#jace barton

OKAY so this is a little convoluted but Jace having a convoluted backstory and knowing like everyone in the multiverse is like a running gag for me so it works in context. 

This also all relies on the idea that comics!Jace and Deadpool have had this iconic odd friendship for decades, and XMCU Deadpool is aware of that. However, Jace doesn’t exist in the XMCU (or if she does, it’s in an extremely minor and unrecognizable way, like Emma Frost in Wolverine Origins.) 

So basically: in MM, there are actually seven infinity stones (seven stones for seven OG avengers.) The seventh stone is the life stone, also known as the bloodstone or blood gem by the hunting community and the Bloodstone family. It’s been in the possession of Jace’s biological father, Ulysses Bloodstone, for hundreds of years and is the source of his longevity (not true immortality; he got the stone in his twenties and in the span of 700 years with the stone, he’s only aged about 30 years, putting him biologically in his fifties when we meet him. The life stone CAN be used for immortality, but Ulysses isn’t as smart as he thinks he is and doesn’t know what an infinity stone even is.)

Quick primer on Jace’s backstory: her birth name is Jocelyn Camilla Bloodstone. Her mother was Alyssa Bloodstone. (I will be changing Alyssa’s name, this is her working title if you will.) Before Alyssa, Ulysses had two other children from a prior marriage, Elsa and Cullen. Ulysses treated them cruelly, especially Elsa, forcing them into dangerous situations to teach them to hunt monsters–imagine fanon!John Winchester dialed up to 100. 

(In the comics, there’s an incident where Elsa as a child killed a monster, but got its blood all over her head, and Ulysses refused to let her or her mother shave her head, instead making her keep it there to infect her scalp to punish her for her inadequacy. Elsa and Cullen’s mother Elise’s objection to the situation caused Ulysses to have her institutionalized. In the fic, though, he arranged for Elise to have an “accident” with some monsters, killing her. He quickly remarried to Jace’s mother, and they had her shortly thereafter.)

Jace’s mother, Alyssa, knew she didn’t want this treatment for her and when Jace was five, Alyssa arranged for Jace to be taken in by a local circus troupe, where she was raised by Clint and Barney Barton as their younger sister (alongside Wes, another abandoned kid who became family with them.)

When Jace was fourteen, her superpowers manifested. Her brothers didn’t handle it well–they weren’t mean, they just didn’t know what to do or how to handle it and she needed more guidance than they knew how to give. So Jace left to find her birth family in the hopes of finding answers. She did manage to find the Bloodstones, and Ulysses trained her to hunt for a few years. Jace had the skills that Cullen lacked, but like Cullen, she was too soft to meet Ulysses’ standards, unable to stomach his ruthless methods and philosophy about monsters. Ulysses would take out an entire pack of werewolves including babies without question; Jace didn’t have that in her. She cried after hunting a lot and tried to hide this from her father, but he knew. 

However, Ulysses was intrigued by the potential of Jace’s power, and wanted to replicate it with a child he could raise from a younger age to hopefully stamp out that “weakness.” Alyssa was long dead at this point, having met the same fate as Elsa’s mother after saving Jace by letting her go. So instead, with the help of his wife, Verussa, he tried to sexually assault Jace to have a child with her. 

Jace managed to escape but accidentally temporarily killed Ulysses in the process. (Temporarily because the Bloodstone would bring him to life.) Elsa was on one of her rare visits home at that point and helped Jace escape to Ireland, and Jace didn’t see any of her biological family for years after that. 

I’m still figuring out what triggers Jace going back to confront Ulysses–I think she’s found out through the grapevine that he’s doing something so awful that she can’t sit back and let it happen, and she goes to kill him for good. 

There’s a lot of overlap between the hunting community and the mercenary community, and that’s how she meets Wade Wilson. At least, she thinks that’s how. 

On Wade’s side–this is during his time travel adventure at the end of Deadpool 2. We know that time travel has to do with the multiverse so I won’t worry too much for now on how he gets into the MCU, just know that he does, and he comes specifically for Jace, specifically at this moment. (More on this soon.)

Jace is initially put off by him–he acts bizarrely familiar with her, as if they’ve met before, which bothers her more than the weird meta commentary–but she’s kind of glad to not be alone, so she accepts his offer to team up. (Unsure what excuse he gives for wanting to team up, maybe he pretends someone paid him to kill Ulysses. Jace is tempted to just let him, but she knows she has to be a part of taking him down, to make sure it sticks this time.)

So they go to Bloodstone Manor, and while Wade is in another part of the house, Jace confronts Ulysses and gets to a point where she scream/sobs “YOU RUINED MY LIFE, YOU RUINED ME” at him (potentially at his dead body at this point, it’s a very charged moment for her.) 

Later, Wade and Jace sit on the edge of the Brooklyn bridge, about to throw the Bloodstone into the water so no one can use it to bring Ulysses back. Wade brings up that he overheard what Jace had said to Ulysses. 

(“Speaking of that fuckwaffle–”

“That’s an insult to waffles.”

“Fucknugget?”

“Continue.”)

He tells her that she’s not ruined, and her life doesn’t have to be, either, and she genuinely takes it to heart. 

Despite that she still has very mixed feelings about it because…like she literally murdered her father with malice aforethought, I think killing him at first was an accident but throwing the stone into the ocean was very much an intentional attempt to make him stay dead. And I think anyone would have complicated feelings about that, even if he was a monster. So for years she kind of has this sense of shame and she thinks about what that weirdo w the red suit said a lot and it does bring her comfort. 

Flash forward to End Game. Jace actually isn't on the team to get the life stone. She’s with Rhodey and Nebula to get the power stone. Team New York is supposed to get the life stone from Ulysses while he happened to be there in 2012. 

However, things go wrong on their end–Jace’s information was incomplete. She didn’t know that while Ulysses was in New York in May 2012, he’d loaned the blood gem to Elsa, who wasn’t there. 

Meanwhile, things also go wrong–but also right–on Jace’s end, because while Nebula gets taken by Thanos, Jace gets taken by the Shi’ar. Specifically the Dragozera people that Adira (GOTG OC) was born into. 

The Dragozera people are the guardians of the dragon force, which I’ve told you about but I’ll go into again here. The dragon force in MM is the opposite of the phoenix force, and it’s based on the goblin force from a comics AU timeline. It’s basically hunger personified, it’s consumed entire galaxies before in an attempt to satiate itself. It’s not the kind of entity you can let wander around of its own accord, it NEEDS a host to keep it under control or else the entire universe could die. 

(I changed the name because goblin force really only makes sense in the context of Maddy Pryor, the host of it, being the goblin queen; because the dragon feels like a more natural opposite to the phoenix; and also because Jace is Jewish and there’s like, implications to think about.)

Anyway, the dragozera take her for two reasons:

One: They want the snap undone, too, and they know (via seer) that the time heist is going to fail if nobody intervenes and helps them get the life stone. 

Two: The dragon force, which has been asleep for millenia, has started to stir ever since Thanos’ snap. They know that undoing the snap will cause a second burst of cosmic energy that will wake up the dragon force completely, and they want to have a host ready for it to minimize casualties. They’ve sought out Jace specifically for…reasons, idk, I’ll figure it out.

Anyways. The Shi’ar Dragozera send her back in time to the first time she killed Ulysses by accident, the temporary one. They want to test her to see what she’ll do in that kind of emotionally charged moment, facing something like that. Jace finds the shame inside her transforms into rage, partly because she’s seeing how young she actually was at the time and is realizing that she was a literal child and it wasn’t her fault. She manages to stay in control and get the stone, though. 

While she’s there, she runs into Deadpool, who has once again popped in from multiversal shenanigans to hang out with her. When asked about his presence, he says “I couldn’t miss the biggest crossover event in movie history!”, turns directly to the camera, says “don’t get excited, this is just a cameo,” and then turns back to Jace and says “plus, I like seeing this guy get murdered.”

Jace is, once again, very perplexed by him but still happy to see him and to not be alone. 

Anyways, Jace returns with Rhodey and Nebula (secretly past!Nebula) with the life and power stones. End Game battle happens, they bring everyone back (snap), they destroy Thanos and his army (snap), and this begins the process of the dragon force’s awakening, which causes Jace to become its host in the aftermath of the blip. Deadpool 3 happens and Wade gets to hang out with Jace more. 

But the thing I wanna mention is why Wade has been continually showing up for Jace in these moments with her father. Wade is not the reason Jace killed Ulysses permanently. She was on that path anyway. And it wasn’t easy for her to do or live with.