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Can't hear. Pain. Can't see. Pain, pain, pain.
The Wolverine's senses gradually came to, fading in from white noise. He smelled burning plastic, hot steel, smoke, heard sparks erupting from the electrical equipment around him. He remembered— he was in the Time Ripper's power supply chamber, standing on the center bridge, which barely resembled a bridge anymore. He'd been knocked off his feet. Everything was destroyed, a mangled mess of twisted metal. His head was throbbing, his body ached terribly. But he was alive.
Wade. Find Wade.
Logan scanned the room. The air cleared, revealing Deadpool's body at the opposite end of the bridge, sprawled out on the decking. Logan crawled to him, ignoring the fiery agony in his joints and all over his body. He dragged himself up next to him, propping Wade's torso against his bare chest and checking for a pulse.
"So this is what it feels like..." Wade whispered, outstretching a trembling hand to gingerly caress his cheek. His mask flexed as his eyes fluttered open, and Logan couldn't see it, but somehow he knew he was batting his lashes at him. "Being cradled to your hairy bosom, I mean. I get why people like to die in your arms so often. Your biceps are very comfortable and you smell like masculinity."
Logan scoffed. Even after an uncomfortably near-death experience, Deadpool was still an idiot. "Fuck off." Wade noticed the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. "Are you alr..." Suddenly, his voice faltered. He teetered and wobbled for a moment before toppling, losing motor control and crumpling over onto Wade.
"Woah, Logan? You good?"
Wade quickly scrambled to his knees to awkwardly catch him, switching their positions. The tips of Wolverine's mask got in the way of resting his head in his lap, so Wade lifted it off, tossing it aside. It wasn't until he had Logan lying there that he noticed the state he was in.
Hm. It looked bad. The explosion of the power supply had left a patchwork of gaping wounds scattered haphazardly across Logan's upper body. They were deep, many down to the bone, with blackened, charred skin around the edges, some of it still smoking. The centerpiece was a significant chunk of the chest wall blown open, exposing the Adamantium ribcage, and most shockingly Logan's heart, beating rapidly inside.
"Ooh, god damn." Wade figured it would take a hot minute for Logan's healing factor to stitch something like that back together. "We gotta do something about you and these traumatic chest injuries."
"Y-yeah, jus'...gimme a minute," Logan wheezed out, shallow-breathed. "Gotta...gonna be fine."
Wade was quickly coming to the conclusion that it didn't seem fine. This was abnormal; Logan's wounds should have at least partially closed up by now, but even the smallest of them seemed to be struggling. Then he remembered the rules of the game as established by Paradox: something about atomization, whatever that meant; he didn't go to fucking school for math. The synopsis was that even their functionally-immortal, regenerating bodies shouldn't have been able to bounce back from what they'd just been through.
Wade's body was fine, though. He had blacked out just before the blast, but by the time Logan was talking to him, he had recovered. And it wasn't like he hadn't gotten fucked up, too— regeneration didn't account for pain, and the arm with which he had been holding the wires stung like a bitch.
But Wolverine was, like, indestructible, right? He'd survived some fucked up shit, Wade thought. Or, at least, the Wolverine in his timeline had done so, until he didn't. But would the Wolverine in any timeline have been able to recover from the TVA's MacGuffin of Death exploding his flesh off and stunting his healing factor?
Am I about to watch another Logan die?
Wade gave him a little tap on the forehead. "Um, good buddy," he said, "I don't want to alarm you, but, uh...I think getting kaboomed broke your healing factor. And, not to brag, but I think mine is, like, way stronger than yours?"
Logan stared up at him with glassy eyes. "Ah, fuck," he sighed. Then he lost consciousness.
Wade went cold. Shit felt very, very real all of a sudden. "Logan. Hey, Logan. Time to get up for school. Um...uh..." He couldn't think of any good jokes to lighten the mood. "Come on, man, I'm not good with loss."
Logan didn't answer. He jostled loosely as Wade shook him by the shoulders. Panic took hold. The two of them had accepted the risk of death on this journey, but it wasn't fair that Deadpool was totally fine, while Wolverine was going to die right here in front of him. Deadpool was a degenerate, murderous lunatic who didn't deserve his immortality, and he was at peace with that. But Wolverine was a good man, the best of the best. He was too good of a man to die. Wade had been planning to buy him lunch after all this. Now he was dying on him, and it was Wade's fault for roping him into this mess in the first place.
Another Logan was going to die in this universe, thanks to Wade Wilson, and he would be gone, and he would never get to fix his own world. He'd be erased from history before Wade got the chance to say goodbye, to tell him he didn't want him to go back to his home timeline, even if the TVA could fix it.
Okay. Think. Deadpool had to stop spiraling, now. He needed to act quickly. Logan was still breathing, albeit faintly, so that was good, he guessed. He checked him up and down, for what he wasn't really sure; it had been so long since he'd needed to tend to an injury that he barely remembered the basic medical skills he'd learned in the military, not that field medicine was going to help in this case.
He watched Logan's heart pumping through the gruesome window in his chest. The pulse was slowing down, a grisly hourglass running out of sand.
Then Wade had an idea.
They were both mutants, right? With, fundamentally, the same mutated DNA in their blood?
Well, then, he was going to give Logan a transfusion.
An outlandish idea, but it could work. Like jumping a car.
He grabbed Logan's limp wrist and inspected the veins in the forearm, finding a spot that seemed suitable enough. Then he discarded the glove on his own left hand and rolled up his sleeve. "Sorry, peanut. Baby Knife," he said meekly, drawing the blade and making a clean cut, vertically down from his wrist toward the inner elbow. He sliced deep, opening the vein wide to account for his regeneration, wanting to give as much blood as he could before his skin closed back up. "Down the road, not across the street— there we go." A gush of red burbled to the surface and he quickly made a similar incision on Logan. Then he clumsily pressed their forearms together, interlocking his fingers with Logan's, and wrapped his other hand around their wrists to firmly seal the fucked up handshake.
"Whoof," he exclaimed to no one in particular, maybe hoping Logan could hear him. "That's. Yep. You take a biiig fuckin' sip o'that juicy juice." He slurred, felt lightheaded. Major blood loss always made him woozy, before his body started producing more. It didn't help that his adrenal glands were working doubletime, too, and he prayed he didn't join Logan in unconsciousness.
A strange tickling, itching sensation gnawed at his wrist. Holy shit, it was actually working. Logan's body literally drank his blood, his cells recognizing Wade's as kin, sucking up what they could while the excess overflowed down their arms and seeped between their entwined fingers. He watched in awe as the smaller holes in Logan's flesh started to shrink, then the larger injuries.
Thank you, Liefeld. Logan's heart picked up to a normal pace and he watched, mouth agape, until it was out of view, disappearing behind muscle and skin as his chest put itself back together.
Feeling his wrist close up, Wade relaxed his fingers and pulled away. Or, he tried to— there was an unexpected resistance. He shook his arm. No budge. He and Logan's forearms had gone and fused themselves together in the regenerative process.
"Ew!" Some of Logan's body hair had even transferred to Wade's arm, matted down to their shared skin by blood and sweat. It was as intimate as it was disgusting. He tugged hard. Nope, that was definitely stuck on there.
Weirdly, their fusion also allowed Wade to feel Logan's pulse, along with his own, and it was rising. Really rising. Pounding. Oh, shit, he's about to do the Wolverine Thing.
Screaming. Claws. Pain. Danger, kill, he's in danger, Wade's in danger, have to kill—
Logan roared back to life. He blinked to clear his blurry vision and remembered he was still on the bridge, claws out, the pungent scent of blood assaulting his nose. The shock of it sent him clambering to his feet. Whose blood...? It smelled like his. No, Wade's? Fuck, where was Wade, was he hurt, did Logan hurt him?
"Hi."
He looked down. Wade's voice was a relief, but the sight of him dangling from his forearm, like a leech, had Logan questioning if he was actually conscious yet.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"I'm stuck."
"What?"
"Can you use your claws? I can't reach Baby Knife."
"Stuck how?"
"Stuck on you."
Oh. Disturbing. Logan understood—well, he understood the simple fact that he and Wade were currently conjoined twins, not how the fuck this situation had come to pass—and made a quick, efficient cut through the membrane of skin holding them together. He massaged the sore muscle around it, noticing that it seemed to heal faster than usual.
"What the fuck did you do?"
Wade watched his own arm recover, some of Logan's hairs still attached, and rolled down his sleeve, putting his glove back on. He collected Baby Knife from the floor, kissing the blade in thanks before sheathing her. "What I did was save your life, You're Welcome. I performed a medical miracle and probably gave myself several new fetishes in the process." He handed Logan his mask. "Also, I think we're now legally married in some jurisdictions. Or siblings. That's gonna be hard to explain."
"Explain later," Logan ordered. "...So, we survived. Now what?"
Now I have to say goodbye to you for real.
Wade clapped his hands together authoritatively. "We're gonna walk out there all badass-like, make a speech, neatly wrap up the third act, and we will never tell another soul about what happened here."