Never-Ending Love (A Spideypool and Poolverine Story)

Chapter 1 - The Healing Spark

Hey guys!! I haven't done any Marvel here on my profile, but I love it, so why not! Here you go!

The rain over Manhattan did not fall; it drove. It was a cold, malicious deluge that slicked the jagged glass faces of the skyscrapers and turned the asphalt valleys far below into a shifting mirror of blinking neon signs and distorted brake lights. The wind screamed through the steel frameworks of the city, carrying the bitter chill of late autumn, turning every exposed surface into ice.

High above the gridlock, tucked into the architectural shadows of a Gothic-style high-rise, Peter Parker crouched on a weathered stone gargoyle. The fabric of his red-and-blue suit—the one with the vibrant, oversized spider emblem stretching across his chest—was completely waterlogged. It clung heavily to his frame like a second skin, cold and unforgiving. His mask was damp against his face, making every slow, deliberate intake of air taste like wet nylon and ozone.

For Peter, the storm was just white noise. It was a physical extension of the static that had been roaring inside his own skull for twelve long years.

Ever since a crumbling clock tower in 2014 had become the definitive graveyard of his youth, he had lived his life as a beautifully engineered machine that had simply forgotten how to feel. He swung through the rain with a desperate, frantic speed, his web-shooters hissing in the damp air, because he knew with a terrifying certainty that if he stopped moving for even a single second, the silence would catch up to him. And in the silence, the phantom weight of Gwen Stacy's snapping spine would drag him down into the dirt like lead. He had convinced himself that he was a walking curse. He was the boy who caught things too late. Anyone who touched his life ended up broken, shattered, or buried beneath the earth while he was left standing, completely unharmed, trapped in a suit that felt less like armor and more like a shroud.

He wasn't looking for a conversation. He was looking for a target. His eyes, hidden behind the wide, reflective white lenses of his mask, scanned the loading docks three blocks over, tracking the faint, blue glow of illegal Chitauri technology being moved by low-level syndicates.

"You know, if you sit out here any longer, you're going to shrink. Or rust. Do spiders rust? I feel like they shouldn't, but biology was never my strong suit. I mean, look at the camel spider. It's not even a real spider, Peter. It's a solifugid. Total fraud. Much like The NeverEnding Story," a loud, grating voice chimed from the darkness of the roof behind him.

Peter didn't turn his head. He didn't even shift his weight. He knew the bright red spandex, the twin katanas, and the non-stop stream of absolute nonsense before the man even stepped out of the stairwell shadows. Wade Wilson had been following him for three weeks. It didn't matter if Peter changed his patrol routes, jumped across the outer boroughs, or hid out on the highest, most inaccessible spires in the city; Deadpool always materialized, an unhinged, fiercely obsessed shadow that refused to be shaken.

"Wade," Peter said, his voice flat, his tone muffled and exhausted beneath his damp mask. "Go home. I'm patrolling."

"Home? Spidey-babe, home is where the heart is, and right now my heart is fascinated by a guy who looks like he's trying to audition for a live-action Batman reboot directed by Zack Snyder," Wade said, squelching across the wet gravel of the roof. He didn't care about stealth. He strolled right up to the edge of the roof, hopped up, and swung his legs over the thousands-of-feet drop-off, planting himself directly next to Peter's stone perch. "Seriously. What's with the brooding? Did someone steal your web-fluid, or are we just having a classic, mid-week existential crisis? Because if it's the second one, I brought fruit snacks. They're dinosaur-shaped. The T-Rex ones give you a little boost of existential validation, mostly because they remind you that even the apex predators end up as oil for a 1998 Honda Civic."