The Fandom Games

Peter

None of you are real.

Each word echoes round and round Peter’s head like a ricocheting bullet in a tunnel. What does Deadpool mean, none of you are real? Peter’s standing right here, isn’t he? Air is puffing through his lungs and blood is pumping through his heart and thoughts are racing through his mind at the speed of a subway train. He knows that he’s not asleep. He wishes he were asleep. Everything would be so much easier if he were asleep.

‘I.. I don’t get it.’ Peter says.

Deadpool sighs. ‘Of course you don’t.’

Peter lifts his eyes from the floor in front of him. Hermione’s right leg is shaking. Arya is slowly backing away from the others, as if Deadpool and his katanas were about to stop her from being real. But Legolas looks less panicked, and more intrigued, as if he’d turned over an interesting page in a textbook. ‘I do not understand,’ he says.

‘You think we do?’ Arya mutters under her breath.

Deadpool slumps back against the sofa, groaning. ‘Urgh! I need something to aggressively crunch my feeling with. Spidey-Boy, do you Avengers have pringles?’

It takes Peter a moment to register that Deadpool is talking to him. ‘Uh, probably?’

Before Peter has finished speaking, Deadpool is skipping out of the games room. Kitchen cupboards slam and shelves shuffle. A little light fixed next to the door blinks red. Peter wonders what it is, but then Deadpool returns carrying a family-sized box of coco pops in each hand.

Hermione grits her teeth. ‘Are you going to explain yourself, or prepare a whole feast while we stand here?’

Deadpool jumps back onto the sofa with so much force that the cushions puff up. ‘Hey look, you don’t need to get all existential and mopey on me. It can’t be that much of a surprise. Spidey!’ He jabs a finger towards Peter. ‘You’ve been made to do loads of quippy Star Wars things so Disney can sell more toys. And you have enough annual identity crises and rock-bottom self-esteem to be a fangirl. Haven’t you ever thought, for just one second, What if Star Wars was real? Or, to put it differently, What if I too were just the figment of some rich old white guy’s imagination?’

‘Not really,’ Peter admits, ‘I just look at the pretty explosions to unwind in the evening.’

‘Or, you! Badass wolf girl!’ Deadpool points at Arya, who lifts her face from the ground. ‘Remember how after the battle of Winterfell, everything in your world started to make no sense whatsoever? Jaime dumping Brienne and going back to Cersei? Daenerys going mad in the space of two seconds? That prophecy about Azor Azhai, that was hyped for years, never even happening? How else do you explain that, other than that the internet was swarming with so many theories that two mildly misogynist writers became so desperate to make the ending unexpected, that they wrote one that made no sense at all?’

Peter doesn’t understand a word of that, but Arya clearly does, because her breath sharpens.

Deadpool whips out the katanas from behind his back. Arya reaches for her sword. But then he impales the cereal packets as if he were sacrificing an animal, and slashes them open. ‘Look, it’s really not that hard to get. Once upon a time, some poor sucker was stressed out of their minds about the actual world, so they made up a new world instead. A World War One soldier gets ill and boom’ – he claps his hands at Legolas – ‘you exist. Someone’s scriptwriting career fails, so they read Lord of the Rings, and boom!’ He waves at Arya. ‘You appear.’ Bereavement and depression and poverty and King’s Cross stations and boom’ - he claps at Hermione – ‘we get you and your friendly castle. And when the 60s hippie teenagers cry out to Stan Lee, Marvel grants them Spider-Man.’

Marvel. Peter drinks up the word for a moment, and, well, marvels at it.

Hermione opens and closes her mouth, hesitating, then says, ‘you mean to tell us… we’re fictional characters? And people… people read about us?’

‘Ooh, yes,’ Deadpool says, ‘a particularly impeccable species of human, known as “obsessed fans” love all of you with slightly weird devotion.’

‘Fans,’ Hermione echoes.

‘Yup, fans,’ Deadpool repeats, ‘they come in several varieties, including fangirls, fanboys, and middle-aged men with My Little Pony tattoos.’ He hugs his toy unicorn. ‘I respect that immensely.’

Legolas strokes his chin. ‘So, our existence is dependent on the devotion of these fans.’

Deadpool’s face lights up. ‘Absolutely-dupely, Will Turner! As long as you all exist in fans’ minds, you exist. You savvy?’

Peter pictures himself in third person, swinging and shooting webs across a cinema screen. Little black words filling a page with details of his every breath and movement and sarcastic comment. His head hurts. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Just roll with it,’ Deadpool advises. Then he smiles, waggles his finger around the room, and whispers, ‘and that goes for all of you too.’ He winks, but who at exactly, Peter’s not sure.

Hermione frowns. Peter can practically hear the cogs in her brain whirring. ‘But surely each fan perceives each character slightly differently? Like, I might look different in different people’s heads.’

Deadpool claps his hands together. ‘Exactly, White Hermione! And that’s where the Library comes in.’ Then he whispers to the unicorn, ‘that’s what she said.’

‘The Library,’ Arya muses, ‘that’s what The Villain in the dark was sending people to find.’

‘Aww,’ Deadpool beams, ‘you’re clever, you two! Once upon a time, when mortals still remembered how to be interesting and use magic, they created the Library. As soon as any book, movie, TV show, comic, game, musical, play – any story that exists – gets written, then boom, a copy appears in the Library. And this copy is intrinsically bound to the story itself. It’s like the master copy. The mother of all copies. The Deadpool of all Avengers, if you will. It controls the story, and the perceptions of it in everyone’s heads. Which of course, is what makes up all of you.’

Peter stopped hearing words about three minutes ago.

Deadpool sighs. ‘You don’t have to get it, you just have to accept it so I can move on to what comes next.’

Arya opens her mouth to speak, but Hermione cuts over her. ‘So… if somebody was to find the Library, and get a book about my world, and write on it, it would change the actual story. If they opened a random page and wrote, ‘then the Dark Lord killed Harry Potter and took over the world…’

‘…then somebody would kill Harry Potter and take over the world.’ Deadpool snaps his fingers. Peter winces. ‘Just like that. If you were to grab a Marvel comic from the Library, and draw a picture of me and Spidey making out, then boom! SpideyPool is canon.’ Deadpool boops Peter on the nose. ‘The Andrew Garfield version only, don’t worry. If you found the Library, you could double your armies, or resurrect your love ones, or erase your enemies from existence, with just a biro and some tippex.’

Peter pictures a pen charged with the power of the Infinity Stones, crossing out universes and rewriting destinies. Man, he really should have paid more attention in English lit at school. Then he realises exactly what that pen could do. ‘That’s what Harley Quinn was talking about. What the villain in the dark is trying to do. They’re going to find the Library, then rewrite the ending of every story, so that the villains always win.’

‘Well done!’ Deadpool claps. ‘See, you’re not just an adorable little face. In three days, we’re going to get mass destruction, enslavements of entire planets, the tragically traumatic deaths of everyone you’ve ever loved… more coco pops?’ He offers round the cereal box. Nobody takes any.

How many threats have the Avengers defeated over the years? How many villains are rotting away in metallic prison cells or hiding in the shadows of other planets, who, if someone handed them the key to destroying the Avengers, wouldn’t wait a second to take it? Images flash through Peter’s mind, of a billionaire Mysterio monopolising Planet Earth, of a thousand Thanoses wielding the Infinity Stones, of the Avengers shrinking into a group of very colourful, very sarcastic, very pop culture-savvy butterflies. How many hours before a prison cell would look Peter away in itself? Or his aunt? Or his friends? Heck, what if someone scribbled out their existence altogether?

Maybe he does need some coco pops.

He glances around the room, to check if anyone else is also panicking excessively. Arya is paler than the wall. The corners of Hermione’s eyes are glistening. But Legolas slides onto one knee, and bows his head. His platinum hair seems to glow in the florescent lights. ‘I will join the quest to save the Library. I will find it within free days, and I will it with my life, as I defended Helm’s Deep, and Minas Tirith, and the Lonely Mountain, and...’

‘No,’ Arya says. Peter turns round. It’s been so long since she’s said anything, Peter had almost forgotten she was part of this too. She’s retreated into the corner, and her face is half in shadow.

Legolas laughs slightly. ‘With all due respect, Lady Arya, do you not see how urgent this situation is?’

Arya scowls. ‘I see exactly how urgent this situation is. And that’s why I should go instead.’

Legolas bows. ‘I accept your assistance, my lady. A fair companion, or apprentice, is always an excellent addition to such a quest.’

Hermione folds her arms. ‘You can’t seriously think that you could take this on by yourself. This is far bigger than you or me or even the hairy elf. This needs a whole team of people.’ She turns to Deadpool. ‘Please, send me back to my world. I need to find Ron and Harry, and alert the Order of the Phoenix, and…’

Arya scoffs. ‘And how long will that take? Do you want to send a raven to every person you’ve ever met? Wait for a hundred phoenixes to hatch, then die, then hatch again? We don’t have time for that. We barely have enough time to be standing here talking. Point me to the Library, Deadpool. I can find it in three days.’

‘Even if you do find it? What then? Darth Vader said the villain in the dark had a whole army of villains from different storyworlds. Do you really think that you can fight off a hundreds and hundreds of monsters by yourself?’

Arya brushes the sword strapped to her waist. ‘I really think that you would be surprised.’

Hermione laughs, and Arya argues back, and Legolas’s calm voice cuts over the two, but Peter isn’t watching them anymore, because he’s noticed that Deadpool isn’t watching them either, but staring at Peter, with his mouth crooked into a smile.

Peter doesn’t understand. Is Deadpool waiting for him to volunteer? If so, he’s going to be waiting for a long time. Does he really expect that Peter, the teenager Thanos turned to dust, the friend who failed to save Mr Stark, to be able to help with any of this? If this Villain in the Dark is really going to ruin all storyworlds, Peter is the last person who should go anywhere near the Library. He’d probably set fire to it by accident before this army of villains even got there. This quest is far too important. It needs heroes with experience, like Arya, and scary twig-pointing abilities, like Hermione, and amazing hair, like Legolas. Peter’s just a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Saving his own world is way out of his league. Heck, just this morning he was defeated by a villain who’s already dead. There’s no way he could save countless other worlds too.

The light next to the door flashes red again, and beeps. The same noise echoes from each room in the building, as if the doors were all shouting something at each other. Legolas and Arya reach for their swords.

‘It’s fine! The systems are malfunctioning a lot at the moment. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the gum I got stuck in the computer in the security room.’ Deadpool squeezes his toy unicorn tight. ‘Does it, my precious?’ He kisses its forehead.

Hermione turns her attention away from Arya. ‘Deadpool, how do you even know all of this? Why is it that you know you’re a fictional character, and we don’t?’

Deadpool spreads his arms out in an exaggerated shrug. ‘Duh. The same reason that any of us know anything! The writers did write that it would be thus. See, I’m metafictional. I break the fourth wall. I’m aware that I’m a fictional character. It’s like, my only personality trait.’ He turns to the side, cups his hand and whispers, ‘lazy Hollywood writing.’ Then he turns back to Peter and the others, and says, ‘I know whatever the writers think it’s entertaining for me to know. For example, I know that Spidey here will lead seven heroes on a quest to save the Library, whether you like it or not.’ He glares at Peter. ‘I know that you’ll all be betrayed. One of you will die, like permanently. And two of you will be making out by the end.’ He clasps his hands together. ‘Aw, I ship it already!’

Arya wrinkles up her nose. ‘Is that supposed to be a prophecy?’

‘Hell yeah it was,’ Deadpool grins, ‘was I mystical and elegant enough?’ His question is somewhat undercut by how he is currently itching his butt with a katana.

‘I have encountered more hysterical and elegant squirrels,’ Legolas mutters.

‘Who’s going to die?’ Peter demands, ‘who’s going to fall in love? Who-’

‘Who’s the Villain in the Dark?’ Arya continues.

Deadpool smirks. ‘Who do you think they are?’

Who does Peter think they are? Could Thanos have somehow undusted himself? Or, Peter’s heard stories about how Thor’s villainous brother Loki has been tinkering around with time and universes lately. Could he have heard about the Library in one of them?

‘It could be the Dark Lord,’ Hermione muses, ‘tampering with death and fate is the sort of thing he does. He did transfer a piece of his soul into an object to cheat death.’

‘As did the Dark Lord Sauron,’ Legolas points out.

Deadpool snorts. ‘Funny, that.’

Arya groans with annoyance. ‘We’ll never guess like this. Almost everyone I’ve ever met has wanted to take over the world, or been ruined by a hero, or both. It could be the Lannisters, or the Night King…’

The light by the door glows red again, and flashes like strobe lighting. High-pitched sirens blare from each room. The ringing is so loud that Peter has to cover his ears. ‘Are you still sure that’s probably nothing?’ he shouts.

Deadpool strokes the unicorn. ‘Hermione and Arya, you were listening in on Harley Quinn, weren’t you?’

‘Obviously,’ Hermione says.

‘And she saw you sneaking around looking all shifty and spying on her evil plotting?’

‘Yes. The villain in the dark sent Harley Quinn to’ – her eyes widen – ‘oh.’

Deadpool grabs a tote bag from behind the couch, and tosses in the unicorn. ‘Yup, I think that definitely is something. I would advise you all to instantly – how to put it calmly – run for fear of your goddamn little lives.’

When he finishes talking, Peter can hear a faint whirring. He rushes to a window. The sun is blocked by a dark triangle. And Peter knows all too well what that triangle is. It’s as if it had flown straight off a Star Wars cinema screen and into the sky. Hermione follows him, and gasps. ‘What even is that?’

Peter presses his face to the glass. ‘That,’ he breathes, ‘is an Executor-class Star Dreadnought, with a Class 1 hyperdrive, titanium-reinforced hull and two battleship ion cannons.’

Arya whimpers. ‘And I thought that dragons were the worst things to exist.’

‘You,’ Peter growls at Deadpool, ‘you promised that everything would be fine! You said that those alarms were just a gum-related accident!’ Everything is most definitely not fine. Peter has already watched the Avengers facility burn to rubble. It wasn’t exactly a day he wants to repeat anytime soon.

‘What can I say?’ Deadpool holds his arms up. ‘I’m a fictional character. I occasionally exhibit irrational, unrealistic or contradictory behaviour to further the plot. And Spider-Pumpkin, you really should have learned not to trust everyone you meet by now. Where you paying attention to the last movie you were in at all?’ He scoops something out of the bag, and throws it onto the carpet. It’s a plastic brachiosaurus figurine, no bigger than his hand. The dinosaur’s paint has faded to a pale blue with age. ‘You want to find the Library? Even, I, the mighty all-seeing Deadpool don’t know where it is. But I can point you in the direction of someone who does. This man knows every secret of storytelling. Every mystery of movies. Every fact of fantasy. He knows everything, full stop.’

‘What’s the name of the man who knows everything?’ Hermione asks.

‘Steven Spielberg. He’ll show you where the Library is, but you’ve got to get to world-hop to get to him first. That dinosaur is a portal to another world. Once you’re there, head to the street by the big pyramid. There you can find the next portal, to the most terrifying world of them all. The real one.’

Peter swallows. ‘You mean…?’

‘Yup! The one messed-up enough to spawn all of you. You get there, you find Stephen Spielberg, you find the Library.’

Peter glances to the window, then wishes he didn’t. The Star Destroyer is taking up half the sky. He can pick out the layers of metal and colossal cannons. Arya grabs the plastic dinosaur. Her hand flickers like a faulty projection, then she dissolves into a whirl of coloured pixels, then vanishes altogether. Hermione takes a deep breath, and touches the dinosaur, and dissipates like water vapour in the same way Arya did.

Legolas gestures to Peter. ‘Lead the way.’

Peter stares at the dinosaur.

‘Go!’ Legolas elbows Peter, and he stumbles forwards. But he still doesn’t reach for the dinosaur. His arm has forgotten how to move. His heart has forgotten how to beat at a normal rate, too.

‘Mr Legolas?’ Peter stammers. ‘I don’t feel so good. I don’t- I don’t know what’s happening.’ I don’t- I don’t wanna go, sir please.’ Tears are running down his cheeks. ‘Please, I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna go. I’m so sorry. Maybe… Mr Deadpool! You should go instead, on the quest.’

‘Nah,’ Deadpool is tipping Coco Pops into the tote bag, ‘I’m good.’

Outside, the shadow of the spaceship has engulfed the entire lawn. How many minutes before it lands? Peter doesn’t want to know.

‘Please,’ Peter sobs, ‘I’m like, the worst superhero ever. I didn’t stop Thanos. I got turned into dust for five years. I didn’t save Mr Stark. The one villain I actually stopped for good has tricked the world into thinking I’m a serial killer. I suck. I don’t want to screw up again. I will screw up again. I don’t wanna go. You go instead of me.’

Deadpool is now plundering the Avengers’ Assassin’s Creed collection. ‘Look, I’ve watched your movies. I know you’ve been through about as much traumatic childhood stuff as Harry Potter did. But you need to go. This is your gig. This is you’re the main character! Anyways, I can’t go. This is a story, right? It needs character development. My character doesn’t need any developing. I’m already perfect, baby.’ He winks, although who to, Peter’s not quite sure. ‘Unlike you lot. You’re all pretty messed-up. Besides,’ he adds, ‘you look like you’re about twelve, and behaving responsibly around children isn’t really my thing. This is already the longest 4,644 words I’ve ever gone without making a dick joke or swearing.’

The noise from the spaceship is deafening. The wind rips branches from trees tosses them through the air, like something out of The Wizard of Oz. Cracks creep across the window. Peter can’t watch this building crumble again, and the grass burn away and earth crack apart. He can’t fail like that again. And he will fail, because all he ever does is fail. He failed to stop Thanos. He failed to save Mr Stark. He failed to expose Mysterio. He’s not some golden-haired leather-clad model hero like Legolas. He shouldn’t even be a superhero, because he didn’t ever do anything to earn or deserve being a superhero, he just got bitten by that spider and – boom! – everyone expects him to be able to save lots of things, when really all he’s got at is destroying these things, like how he destroyed his grades and then his friendship with Liz and then half of all life in the universe and himself and then Mr Stark and now he’s destroyed his own life and probably his aunt’s and his friends if he ever gets to see them again, because whichever writers were dumb enough to create him must really have it in for him, or maybe just not care for him at all, and if he goes on this mission to save all storyworlds, this quest of all quests, then he’s only going to destroy that too, and all these thoughts are whirring around his mind like those leaves outside, and Peter would like to be anywhere else at all, where this isn’t his problem or his story and he can go home.

Except, he doesn’t have a home.

And as broken and terrifying as his home is, he won’t get a chance to fix it if somebody else ruins it first.

And the hurricane in his head stills. And he’s left with just one memory, that of a ship rattling into the deep unknown of space, of Mr Stark’s face half-lit in blue light, and the wry acceptance on his face when Peter says, ‘you can’t be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man if there’s no neighbourhood.’

Peter nods at Legolas, squeezes his eyes shut, and grabs the dinosaur. He feels Legolas’s firm fingers next to his. His whole body tingles, as if charged with energy. ‘Wait,’ he cries, ‘who’s going to betray us? Who’s going to die? Who’s the villain in the dark?’

He opens his eyes. The vision is blurred, as if the room was made of smudged watercolours. ‘Oh!’ Deadpool’s voice cuts. ‘I was so busy trying to create suspense and intrigue I forgot to warn you! It’s-’

Then the noise heightens into ringing, and swallows Deadpool’s voice. And as the world fades to darkness and Peter starts to fall, the last thing he remembers seeing is a blur of red unsheathing two katanas and rushing headlong towards the landing spaceship.