eyebrows rose a little. "Yeah, damn those people and their kindness," he said, reaching for a towel to wipe his face. "What's up, chickadee? Somebody give you one too many smiles today?"

"You know what?" She asked after taking a long drink from her bottle and cocking a head and a hip at him. "Yes. I think people here smile way too much sometimes. It's like being pressured into being happy. My doom and gloom is offensive to them and all they want is for me to be happy and well-adjusted because that's what life is about after--" war. "Hm.'

"Hm?" Wade asked, eyes narrowing slightly. "People here can be really chipper, but I'm pretty sure a lot of it's a coping mechanism. Cause there's been some bad stuff that's happened. But which 'after' are you talking about?"

"... I'm sorry," she said after a long pause. "That was-- People have their right to their personalities and coping mechanisms and it's not something I take issue of unless and until it affects me. But it's been a long day and I'm too tired to deal with--" civilians. "People. And their cheerfulness."

She sat down on the wooden floors, carefully so that she would not tear the stitches in her side, and began stretching.

"I can understand that," Wade said, nodding. "What expectations are they throwing your way?" He noted a slight stiffness to her movements despite the fact that she'd done more than enough exercise to have warmed up by now. The field medic in him, stunted though he was, decided there was either an old injury or one that she hadn't had for long enough to get used to it - or for it to heal.

"Normalcy. Studying. Going to college. Finding a job. Being happy and well-adjusted," she shrugged, legs spreading into a horizontal split and ignoring the pain from her newest wound. "I don't know. They say they're not expecting anything. But they are hoping. Which is worse than expecting because of the disappointment that follows. Mostly I can't help but think that it's because my apparent happiness makes some of the bad things they went through a lot easier to bear. And when I'm upset, they take my sadness personally. Which is ridiculous."

Wade felt a little bit like he'd jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool filled with piranhas and a mission that involved finding colorful little rings at the very bottom. "Hey, trauma's trauma, whatever flavor you've got. It's not gonna go away just because you slap a band aid on and fake a smile. I should know. I've got the best Batman band aids ever and even they don't magically make my many varied traumas disappear."

She snorted, laughing a little. "I'm not making any sense to you, am I?"

"I dunno," Wade said. "You're singing a familiar song. The words all make sense, I've heard 'em before - sang 'em myself. Just the tune's different."

"Yeah," she said. He had enlisted right out of school. At least that's what Wade had said the first time they'd actually spoken. "I fail at being a civilian."

Wade shook his head. "You never go back to being a civilian. No matter what they tell you, no matter where you live or what you wind up doing with the rest of your life. There's always that sixth sense that makes you check out the guy who's been following you for two blocks, that extra bit of paranoia that has you scoping out exits in restaurants or at public venues, the knowledge that you could get to somebody if they were in your current situation so somebody can definitely get to you. It's trained, ingrained. Once it's there, it'll always be there - like you're right or left-handed or your eyes are blue or brown. It's just a part of you."

"Yes, exactly," she breathed, green eyes swirling with emotion as she sought out his gaze with them. She couldn't help but compare him to the Wade she had known -- another habit ingrained into her by now, subconscious and automatic. "But people don't understand that, do they? I mean, I'm not saying they had great lives or even better lives than I did. But. Just. I can't be the happy, well-adjusted girl they want me to recover into." She laughed, shaking her head as she looked down at her knees and relaxed into a more casual sitting position. For a moment it sounded like she might cry, but her eyes remained dry.

"I can't. I've tried and the pretending is killing me," she added into the brief ensuing silence. "You can't take a soldier out of a war and then expect the soldier to be able to live life surrounded by faces familiar to them. Not when those faces are faces of comrades that were killed in battle and faces of enemies whom they'd killed and who had killed them... The faces nightmares are made of. Not without going insane. And it's not like I don't want to." Her hands were fists clenched in her lap, nails digging into the callused flesh of her palm. "But I can't." Nevermind that people kept telling her that it'd get better in time. She tilted her head at him and bit her tongue. She'd said too much. Again. And she didn't even know how much he knew.

"Nah, chickadee," Wade said, shaking his head. "So stop trying to be the perfect daughter, friend, girl - whatever. You've gotta be you. You'll kill yourself trying to be something you're not, something you can never be." Walking over, the mercenary sat down next to Rachel and continued, seemingly apropos of nothing, "You got the nightmares? The hallucinations?"

“I don’t know who I am,” she said bluntly, head turning just so, to look at him from under her sweat-soaked fringe. “Not here. Not anymore. And, well, yeah. Lived with them most of my life.” She shrugged like it was the most natural thing on Earth.

"Okay, so at least one thing you are - a young-ish girl suffering from PTSD-induced nightmares. Check," Wade said, quirking a smile. "Look, figuring out who you are is a thing that's supposed to happen over time. You've barely had any time. It's not gonna come easy, it's not gonna come fast. You just gotta remember to breathe. Almost nobody else around here can understand what it's like to go to war before your brain's finished developing. They're not gonna understand that the fighting, the death - it winds up being part of your development. It's not their fault, they just have no way to understand. So take what they say with a grain of salt and do what feels right. As long as you don't wind up peeing in a bottle with nails ten inches long in a dark room acting really crazy, I'd say you're doing pretty good."

She laughed, mostly because there wasn’t anything else to do. Everything he was saying, she knew logically. But the rational part of her brain didn’t always translate to easing the perpetual ache in her chest. So she said: “I know they can’t understand it. But I’m just so, so tired.”

“And since I'm in the mood to overshare,” Rachel sighed and leaned back on her elbows, head hanging back to peer up at the ceiling as though it contained all the answers. She simply was not wired to suppress all the thoughts and emotions in the world. But the words still didn’t come easy. “There are times when… Like, I almost got into an argument with Angelo last week. One-sided, of course – you probably know how he is, irritatingly unflappable fucker. He was being my older brother. Concerned. And nosy. And… parental. Like he could tell me what to do and I’d have to do it because he was somehow in a position of power over me. And…” she swallowed hard and lowered her face to reveal the unhappy consternation in her brow. “I stood there thinking about the 50 different ways I could kill him without him even being able to begin to stop me.”

God, that sounded so horrible.

"Right, not so much a 'go to college, get a degree' kinda girl, huh?" Wade said, leaning his head back against the wall behind them. "More a 'lookit how this dude's actions have destabilized an entire region and how this other dude's actions have undermined the government over there so now obviously there's gonna be a massive war and hundreds of thousands are going to die' kinda girl. I can see that." Then he grinned despite himself. "Did any of them tell you to just ignore the shit in your head and it'd go away? I got that one a lot."

Rachel snorted. "You know they don't put things that way. They're more of the 'it'll be okay just give it some time' kind of people. Or the 'you'll find your purpose in life eventually and shit rainbows and unicorns' sort. And then you smile and nod and reassure them that yes, it'll be okay because life has a habit of working itself out all by its lonesome and no don't worry, little Rayray ain't gonna go jump off a cliff and off herself. Otherwise they'll smother you with their powers to coddle you until you submit to their obvs higher powered braining and wordly knowledge about how 19 year olds need to behave."

"See, I always got advice from the army shrinks. Who were much more like, 'Are you functional? No, don't actually tell me about how you keep seeing bullet holes in people's chests when you're talking to them in the mess hall, just tell me you're functional. I don't actually care about your mental well-being, just how quick I can okay you for duty so you can go kill that dude in that country with the stuff in it that we say we don't want but we really, really do actually want.' It was all a formality. So y'know, you learn to compartmentalize. I do that really well," Wade said, nodding a little. "Like, I just don't think about certain things. Certain people. And when I do by accident, I wind up fighting a precog who knows where all my hits are supposed to land so he's never there. It's very therapeutic."

"Gee, where do I get a toy like that?" She asked, tone tinged with sarcasm. "I blow stuff up at the quarry. It's also therapeutic. But it's a wee bit difficult to not think about certain things and certain people when they're literally staring you in the fucking face. M'just sayin'."

"A secret government project sanctioned to use all kinds of fun and interesting, unsafe and untested methods to enhance and augment people's mutations," Wade deadpanned. "But no, I get it. That's why I don't think about certain things. Or people. Like if Thor ever shows up in front of me, I'ma try and punch his teeth into his throat. I'll probably fail - y'know, Norse god of thunder and all that shiz, but if he's there... seriously. I'm gonna try my damnedest to make it happen." He paused, scowled at the ceiling a little, and muttered, "Asshole."

“I can’t,” Rachel rolled her eyes and started unwrapping the tape from her hands – it didn’t seem like she’d be getting any more done at that point, and her side was starting to itch where the stitches were. “I dunno what your beef with a Norse god is about, but it’s not the same as you and your WEAPONX stuff, man. Let’s say… Catseye. She was a murdering traitor where I came from. But here she’s a little pussy cat. But when I see her – and I do see her quite a bit – it’s hard to disassociate the two. Or when I see Scott. His death was the first I’d ever felt. I can’t un-see or un-feel and certainly not not think about it when I’m around him. So most times I’d rather just not see people but then that’s a tiiiiny bit difficult.

“But hey, I got your back. I’ll pin him down and you can have at him?”

Wade paused for a moment, going very, very still. Nothing about him moved, nothing about him shifted. He didn't bat an eyelash. The moment lengthened, stretched, hollowed out, and refilled with something very like caution. "What'd my other self tell you about WEAPONX?"

Rachel was watching him with an air of casual indifference, but she was a little too focused on her tape for it to be natural. “Well. We merely traded sob stories so nothing in too much detail. I know they fucked with your mutation, jacked you up on a coupl’a others then took ‘em off an’ left you mostly operational?-ish. Or something. Does it matter? You won the sob story contest, by the way. But I’ve got new material now so you’re in for some tough competition.”

Not entirely sure what to do with that, Wade continued to ponder the ceiling. He did relax a little, though. "So just how close were we on the other side? And does my face bother you? Cause I'd offer to change it, except that my girlfriend kind of likes it the way it is. Also, I don't care what anyone says, Thor is an asshole and don't you believe anything anyone else tells you."

"I got your back,” she repeated with a wry smile, wincing as she leaned a little too far to retrieve her water bottle. “You an’ Molls saved my life the first time we met, if that answers your question. And I saved your arses in return.” Which probably would not have needed saving if it weren’t for her anyways. But he didn’t need to know that per se. “You didn’t turn evil or die so I think you’re pretty safe. We didn’t talk often or see each other much. But when we did, we’d talk for like, forever.”

Wade smiled a little. "Alright, then. Just remember - Norse god. 'God' being the key part there. I'd rather you not get smote for having my back. That'd suck." He watched as Rachel moved, noting the same stiffness as well as her wince, and asked, "What'd you do to your side?"

“There can only be one God,” she said sternly, tossing her bottle into her open gym bag. He probably wouldn’t know whether or not she was joking given that he didn’t exactly have that kind of inside joke with her. “I was splodin’ things in the quarry and summoned too much shit at one go so I got sliced in the side. S’no biggie. Dr Cece said I could take them stitches out in two-ish days, I think.”

"Right," Wade deadpanned. "All hail the one true God, may his light shine on your always, bringing you peace and happiness."

“Hail, hail. He is the answer to everything,” she agreed solemnly, then grinned. “Do you know a dude called Daredevil?”

"Nope," Wade said, shaking his head. "Not a codename I'm familiar with." He paused to think about it. "Yeah, no. Not from my WEAPONX days, my merc days, or the groups I hang around with now. Who was he?"

“He was the third to your trio. He was always off trying to con some poor bastard of his last penny though. His favourite dress up gig was as a priest. It was hilarious. I never asked any of you for your real names though, so I can’t confirm his identity.”

"Huh," Wade said, considering that. "Probably Matt? I dunno, though. He's religious and I'd take him with me if things blew up around here, same as Molly. Not sure about the conning thing, but hey - different circumstances and all that." Shrugging, he said, "C'mon, let's go get some food."

Blinking at the sudden topic change, the redhead studied Wade for a long moment before shrugging. "I'll insist on a bath first though." Because of all the luxuries of peace-time, taking baths was one thing Rachel unabashedly indulged in. "You stink."