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Tony and Steve were kind, devoted, loving parents. Their son grew up living in luxery, surrounded by enough science and adventure to fuel his eager mind for a lifetime.
There were a few down sides, of course, like how it was impossible to watch the news footage of Captain America and Iron Man’s battles without fighting back hysteria. And of course, there was always the problem of his parent’s legacy and wealth, and how far criminals would go to obtain it.
So Peter Parker-Rogers-Stark is nine years old when he’s kidnapped for the first time.
The experience itself is a little clouded around the edges - mostly it’s just raw, consuming fear, the fear of being out of his safe place, out of the reach of his parents. He remembers crying a great deal, so much so that his abductors were quick to gag him in their frenzy not to be caught. They were two big, broad men - not that anyone would have really seemed small in such a situation - but as it is, they loom over him, dark shapes, blurred voices, aiming a video camera at him unwaveringly.
Peter trembles uncontrollably. His ankles are tied to the legs of the wooden chair they’ve pushed him into, his arms twisted around the back and secured with what feels like an excessive amount of scratchy rope. He wants to feel Daddy’s arms around him, the way his Papa kisses his forehead when he’s scared. He’s scared now. He wants to hear their voices more than anything else in the world.
It’s barely thirty minutes past when something makes the smaller of his two captors topple over and stop moving.
Before he can get a better look, a force seizes the back of Peter’s chair and whirls it around so he’s facing the wall. Then there’s a heavy thud, a sick, splattering noise, and a choked scream.
“Well, that was easy.” gloats a deep voice Peter’s never heard before. “There’s a lot of money out for you, you know. Hell if I know why….”
“Who the fuck-!” his captor’s scratchy voice rasps back, and then it gasps and chokes and Peter feels his insides twist and fresh fear seize him. There’s a meaty thwak of a sound, and suddenly that deep voice is back, but it’s angrier, rougher, climbing in volume until it makes Peter quake in his bonds. “YOU DON’T MESS WITH CHILDREN, YOU HEAR ME, YOU FUCKER? YOU DON’T INVOLVE CHILDREN!”
There’s a second thwak, a weak, bubbling scream, and another wet splatter before everything goes quiet.
Peter can feel his pulse beating in his neck. There’s a funny, muffled sobbing sound coming from him that he can’t seem to stop. But it’s not enough to quiet the sound of a body straightening and heavy boots approaching his back slowly, thud, thud, thud. The man, whoever he is, steps around his side and kneels down in front of him.
He’s wearing a red and black mask, and the rest of him is just big, broad muscles snug under a scarlet costume. There’s red dots peppering him, laying in wide fans. It’s hard to tell how much, really, with all that red. But Peter knows blood when he sees it, and he knows what it means.
“Hey, kid.” the man says easily. “My name’s Deadpool. You wanna go home?”
Peter tries to nod. It’s a weak, shaky motion, but Deadpool just says “I thought so” and unfastens the gag from his mouth.
He starts making quick work of the rest of the bonds, and Peter forces himself not to turn his head and see the scene behind him. He’s almost positive those noises are never going to leave his mind. He’s sure he doesn’t want to know what they look like, too.
So he stares at the top of Deadpool’s head instead. And as the man severs the last rope on his wrists, he shakily whispers: “Are you my hero?”
“Nah,” Deadpool says, standing up straight so he towers over Peter. “I’m a dick. I kill people.” He grins so widely that the shape of it is discernable through his mask. “What can I say? It’s a living.”
Peter squeaks, “Oh.”
He thinks he may have passed out then, or maybe the shock was enough of a blur, because his next clear memory is Daddy chanting “you’re okay, you’re okay” against his hair and Papa lifting him high up off the ground and squeezing him in a hug so tight and warm and safe that Peter thought he could just live there forever.
——-
When Peter’s fourteen, a group called the Five Points drugs him and steals him away. He wakes up tied to a table, still partly dressed in his school uniform, save for the fact that someone has yanked a white hospital gown of a thing over the top half of him. He’s tied down to a table this time, and it occurs to him that this, at least, is more comfortable than the wooden chair.
He’s heard of the Five Points before, rumors that they were a cult. Seeing them now, Peter’s pretty sure that’s at least within throwing distance of the right answer. Whatever their master plan is, Peter’s not sure, but it does invovle a hostage video for his dads.
“Observe the face of your son,” floats the slow, dreamy voice of their leader. She’s a small, willowy looking woman with a hooded cloak and a star pendant hanging around her neck. “We have many uses for him if you do not wish to collect him….”
Peter blinks up at the ceiling and tries to feel brave. Something in his stomach is twisting slowly as the woman films her speech. He isn’t sure what they’ll want with him once she’s done. But nobody has seemed keen to even want to touch him, so far. The leader herself was clinical. Her tone spoke of insanity.
He’s exhausted, mostly. He’s shaken. He’s trying not to think of his fathers watching this tape, hearing these words, seeing his face. He feels lower than dirt.
The video clicks off. The woman dismisses her lackeys, and Peter continues to stare numbly at the ceiling until the pressing silence is like a heavy fog. A sigh stretches over the room. Heels click crisply on the floor.
“You will make a lovely sacrifice, if your tainted family decides you are unfit to reclaim.” she whispers.
“Gee, thanks.” Peter quips, a bit of a hysterical edge to the forced smile on his face. “I’d give you a compliment back, but my brain’s a little fuzzy. Probably cause, you know. You drugged me.”
“Cute.” the woman says, and Peter shifts his gaze just in time to see her head sliced clean off her shoulders.
Wet warmth sprays over his body, coloring his white robe scarlet. From somewhere far away there’s a wild, horrified scream. His eyes are so wide that it’s actually painful.
When her body is kicked out from under her, crumpling uselessly to the floor, a red and black mask is staring down in her place. The screaming noise crumbles, and in his shock, Peter realizes that it had been coming from him.
“Mission accomplished, level up, twenty thousand experience points!” Deadpool whistles, stooping down so he disappears out of Peter’s sight. “I’ll take that, thank you.” He straightens, still not looking at Peter’s shaking form, though now the woman’s star pendant is dangling from his fist. “Kidnapping kids now, huh, bitch? I’d like to see you do that without your HEAD.”
He punches the air in victory.
“Oh my god,” Peter whispers.
“Oh - hey there.” The mercenary turns, the white shapes of eyes wide with interest. “It’s Deadpool, actually, but I’ll answer to God if you insist.”
“It’s you.” Peter says stupidly. He’s starting to think he might throw up pretty soon. He actually can feel the fresh, warm blood trickling slowly down his cheek, and yeah, he’s pretty sure he’s going to lose his lunch.
“You’re welcome.” Deadpool snorts, and unsheathes a long, gleaming katana from his back. Peter feels himself tense up for a moment, but Deadpool’s only going for the restraints again.
“Forgive me for not, uh…walking you home, but I’ve got a bounty to collect.” He says as Peter shakily slides his legs off the table. “We can’t all be the damsel in distress.”
“Ha, ha.” Peter mutters back, trying to sound sarcastic, but only succeeding in sounding stunned and distant. He can’t help but stare at the man, the broad, heavy shape of him that he had thought back on so many times since the incident years ago. He didn’t seem quite as tall now - now that Peter himself had grown, but he was still notably bigger, stronger, and as strange as ever.
Deadpool cocks a mocking salute. “Later, loser.”
“You saved my life!” Peter blurts out as the man turns his back. Deadpool stops immediately, peering at him suspiciously over his shoulder. “Five years ago….there were these two guys, and a basement, and you…”
He trails off. For a long moment they just stared at each other, one dubious mercenary and a bloodstained high-school student. Then Deadpool claps his hands - “Ah! You’re that little kid-“
“Yeah.” Peter says, rubbing at his wet arms and trying not to remind himself of the headless woman on the floor between them.
“What, getting kidnapped once wasn’t good enough for you?”
“Believe it or not, I’m actually one of those rare guys who’d rather stay at home.”
“Oh, I got it.” Deadpool snaps his fingers. “Rich parents.”
“…kinda.”
“Fascinating.” the mercenary nods sagely. “Whelp, if that’s all, I’m just gonna shoot my way out of here, capice?” Peter watches as the katana disappears inside it’s sheath again and out came a frightening looking semi-automatic. “Make a beeline through the dead bodies and you’ll be home in time for dinner.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Peter blanches.
“Your guess.” Deadpool shrugs and off he goes, leaving an exhausted Peter to follow.
——-
A week before his sixteenth birthday, an unidentified male brings a bag over Peter’s head and yanks him into a getaway car.
The recently replaced driver twists the keys in the ignition before craning around to face the backseat and firing twice into his abductor’s head.
Peter fumbles with the bag and tugs it free. And there’s Deadpool, half-hidden in his trench coat disguise, pretending to blow smoke off the barrel of his gun through the fabric of his mask.
“Baby,” he teases as Peter blinks at him, stunned, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
——-
Turns out, getting bitten by a radioactive spider really changes things.
When you were basically a winning lottery ticket for crazy people to kidnap, even Tony Stark’s security couldn’t deter everyone. After the last two instances, Peter is starting to think Deadpool is having his own effect on that, too. But in the end, it turns out nothing could really defend himself better than a set of superpowers to call his own.
Peter hadn’t seen the mercenary at all during his transformation. In fact, the change in his life was so drastic that any thought of the other man was effectively pushed to the back burner. It wasn’t until months later, when he’s patrolling alone as Spiderman, that he even realizes the man was still lurking about at all.
Peter swings past a dark ally and immediately doubles back when his spider-sense thrums a disturbed note.
He nearly falls off the wall at what he sees.
It’s the most horrible of harsh realities, a life he couldn’t save. He scales down slowly, his heart rising in his throat, unable to tear his eyes away from the gore before a deep, warped voice rasps up at him.
“Well, if it isn’t…the…sexy Spiderman!” it says, and Peter gives a twitchy jump and follows the sound to a bloody mess of a torso. Under all the gore, he sees the red costume, the black marks, and the familiar looking mask before the pieces finally click together.
“What the-” Peter gasps, and immediately claps a hand to his mouth, his stomach threatening to rise, because there’s just no - no way -
“You can just call me Deadpool…merc with a mouth….gangsta of love….” Deadpool laughs, his voice garbled through the blood, “Still two legs short, but I just got the last arm back on…order of importance, you see….you realize how…horrible my Saturday nights would be without the use of my hands? Ha ha…”
Spiderman hops over the pools of dark blood and crouches down near the talking body. At this angle he can see the upper half of him is connected, albeit gashed up, and it only takes him a few seconds to spot the several hunks of meat scattered about that could only be a pair of sliced up legs. “How are you alive?”
“Oh, healing factor…can always count on you, buddy….”
“Your legs are missing!” Peter hisses at him. “You’re half a body!”
“Ouch! Straight to my little black heart…” Deadpool cranes his head back, eyes narrowing dubiously. “You want to make this faster? Go fetch. You’re supposed to be a hero, right?”
Peter tries to keep his eyes averted as much as possible, but there’s really nothing like trying to make a human puzzle out of a hacked up body. The flesh is still warm, oozing blood, and Deadpool keeps making dramatic noises like he can somehow feel the contact on his severed limbs. Peter can’t tell if he’s messing with him or not. He’s never seen anything so horrible in his life. All he can think of as he tries to make himself useful is that this is the man who had been saving his life since he was a child. This is the the man who he used to privately thank when he was reunited with his parents after a hellish day.
He realizes with sudden, terrible clarity that he really has no idea just who this man is.
He thought maybe they were connected, or even fated, like Peter owed him a debt for every time he was allowed to live a little longer. And maybe that would come full circle someday, or maybe it wouldn’t. He didn’t know what he expected.
He wasn’t expecting this.
“How long does this take?” Peter asks after several long minutes, and Deadpool just shrugs. “Ten minutes. An hour. A day.” he chuckles and looks down at his mending body. “Don’t worry your pretty head, baby boy, it’ll happen. Trust me.”
Peter feels his face color slightly under the mask. “I do.” he says. “I do trust you.”
Deadpool actually howls with laughter. Peter can’t tell if he’s being mocked or if Deadpool is just that surprised from his answer. “Well, you’re one stupid superhero then,” he snickers, and Peter decides then that it must be the latter. “But I guess you’ll learn your lesson one way or another.”