Red dust choked the air. The brutal, unforgiving sun of the Wasteland baked the cracked earth, turning the desert into a massive, shimmering oven.
Clint Barton wiped a layer of grime from his forehead. Forty-five years had passed since the night the villains organized and slaughtered the heroes. Forty-five years since the world broke. Now, the former Avenger known as Hawkeye was just a tired old man making a meager living hauling black-market cargo across a dead continent.
He crouched behind the rusted chassis of an overturned sedan. A gang of scavengers had tried to ambush his delivery route. Clint had systematically put them down, leaving only one survivor—a mutated clone scrambling desperately up a sand dune to escape.
Clint drew his bow string back. The familiar tension grounded him. He focused on the running target.
His vision swam. A cloudy, gray blur bled into the center of his right eye. He blinked hard, trying to clear the sudden obstruction. His fingers slipped.
Thwip.
The arrow launched. It sailed two feet wide of the clone's shoulder, burying itself harmlessly into the irradiated sand.
Hawkeye never missed. But Clint Barton, aging and rapidly losing his sight to glaucoma, just had.
The clone scrambled over the ridge, a victorious sneer twisting his scarred face. He opened his mouth to shout a warning to his camp.
BANG.
The deafening roar of a heavy-caliber gunshot echoed across the canyon. The clone's head snapped violently backward, erupting in a spray of red mist. The body went entirely limp, tumbling backward down the dune and crashing into the dust.
Clint froze. He kept his bow raised, his cloudy eyes scanning the ridge.
Two distinct voices drifted over the wind. They sounded entirely out of place in the grim silence of the Wasteland.
"Did you seriously have to execute a guy the literal second we stepped foot into this universe?"
"Come on, Spidey! It's rule number one of apocalyptic storytelling!" the second voice replied, loud and muffled by fabric. "You never leave the escaping lackey alive! If he gets away, he warns the local warlord, and we spend the next three issues fighting generic goons. Believe me, that old man down there should be thanking me. Besides, it was just a clone. It's definitely not his entire personality."
Clint rubbed his eyes with the back of his calloused hand. He stared at the two figures stepping over the crest of the dune.
One wore a sleek, pitch-black suit with a massive white spider emblem stretching across its chest. The other was clad in head-to-toe red and black tactical gear, casually blowing smoke from the barrel of a Desert Eagle.
Clint lowered his bow. His heart hammered against his ribs. He thought his failing eyesight was finally giving way to full-blown dementia. Spider-Man and Deadpool. They were dead. He had seen the broadcasts decades ago.
"Do you know these guys, Clint?" his terrified employer whispered from the cab of their armored truck.
Clint stepped out from behind the rusted sedan. The desert wind pulled at his gray hair.
"Peter?" Clint called out, his voice cracking like dry leather. "Wade? Is that actually you?"
An awkward silence fell over the ridge. Peter and Wade stared down at the gray-haired, weathered old man.
Wade broke the silence by throwing an arm over Peter's symbiote-covered shoulder. He leaned in entirely too close. "Wait. Does this timeline have another Paste-Pot Pete? You share a name with a guy who shoots weaponized Elmer's glue."
Peter ground his teeth. "If you mention Paste-Pot Pete one more time, I am going to bury your head inside that rock."
"Oh, stop it," Wade cooed, pressing his masked cheek affectionately against Peter's shoulder. "You're so sweet. You won't even press the button on my mutant-gene suppressor collar."
Clint let out a long, exhausted breath. He lowered his bow entirely. It was definitely Spider-Man and Deadpool. You couldn't hallucinate a headache this specific.
A few hours later.
Clint finished his cargo delivery. He stopped by an underground back-alley clinic run by an old acquaintance to get his eyes checked. The diagnosis confirmed his worst fear: advancing glaucoma. He would be entirely blind within a few months.
Now, he sat behind the wheel of his customized Spider-Buggy, navigating the cracked, winding remains of an interstate highway. Peter and Wade sat in the back seats.
"So," Clint said, glancing in the cracked rearview mirror. "You're the Peter Parker from another universe. And Deadpool. And it looks like you're wearing the Venom symbiote." Clint gripped the steering wheel tight. "Take some advice from an old man who has seen everything go wrong. That black sludge is bad news. Take it off."
Peter crossed his arms. The black armor shifted slightly over his muscles. "We actually get along pretty well. I know the psychological side effects, but we have an understanding."
Clint opened his mouth to argue.
Suddenly, a massive, monstrous black head erupted from Peter's shoulder. Razor-sharp teeth gleamed in the desert sun.
Yes, Venom rumbled, its voice vibrating the buggy's chassis. We get along perfectly.
Clint snapped his mouth shut. He kept his eyes on the road. The multiverse was a terrifying place.
"So, what brings you to a dead world?" Clint asked, shifting gears. "You said some kind of multiversal 'Web of Fate' pulled you here. Looking for this universe's Spider-Man?"
Clint let out a bitter, raspy chuckle. "It's a pity you're forty-five years too late. This world's Spider-Man died a long time ago."
"Actually, the Web just pulls me toward the central Spider-Totem of a given timeline," Peter corrected, leaning forward against the roll bar. "It doesn't have to be my exact counterpart. I already know who the Totem is in this universe. Her name is Ashley Barton."
Clint slammed on the brakes.
The buggy skidded in the dirt, kicking up a massive cloud of red dust. Clint stared at Peter in the mirror, his cloudy eyes wide. Ashley. His estranged daughter. If she was a Spider-Totem, that meant she had a destiny. It offered Clint a fragile, terrifying spark of hope.
Peter, however, remained completely silent. He stared out at the barren wasteland, his white eye lenses narrowed in deep thought. The Web of Fate usually triggered when a timeline's Spider-Totem was in mortal danger. But Ashley Barton was just a localized vigilante. She didn't affect the grand multiversal structure. Why was he here?
Clint noticed the dark shift in Peter's posture. "Why do you look so miserable, kid?"
Peter let his head fall back against the leather seat. He let out a painful groan.
"Well," Peter started, his voice dripping with exhaustion. "One minute, I was swinging around the New York City skyline, enjoying a really nice evening. The next minute, I was dodging weaponized superglue from a guy dressed like a hardware store. Then I had to physically pry Wade out of a puddle of industrial adhesive. And then I got sucked through a dimensional rift." Peter glared at Deadpool. "And for the entire inter-dimensional trip, he kept telling me I needed to wear red."
"Spider-Man should absolutely wear red!" Wade yelled, throwing his hands up. "Just like Deadpool wears red! It hides the blood! And the salsa stains! Hey, old man, where are you taking us anyway?"
"We're making a pit stop," Clint said, putting the buggy back into gear. "Going to visit an old friend. Then I'm going home to see my daughter."
Clint drove the buggy off the highway, navigating down a dirt path toward a dilapidated farm. The wooden fences were splintered. The crops were dead. An elderly man with gray hair, a thick beard, and a worn flannel shirt stood by a wooden post, methodically driving nails into the wood with a heavy hammer.
Old Man Logan.
Wade leaned over the side of the buggy, pointing a gloved finger at the farmer. "Question for the group. Why do all alternate-universe Wolverines look exactly like Hugh Jackman post-2000?"
"Because he's iconic, Wade," Peter muttered. "Just like every Deadpool looks like a mutated avocado crossed with Ryan Reynolds."
"Shut up! You three-faced corporate sellout!" Wade gasped, clutching his chest in mock offense.
Clint parked the buggy. He killed the engine and stepped out, walking over to the fence to greet his old friend.
Wade stayed in the back seat, leaning close to Peter. He lowered his voice, slipping into his fourth-wall-breaking narrator tone.
"Look at him," Wade whispered, gesturing to Logan. "Generally speaking, this setup means the protagonist has settled into a life of complete pacifism. He's buried his violent past. He just wants to farm dirt. You know what that means, right? The writers are absolutely going to murder his family to force him to pop those claws again."
Peter frowned, watching Logan tiredly wipe sweat from his brow. "You think Logan is the protagonist of this universe's story?"
"Uh, yeah. Logan is second only to you in Marvel popularity, web-head. He's tied with the World War II Boy Scout," Wade explained, waving his hands. "A Wolverine comic versus a Hawkeye comic? Anyone with a brain knows which one sells more issues. Unless Hawkeye gets a really good Disney+ spin-off."
Peter ignored the meta-babble. He crossed his arms, staring at the broken, tired old mutant. "So... do you think it's better for him to stay retired, or come out fighting?"
"Ah, the classic moral dilemma," Deadpool laughed, clapping his hands. "You want his help, but you don't want to ruin his peaceful life. Think about it, Spidey. The narrative rules demand blood. He either lives here, dead inside, until the plot slaughters his loved ones to motivate him, or he wakes up right now. Tragedy is the only outcome for that old man."
Peter stared at Logan. Wade's logic was twisted, but entirely accurate. If they left Logan alone, the universe would punish him to start the story.
"So," Peter said slowly, his voice dropping an octave. "It would actually be a mercy if we forced him to join us right now. Before the plot hurts his family."
Wade paused. He looked at Peter's black suit. He noticed the aggressive shift in the symbiote's posture.
"Wait," Wade stammered, holding his hands up. "Spidey, whatever you're thinking, you don't want to make me—"
Peter planted his boot squarely into Wade's chest. With a surge of superhuman strength, he violently kicked Deadpool out of the buggy.
Wade flew through the air, screaming, and crashed spectacularly through the wooden fence, landing directly at Old Man Logan's feet in a cloud of dust and splintered wood.
The plot had officially started.
PS: Wade wasn't lying about the popularity contest! In almost every official Marvel Comics popularity poll conducted over the last few decades, Spider-Man overwhelmingly takes the #1 spot. Wolverine and Captain America constantly battle it out for the #2 and #3 positions. Also, this chapter features three massive chatterboxes—in the comics, Hawkeye is notorious for using relentless self-deprecation and sarcasm to cope with fighting alongside actual gods!
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