by Red Monster
Disclaimer: Blah blah blah, Wade, Terry, James, Typhoid Mary, and Al are all property of Marvel Comics, in fact, this whole story is built around a comic book that they published, heck, much of the text is straight out of that comic, but I'm not making any money off of this, and probably no popularity, so don't bother suing me, guys, as you won't accomplish anything by it.
Hi, my name is Wade Wilson, most people unlucky enough to know me call me Deadpool, yadda yadda yadda. One fine spring day, in a perfectly legitimate tourist attraction in Iowa, I learned what it's like to truly be heartbroken. Perhaps I should introduce you to the cast of characters first. There's Theresa Rourke Cassidy, a very foxy little mama who I was sure would be my salvation. Boy, did I get a wrong number. Then there's James Proudstar, Terry's boring male best friend, who undeniably holds the record for the world's wettest blanket. He's a terrible bore, but Terry seems to like him well enough, so I'll let him live. Unfortunately, there's also Typhoid Mary, a psychopath who has recently restructured her life around my destruction. She's really good at it, too. I'm proud of myself for pulling through her antics as well as I did, which isn't very. Finally, there's Blind Alfred, my prisoner, who by the way is an old lady. Now if only that stereotype that all old ladies are sweet and affectionate and spend all their time baking cookies and growing crocuses were true. Now onto the story, mouth-breathers!
I suppose you deserve to know I'm less than concrete in the mental health department. Lately I've been developing a greater capacity for love and forgiveness and restraint and all that touchy-feely crap, but don't rule out the possibility of me using your head for a soccerball if you play your cards wrong. Terry seemed to have a really soothing effect on me, getting me to hold out on making out of a certain bottom-feeding, compassion-impaired (look who's talking!) quack, and I honestly believed I loved her. Or was that just lust? Or had I merely eaten too much of Al's special recipe carrot cake again? I can never tell the three apart. Anyway, I had very disturbing feelings for this girl, and was willing to do things that never entered my diseased mind before I met her. She seemed to have this gift for reining in my insanity before it made me do things any other peon would regret. Unfortunately, she can only this gift when she's nearby, and I was separated from her long enough to get a little out of hand. I felt myself edging toward the brink of a state of being unfit for contact with children and other living things, but then I remembered how Terry was so good at kissing it and making it better. Hey, get that image out of your mind, you depraved, Hustler-reading schmuck! So I went a-hunting for Terry, hoping she'd bring me back to the land of the Prozac-enriched. I was about to find out, even Terry's compassion and patience had a limit.
I finally found Terry killing time at a shamelessly commercial, though harmless tourist trap in Iowa, the site where the Costner movie Field of Dreams was filmed. I saw her shooting Polaroids idyllically, and saw James, that poster-hulk for insomnia cures, pouting in a car like Terry loved the sights more than him, which was understandable, knowing him. I looked at her innocent, happy face, his truly repugnant humorlessness, and remembered her talent, and the most brilliant idea for how to get her attention struck me. Oh, it's too grand to blurt out now, you'll have to keep listening!
I turned on my image-inducer to make myself indistinguishable from any other assimilated former reggae mon, and snuck into the car beside James. I broke the ice in my own inimitable way, he acknowledged his recognition of my distinct voice tactlessly, but expressively. I blathered a little, sent him a few rude racial remarks that I would have responded to with exotic kitchen implements in his place, but he took in stride. Then I made my offer to withhold the blasting of his big carcass across the park with a big hair-dryer in exchange for a few minutes of privacy. He wasn't compliant, to say the least, which I usually don't do.
"And why, pray tell, would I do that?" the hulking behemoth asked me.
"You consider yourself a hero, Jimmy?" Ugh! I can't believe I called him Jimmy!
"What?" he asked.
"One of the good guys, an examplar? A protagonist? A tonto? Stop me if you catch the drift, Kemosabe." I explained.
"I catch, and the answer is yes." he said earnestly.
"Bet it feels good... clarity like that. Some of us aren't focused. We need beacons, signposts, Terry's like a neon sign. I need her..." I began.
"She doesn't need you. And when she did, I didn't see you around. Case you hadn't heard, we were hunted like dogs during Operation: Zero Tolerance. Not a lot of fun..." he started. Now that I think about it, I have to admit, the brute had a point.
"That's mutant stuff. Not my problem. She did alright." I told him eloquently.
"Thinking like that let the Holocaust happen, the Trail of Tears." James reminded me.
"So now I'm a Nazi?" I asked wittily.
"No, but you're still a lifetime away from ever getting close to a beacon like Theresa. Quite frankly, I don't know why you even bother." he said boldly.
"Do Theresa a favor." he went on. "Climb back under your rock and wait. If she 'needs' you, she'll call. But bring comfortable shoes, 'cause I think it'll be awhile." That was about the coolest thing I ever heard the guy say.
"So that's how it's gonna be, huh? All macho, no sensitive side?" I asked, as if I were one to talk about insensitivity.
"Yup." he said. Once again, tactless, but expressive.
"That's a pity. Back to plan A, then. Sorry about the shirt. It looks new." I told him. I was such a dumbass. I thought I was being brilliant and creative and showy. Well, I got one out of three right. I had just signed my own death warrant.
The method in which I signed my own death warrant was to take out a small bomb and apply it to James' protein-fed self. Like a charm, he went flying across the field with a grand flame, in a beautiful curveball shape. And Terry did understand correctly when James shouted "Alright, the kid gloves are off, and they're gonna be wrapped around your neck, Deadpool!" Damn, I was hoping he'd be knocked out so he couldn't interfere with me and Terry. I guess the guy's a lot tougher than I gave him credit for. He bounced right on back, punched me across the field. But I threw sand in his face and was about to turn his bola-balls into school lunch when all the noises...stopped. At least that's what it felt like, but it was really just one noise coming up that drowned out all the others and was so powerful my ears couldn't process it. I felt it more than heard it. It felt like an explosion in my head. I turned around, and there was Terry, a different person from the sweet, smiling tourist of just a minute before.
"You're lucky I didn't hit you full blast, you stupid sod." she said, sounding sadly like James, only with that pretty Irish accent and that estrogen-enhanced female voice, oh, you get the picture.
I was blathering in my usual brilliant style about disembodied voices and James Earl Jones, when Terry asked James to handle crowd control while she talked to "this imbecile" As James sullenly walked away to get the screaming masses under control, Theresa asked me why I attacked him for no reason. I was just cooking up an innocent little lie to sway her to my side when she saw through my ruse and screamed at me to explain myself.
I asked her if she liked me as a person, trying to set the stage for her talent to work. She was just about to do what I needed her to do when she realized what I was doing, and she just wasn't in the mood for it that day.
"You’re not going to pull that puppy dog rubbish with me this time, Wilson! You came here looking for mischief, and that's what you found. Your pal Siryn isn't going to kiss it and make it all better." she said, walking away.
"Wait! I didn't want to cause trouble, Terry!" I was such a liar. "I've been looking all over for you, don't... Terry, please, things have been happening... not so good things... I need your help. I need you." I begged her.
"I been through some bad things, too, Wade. Maybe you turned on a television in the last month and caught a little thing called Zero Tolerance? Today I was finally getting around to laying all that to rest... and in you leap with guns and blades and bad jokes and... you picked the wrong day to screw up, Wade. Sorry, but I'm not interested in helping you right now. Pick up your own mess." she instructed me. I swear, that day, she and James must have been of one mind. They both had this really effective way of cutting me off with just a few words.
"Hey! Look, I'm sorry my timing sucks, but this is serious! This isn't like 'Ooh, I have a zit before the prom, help me pop it' this is me losing my grip on... Rourke! I'm talking to you! Stop!" Much more serious than I normally am.
"I’ll call you when I get settled in." she said, trying to walk away. Now that I think about that day, I'm surprised she was that nice to me.
"I said stop! Don't you dare turn your back on me when I'm talking to you! You'll stand here and listen, or so help me..." I began, grabbing her by the arm and shaking her in front of my face. I don't know what had gotten into me right then. She had the power to blow me to pieces at the distance she was from me, but her restraint kept her from using her powers. And without her powers, Terry is really a very light, delicate-boned woman. No match against a guy my size. I didn't mean to be so rough with her. I tried to apologize, but it was too late. I had already pushed her beyond the point of no return. She crinkled up her angelic face at me and stalked away.
That was when I was truly heartbroken. I had just blown my chance of ever being on good terms with Terry again. I had to get drunk. So I scraped up some cheap beer, and drank about 20 cans of the swill, and hid out in the cornfields until the cops packed up.
I blathered drunkenly at some curious woodchuck, threw my image inducer into the corn, and chased the poor rodent away.
Then "Terry" showed up again, threw herself in my arms, and confessed her love for me. I was on top of the world until the next morning, when "Terry" turned out to be Typhoid Mary in disguise. I must admit, she's very good at what she does.
After it was all over, I went back home and asked Blind Al for advice. Hey, stop that laughing out loud! I know she's a vindictive old viper, but she is a woman, after all. I sat her down, told her the whole story, about my deteriorating mental state, my 4-star performance in Iowa, Terry's reaction, and Typhoid's appearance. Al just laid her head in her hands and moaned.
"Oh Wade, Wade, Wade" she went on for about an hour before gathering up the strength to talk down to my level. "I'm ashamed to call myself your prisoner. I knew you'd blow it with her eventually, but I had no idea you'd do it so soon or so efficiently and single-handedly. You might as well just get on with your life and find another sweet girl who brings out the best in you, only don't repeat your performance of... what you just described to me. The matter's out of your hands, because Terry's not coming back. And you have no one to blame but yourself." Al said disappointedly.
"Hey! Come on, Al, it can't be that bad! All I did was blow her boring male best friend across a baseball field and then ask her to talk to me nicely for a few minutes! After a week with him, she'll come running back to me, I just know it." I said desperately.
"Wade, that girl has a choice of what man she ends up with. I used to be that liberated, so I know what kind of choice she'll make. She's not coming back, Wade. Even if that James guy she brought with her is a colossal bore, she's not coming back to you. Believe me, nice girls don't appreciate it when guys like you throw bombs at their best friends. In fact, they don't appreciate it at all when guys like you do violent things to get their attention. Maybe if you had stopped yourself after you threw the bomb and apologized to James and swore it was an accident, that you just meant to slap him on the shoulder, Terry would have forgiven you and worked her magic on you like you wanted her to, but you've really screwed yourself over this time, Wade. James was just trying to protect her from you, and can you blame him for not trusting you with his best friend? So how did you disprove his fears? You threw a bomb at him and almost slugged Terry. You've really hit a new low this time, Wade."
"Al, please, don't do this to me. I know you hate me, and I don't blame you, but there's no need to give me this." I said, sinking deeper into the depths of despair.
"I'm not telling you this as your prisoner who's trying to bring you down to free herself, I'm telling you this as a woman, and as a person with half an ounce of sense. Terry would have to be a total dumbass to come back to you. Rescuing her from that insane asylum was a good move, but it just wasn't enough to gloss over this. You have to treat her like a friend if you expect her to keep you from the brink of insanity." Al said.
"But Al, I'm a great friend to her! I'm willing to take her anyplace! Why, just a few months ago, I took her to Switzerland to kill her evil Uncle Tom whom she knows is insane!" I defended myself.
"You did what?! You took her on an excursion to kill her relatives?! That is not what friends are for! Take her to Switzerland to ski and lounge in fancy resorts and sip hot cocoa, dammit! What were you thinking?! Wait a minute... did she ask you to kill her Uncle Tom?" Al asked me.
"Well no, but she knows he's cuckoo." I said.
"Did she even say she wanted him dead? Has she ever expressed hatred for him?"
"No, Al! But everyone knows the guy is a nut and needs to be put out of his misery! Even Terry knows that. She's got an ounce of sense in her head."
"Wade, taking friends to Europe to kill their relatives is not what friends are for. Blowing up your friends' other friends is not what friends are for, even if said other friends are boring and humorless. Asking friends to be nice to you after you've done something horrible like blow up their other friends is not what friends are for. And assaulting friends when they don't bend over backwards for you is not what friends are for, either! You've done so many things to piss her off, Wade, I'm surprised she didn't leave you with your limbs rearranged. And don't go thinking she'll reconsider you after spending some time with James, either." Al began.
"Oh, now what, are you gonna tell me when you were her age you'd go straight for guys like him? Great." I said exasperatedly.
"No, Wade, I'm not saying that. But I am saying that if they're best friends now, your brilliant sense of humor isn't going to change that. Guys like James, who are boring and humorless wet blankets and even a little clueless and can't take a joke, are usually responsible and reliable and faithful and willing to commit and all that mushy crap. That doesn't mean he'll turn Terry on, but she'll lean her head on his shoulder much faster than yours." Al said.
"Well, what would you do when you were young and cute and had a choice like Terry?" I asked.
"Honestly? I'd initially go for guys like you..." she began, when I cut her off.
"Yay! I'm not totally lost after all!" I celebrated.
"BUUUUT, then said guy like you would turn out to be a royal jerk, and I would go crying back to my Mommy, and try my luck with a guy more like James, and it would last much longer. And after I got bored of the guy like James and moved on, I certainly didn't go back to the same royal jerk who sent me packing in tears. Terry is probably rubbing noses with James as we speak. And I can't believe you honestly thought it was really Terry when Typhoid showed up in disguise and laid you. That's the most pathetic part of all. You don't understand the stupidity of what you've done. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for my afternoon vitamins." she said, and groped her way back to the room I'd set aside for her since taking her prisoner.
At first I was too enraged by the hopelessness of my situation to believe it. But Al was right. Terry is gone for good, and I have no one to blame but myself. That's what's most heartbreaking about all this. I can't blame society, or misunderstanding, or poor communication, or PMS, or the media on losing Terry. I did it all myself, testing the limits of her compassion until I reached a level no one could be expected to pass. I wonder how good a shrink Dr. Weisman is when she's not possessed by Gamesmaster? I'm ashamed of myself now. Ashamed that I ever thought Terry was endeared by how I was treating her, ashamed that I thought I could gain her compassion by committing violence against her friend. Ashamed that I was shocked when Typhoid Mary reared her ugly head in the morning. The only thing I'm not ashamed of is how I got through the situation. I went to Terry because I thought I was about to go over the edge. But she ditched me, and I still came out with my head held up straight in the end. Perhaps she was trying to teach me to swim by pushing me into the river...
I'm going to put this down in my scrapbook as things to keep in mind. I treated Terry like a treatment rather than like a person, so she refused to help me. I didn't handle the situation right, so it blew up in front of me. So if there's anything I've learned from this harrowing experience, it's that proving beyond all doubt that you need something is not enough. You have to show you deserve it.