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Chapter Text

Part 1: From a Tiny Spark

On August 26th, 1934, Gwen Stacy brushed past the doorman at the Ritz-Carlton, walked into the dining room, and set herself on fire.

Pandemonium ensued. The surrounding tables caught instantly, their occupants engulfed before they could even scream (but then, oh, they screamed). Whatever she had used burned fast and it burned hot.

Six killed, and those who didn’t die on crisp white sheets would be crippled forever. Nasty business, all in all.

“Why would she do it?”

It was the question on everyone’s lips. Why would such a nice girl commit such a terrible act?

(She wasn't that nice, some whispered behind closed doors. Rumor had it she worked at the Black Cat nightclub on the side.)

“Socialism!” J. Jonah Jameson blustered in that evening’s Bugle. “This is the result of rabble-rousers like May Parker getting everyone fired up about ‘the downtrodden masses.’ She says the rich must burn, and her red-bellied lackeys make it happen.”

There were always a few fires in this city, built on lovingly gilded plywood as it was. We lost a few warehouses and tenements every summer. But this one affected the privileged, and so this one got the headline.

I didn’t know Gwen well, but she always struck me as a nice enough broad. Never saw her at any of Aunt May’s rallies now that I gave it a ponder, but she could have been there. They drew an ever-increasing audience as the Depression dragged on, as more lost their jobs and, with them, their hope. And all the while, the fat cats dangled the hope of a dollar or two on a silver string above our heads.

So maybe she did do it as an act of protest. Read about it in one of those glossy magazine spreads about Buddhist monks and Ruskies starving themselves to death, took it to her head that it was her one shot to make her screaming, soot-streaked mark on the world. 

But I didn’t think so. 

The whole thing stank, and not of turpentine. 

Gwen Stacy did moonlight at the Black Cat, and I knew that for a fact — that’s where I’d met her. Not that I was a regular in that kind of kitten coop, mind. I wasn’t a teetotaler, but vice and liquor liked to cozy up with the mobsters, and those goons weren’t my first choice for a snuggle. Not to mention my one humiliating attempt to get up close and personal with the lady of the house… Let’s just say the Cat wasn’t my first choice of juice joint. 

Still, I was a private investigator, and that made the mob’s business my business. And Felicia Hardy entertained everybody who was anybody in the seedy underworld of New York City. So once in a blue moon, I’d let the dulcet tones of leather and smoke spool around me and draw me in.

I recalled the last time I saw Gwen clearly, because it was the night I met him.

Sergeant Wilson.

(What he was a sergeant of, I couldn’t tell you. He didn’t wear stripes or medals, and he was far too young to have served in the Great War. But he wore the title like he wore his dandy vest and his pocket square: ostentatiously, and with great aplomb.) 

That Saturday I came with something to offer. One of the regulars was involved with shady dealings involving a certain kind of girl. Felicia Hardy gladly opened her doors to all seven of those deadly sins, but if you hurt a gal in her profession — well, you’d find your perfume-spritzed invitation revoked before you could polish off your bathtub gin. 

And if you got eighty-sixed from the Cat, you might as well consider yourself eighty-sixed from life.

I had the dirt, and if I gave it to Felicia, she’d wield the shovel herself. Maybe the blood wasn’t entirely off my hands, but… look, you didn’t see what they were doing to those girls. Turned my stomach, and I’ve seen a lot. And it was always good to earn a favor or two from that woman — G-d knows I burned through ‘em fast enough.

I found her and a sweating bottle of champagne doing their damndest to pry their way into the swanky trousers of her latest besotted patsy.

“Well if it isn’t my favorite private dick,” she purred, the stars in her eyes cutting conspiritally to the man at her side. He snorted into his cigarette. My neck went hot. “Won’t you join us? You must meet Sergeant Wilson.”

“Call me Wade.” His teeth flashed white, and he turned, and my eyes just about bugged out of my head. 

I was raised better than to stare, but in that moment I didn’t give a damn. His movie star charm bled to gnarled scars, his face split down the middle like one of Felicia’s mangy tortoiseshell cats. Like he’d defied hell itself, and had the poor form to come back to tell us poor schlubs the tale. 

I didn’t bother to hide my flinch. His mouth twisted. “And who is this, Ms. Hardy? Your kid brother?”

He stepped in, taking my space as easily as he took a drag, pinning me with the full horror of his cloudy white eye. Smoke flooded my nostrils, and sour bloomed in my mouth, and when I pulled away it wasn’t just from his horrorshow of a face. 

Because Wilson didn’t just smoke; he smoked a very specific brand. For one short, painful breath I was back on my front stoop, the cotton of my shirt clinging to my sweaty neck. My uncle laughing. The radio humming through the threadbare curtains as my aunt did up the dishes, generous enough to turn a blind eye as he snuck a smoke. The smack of the garish yellow pack against his palm. Fatima Turkish tobacco mingling with the tang of hot pavement as Ben tapped the side of his nose, shot me a wink. 

Even after three years (even after everything), I’d occasionally catch a whiff of stale smoke when his old army coat swirled around me just right, and it took me back every time. 

Ben was the last person I wanted to be thinking about in a place like this.

“Oh, sugar,” Wilson’s leer nipped at the heels of my faltering retreat, “don’t you just look good enough to eat.”

I wrung my hat, turning to Felicia in an impotent appeal for rescue. Her eyebrow cut up her face as she tapped her own cigarette on the side of a crystal ashtray. The mean little quirk of her lip stirred the queasy memory of that night last winter (the night I thought she and I might make something happen), and shame pressed thick in my throat. 

What a damn fiasco tonight was turning out to be.

That was the moment Gwen turned up. She stumbled with her tray and Wilson reached out to catch her, his lecherous face two ugly halves of an even uglier coin. He met an unreactive audience; Gwen just blinked as she was set back on her kitten heels. Felicia uncurled from her lounge.

“Gwendolyn, darling, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.” She fussed at Gwen’s babydoll curls, fluffed her indecently short dress.

“Sorry, Ms. Hardy,” Gwen whispered. “I guess I didn’t sleep too good last night.” With her pale cheeks, she was halfway to a ghost already.

Felicia tutted. “You traveled with Mr. Freeman last week, didn’t you? Did he mistreat you?” 

Those cat’s eyes narrowed, kohl wings sharp as the knife that would soon be pressed against Mr. Freeman’s unmentionables. The table closest to us went silent, its occupants glancing nervously at the door. 

“No!” Gwen rubbed at her cheek, then, “I — I don’t remember. We went to a health resort, maybe.”

Felicia held Gwen's chin for a long moment, wrinkles threatening to trespass on the forbidden territory between her brows. 

“Well,” she finally said, releasing the poor girl from her scrutiny. “It seems you need another one.”

That was the last time I saw Gwen Stacy alive.

And that was the night Sergeant Wilson offered to walk me out like I was some kinda dame in need of an escort. Felicia threw him a salacious wink as we left, and I pushed back a pang. She wasn’t mine; never had been. Still, it made a fella sting.

Outside, Wilson lit another cigarette, proffering it my way. I waved him off and he shrugged, cheerfully volleying smoke at the traffic that rushed past us through the midnight heat.

“Leesha says you’re a reporter,” he said. “That true?”

I tugged at my sweaty collar. “Reporter, PI. Whatever gets the story.”

“Yeah,” he drawled, wetting his lips. “Yeah, you look like a man with a story.”

I stepped back, clearing my throat pointedly. He shuffled behind his pocket square, and then a creased square of newsprint bullied its way into my view. 

“You take this?”

I had. It was a shot of the new public health center in Greenwich Village, a shiny new rat trap bestowing the privilege of health onto the unwashed masses. Seemed charitable on the surface, but everyone knew that con. Those fancy doctors and government men dripped with sleaze, and the only thing they’d be serving was the health of their own bank accounts. 

Wilson held the photo up to the streetlight, brought it close to his ruined eye and then back out. 

“What’s the ‘B’ for?”

“The what?”

“P. B. Parker. What’s the ‘B’?”

“Benjamin,” I said, my fat mouth selling me out before my brain could catch up. 

“Benjamin.” He rolled the word around in his mouth, blew it out in a smokey ring. “Benji. I like it.”

“I’m not…” How dare he? “It was my uncle’s name. He died.”

“Condolences. But I guess if he bit the bullet then it’s your name now, huh, Benji?”

“No. It’s not. My name is Peter. No one calls me Ben.”

“So you’re saying I’m the only one?” He was up in my space again, so unassuming that I’d barely noticed. Smoke wound around us, crawling into my pores like the Amidah in my uncle’s mouth back when I was young, back when he still bothered to pray. 

The curl of scarlet tingling up and down my cervical vertebrae told me I was on the edge of something dangerous.

“I like that,” he whispered, the words clear as a bell as they made the scant trek from his lips to my ear. “I like that I’m the only one who calls you that.”

Then he stepped back, releasing me like a puppet from its strings. With a laugh and a hop, he pulled himself up to Felicia’s balcony. His voice was smug as it dripped down. 

“See you ‘round, Benji…”

I ground my teeth. “I sure hope not,” I muttered, and turned toward home, and tried not to think about what they were about to do.

A week passed, and I (mostly) put him from my mind. And then Gwen walked into the Ritz-Carlton and didn’t walk out and I forgot about Wade Wilson entirely. 

This wasn’t a job that Peter Parker, Private Eye, could tackle. This? This was for the Spider.

I sat on the rooftop of the hotel across the street, squinting through my goggles at the burned-out crater in the side of the Ritz, waiting for the dog and pony show to die down. A couple of coppers idled on the sidewalk, their mocking laughter echoing into the night.

Word had gotten around about Gwen’s extracurriculars, and folks were suddenly taking it a lot less seriously than they had that afternoon. Sweet little blonde girl in trouble? The boroughs hold their breath. But find out she’s a loose woman and it’s a city-wide sigh of relief.  

She wasn’t like us. We’re safe. 

“ — treated for hysteria last week, I heard.” The words wafted up from below, bored, mocking. The fuzz slurped their coffee, taking a load off fifty feet from what had been the pits of hell not twelve hours ago. The air still stank of fire, and burnt fat, and a sharp, distinctive tang.

“Think she was the other woman? Was her boyfriend in there, or something?”

I spat to the side and pulled my coat around me, suddenly chilled despite the heat. 

“Disgusting, is what it is.”

This voice was right in my ear.

Red screamed behind my eyelids and I turned and black webs spooled from my wrist, but he was faster, dodging out of the way. 

“Wowee, the stories are true, then! Is that some kinda gadget, or is that coming out of you? Because, I say, that’s enough to give a fella some ideas.” The mask filling my view was ghoulish, red and black leather shoddily stitched together in a ghastly approximation of my own. 

This was danger, my senses were telling me. This right here was a bad man.

This was also, clearly, Sergeant Wilson. I took a step back. He tilted his head, seeming amused at my wariness.

“Like I was saying. Disgusting. Something bad happened here, something badder than bad, and they’re down there talking booshwash like she wasn’t worth the gum on their too-nice shoes. She was a good kid.”

“She was,” I choked out around the lump in my throat. “She was a nice gal, and this wasn’t no suicide.”

He considered me with his mask-clad eyes until my skin burned. I apparently passed inspection, because he bounced back on his heels.

“Well! If you think it’s fishy, and I think it’s fishy, guess we got a whole damn fish market to explore.” He gave a twirl, the swing of his dark coat revealing a sizable arsenal. I blinked. “Will you do me the honor of escorting me to the Ritz, good sir?”

We descended to the alley, me with a few taps of my feet against the brick, zigzagging from wall to wall, him straight to the ground with a thump. Bile rose in the back of my throat at the sound of breaking bone, but he merely cracked his neck, rolled his ankle, and said, “Shake a leg, ladies!” as he set off. 

Who — or what — was Sergeant Wilson?

The coppers were gone (no doubt off to the speakeasies and gin joints to cash in the favors they’d reaped that night. Despicable). The Ritz itself was a putrid corpse, the gaping wound in its side a black spot to warn all travelers: This is not a safe space. Here, there is disease. Get out, while you still can. 

Fools that we were, we barged right past the yellow twine and the red flags.

Not that there was much to see. The stiffs had been carted away, leaving the charred skeletons of tables and chairs to mark their memory. But no clues. Nothing to point us in the direction of who had done this to Gwen. A bust.

“Well, this ain’t duck soup,” I said, wadding up a waterlogged menu.

Wilson staggered back, boots sliding on the marble. “W-what did you just say?”

He quavered like a kitten, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him back towards the exit.

“That smell,” he murmured, “I know that smell.”

The reek of death clung to the wool of our coats, oily and distinctive. It was awful, even after everything I’ve seen, and I wasn’t surprised that a dandy like him couldn’t handle it. It took more than donning a mask to add mettle to a man; many had tried before me, and many would try after.

As if to prove my point, he stumbled out a ways and pulled up his mask, loudly vomiting into the gutter. Suddenly it struck me, as his skin was revealed and his scars undulated in the streetlamp. Charred flesh.

I know that smell.

My throat hitched, and I knelt down, rubbing a firm circle into his back. The poor bastard should’ve stayed outside. He puked again, acrid fumes tangling with the smoke in my nose.

“You’re alright,” I said, even though nothing was alright and we both knew it. He blinked up at me through watering eyes. 

“You sure know how to show a doll a good time, huh, mister?” Shaking, he pulled the pack of Fatimas out of his pocket. 

The memory of Ben’s hand fell heavy on my shoulder.

I jammed my fists into my pockets and stepped back. 

“Probably could have made a better night of it,” I said, shuffling.

He grinned, and spittle clung to his lips and the end of his cigarette, and the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. The rough brick at his back took his weight, giving him the merciful illusion that he could support himself. “Ah, well. Any night’s a treat when it’s with you, Benji.”

He winked.

I stumbled back as if I’d been struck. 

“Wh — what?” Another step back, and my back hit the wall and I was whirling around myself, red curls of danger rising like the smoke from the cigarette in the corner of my eye.

“Benji… Peter, wait!” 

But I was already gone.

My flight took me to the only place that made sense: The Black Cat, and a quick leap up to Felicia’s balcony.

“Peter,” she called through the French doors, voice hoarse. She always did know when I was near. She’d been crying, kohl-streaked spiderwebs cracking those sharp cheekbones to pieces. 

Right.

She’d known Gwen, was fond. I should have cared, should have tried to be sympathetic, but I had bigger things on my mind.

“Did you tell him?” Cats scattered like leaves around my boots as I strode in.

“What?”

“Wilson. Did you tell him? Did you tell him about the Spider?”

Pale skin, smudgy purple bruises of grief under her eyes, betrayal slapped across her features. “You know I would never.”

“Then how did he recognize me?”

She sized me up. The ash on my sleeve, the quiver in my lip. She always did see more of me than I wanted her to see. “I think there are a few things you need to know about Wade Wilson.”

Next: “Four Boys and a Gun”

Chapter Text

This is how she told me, passing Wilson's story to me secondhand like a moth-eaten sweater reluctantly purchased at a tag sale.

It was the Great War, and Private Wilson (private, not sergeant, not even corporal) had come all the way across the ocean for blood and guts and glory. 

Or maybe he joined up to flee the father he'd never told Felicia about, not even in those moments in her boudoir when they were most exposed, when all their ugliest scars were on display. He didn’t have to tell her. She could see it in the shadow of his eyes. 

Whatever the reason, whether he went to war because he had an infatuation with killing or whether he met that scarlet mistress on the front, he was damn good at it. Good enough to get attention. It didn’t take long for him to get tapped as the rifleman for a fire team, a specialized squad. The ones who went in to do the work other people didn’t have the guts to do. 

He had this officer, Stryker. The man liked having a trained killer, but wanted one on a short leash. And, oh, Wilson choked on it, pulling at his lead to see if there was any give, sneaking out of his kennel any time he had half a chance.

And then Stryker caught him in a delicate situation. 

“Delicate situation?” I asked. “Some French whore?”

Her eyes flashed, hot and hurt. 

A swell of shame. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Some French dame, or something?”

“Or something,” she replied, like ice water on my neck.

A delicate situation laid bare to a commanding officer with a chip on his shoulder. A dishonorable discharge waiting back at camp. 

A poorly-smothered camp fire stroking itself back to passion near the munitions tent, while the dry brush wafted as enticingly as the hooker that had gotten Wilson in so much trouble that night. 

A platoon-sized stick of dynamite, just waiting for a match.

“He didn't do it,” she was quick to reassure me. 

Wilson didn't light the spark. But he saw, he knew (thought he knew) how it would go down, and for once in his life he did what Stryker always shouted: 

He kept his big mouth shut. 

Except it wasn't any old munitions tent. Some scientist had been there the week prior, muttering to himself, a big metal suitcase in hand. He’d left the tent empty handed. 

The explosion was a bright, eerie green, and its swan song took the entire camp. One minute they were a family, the horrors of the trenches a bond thicker than blood. The next, Wilson emerged from the flames an orphan. Unnatural. A thing that couldn’t be hurt, that couldn't die.

Immortality? I scoffed. No such thing. And yet... 

The war ended in '18. (My father — his brain filled with scientific notation and dreams, a young family back at home — died scared and alone in the mud in 1917 while his older brother wrestled with the Krauts half a continent away.)

And now it was sixteen years later, and the half of ‘Sergeant’ Wilson’s face that was still halfway to human was as boyish as a fresh recruit on a hot summer morning. 

No such thing as immortality. 

No such thing as that spidery creature that called itself a god, either, but I still felt the awful, twitching memory of its claws burrowing into my spine as it latched onto me for keeps. I didn’t know much about the supernatural, but I knew those claws would be in me until the day I finally swung out of this miserable existence (and maybe even longer).  

A white cat twirled around my ankle, its long, matted fur catching at my trousers. Felicia's eyes like embers; her face half in shadow like a modern-day Pythia.

She made us a strong drink.

“You know what a gunsel is?” she asked, passing me a tumbler. I took it gratefully, running the cold crystal across my forehead.

“A hitman.” Or a goose, but that seemed less likely. “Wait. You don’t mean to say — ” 

“He’s a mercenary,” she said, though her lip quirked in a way that said I was on the outside of the joke. “That’s probably how he found you out. He makes a living finding the people who don’t want to be found.”

“And then killing them.”

An elegant shrug. “He’s particular about his jobs, by all accounts.”

“That’s what all the goons say.”

“He turned down the one on me. And even offered me a buy-out.”

“A buy-out?”

“For a very reasonable sum — most of which I have since recouped in very pleasant company — the man who wanted me dead is no longer a concern to me.”

I put my head in my hands. “He’s a killer. And he knows me. Knows where I live, where I work. He’ll find out about Aunt May…”

Her eyes were somber. “I don’t think those are the things you need to be worried about, in regards to Sergeant Wilson.”

“What do you mean? What else do I need to worry about?”

She stood, slipping out of her gown as if she was by herself getting ready for bed, as if I wasn’t in the room at all. Her bony shoulders jutted under the straps of her slip and I glued my eyes to the wall, remembering once again that awful night, the humiliation of having her pressed against me and — 

She pressed against me now, standing on her toes, breasts soft against my chest and breath hot against my ear. There was a long, terrible silence.

My jaw clenched. “What do I need to worry about?”

A breath of fresh air as she stepped back, and my body relaxed in a rush.

She had that look in her eyes again, the one that made me feel like I had been peeled back and found wanting.

“Go home, Peter. Just… go home.”

I went.

Next: “The Man Without a Mask”

Chapter Text

Aunt May’s next socialist gathering was a somber affair — more eulogy than rally. But the fire in her eyes burned hotter than ever. 

“The movement does not demand such a sacrifice of you.” 

In a novel, it would have been raining. As it was, wispy white hairs pulled free of their tight pins in her sensible cloche, drooping in the heat, and sweat beaded under the wool collar of her best dress.

“Gwen Stacy was a brave young woman. But I implore you not to take the steps she did. We must look out for each other, for the world will not look out for us.”

The crowd shuffled as we took a moment of silence, hats in hand and eyes downcast. 

Afterwards, May beckoned to me through the milling crowd. She was mid-conversation with a waifish blonde in a crisp nurse’s hat, and the woman raised tired eyes as I approached.

“My nephew, Peter,” May was saying. “Peter, this is Sarah Rogers.”

Mrs. Rogers shook my hand, her bony fingers cold even in the heat. But her voice rang strong. “Pleased to meet you, Peter. I’m after a favor.”

May said, “Mrs. Rogers has a son who’s new to the movement. She was hoping you’d have a word with him about restraint.” She gave me a stern look over her glasses.

“He’s got a fire in him, my Stevie. Just like his father had.” A sad smile flitted across Mrs. Rogers’ face, and a hint of Irish shone through her careful American words. It was clear she had a story, and I wondered if I would ever get the chance to know it. “Stubborn. Already getting ideas in himself, starting battles he can’t win. I have my worries.”

Perhaps Aunt May hoped that in advising little Stevie, I’d find a smidge of self-preservation for myself. I was careful to keep the Spider far from her doorstep, but I couldn’t always hide the busted lips and the shiners.

A kid sidled up, the spitting image of his mother. His skinny face split into a grin at the sight of her, and he planted a kiss on her pale cheek.

Tied to the apron strings, my mind supplied. But maybe when you were one bad flu from becoming worm food you didn’t skip a single moment of affection. Guilt rising, I nudged my shoulder against May’s, and got a surprised beam in return.

I nodded to the kid. “Stevie, yeah? Wanna go get a soda?”

“It’s Steve.” His voice was deep. Maybe he was older than I thought. Then he glanced over his shoulder at his mother, melting back into a gawkish kid as she nodded encouragingly. “Sure.”

The street was all hustle and bustle, a writhing, claustrophobic mass of big city humanity pressing us close as we made our way down to Louie’s.

At the counter, Steve tried to order the dog soup. “I’m buying, kid,” I said, as Louie slid down my malted egg cream.

“I’m not a charity case,” he muttered. His threadbare clothes said otherwise, lovingly maintained in the way that only the poor take care of their things. “And I’m eighteen, I’m not a kid.”

I sighed. “You can get me next time, pal.”

He pulled a face, but deigned to order a strawberry phosphate, extra sour. No wonder he looked like he sucked lemons for fun.

We sipped our drinks, and I considered what to tell him. Steve wasn’t tough enough to be out picking fights for the cause. But it was clear by the barely-there scabs on his knuckles, the echo of a bruise under his eye, that he didn’t see things that way. And who was I to tell him not to play the hero? I was out on the streets every night, one stray bullet from breaking my poor aunt’s heart.

Scrapper that he was, he beat me to the punch. “They say you’re a private eye. That’s why I asked Ma to introduce me. I have information, but I don’t know” — his lip trembled despite his bravado — “I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t talk to the cops…”

Steve finally looked up from the scum collecting on the surface of his soda, bold eyes meeting mine.

“I have information about Gwen Stacy.”

There wasn’t much to tell, but he spilled what he had.

He’d known Gwen, known her well from the sounds of it (although he wouldn’t say from where, and I didn’t press for fear of spooking him). I tried not to dwell too hard on the thought of a kid like him running around with a dame like her (because he was just a kid, no matter how old he thought he was at just-turned-eighteen).

She’d been gone for a week, with the mysterious Mr. Freeman that Felicia had mentioned at the Black Cat. Some kind of fancy health clinic. Everyone knew what really went down at those health resorts, especially when you were the kind of man who could bring your own company. This wasn’t new to Gwen — she made most of her money waitressing, or with a couple of hours here and there on a lonely night, but she’d been known to spend a few days playing house for some schlub with deep pockets.

I wasn’t one to judge, but Stevie still shot me a glare as biting as his soda. “Everyone’s hurting.”

Anyway, this time… she came back different. Didn’t turn up at the usual haunts, and when the gang went to her boarding house they found her pale on her feet, swaying in the doorway as the house matron hovered narrow-eyed behind her. She creased her brow like she didn’t recognize them, looking to her stout chaperone for help, and then she shook herself and blinked.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Just tired.”

Half a week later, she was dead.

Steve paused for a long moment, smashing his straw against the bottom of his glass. He finally said, “She used to spend time at the Slide. You know it?”

I shook my head and he tucked his chin, harsh splotches blooming on his cheeks.

“It’s an absinthe bar. Very… bohemian.”

He eyed me expectantly. I grit my teeth. I hated those weeks where everyone and their uncle got their jollies by yanking my chain. “I’m not much for the green fairy, myself.”

“Well,” he coughed. “Me neither. But Gwen used to go there, and some of them might know more about Mr. Freeman and that clinic that he took her to. Gwen wasn’t the only one who talked about it.”

“I’ll look into it,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “What was it called?”

“Extremis. The Extremis Institute.”

Turned out I didn’t have to hit the pavement to untangle Rogers’ vague clues. The Extremis Institute found me, in the form of an assignment from JJJ and the Daily Bugle.   

“They asked for someone with a scientific mind,” Jameson growled around his cigar. The day he let those teeth unclench would be the day of his funeral. “That means you, Parker.”

Fine by me. Let Eddie Brock have the political scandals. Let him shake the President’s sweaty paw. 

I was happy to be the go-to guy for the grisly murders — I’d gotten the inside scoop on more than one crook that way. And backpage blurbs on matters of academic enlightenment? Well, they were a poor substitute for my half-finished college education, but they caught me up enough to rub elbows with the eggheads, at least.

The Extremis Institute was a true modern marvel, or so the press release claimed. I would have been in awe as I passed through its chrome and glass doors, if Gwen’s trembling face hadn’t been plastered behind my eyelids. As it was, my skin crawled, and I had to swallow hard against the sharp antiseptic that clung to the air.

I tugged at my collar as I was given the once-over by a nurse, her face as severe as the starched folds of her hat. She marched me to the office of one Dr. Emrys Killebrew.

“Доктор,” she said, the rasp startling me. “ваш журналист.”

The words were neutral, but that huffy tone was unmistakable. That was alright. Wasn’t the first time I’d gotten a less-than-warm welcome as a newshawk.

“Thank you, Varvara,” the doctor replied. He cut an impressive figure, framed like some swanky portrait in the full-length windows.

Varvara shot me one last venomous look as she turned, and I couldn’t resist adding a parting, “Вы очень добры,” pitching my voice soft and courteous. You’re too kind. I took a small, mean pleasure in the way her shoulders tensed.

“Parker,” Dr. Killebrew said. An American, then. He gripped my hand hard, and his stern map of a face had been folded a few too many times, but he gave me a broad smile. “You speak Russian, then?”

I forced a smile back, even as my teeth itched. “A bit. My aunt has an interest in Russian literature.”

The wheels turned in his head and I was afraid I’d put my foot in it, but he just raised an eyebrow. “Much to your editor’s disapproval, I gather.”

“You follow the Bugle, sir?” 

“Certain sections, anyway. Those areas which showcase talent.” He pinned me with his focus, and something nervous curled in my gut. “Your coverage of the Greenwich Public Clinic was insightful. Almost made me wish it was one of ours. Walk with me, son.”

We walked.

“Are many of your staff Russian, then?”

“Quite a few. I’ve only just recently returned to America myself. I was injured in the war. Crippled, really. I recuperated in a hospital in St. Petersburg.”

The scratch of my pencil echoed in the tranquil halls. “Is that how you came to medicine?”

“Indeed,” he said, nodding approvingly. “The Russian techniques were innovative, although not all of them would be palatable to American sensibilities. But they were effective. And they held a seed of genius that I knew I could nurture and refine; a beauty contained within the brutality. Once I was well, I took up medicine myself and, with the help of my Russian colleagues, began developing the methods you’ll be seeing here today. Ah! Come along, this way.”

He took me by the elbow and I swayed away from him, the smell of medicine in the air making my head buzz. If he noticed he didn’t mention it, although I swore his fingers tightened around my arm for the briefest moment before he released me. 

I rubbed at my temples, took a deep breath. “And what exactly does the Institute treat?”

His eyes shone, as bright as his white teeth and his white coat and his gleaming white Institute. “So many things! Treatments and cures for a multitude of physical ailments. But my passion, Mr. Parker, is the medicine of the mind.”

I squinted as he ushered me into the first ward. “This doesn’t look like a nuthouse.”

A sea of white beds lapped at the toes of my boots; each cot a life raft containing a slumbering castaway adrift in his own mind. White-capped nurses sailed about, feeling foreheads and adjusting covers.

“And that, Mr. Parker, is the beauty of Extremis. Gone are the days of crowded, filthy asylums. Disorders that were previously thought to be caused by evil or weakness of character, we now know to be misformation or misfiring of different areas in the brain. And if there’s a physical cause, there’s a physical cure.” Killebrew‘s voice thrummed as he gestured around us. “These people are victims, son. Trapped in the prison of their own minds. And here at Extremis, we aim to set them free.”

“What’s the treatment, then?”

“Deep insulin coma therapy.” He beckoned me closer to one of the patients. “An American invention, actually, but one I improved on with Russian techniques. The schizophrenic mind is fractured, pained. It needs rest. By inducing coma and maintaining the body, we relieve the brain of stress.”

“And that stuff?” I waved my pencil at the garish green liquid draining from a glass bottle into the arm of the nearest patient.

He narrowed his eyes, adjusting the dial to some imperceptible correction. “Nutrients. Gentle narcotics to induce restful sleep. And a proprietary serum that promotes the healing ability of the brain.”

The chartreuse balloons hung like beacons, sent aloft by tortured souls in futile hope of rescue. I couldn’t suppress a shudder as the door closed, hiding them from my sight.

“Shocking, I know,” Killebrew said, sympathetically. “We do begin with gentler methods. Hypnosis. Medication. But the Institute is not for the easy cases.” 

He paused, sizing me up.

“As a matter of fact, we’re currently playing host to a rather unique case.”

“Unique?” I asked. “Not schizophrenia, then?”

“I shouldn’t say this to the press…” He tilted his head. “But perhaps… off the record. I feel I can trust you, Mr. Parker.” 

“Off the record.” I held his eye, trying to radiate honesty. It wasn’t like I wanted his secrets for the Bugle, anyway.

No, I wanted them for Gwen.

Killebrew nodded once, sharply, then led us to a private room, pulling a key from his pocket. 

This lonely refugee didn’t even have the company of his lost brothers-in-arms; he drowned alone. The room was silent but for the wheeze of a small pump.

The body lay still. I wondered if he dreamed under gauze-wrapped eyes.

“Are you familiar with the late Norman Obsborn? Known to some as ‘The Goblin.’” I froze, and his keen eyes didn’t miss it. “I do hope you never had any run-ins with him?”

“My uncle,” I managed to gasp, the words punched from my lungs. The fog of antiseptic was stronger in here, clinging green in my throat, shimmering under the overpowering stench of blood in the room where I found Uncle Ben. 

My uncle wasn’t killed by the Goblin, oh no. He was devoured. The Goblin’s men bound him like a dog, beat a helpless man within an inch of his life, and then they had the Vulture — with his monstrous appetites — finish the job.

“Are you alright, son?” 

I blinked, and Killebrew’s intent face replaced the memory of Uncle Ben’s ghastly frozen scream. I cleared my throat, trying to soothe my pounding heart. My head throbbed.

“Sorry, Doctor. Ben was — he was the only father I ever knew. Losing him almost killed my aunt and I. The Goblin was a monster.” 

His face darkened. “I’m sorry. From what I’ve heard of the man, everyone has a similar story. It may, then, interest you to know that the young man lying in this bed is Harry Osborn.”

“I didn’t know he had a son,” I murmured, trying to get my feet back under me.

Killebrew clicked his tongue. “Shuffled off to boarding school as a child. But Osborn did have a few legitimate holdings among the filth, and after his death the directors needed a figure to head up the company. A child prince, really. Can’t blame the son for the sins of his father, but when we speak of the science of the mind, we must consider our progenitors.”

Maybe I should have felt hatred for the young man (boy, really). Or maybe guilt. I took his father from him, just like his father took my uncle from me. For a moment I was back in the sewers under New York, stepping aside as Norman’s feral green face screamed in horror, as a river of filth swept him to an ignoble end. But I couldn’t find it in myself to hate the kid in the bed, and I certainly couldn’t find regret. Nobody deserved Norman Osborn in their life — least of all his own kin.

“So what’s wrong with him?” I asked, after far too long a pause. “Is he… like Norman?”

I bit my tongue. Very few people knew the full truth of Norman Osborn’s insanity, and poor little Peter Parker certainly had no reason to.

“Worse than that, I’m afraid. He was caught in some youthful follies.” Killebrew leaned close, conspiratorial. “Stepping out with the wrong type.”

Ah. My fist clenched, and my face flushed hot. 

“The wrong color, you mean?”

“The wrong sex. Harry Osborn is a homosexual.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, my anger evaporating as quickly as it had arrived. It left a film of revulsion in its wake.

“Oh, yes,” he sighed. “A kindness his father didn’t live to see the day, really. At seventeen Harry is still a ward of the board of trustees, and they did the right thing — they brought him to us. Our treatments can make him a normal, productive member of society.”

I swallowed hard. “Is that even possible? For someone like him, to…”

Killebrew drew me away from the sight, and this time I didn’t pull away. His hand on my elbow was kind, but through the haze I swore a flare of acrimony crossed his face as he locked the door. Then I blinked, and his sincere eyes were back on mine.

“Have no doubt, Mr. Parker. Here at the Institute we’re changing the world. One mind at a time.”

Back in his office, Killebrew fixed me a scotch. “Cigarette?” he asked, and I shook my head, holding the tumbler in numb hands.

The sharp burn of a match, and smoke from an all-too-familiar brand joined the whiskey and antiseptic in my raw throat.

“I’m sorry, son. I know some of the sights can be a bit of a shock.”

I nodded weakly. “The day-to-day details of medicine aren’t always pretty, I imagine.”

“No,” he said, passion returning, “but it’s worth it. We’re on the verge of breakthroughs for so many ailments. Mental disorders, yes. But also physical. Polio. Tuberculosis. Influenza. Did you know the Spanish Flu killed more people than the Great War?”

I shook my head, took a sip. The burn helped me focus my throbbing head. “My mother died of the flu.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Mother to the flu, uncle to the Goblin. And your father?”

“My father died in the war. I was too young to remember him.”

“Mr. Parker.” He paused, pursed his lips. He had produced a coin from somewhere, and he ran his thumb idly along the edge. “I must admit something. I knew who you were before you arrived.”

The sun shone off the copper. I squinted at the large X on the side, trying to make out the letters stamped into the metal, mind only half on my words. “You said you followed my work.”

He caught the direction of my attention and smiled wryly, pushing the coin across the desk, towards me. “I have. But I looked you up for a reason. I knew your father in the war, you see.”

The slip of copper became the least of my concerns. “I’m sorry?”

“We met on the front,” he said, smoke seeping from the corner of his mouth. “He was a good man. Spoke of you and your mother often. He had so much pride in you. Such high hopes. I was gutted when I learned of his death. And so when I found myself in New York, I resolved to look you up.”

“I… don’t know what to say.” My own voice was faint through the static in my ears, the red of pumping blood. 

“Then let me. I’m sure your father would be proud of what you’ve achieved… considering your circumstances. But you’ve a keen scientific mind. You’re wasting yourself in journalism.”

I shrunk in my seat. “I’m taking classes when I can, sir.”

He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “We have a place for you here at the Institute, Mr. Parker. If you want it.”

For a breath, it laid out white and glimmering before me. A future in science. A future spent at the elbow of a great man, building the business of healing. 

The future my father and my uncle had always wanted for me.

A few years before he died, Uncle Ben took me to a talk by some lady scientist on tour from France. The room was crowded and her accent was strong, her words muddy under the shuffles and groans of hundreds of bodies. I could barely hear her, and I had to bite down my frustration for Ben’s sake (Ben, who had taken on extra shifts to afford the tickets, who had been so proud to bring me here). But at one point she turned her head, and suddenly it seemed she was looking straight at me. Her words cut bold with conviction, clear through the crowd, and I had never forgotten them.

My head is so full of plans that it seems aflame.

I opened my mouth.

“Did you happen to treat a patient by the name of Gwen Stacy?”

Killebrew drew back, face twisting into something brief and ugly before he managed to smooth himself back to composure. He coughed out a laugh. “Perhaps you belong in the news business, after all. The girl who burned the Ritz, right? No, she wasn’t a patient here.”

But she was, my gut told me. You know she was.

I stood.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, holding out my hand. “I appreciate the offer, I do, and I’ll think about it. I just have responsibilities. People I’d want to talk to before I make a decision.”

He smiled, benevolence restored. “Take a few days. But don’t take too long. The flames of progress move ever swiftly, after all.”

His words burned on the back of my neck as I made my way down the front drive. I turned back, sure he must be watching me, but the sun glinted off the windows, leaving them opaque to my scrutiny.

Next: “The Spider and the Flame”

Chapter Text

I needed space to think and a strong cup of joe, and Louie’s was the place to get both. It was dark by the time I got there, the all-nighter mostly empty, and I stared into the black of my coffee, hoping it held some kind of deep wisdom.

Something was obviously rotten at Extremis. Had Gwen been there? If so, why? And I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about the joint had been offputtingly familiar. 

And why was Killebrew so interested in me? Not in the Spider. In Peter Parker. No one in the world was interested in him.

A tap on the window interrupted my reverie. I turned to see Wade Wilson, his face ghostly pale in the café lights as it emerged through the dusk; nothing but a reflection, the glass smoothing his scars into something halfway to normal. I was no broad, but even I had to admit that he must have been nice to look at, back in the day.

The Night Café, 2020
Oil on Canvas
28 x 36 Inches

He waved cheerful and I sighed, jerking my head.

You might as well come in, then. Seeing as you’re already here.

He beamed as he pulled up a chair, turning it backwards and straddling it. He tapped out a cigarette, offered me one as he lit up. 

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

Shrugging, he leaned in and slid the spare behind my ear. I jerked back, something hot squirming behind my sternum. He just smiled and took a drag.

“For later, then. How was your day, dear? You sure look swell in a tie.” I rolled my eyes as he snagged my java, pulling it toward himself as if daring me to stop him.

“I don’t understand you,” I muttered.

He tilted his head, eyes crinkling. “Don’t you?” he asked. His tongue darted out to catch a stray drop of coffee, and I looked away.

“Bad day,” I finally replied. “Following a lead on Gwen. Bupkis. Trip for biscuits. You know anything about the Extremis Institute?”

Pursing his lips, he shook his head.

“How about a Mr. Freeman?”

“Nope,” he drawled, leaning back in his chair, tilting away in profile. Showing me his good side — friendly of him. “Not in this decade, anyway. What’s he got to do with Gwen?”

“I think she went with him to Extremis for some kind of treatment.”

He hummed, brow crinkling, then turned back, the horror of his scars unfolding back into my view.

“There’s a man I’ve heard about, the Good Doctor. Think that could be related?”

I shrugged. “Right now, any lead’s better than no lead.”

He nodded. “Got anything else? Or just Extremis and Mr. Freeman?”

I opened my mouth, thinking of Stevie Rogers and the Slide, but something stilled my tongue. Silently, I shook my head. He studied me, eyes narrowed, and my skin tingled like I was too close to a power socket. I swallowed and looked away. His focus broke with a grin.

“Well. I remember where I heard about the Good Doctor. Let’s get a wiggle on.”

He drained the rest of my coffee, dropping a few coins on the table. I opened my mouth and he shot me a pout.

“Let me spoil you, jellybean.”

With a sigh, I followed. “Wait. Should I change?”

I’d come straight from the Institute, still in the guise of mild-mannered reporter Peter Parker. The mask was in my pocket, but if fists started flying I didn’t want to be caught flat-footed. 

“Naw,” he said, “Your pretty face will open more doors than that spooky mask, doll.”

“Doors, where? Where are we headed?”

He threw an arm over my shoulder, pulling me close as we walked. “You spend a lot of time down at the docks, Benji?”

“Do you?” I asked. I struggled to get my feet underneath me, not used to matching another’s stride.

“Oh, yes. Quality time, if you get my drift. If you pick up my anchor. I just really like seafood.”

I squinted. “You’re… friendly with the sailors, then.”

He laughed, cheeks hollowing as he took a long drag off his cigarette. “Oh, I’m friendly. Those bell bottoms really know their way around a buoy.”

“Well,” I hedged. “I should hope so.”

Was this some kind of code? Was I supposed to respond with some comment about the weather? His head nudged mine, expectant.

“It’s a good place to find crime,” I finally said, fighting the feeling that I was being made the fool.

His shoulders drooped. “More kinds of crime than you realize,” he muttered.

He slowed, tripping me up, then danced away into the empty street. His boots were light as he tapped across the gummy asphalt, but his voice held a sullen bite. 

“More kinds of crime than you know, Benji, baby. You got no idea.”

The man confounded me! One minute he was up in my face like he wanted to be my wife, the next he tossed me away like a plugged nickel. I shook my head, took a deep breath. The muggy air settled thick in my lungs.

Even so, the night was beautiful as we walked. It muted the mess and ugliness of the city, turning the sickly, faded colors of day into clean, soft beauty. The velvety sky seemed to go on forever. Wilson crooned a little tune, joie de vivre restored as quickly as it had left.

It almost felt a shame to let my eyes adjust to the watery yellow lamplight of the docks.

“Luke,” Wilson hollered. “Oy, Luke!”

There was movement in the boathouse, and then a sailor’s crisp whites emerged down the steps.

“Wilson. You think you can just swan back in here?” Luke’s face held a storm. Wilson just stood his ground, his good brow raised. The other man cracked a rueful grin, teeth flashing white, his deep brown skin glowing golden as he stepped into the circle of light. “Well. You can.”

Wilson grinned back. “As if anything could keep me away from a wolf like you.”

Luke chuckled. “Sure, punk. What can I do for you?”

“Why do you assume I’m here for anything other than pleasant company?” asked Wilson, biting his lip and beaming like a damn daisy.

“Brought plenty of pleasant company with you, I’d say.”

Suddenly, I was in Luke’s sights. His smile broadened as he took me in. I froze. He winked.

I shook myself out of it, forced a polite nod back. The man seemed friendly enough, and if he wasn’t I could take him — take both of them, one hand tied behind my back, ten times over. Clearly my visit to Extremis had shaken me more than I realized, if I was seeing danger around every corner.

Wilson shrugged. “Fair enough. I was hoping you might know more about the Good Doctor.”

That made Luke pause. He tipped his head my way. “You want to talk about the Good Doctor here?”

“Inside, then,” Wilson said, turning to me. I glanced between the two of them, bristling as I pressed my back against the rough pylon behind me. He nodded to himself. “Inside. You just be good and wait out here, Benji.”

They went. I waited.

I waited in the light, but I sure felt left in the dark.

Even this late, the docks teamed with sailors and merchants. I stuck out like a sore thumb in my pressed trousers and best shirt as they swirled around me, busy at their nighttime tasks. Most ignored me, but a few sidled up, locking eyes. They broke off with indifference at my terse replies, and I glared at their backs. Dope peddlers and trigger men, no doubt. What kind of creep joint had Wilson thrown me into? 

I longed for my mask, for my revolver, for the safe haven of dark rooftops.

The two men were gone for long enough that I more than half wondered if they'd gone out the back way, given me the slip. I was turning my thoughts towards home and bed when they finally emerged.

“Thanks for the tip-off,” Wilson rasped. I straightened. Had they fought?

My senses should have told me if there was trouble afoot, but maybe the spider god just didn’t give a damn about Wilson. Can’t say I blamed it.

Luke clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll keep my ear to the ground.” He turned to me, grasped my hand between his big, hot ones. “Nice to meet you, Benji.”

“It’s Peter,” I said, goosebumps rising on my arm.

“Peter, then.” His face lengthened, losing its sly amusement. “Keep your ears open. I hear there’s a storm coming.”

I nodded dumbly, lungs kicking back in like bellows as he released my hand. Wilson’s nostrils flared and he grabbed my shoulder, steering me back into the night.

“Wilson,” called Luke, “if that doesn’t pan out, they might know more at the Slide.”

Wilson’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and he didn’t answer.

“What's the Slide?” I asked. His jaw clenched. 

“I can check it out,” he said, light as anything. “If you don't know it already, it's probably not your kinda clam bake.”

Using the momentum of his hurried pace against him I wheeled around, halting him so fast he almost bowled me over.

“I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Glowering, he ran a hand through his hair. “There’s plenty I’m not telling you. Just like there’s plenty you’re not telling me.” His eyes locked on mine. “But there’s plenty I am telling you. You just don’t know how to listen.”

He leaned in close. 

It burned, this lightning strike of a warning; it sizzled on my skin here on the street, back at the docks, in the cafe. It had itched under my collar from that very first night at the Black Cat. 

Danger. 

But it wasn’t. I met bad men every day, I knew what a bad man felt like. That knowledge was the reason I was still alive. This? This was different. I had every reason to believe Wade Wilson meant me harm, yet somehow I was sure of him, sure all the way down to my bones. So how did he put me behind the eight ball with a glance? Why did my lungs ache until I couldn’t breathe, what made me coil to throw the first punch? 

He reached for me, on an inevitable collision course to some unknown conclusion, and time stretched around us in a blistering embrace… 

Then his fingers grazed my ear and he retrieved his cigarette, sliding it into the corner of his mouth.

“Thanks for holding that for me.” He stepped back with a wink, lips sucking tight as a match flashed in the air. “Anyway. It was nice catching up, sugar, but I gotta see a man about a dog.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Sure,” I told his retreating back. "Lemme know what those dogs dig up."

He was hiding something from me, but he wasn’t wrong — we both had secrets. Still, he had the skinny on the best lead I had on Gwen’s murder, and I didn’t trust him to spill. It was time to do a little digging of my own.

Tracking down the Slide was harder than I expected. It wasn’t a blind tiger I knew, and I knew most of ‘em. Well. The troublemakers, anyway. Some gin joints kept their heads down, more focused on making a space for like-minded folks to get together and have a good time than they were on making a home for trouble. But Gwen Stacy seemed a little pale for that kind of jazz club. 

Most of my usual stoolies didn't know the Slide, and those that did had their lips sealed tighter than Fort Knox. It took a few days to track down someone who would sing. 

“You don’t know it?” Spector grinned so wide I thought his fool face was going to split in half. 

 Or maybe today he was Lockley. My informants were all over the map, every last one of them off the track in one direction or another, and Moon Knight and his roulette wheel of personalities was the worst of 'em. But beggars can't be choosers, and the loonier the snitch the better the intel. 

“Does it hurt to be crazy?” I deadpanned.

“Klotz kasheh.” Stupid question. He batted his eyes and I huffed through my mask. “Often. But the Slide… I figured you for a regular.”

My fist clenched. I was done being led around by the nose. I rounded on him, stepping in a little too fast. 

“What kind of place is it?!” 

"Full of schmucks, just like you,” he cackled, darting under my arm and down the alley. “You’ll be in good company. Go see! Go see, and then come back and thank me.”

Next: “Strangers in the Night”

Chapter Text

The air was charged that night, stifling even at 2am. The sky pitched green, and the city held its breath.

That sailor had said a storm was coming, and somehow I just knew it was going to come down on me. I thought I smelled smoke around every corner. I’d been in this schtick for long enough: when I smelled smoke, I started looking for the fire.

The stocky broad at the door asked me for the passcode, eyeing me up and down. “Black leather, huh? If you want to get to the Velvet Room there’s a passcode for that, too.”

Strange for there to even be a passcode, what with Prohibition being repealed end of last year. But some places didn’t want the fuzz sniffing around close enough to get their liquor ticket above board.

I didn’t have time for it. I loomed in. “How’s this for a passcode? I’m investigating the murder of Gwen Stacy.”

The dame’s nostrils flared and she drew herself up to a surprisingly formidable height. My senses flared red and I stumbled back a few steps, and then the door swung open and I caught a glimpse inside and my heart caught in my throat.

What kind of place was this?!

The half-naked skirts, I’d expected. Not my thing, but you hang around the Black Cat enough you get used to them. But there were fellas, too. Boys, really, in tiny shorts, cheeks rouged up like a mockery of the fairer sex. Guys in suits dancing with other gents. A dame in a tux shot me a glare from behind the bar. 

My foot caught under me and I sprawled to the ground, and the ‘lady’ at the door loomed over me, her Adam’s apple flexing as she swallowed, the veins in her biceps popping under her lacy sleeves.

Fairies. Queers and queens and dykes, the whole damn lot of them.

“Somehow I don’t think this is your romp, detective,” she said, and I heard the crack of her knuckles but I was already fleeing. 

I careened into the alley, head spinning, bile rising. She may have had her vices, but a class act like Gwen wasn’t going to be found in a despicable place like this. No way. 

A man was in the alley, his broad back as tucked away as it could be, and he turned as I staggered past, the small body beneath him shirking back into the shadows. His eyes widened in shock, and then the storm was upon me.

It was Sergeant Wilson. And cowering behind him?

Little Stevie Rogers.

The pieces fell into place.

The way Wilson got all up in my space, winding around me like the smoke he was so fond of wafting my way. So affectionate. So handsy. The way Felicia looked between the two of us like the cat that got the cream. 

The way Steve Rogers flushed when I pressed him on how he knew Gwen, the way a kid half my size had sized me up and somehow found me wanting. The way his swollen lips dropped open now.

That was the last thought through my head, and the first out of my mouth.

“Steve?”

He reeled, the name hitting like a slug to the chest, stark terror in his eyes. He had to hold his pants up as he shoved past Wilson and fled. I took a half step after him, then rounded back.

Wilson. Wilson was the one who needed to answer to me.

“What is this?” I growled.

He swayed against the brick, but his gaze was steady as he stared at me — no, stared through me, the way Felicia stared through me, and damn them both, had they been conspiring against me in this?

“I think you know exactly what this is, Benji.”

I spat. “You’re — he’s — you’re a damn queer.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t. Depends on the weather.” 

As if on cue, the alley lit up with a flash of lightning, thunder crashing on its heels. The storm was on us, the air between us green and electric.

He prowled toward me, a force of nature compelling me backwards until I hit the wall, his body pressing into me until I thought I would melt right through to the other side. The reek of whiskey and stale smoke slapped me across the face. I jerked my head to the side. 

His breath, his scars, his perversion. I wanted none of it.

“Oh, I think you do. Sweetheart, I think you’ve been wanting this a long, long time.” 

The words slurred against my ear, and he lifted my mask like it was his instead of mine. I moved to break his grip (break his bones, if that’s what it took), but instead my traitor fingers draped over his wrists, and he kissed my knuckles like a lover would. I swore I felt the brush of his lips through the leather.

I shuddered, whimpering, “Stop!”

He buried his face into my neck, shook his head. “If I thought you actually meant that, I’d stop in a heartbeat.”

Thunder growled, or maybe that was just the blood pounding in my ears. My mask lay abandoned to the cobblestones, and then my coat, and then I was bare, vulnerable, stripped of the Spider’s armor. Anyone walking by would know it was me with his hands up my shirt. They would know what I was doing. What I was letting him do to me.

He spun me, the impact against the wall jarring from my wrists up to my shoulder. I pressed my cheek hard against the brick as his fingers went to my belt buckle, clever despite his whiskey soaked breath. Or maybe he had plenty of practice doing this after a little liquor. Practice undressing another man, baring just enough skin to…

To what?

I’d thought about it, of course. Every guy has, right? In the darkest hours of the darkest nights, you think about what people like… that, get up to. But I’d never thought hard enough to fill in the blanks — why the hell would I? Which meant I had no idea what he was planning to do now, as he pushed my trousers half around my thighs, as he shoved his hand down and —  

Oh.

I gasped and hitched into his sweaty palm, the touch scalding through my veins, expanding harsh in my lungs until it forced its way out in a groan. I sobbed, and I shook, and I pushed into his hand, and he nipped at my ear, and he fumbled behind me, operating his buttons one-handed.

A drop of rain hit my upturned cheek, fat and warm.

Then he got his pants open, and pushed down my briefs, and suddenly he was hot and alive against me. Cold fear spiked through my chest, freezing me where I stood. 

He paused.

“Wait,” I gasped. “Please, wait.”

“Don’t worry,” he murmured, burying the words sloppy and hot against my neck. “I’ll take care of you, Benji. Make it so good, you’ll see.”

The skies broke.

He pushed between my thighs, pressed his legs around mine so I was squeezed around him, a hollow substitute for what a dame had going on under all those skirts. And that’s all I was to him — a dame, just a moist spot to stick his cock. Carving out a space for himself whether I wanted him there or not. 

The human side of him rubbed against my neck, stubble scraping a rash that I wouldn’t be able to hide. He sucked hard, biting and bruising like he was claiming me. Like he was trying to tell the whole world. Too hard, I wanted to say, lighten up, go gentle, but that would mean admitting there was a way he could kiss at my neck that would feel good. 

It was shameful, it was perverse, and even more perverse was the way I swelled even harder in his clever hand, shouting into the pelting rain as pleasure scorched my flesh.

Flames built in his palm, kindled in my belly. They licked up my spine, crimson like my spidery intuition. 

Danger. Beware. This here is a bad man.  

I writhed like an animal, the obscene slap of his skin against mine spurring me on, the grunts in my ear pushing me higher. Great, heaving breaths, lungs full to bursting with petrichor, and stale Fatimas, and the cheapest corn liquor Big Vinnie could get away with pawning off onto the queers.

Ecstasy hit and I curled around myself, cheek pressed to the brick, gasping my disgrace into the storm.

“Baby,” he gasped, “baby, I gotta…”

He wasn’t done using me. 

The rain turned frigid and I shivered violently — or maybe it was a shudder at the sick, wet feel of him sliding between my thighs, pushing into me again and again until I wanted to crawl out of my skin and up the wall, leaving my sodden husk behind. I was stronger than him. I could shove him off me. Shove him away, break his nose, crush bone against brick until he no longer looked like the man who had done this to me.

I didn’t do any of those things. I froze as he rutted against me. I froze, letting him burrow his face and his sounds and his animal pleasure in my body. I froze for a lifetime, until he finally cried out and thrust forward in a sticky rush against my clammy skin.

The world surged back with a flash and a rumble.

I became alarmingly aware of the thrum of rain hitting the pavement, the echo of jazz around the corner, the headlights cutting bright slashes across the brick. Goosebumps bloomed every place his wet skin wasn’t touching mine and bile clogged my throat, sudden and sour.

“Get off me,” I growled, pushing away from the wall with all my strength. He went flying to the grungy cobblestones, gaping like a fish, dick hanging against his trousers. 

“Benji,” he started, and he sounded… broken. Vulnerable. How dare he sound vulnerable? After what he had just done to me?

“Stay the hell away from me. You hear? If I see you again, I’ll —  I swear I’ll — ”

Then I fled, just like little Stevie had fled, off into the night, away from his broken voice.

I could run from him, but I couldn’t run from myself.

I still tried.

I didn’t go home. The thought of going back to Aunt May’s sweet little house made my stomach churn. Instead, I went to the only person I could think to go to when I felt this stained.

Felicia.

She took one look at me, barefaced and bedraggled, and ushered me into her den of sin, stripping me out of my soaked clothes with the ease that only a woman in her profession can manage, and shoving me into a hot shower until my brain fired back up.

The scalding water couldn’t wash away my shame any more than the rain had, but by the time I emerged the bruises on my neck were already healed, the evidence that he’d ever been there erased. And yet the ghost of his lips felt branded on my bones.

I emerged into dim silence, broken only by the drip drip drip of my clothes hanging on a rack by the open window. Felicia dressed me in the underthings of some long-departed beau, folding me into her bed and into her arms, her fingers carding through my hair in a strangely maternal rhythm. I caught the glimpse of a memory of cool fingers on my feverish forehead, and a woman that wasn’t May singing me to sleep.

I slept.

When I woke, the sun was high and Felicia was gone to whatever secretive, feline things she got up to when the sky was light. I staggered to my feet. My clothes hung by the window, the heavy wool still damp in the humid August air, and I pulled them on by rote, fingers thick.

It was only as I was swirling the coat around my shoulders that I realized:

My coat and mask, abandoned to the alleyway in my frantic retreat? Someone had hung them there, too.

End Part 1

Next: “Kitten with a Whip”

Chapter Text

Part 2

I had questions. Wasn’t sure I wanted answers, mind, but like that dearly departed curious cat, I never could leave a good mystery unsolved.

Felicia wasn’t an option. Her kindness wasn’t something to take for granted, and she would be holding last night’s moment of weakness over my head for a long time.

The whole thing reeked of Spector’s very special brand of anarchy, but if I had to face his smirking mug right now I wouldn’t be able to keep my fists to myself. There was the man from the docks, Luke, but the more I thought about the night we’d met, the less I wanted to see that man ever again.

That left me one good option.

The Brooklyn street was bright with the sound of baseball. Steve Rogers tipped his head when he spotted me, confused, but he smiled all the same.

“Peter!” he greeted me, that ten pound voice booming out of that five pound frame. His companion flipped me a salute.

“Steve,” I said, shaking his hand. “Barnes.”

It figured that those two would be thick as thieves. Bucky Barnes was a friendly fellow, but I always had to keep my guard up — he was as likely to be running goods for the Irish mob as he was to be helping little old ladies across the street. Still, he was a useful man for the Spider to know. 

He slung an arm around Stevie’s narrow shoulders. “I was just meaning to look you up, Parker.”

“Whatdya got for me, Buck?”

Turned out he often had some good leads for Peter Parker, Private Dick, too. Which led to a constant balancing act — keeping straight which conversations I’d had with him as who, and doing my damndest to keep him outta the cooler all at the same time.

Bucky shrugged. “Wanted to give you a heads-up. Folks like us, we gotta watch out for each other.”

My stomach dropped. “Folks like us?” I asked, lips numb.

“I know you ain’t Orthodox or nothin’, but just keeping kosher’s enough to catch attention from the wrong type of person, these days.”

“Oh. Right.” My shoulders slumped in relief.

“You hear the Radium Club got pinched?”

“Yeah,” I said. The raid had been especially brutal, even for New York cops. Even for Harlem. “Nasty stuff.”

“Sam!” hollered Barnes, and up jogged…

“Wilson,” I acknowledged, trying to hide a grimace at the taste of the name in my mouth.

Sam Wilson gave me a friendly nod. I was just glad he didn’t recognize me as the vigilante who threw him through the window of a speakeasy last week. 

“Hey, guys. What’s the word?”

“The Radium Club,” Steve said. 

Sam sucked air through the gap in his front teeth. “Just awful.”

“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying they were targeting Jews?”

“My sister worked there,” Sam said. “It’s right next door to the Commandment Keepers synagogue. The Ethiopian Rabbis go there to drink and kibbitz.”

“Is your sister okay?” I asked.

He snorted. “She’s alright. Scared and out of a job, but… who ain’t, these days?”

“Just, be careful, okay?” said Barnes. “High profile reporter like you… Be easy for you to get a target on your back.”

“Zei gezunt, pal. You, too.”

We left them behind, Steve and I, escaping the heat on the shaded stoop of a nearby apartment. 

“Look, about the other night…” I started, then slammed my mouth shut.

There was one minor detail I hadn’t taken into account.

Steve didn’t know I was the Spider. 

His shock mirrored mine. “You’re him, aren’t you?” he whispered. “And you saw…”

“And I saw,” I agreed. “I saw… I don’t know what I saw.”

“Doesn’t matter what you saw,” he muttered, sullen and suddenly so very young. “Matters what you mean to do about it.”

I raised a brow. “I told your Ma I’d keep an eye out. You wanna explain why that ain’t something she should know about?”

He rubbed at his temples and, instead of an answer, pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “It’s not good for me to get worked up. Want one? You seem pretty wound up, too.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“It’s medicinal,” he wheezed, passing the lit stick my way.

I glared at the thing, then snatched it and took a puff, glad at least for a taste that was fresh and pungent instead of spicy and smooth.

“Wait,” I said. “Is this reefer?”

He bared his crooked teeth in what could have been a smile. “Page’s Inhalers. For the asthma.”

I shook my head and passed it back to him. I did feel a little better, but Indian cigarettes weren’t going to loosen the steel band tightening around my chest.

“Who else knows?” I asked.

He bit his lip. “A few friends.”

“Friends?” I glanced across to Bucky, his arm draped conspiratorially around Sam’s shoulders.

“No! No. He’s not… he’s not like me.”

I sighed. “You gotta stop doing this, Stevie. It ain’t right, and it ain’t safe.”

“It’s Steve. Anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with me being the way I am.”

“Yeah?” I snapped. “Maybe not, until folks start talking.”

His shoulders rose and he squared off, got right up in my face. “I’m the crippled son of an unwed Irish mother, you think being queer is gonna be the thing that finally puts me on ice? Hell, I’ll be in an iron lung before I’m twenty-five, may as well get in what I can before they toss me in the clink and throw away the key.” 

There was a strained silence as he waited for a response, then he bit out a laugh. 

“That was a joke, Pete. There’s no way my Ma can afford an iron lung.”

“Yeah, well.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Don’t break her heart early, maybe. You don’t gotta be this way.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t think you came because you were worried about me, now.”

I sputtered, pressing back against the concrete. “Of course I’m worried about you. You're just a kid! You’re mixing with the wrong sort, creeps like Wilson — ” 

“Did you do it?”

“D-do what?”

A cruel sort of smile was crawling across his face, and I felt a sudden, terrifying urge to teach that smirk a lesson. His words drawled out syrupy sweet. “Did you do it with Wilson?” 

“You need to shut your damn mouth, Rogers. Just because you’re a damn fairy doesn’t mean everyone else is.” I gestured my head towards Barnes. “He sure ain’t.”

He shot up, and those sharp little fists suddenly held a whole lot of weight. Then, after a deep breath, he drew up and spat, a fat wad of accusation landing an inch from my shoe. “I’d rather be a queer than a coward.”

I opened my mouth, but any response I might have had caught jagged in my throat. He jutted his chin.

“See you around, Parker. You can rat me out if you want…”

He didn’t have to finish. But I know the dirt on you.

The sticky heat did nothing to ease the ice in my chest as he walked away.

Peter Parker was done for today. I didn’t know how the city would look through the Spider’s lenses, but it had to be better than this.

Next: “A Lovely Way to Die”

Chapter Text

Turkish Cigarettes, 2020
Oil on Canvas
24 x 18 Inches

How foolish to assume my problems wouldn’t follow me to the rooftops. I went out in search of crime, but found only melancholy. Melancholy, and a city laid out before my feet, miserable people going about their miserable lives, bigger things to worry about than my damn problems. 

I knew the scrape of Wilson’s boots the split-second before I heard them — like I was waiting for them. Like his return into my life was inevitable.

My fingers twitched towards the mask I had abandoned in the afternoon sun, but what did it matter? He’d seen all of me already. 

“Heya, Benji,” he said, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to step right off the rooftop. Like a wafting speck of soot he settled in place beside me, complementing my vigil. The hiss of a match, a flare of light, a familiar plume of smoke, and my fingers curling around themselves into a weapon.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said, after a long drag. “I was too drunk, the other night.”

Apologize? Was that how he thought this would go? I only wound tighter, a coil of fists and fury.

He hadn’t meant it. It had all been a lark. Just one fella having another fella on. If he hadn’t been so drunk he would have…

“…I would have treated you better,” he said, bringing my careening thoughts to a crashing halt. I didn’t have to turn my head to know the burn of his eyes on my face. “I would have treated you the way you deserve, Benji.

Something crawled up into my throat, not quite nausea, not quite hope. “So you don’t deny it,” I growled.

“Deny what? That I’m a queer?” The cherry on his cigarette flared as he took a pull. He held it in my direction. “Kinda figured you’d cottoned on to that. Aren’t you supposed to be the great investigator?”

The August air was stifling, but contrary to a fault, I yanked the cigarette out of his fingers, took an arduous drag. It expanded in my lungs, stretching me open, heating my belly in a way Wilson’s silvery exhalations did not. 

It wasn’t a nice sensation. 

I took another drag. 

Wilson sighed, the muggy air easy in his mouth. “That was your first time with a man.” It wasn’t a question.

I jerked. “Of course it was! Why would I… I wouldn’t…”

Those long fingers dipped under my chin, the cigarette a red flare by my jaw. I had the strength to lift buildings, but in that moment I did not have the strength to stop Wade Wilson from turning my face to meet his.

“Sweetheart,” he said, and the softness of it was enough to break me. “Sweetheart, was that your first time with anyone?”

“No,” I sputtered, cutting my eyes to the side. He swore under his breath. “No. There were girls, here and there. Felicia!” I threw it out like a jab, like it would make him jealous the way the two of them made me jealous.

I couldn’t meet his eyes, but I heard his smile. Soft, like the rest of him, so soft it was slicing me to pieces. “And how did that go for you?”

Somehow, it wasn’t mocking. Maybe it would have been easier if he’d been cruel, if he’d laughed at the idea of me humiliating myself in Felicia’s bed, trying to perform until she lost her patience and kicked me out with my trousers in hand. She sure thought it was a gas. 

His hand slid off my chin, pulling the cigarette towards his lips, and my eyes were helpless but to follow, to watch the way his mouth worked around the damp paper, the way the smoke drooled over his chin like blood after a good wallop.

“Sweetheart, if Felicia couldn’t get you stiff, you are definitely bent.” 

I wanted to protest but the words wouldn’t come. Didn’t matter; he was talking enough for both of us, his gaze sliding over me like I was barely there.

“Now me? Love ‘em all. I could marry a gal, settle down, easy. I still wouldn’t be happy, mind. One woman for the rest of my life? Pile of kids? Punching a clock at a factory or an office? The skin crawls at the thought. But in the bedroom?”

Smoke curled around me, the words settling into every pore, every fold of my clothing until I reeked with them. I didn’t want to think about him in the bedroom with anyone, but my traitorous brain dug its heels right into the tasteful carpet of their charming home.

“In the bedroom? Yeah. I’d treat her right, keep her sweet on me. Happy wife, happy life, all that. Use my mouth, get her there a time or two before I thought about me at all. Bury my cock where she was warm and wet, fuck her till we both got there, till our throats were sore from screaming.” 

The view from the roof dimmed, overshadowed by the image of corded muscles sliding under pockmarked skin. I could hear the soft cries and the rhythmic slap of two bodies becoming one, could taste salt and sweat on the tip of my tongue. I felt the ghost of pleasure, and it haunted me. I swallowed hard around my desert of a mouth, around the smoke thick on my tongue, and I couldn’t help it; I swelled and I burned and I wanted.

His voice was hot and close in my ear. 

“Are you thinking about her, or are you thinking about me?” 

And then I was clutching the wool of his greatcoat and I was half on top of him and I was kissing him.

It was outright obscene, how easy we fit together. The natural way my mouth melted into his, the easy way his hand slid under my sweater and found the ridge of my back. I had to keep my eyes clamped tight for fear he might absorb me into his chimera body and keep me forever.

But for once, he was the one retreating. “Wait, slow down.”

My fingers only held tighter, reeling him back, and he surged up against me, giving as good as he got, before shoving me off with an unhappy gasp.

“Benji, sweetheart. We’re in the open.”

My murky senses cleared just enough to realize that he was right. If someone were to look up, to see us… to see me…

“Don’t think about it,” he murmured as he pulled me back from the edge, shepherding me into the blind shadow of the neighboring building. “Don’t think about them, just think about us.”

I didn’t want to think about us, so instead I pushed him back against the closest wall and didn’t think at all. He went lax, and let me take.

But once I had, I faltered. 

Did he want the same as in the alley? Was he expecting me to… to what? 

Maybe he heard my hesitancy in the cadence of my gasps, or felt it in the tremor of my fingers on his coat. Either way, his hands came up, folding large and warm around my face, pulling my mouth against his in a practiced rhythm. He kissed me like he wanted to drown in me, and the more I tried to hurry things up (to get it done and over with) the more languid he became, licking into my mouth like it was the only thing he had to do all day.

His lips trailed down my neck and I winced, remembering the last time. 

“Too much?” he asked. My skin thrummed as his mouth softened, little kisses and nips that made me flush and burn. He gently turned us until his broad body stood between me and the world. “Yeah, too much. You’re a gentle soul. What do you want, sweetheart? I’ll give it to you. Anything.”

I shook my head. “Don’t… don’t know. Just want…”

Just want you, I couldn’t say, but he heard it all the same. His hand clenched on the back of my neck.

“Don’t worry, I know what boys like you want. You gonna let me get on my knees for you, baby?”

Mine almost buckled as he slid down. As he tilted his face to show me his good side, as he nudged his cheek up the front of my trousers, as he went for my fly. I clutched at the wall, brick crumbling to pebbles crumbling to dust under my fingers with the pop of each button.

And then, his mouth, my G-d. 

I thought I knew fire, but that was before I learned the squirm of his tongue, the hard slide along the roof of his mouth. The accommodating resistance of his throat, fragile as he choked on me.

His fingers buried frantically in his hair as he took me in, a practiced motion that positioned his forearm just-so to cover the ruin of his face, the ghastly pallor of his bad eye. He camouflaged his ruin until he was something almost pretty, almost innocent, the blue of his good eye peering up at me from behind long lashes. 

The world fluttered and my breath came fast and then I was clutching at him, the back of one hand pressing hard against my mouth to muffle the sound of his name as I finally broke to his sweetest of interrogations, as my body admitted what my mind could not. 

He pulled back with a cheeky grin, and I slid down the wall, boneless without his hands on my hips. When he leaned in, I leaned away, not ready to face the evidence of what we’d done. Instead, I fumbled at the front of his pants. He sucked in a breath as I got them open.

“You don’t have to…” he started, as I got my hands around warm, soft skin.

“How do I…”

His throat clicked as he swallowed.

“You don’t have to, Benji.”

I set my jaw. “What do I do?”

He buried his face in the crook of my neck, breath moist as he wrapped his hand around mine and gasped his pleasure against my sweaty skin. Once I had learned him well enough he let me go, fumbled for a handkerchief, set his teeth into my shoulder and his fingers into my ribs and groaned like a man dying.

After, my skin buzzed, tight and uncomfortable where his hands still rested. I rubbed my fist to my chest, the taste of smoke suddenly vile in my mouth, and jerked to my feet.

“Wait,” he stuttered, pulling halfway up. “I’ll stop touching you. Just… don’t leave. Not yet.”

My fingers clenched around my abandoned mask and I looked wistfully off into the afternoon, and then I nodded and sat back down. There was a distance between us, a distance I was wishing more and more was greater and greater.

“So,” I began, after enough time had passed that even my view of the city lost its appeal. He’d wanted me to stay, but now that he had me, he didn’t seem to know what to do. “Your life… being like this… is it always like… this?”

“Sometimes,” he said. He still held a softness, like something about my presence dulled the mercenary steel he wore under his charming grin. “Making time here and there. A few rounds of checkers in the right kinds of theaters. Some titillating strolls up and down Vaseline Alley. But there’ve been a few people I could have loved, if I’d had the chance.”

“Loved?” I scoffed.

“There were a few. But that was before I had a face like this. None since… well.”

“Well?”

His jaw clenched as he fiddled with his book of matches, lighting them one after another, only to extinguish them between his fingers. “Thought Felicia told you all about me.”

“Not enough, obviously.” 

He shrugged, suddenly jovial. “What does it matter? Let the past be the past.” 

“Who was he?” I demanded, not sure why I was suddenly so fixated. 

He slammed the matches to the ground, and the grin fell away as quickly as it had arrived, and I was once again held hostage by his relentless eyes.

“What do you want to hear? That you’re ten times the man he was? Because you’re not.”

I flinched. “Low blow, Wilson.”

“That’s not what you called me while you were firing that pretty little Colt New Service down my throat, Benji.”

Red burned high on his cheeks, and his good eye became a raging spark. 

“Fine,” he bit out. “You wanna know? Wanna know what happens when a queen like me tries to find a king? Because you’re not wrong. Goes about as well as a Greek tragedy. Is that what you wanna hear?”

Suddenly, I didn’t. The ugly curiosity that had scalded my veins moments before dampened to a smolder, soggy and cloying like the gritty ash I rubbed between my fingertips. But I had started this and, like it or not, he meant to finish it.

He loaned me his story with suspicion, placing it gingerly into my arms like a precious family heirloom being shown to a careless child. 

There were two boys to war. Well, four boys. Four out of a whole crowd of Stryker’s carefully groomed killers. A herd of children who were told that they had skills. That they were special.

But two important ones. Wade and Dickie. 

“Told you I knew a good dick or two in my time, sweetheart,” he said, with a sickening wink.

I made a face, and stole a drag of his cigarette. 

Now Wade, he knew his way around a well-built pistol.

“You know what a gunsel is?”

“A hired gun.”

He barked out a laugh. “Maybe that’s what they mean by it now.” 

It used to mean a young man who went with older guys to keep food on the table. A fella who didn’t live at home no more, so he had to use whatever he had to make a home for himself. Wade, he'd done his share of sucking and fucking and bending over for older men who had a little sugar to spread around.

Dickie was older, too. And he didn’t have much money, but he was boyish, and handsome, and romantical enough that for the first time in his life, Wade could really see them being something. 

Dickie saw it, too. On the rare nights when they managed to sneak into each other's bedrolls, he'd spin sweet nothings about the life ahead of them. 

Confirmed bachelors, he'd say. It's not so uncommon, these days. 

Or find a couple gals who loved each other in a more-than-sisterly way and get down on two matching knees, build two matching houses with one white picket fence. And if the sleeping arrangements got a little creative, who was to know? 

It was a beautiful dream, and it kept Wade warm on the nights when he and Dickie couldn't find a way to be with each other (which was most of them). There was one night in Paris when the team all headed their separate ways and the two of them found an abandoned hotel, managed to hole up and share a bath, took the time to do it proper, laying Wade out on sheets that were almost clean. 

The others in their squad — Jim and Francis —wouldn't understand. And as for Stryker… hoo, boy, there would be hell to pay if Stryker ever found out.

“Well,” he corrected. “Jim knew, I think.” 

Gruff, and older than the rest of them (maybe even older than Stryker), Jim just rolled his eyes when he caught them standing a little too close. But Francis… oh, Frannie and Stryker were up each other's asses alright, and not in the way Wade and Dickie were.

(He coughed that line out in a ratcheting laugh and a cloud of smoke.)

So of course it was Frannie who caught them screwing. 

There was hell to pay. And Wade was angry, bitterness smoldering right down to his marrow as just one more thing he loved was taken from him. 

And then the munitions tent, and the neglected spark, and the explosion. 

“It was my fault,” Wade said. “My fault he died. My fault they all died.” 

I didn't know what to say. He wasn't wrong. 

We sat for a long time, the afternoon stretching lazy into the orange and purple of dusk.

“The burning’s not so bad,” Wade murmured, and I blinked from my slump. His words floated, mesmerizing into the dimming light. “A split second of hell, sure. Absolute anguish. But then it all turns to ash, and that nothing is as sweet as paradise. Naw, the burning’s not so bad. Now the living: that’s the agony.”

He rolled a coin across his knuckles as he spoke, idly, an illusionist practicing his tricks to an empty theater. A great big ‘X marks the spot,’ served to me on a shining copper platter.

I bolted up. 

“Where did you get that?” I asked, and something in my tone made him straighten up, made his forehead crease.

"The war,” he said. “Francis came from money. His daddy had 'em minted up for the team. I pull it out, sometimes. When I’m thinking of him.”

“I’ve seen it before,” and if I didn’t have his full attention before, I had it now. “I saw it at the Extremis Institute. Dr. Killebrew had one.”

“Killebrew?” 

Suddenly he was in my face, stale breath hot against my mouth, and for a breath I forgot that I shouldn’t find it exciting, forgot that I shouldn’t squirm. He realized, of course, saw right through me, but then he shook his head sharply, came back to himself. 

“Describe him,” he snapped.

I faltered. His hand clenched in the knit of my sweater and I remembered in a rush that I was in the presence of a killer. And, G-d, my body only thrummed more.

“Describe. Him. Short? Bald?”

I shook my head. “Um… white hair. Thick, white hair. Roman nose. Taller than me, almost as tall as you. Broad shoulders. Well spoken.”

Wade crumpled back on himself. His voice cracked when he tried to speak. “The doctor who brought the suitcase to the munitions tent. The one who gave us injections. Ruskie bastard. He was called Killebrew. But he didn’t look like that.”

“That’s… good?” I said, but his agitation only grew.

“It’s worse, I think,” he said. 

“Who, then?”

His eyes latched onto mine, the ghostly white and piercing blue transformed into twin pits of shell-shocked terror.

“William Stryker.”

And then he was on his feet, a whirlwind of manic determination. His grin flashed white against his scars and I found myself somehow caught by surprise — the way his mouth lashed open, I had almost expected blood.

“I think it’s time we pay the Good Doctor a visit,” he said.

I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “Should we make tracks?”

“From what I’ve heard, the Doctor doesn’t keep evening hours. Anyway,” he said, bouncing on his heels, “I don’t have nearly enough knives on me just this second. We’ll meet up tomorrow, go in fresh.”

“Alright. Here?”

“Oh, no, Benji, baby.” He rubbed his hands together and my stomach sank. “No, no, no. You and me, dollface? We’re going to the Slide.”

Next Time: “Sanctuary”

Chapter Text

I wasn’t what you’d call enthused about heading back to the scene of my humiliation, but we were onto something, and this time I wasn’t going to let Wade leave me to the breeze. So the following afternoon, I tightened my mask and set my jaw, summoning the reckless bravery with which I stepped off of buildings and swung through bullets.

It almost worked.

I rubbed at the back of my neck, shuffling under the glare of the dame blocking the front door of the Slide. Disdain oozed from her pores, melting with her rouge in thick pink rivulets in the late afternoon heat. I clutched my hat to my chest, trying for contrite through my goggles.

“Velma’s a nice lady,” Wade had said, that wild, unhappy grin never dimming. “And you ain’t gonna make her feel like anything less than that, right?”

I had eyed the knife he flipped along his knuckles and nodded with a gulp.

I wasn’t sold, though — Velma didn’t seem remotely nice.

But Wade managed to charm his way in, dangling his mask idly from one finger, sandy hair dark at the roots and sticking every which-way as he schmoozed. And if my gut churned as he stretched on his toes to whisper in her ear, well… it was clearly just impatience with the whole damn farce.

The Slide was quiet as we made our way through; this den of iniquity less gaudy than I would have figured. The bartenders stocked bottles and wiped down chipped tabletops same as every other working stiff in the city this time of afternoon. They watched us like hawks until we passed. 

Velma led us to the cellar.

I don’t know what I was expecting. A backroom office, scalpels and syringes crammed between receipt books and moldy coffee mugs? Maybe a heavy wooden door, the dim club falling away to reveal Killebrew (Stryker’s) gleaming office, blocks’ worth of green grounds stretching out through an impossible picture window.

Instead, we were in the secret underground of a secret underground. An old mirror tucked between wine racks, our figures greeting us through the dust like the ghosts of old friends. The white goggles on my dark face looming spooky and alien. Velma’s caked-on makeup, the squared-off lines of her jaw glowing soft and pure under the single bare lightbulb. Wade, nothing but razor-sharp teeth splitting the middle of a shadow.

The mirror creaked outwards, grimy dust wafting down to my shoulders, and Velma gestured us through.

“I’ll call ahead.” She mugged my way while Wade’s back was turned.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Wade said, with a wink and a hard elbow under my ribs.

I forced a respectful nod. “Thank you, ma’am.”

And then the hidden door slid shut with a rasp and we were plunged into night.

With the scrape of a match and the acrid tang of tobacco, Wade’s half-masked face emerged out of the darkness. The dark leather patches reflected back ghastly twin embers, glowing orange points where his eyes should be, his Cheshire cat grin dripping scarlet. 

“Any last words?” he asked, the cherry of the cigarette gestured my way. I didn’t take it. Instead, a moth to the flame, I stepped close, my lungs filling with the smoke from his through the thick fabric of my mask.

Any last words?

Even a man on death row gets one final cigarette, and Wade smoked his with aplomb, biting the paper at a jaunty angle, a memento mori’s bony grin on his living face as he postured on the creaking wood of the gallows.

The ember flared with every breath, a dim strobe that lit the rough dirt and heavy beams of the passageway just enough for my spider sharp eyes. With one final taste of smoke, I took him by the elbow.

The dark never was my enemy, and I could be the guide to my mad guide.

A flash of orange ignited in the distance.

We were expected, down this rabbithole.

Time stretched, under the city. The further we went the heavier our feet, until each reluctant step scraped across the dirt. We could have been halfway to Harlem, or a single city block.

Either way, an eternity passed before we dipped our toes into the kaleidoscope pool of two stained glass sconces, the light falling on an ornately carved door. Its gilded surface spelled out a single word.

Sanctuary.

“Holiest of holies,” I murmured, fighting a long-forgotten compulsion to check that my head was covered, that my hands were empty, that Wade had finished and abandoned his cigarette.

Wade turned to me, black and red taut across his face. A whisper echoed as he caressed his weapons under his coat, and I tensed until I became steel, bracing for the first sight of Stryker’s smug face. 

The earth around us held its breath.

The door creaked open, light spilling out around a stocky man dressed in the rich silks of the Far East. His tawny moon of a face eclipsed into something severe. 

“Welcome,” he said. “If welcome you we must.”

And behind him stood… 

“The Good Doctor,” I murmured. The Good Doctor wasn’t Stryker at all. This door had opened on swanky decor, not a sterile modern tundra. 

And among the silk and bronze stood the gaunt frame of Doctor Stephen Strange.

I’d only met the guy once. Back before the Spider. Before — everything. During those brief, hurried weeks when I trailed after Ben Urich, schlepping his Brownie box cameras, mourning my uncle but putting my faith in the power of the press. Urich had been there to take a photograph to mark the city’s top surgeon’s early (and untimely) retirement. 

Strange’s hands had still been in bandages, then.

With a contemptuous jerk of his head, Strange ushered us up several flights of stairs, the foreign butler excusing himself to fetch tea. As Wade and I slowly drowned into the velvet cushions of an overly soft sofa, I eyed those hands. Coarse gauze had been replaced by fine silk around the palms, the elegant surgeon’s lines mutilated by a cartography of harsh red weals.

He steepled those malformed fingers, pressing them against his silver-streaked beard to steady their quiver.

“Wade Wilson,” he said. “I imagined we’d meet sooner or later, but I assumed you’d be coming to avail yourself of my professional knowledge. And you, Spider — I won’t name you, but you are known to me. Take off that ridiculous mask. We don’t hide our faces, here.”

Too startled to argue, I did, sharing a confused glance with Wade’s now-bare face.

“Professional knowledge?” I asked. “I thought you stopped practicing medicine after…” I gestured lamely in his direction.

Jameson’s write-up had pitched Strange’s injuries as a tragic accident; a robbery gone sideways, a senseless act of violence cutting the career of a genius short too early. Applesauce, through and through. Everyone knew what happened when you crossed the Goblin, but it wasn’t the kinda puff that made the front page of the Bugle. 

Strange eyed me thoughtfully, flexing his fingers.

“After the Goblin’s men ruined me? I understand I have you to thank for his removal, Spider. My thanks for that.”

“Thanks?” I said. “I’d say I was a couple of months late for your thanks.”

“Perhaps.” He tipped his head. “But Norman Osborn did not let go of his possessions lightly. If I refused to butcher for him, he wouldn't stand me healing for anyone. It was only a matter of time before he decided my knowledge — my very life — was a liability. So, yes. My thanks.”

I rubbed at my knuckle. “So… you still practice?”

“Ah! Yes. I’ll never practice professionally again. I am a man of considerable ego, and going from being one of the top surgeons in the world to a friendly family doctor,” his words dripped with disdain, “is a loathsome thought. But no one, the Goblin least of all, could remove in me the drive to heal. Tikkun olam, repairing the world. A man like yourself would understand.”

“I do,” I said, recalling the mezuzah my fingers had brushed as I stepped through the gilded door. Those who have the power to do good must use it.

The butler came in, trailed by a kid carrying an etched teapot and a stack of round porcelain cups. She beamed as she set down the tray, then bit her lip and schooled her features at a raised eyebrow from the man. 

“Oolong,” he stated. Huh. Brusque way to offer tea.

“Thank you, Wong,” Strange said, softening. Wong made himself at home on the settee next to Strange, and I jolted up as he picked up one of the doctor’s broken hands, holding it between his two soft, warm ones, unwinding the silk and rubbing the color back in with strong strokes. 

These weren’t the affections shared between a hired man and his beloved employer.

“Wait, are you — ” A pinch from Wade snapped my fat mouth back shut.

Wong fixed me with another one of those stern glares. “We do not wear masks in this home.” He turned his reproach to Wade. “And what manner of venereal disease are we seeing you for today?”

Wade cracked his neck. “Believe it or not, Mr. Wong, for once the enemy isn’t in my trousers.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Your practice?” 

“The devotees of the Slide,” said Strange. “The youths on the street. The prostitutes. The single mothers. The dirty and the forgotten. We do what we can; doling out contraceptives, providing treatments for common diseases of the trade, not to mention your standard coughs and colds. These broken hands aren’t fit to help the girls when they get themselves into trouble, but I still have a trusted colleague or two who will do me a discreet favor, here and there.”

“What about the public clinics?” I asked. “Aren’t they supposed to be doing all that?”

“Butchers,” huffed Wong, and Strange’s mouth twitched at the corners.

“Wong is a physician himself, with opinions about our American practices. We met while I was searching for less conventional treatments for my hands. Herbal salves and needling of the qi aren’t enough to get me back in the operating theater, but the doctors said I would never write again. Would never do my own buttons, or comb my own hair.” He saluted us with his tea cup, trembling but secure. “But, to business. It seems you’re not here about your burning passions.”

I choked into my tea, and Wade took advantage of my distraction to sling a chummy arm over my shoulder. I sank in my seat.

“Benji here has been looking into the death of Gwen Stacy. We thought you might be…” Wade chewed on his lip. “She saw a doctor, before she died.”

Strange leaned in. “I haven’t treated Gwen recently.”

I sat up, shrugging off Wade’s heavy grip. “We think it was Dr. Killebrew, with the Extremis Institute. I heard from Steve Rogers — ” 

Wade cut me off with a hiss.

“Grant,” he said pointedly, then narrowed his eyes at Strange and Wong.

Strange flicked his fingers. “It’s already forgotten.”

I pulled a face, but took the correction. “Uh, well, I heard from Grant that a Mr. Freeman might have taken her there?”

Strange cursed. “I knew it,” Wong muttered. “Freeman is with the Greenwich clinic,” he explained. “He’s been nosing around, a wolf nipping at the edges of our flock. Gentlemen, I have a sinking feeling that Gwen Stacy wasn’t the first.”

“She wasn’t?”

Strange nodded. “You’ve heard about the outcropping of warehouse fires?”

I had. The Bugle’s coverage had been light, but a perk of hanging around the newsroom was hearing the tidbits that the papers didn’t see fit to print.

“All of them had casualties. Young people, squatters. I don’t know for sure, but if I had to hypothesize…”

Wade finished his sentence. “… you’d say that someone there had recently been to the Greenwich Clinic, or had gone away with Mr. Freeman.” He turned to me. “I was wrong. I do know a Freeman. Francis Freeman. The only problem?” That terrifying grin was back, a harsh slash of danger. “He died the same day I did. In 1917.”

“Stryker,” I cursed.

“Stryker.”

I turned my attention back to Strange and Wong. “I didn’t know the public clinic and Extremis were connected. Dr. Killebrew… Stryker, said they weren’t.”

Strange shrugged. “It wouldn’t behoove an upscale institute like Extremis to be associated with public health under the most innocent of circumstances. If there are shady dealings…”

“They’d want to hide the connection even more.” I nodded, turning to Wade. “We can look into it. Case the joint, break in after hours.”

“Yukio,” said Wong, and I jumped, having forgotten the girl who stood, quiet as a mouse, by the fireplace. “Go get the others, anyone who’s home.”

“Your wards?” I asked.

Strange shrugged, annoyance flitting across his face. “That word implies a level of domestication that these feral brats are incapable of. They come and go as they please; we merely set out a warm saucer of milk and a tub to dunk off the fleas.”

“He adores them,” Wong said, with a roll of his eyes.

Shaking him off, Strange was counting, fingers pressed flat against the table to keep his place. “Are we missing any regulars?”

“Bobby,” Wong said, forehead creasing. “Theodore, too.”

Strange pursed his lips. “How long has it been since Harry stopped by?”

“Harry Osborn?” I demanded. Wade’s face twisted. “Sorry,” I muttered. Then, “No, I’m not sorry. I saw him at the Extremis Institute. His guardians had him checked in for…”

Well. I gestured around us.

Strange went pale and he stood abruptly, tea pooling with the force with which he set down his cup. He stood by the window, his back a harsh stroke of anger.

Wong lifted a hand toward him, then let it drop, sorrow shadowing his face. “We had hoped…” He sighed. “One always hopes for progress to march like a regiment, pressing ever forward. More often it’s a tide, inevitable. Given enough time the mountain will crumble, but when the tide is out…”  

The room was silent, then Strange picked up the thread, his clipped words delivered to the curtain. “The years between the war and the crash were good for people like us. This generation was not meant to be burdened with such trouble.”

Wade’s fingers tightened on my leg, hard enough that I winced. His face echoed the grief in Wong’s eyes, the rage in Strange’s back. I bit my lip and stared into my teacup, feeling suddenly as though I had barged into a stranger's home while they sat shivah.

“Say, Doc, did you mention Harry?”

A whole gang of kids was trying to crowd through the door, and the mass pushed forward and expelled a dark-haired gal in trousers and suspenders. She cracked her gum and winked obnoxiously at Yukio, who tittered behind her hands. Wade cooed. I rolled my eyes.

“Just saw him, is all. Twenty minutes ago, outside the automat. I hollered, but he didn’t answer. I figured he was out with… ” 

She pulled a disgusted face, presumably to imply his business associates.

We shot to our feet.

“He was in a coma on Tuesday,” I said. “Even if they woke him, he shouldn’t be out doing his shopping.”

“We’ll find him,” said Wade.

We rushed to the kitchen door, slipping on our masks as we went.

“Spider,” said Strange, and I turned back. “Harry is not his father.”

“I know,” I said. “The things his father did… My grudge ain’t with Harry. I’ll bring him home, I swear it.”

Sometimes at night, I dreamed about the people I was too slow to save.

Next: “Nocturne”

Chapter Text

Sometimes at night, I dream about the people I was too slow to save.

Every great mystery begins with a body. Everyone knows that. By the time my boots hit pavement, an entire life has already been redacted to a mere chalk outline, waiting to be washed away completely by that night’s rain.

Their story ends before mine begins. I don’t stand a chance.

I shouldn’t feel guilty about them… right?

And yet.

I still see them in my dreams, standing from their chalk halos, pressing up off cold steel slabs. Rising out of the fragile mortal vessels they no longer have use for. They fill the background of an uncanny gallery, a ghastly cast of characters.

In the foreground are the ones who could've had a shot.

Broads who slunk into my office like the devil in stiletto heels, those sharp points too slow to outrun their demons. Heels tapping their way up and down the corridors of my brain.

Civilians caught in the crossfire, catching bullets meant for me. Their pasty faces hang slack with fear, no idea when they left the house that morning that it would be the last time they’d look themselves in the hall mirror, or kiss their wives goodbye.

Sometimes I dream of my uncle, his fate sealed the day they put a screaming bundle in his arms and said, “We gave him your name.” The nineteen years he got were a blessing. Sometimes I dream of my mother, her hand limp in mine as my own fever broke. Or of my father, nothing but a face in a photograph. How young he was, and too cocky to be scared.

I didn’t ask my father to go to war. I didn’t ask my mother to nurse me when I lay sick of the flu. I didn’t ask my uncle to give me his name. 

But they did, and now they’re gone.

Sometimes, too, I dream of the evil men. Of the lives I’ve taken.

Because I have killed. Not like Wilson kills: for money, or for the joy of it, maybe. But when it’s man to man on a narrow ledge, his life or mine, when his foot slips — I’m not afraid to push. When faced with the barrel of a gun, I don’t hesitate to pull the trigger first.

Life is sacred, sure. But isn’t my life just as sacred? Wiser heads than mine have argued the point for centuries. I’ll leave them to it, while I do what needs to be done.

Their faces are always so terrifying in the moment. Brutes and monsters, lined with harsh experience. But after, lying broken on sticky sidewalks, they look young. Faces slack and afraid, as if they didn’t know today was the last day they would put on their hat and leave the house.

I can’t let it stop me. When it’s kill or be killed, I can’t afford to hesitate. Not unless I want to be one more family member for May Parker to identify at the morgue, to sit guard and read psalms in an icebox full of John Does, my face slack and scared and young.

Norman Osborn’s face was like that in his final moments. As hateful as he was, as grotesque and twisted, as quickly as he would have thrown me into the sewer in his place… The face that swept away from me was that of a beaten child deemed unworthy of love.

Every great mystery begins with a body.

The first time I met Gwen Stacy, she was sly, but kind. She winked as she set down my whiskey, said, “Don’t you worry about Ms. Hardy, detective. I’ll protect you from that old bearcat.”

I’m sorry, I say in my dreams. You said you’d protect me, but I didn’t protect you.

Maybe Felicia sent her to my table that night for a reason. Maybe she was a certain kind of gal that a certain kind of fella could take home to Aunt May. The type of broad someone like me could build a happy enough life with, just so long as nobody asked too many questions about why I only invited one other guy over for poker night, or why she was always off staying the night at her sister’s across town.

Probably not. Probably it was just Felicia doing what Felicia did best, poking at my soft spots with curious claws. I’ll never know, what with Gwen nothing more than a smudge of mopped up ash on the marble floor of the Ritz before my part of the story even started.

“Need a light?” she asked, and this wasn’t my dream, this was how it actually happened. “Need a light, mister? I could be your flame.”

“No thanks, doll,” I replied. “I don’t smoke.”

We caught up to Harry Osborn just past Washington Square.

Next: “The Sins of the Father”

Chapter Text

Harry was in a hurry as he strode past the park, tugging at his collar, sweat beading in the evening heat. We called out to him but he didn’t turn. I could hear Wade fingering his pistols and I shot him a glare.

“He hasn’t done anything.”

Wade glowered. “Not yet.”

When it was kill or be killed, I couldn’t afford to hesitate. But we weren’t there. Not yet.

Harry seemed to glow in the growing dusk, sickly under the streetlights as they sputtered to life. He turned, and for a moment I swore he looked right at me. And then he rounded the corner, a pile of refuse catching ablaze under his trailing fingers. Wade lurched back with a moan of fear as I rushed forward, beating at the flames with the heavy wool of my coat.

It was fighting fire with a thimble. I rounded the corner to something out of Dante. Fires sprung up along the street, a cacophony of terror swelling as people ran past, clutching their children, their meager possessions. My skin stung with the heat, even through my leather and wool.

Harry turned again, and for a moment I swore his mouth made the shape of the word Spider, and then I only saw his back as he retreated through a door —  

 — into the Greenwich Public Clinic. 

Of course.

A hand clamped onto my shoulder and I stumbled back into Wade’s suffocating grip.

“You need to stay back,” he shouted, voice muffled through the crackle of flames, the buzzing in my ears. The spider god screamed at me, vermillion whirling behind my eyes to match the firestorm in the street. I shook my head to clear it, pushing off of him.

“You need to help me!” I yelled.

He grabbed me properly then, lifted me up, and I splayed like an alley cat, shooting an elbow back. There was a crack behind me, and the wind went out of his lungs, but he didn’t let me go. “You cannot go in there. Benji, you can’t. I know what it is now.”

I struggled free, whipped around. Mask to mask, we were strangers to each other.

“What?” I snapped.

“Extremis is… it’s whatever happened back then. In the war. What made me like this. What killed Dickie. You cannot go in there. I — I can’t lose you, too.”

It was as though the mask melted, as though I could see the look on his face, the terror laid bare to me through the leather. His fear for me. His need. 

His possession.

I took a step back. His hand twitched.

“I have to save him,” I said. “Help me.”

Then I turned for the building, making my peace with whatever fate awaited me inside that flaming maw. I’m sorry, Aunt May. I didn’t bother to listen for the footsteps that wouldn’t be on my heels.

The smoke in the front hall of the clinic was a punch to the face, invading my lungs, soaking into every fiber of me. I slunk low to the floor, crawling on my fingertips and the flat of my toes like the spider I took my name from. I squinted up through my goggles, trying to make out the ceiling through the angry haze. In my interview they’d made a big show of touting modern sprinklers, state of the art, but there was no sign of them now.

I pulled in a foul, stinging breath and held it as I crawled up the wall. The line of shiny sprinkler heads lay dormant. I took note of the direction of the pipe that connected them, and dropped back to the floor. It seemed impossible that, only a few hours earlier, I was in the cool, dark tunnels under the city, Wade warm and solid at my side, spiced smoke curling gently from his lungs into mine.

Another breath. Another few feet along the corridor. Another ascent into hellfire to make sure my way was true. Another retreat to the questionable oasis of the floor. Another scorching breath.

My head spun, my ears rang. Time lost its meaning. 

The way I’d learned it, the world to come didn’t include eternal torment. But what good was that, when it had found me on earth?

I crawled. I climbed. I dropped. I breathed.

Finally, I found it — a utility room and a water main. The shut-off valve jammed shut. I had to kick at it with all my strength to make it release. The pipes hummed out a tortured whine. The walls creaked. 

Please.

The sprinklers kicked on. 

I sunk down on the wall, heaving in great, grateful gasps of sickly sweet air. It took me back to that night in the Ritz, smoke and waterlogged antiseptic, a charred twist on the medicinal scent of the Institute. I tried not to dwell on the pallor in Wade’s face as he spit sick all over himself that night, the fear in his voice as he tried to hold me back today.

I pushed myself up. There was work to be done.

The utility room was tucked away at the back of an office. Something itched at me as I passed through, and I turned back at the door, trying to put my finger on it.

The place was a shell.

Empty, gaping file drawers. Shelves cleared of medicines. They’d cleaned the place out, and then they’d sent Harry in to destroy the lack of evidence. 

Stryker was covering his tracks, and quickly.

I had to find Harry.

Even through the grimy downpour that coated my goggles, the way forward was obvious. The fire fought unnaturally against the streaming water, spitting out angry protests as it went ungently into the dark night. All I had to do was follow the direction of the ever-increasing flames, a bright runway leading me to their uncanny source.

A mangled door, the frosted glass proudly proclaiming ‘Director Freeman’ in harsh webbed shards. A vast, modern office. In a past life, it might have been similar to Stryker’s; now, its clean expanse was irreparably charred.

The man faced away from me, his back a strong line, hands clasped loosely behind him as he gazed out the window into the night. A tranquil eye in a whirlwind of smoke and steam and flame.

Harry Osborn turned to greet me.

“Spider,” he said, his voice horribly monotone. “Killebrew knew you would come. You haven’t been subtle about where you wove your webs.”

His eyes flashed green, and I fought back bile at the memory of his father, skin like envy, gun to Felicia’s head in the bowels of the city. My head buzzed with a horrible, persistent static, a sick whine in the back of my teeth, red red red up the back of my neck.

“The perversion stops here. The sickness in this city, in this world. All its flaws and imperfections. Extremis will heal the world, and you, Spider?” His horrible, flat voice resonated through my skull, rattling bone that already shook, that had been vibrating discordantly since the moment I stepped into the building. My ears rang, and I heard a sickening pop, and his next words came as though an ocean stood between us. “You stand in the way of perfection.”

His eyes blazed — no, not just his eyes, all of him — and he arched back in a grotesque scream, his veins standing dark against the chartreuse fire under his skin.

I’ll bring him home. I swear.

I rushed towards him, laid my hands on him, grit my teeth as my skin blistered through the leather. Turned us both until he was under the sputtering deluge of a sprinkler, dank water hissing as it evaporated off of his deadly hot skin.

He curled forward around himself, his light dimming, and he blinked, and maybe… maybe I’d been able to stop it. Maybe I had gotten to him in time. His mouth gaped in confusion, and and his eyes blinked open, the frightened eyes of a child —  

And then he strobed green.

I pushed as hard as I could towards the window, threw up my hands to protect my head against the glass. The street rose to greet me like an old friend.

There was a blinding flash, a muffled boom. And then only flame and silence as I lay gaping on the pavement.

Next: “I Died A Thousand Times”

Chapter Text

Wade took me back to his. 

There was nothing we could do for poor Harry, nothing useful we’d be willing to tell the police when they showed. And I couldn’t go back home to May reeking of the fire. 

Reeking of Extremis.

The acerbic stench still gnawed at my throat. It was the sharp decay that had risen from the corpse of the Ritz. The haze that swaddled the patients at the Institute into uncanny sleep. 

The fear that seeped, bright, out of Harry Osborn’s pores.

In the patient ward I mistook the smell for antiseptic, blissfully ignoring the green balloons of poison bobbing around my head. They had reminded me of beacons, desperate flags sent aloft by lost souls. I assumed then that the enemy haunting their nightmares was the prison of their own twisted minds.

Instead, their torturer had been the twisted mind of the man who walked at my side.

To think I had considered — even for a moment — taking Stryker’s offer to work at his side. Was it a ploy to entrap an irritating reporter in one of those sleek white beds? Would I have become yet another of those lost, trapped souls? Or worse, would I have become the torturer? The prison guard?  

My skin crawled.

While I walked the corridors of my own mind, Wade carefully peeled me out of my outer clothing, airing out the evidence of my failure as he shook out my coat, my sweater; hanging my sins on the fire escape for all to see.

I didn’t shake the fugue until he had me down to my undershirt. I drew in a great breath of muggy air, clenched my numb fingers around a glass of whiskey I hadn’t realized was in my hand. He leaned against the window, sharp frame lit from behind by the orange of the streetlight, orange glow flickering between his lips. Wrapped in thin cotton, his shoulders looked fragile; without the shield of flamboyant vests and dandy ties he seemed to fold in on himself.

“Why didn’t you go in?” I asked. “Why didn’t you help me?” The scrape of my own voice surprised me — a stranger’s voice, low with smoke and grief. 

He laughed, short and humorless. “You can ask me to do anything and I will, Benji. Cut off my own arm just to make you smile. But don’t ask me to go into the fire. Don’t ever ask me to do that.”

“Not like you can die,” I muttered, tossing back a burning swallow of my drink. “Other people can. That place was empty, except for — ” my voice crumbled to ash, and I had to start again. “There weren’t any patients, this time. Next time, there will be. Next time people will die.”

He shrugged, as easy as if we were talking about the weather. “Everyone dies, in the end. Everyone but me. But I won’t go into the fire. Ask me to do anything else.”

Then, G-d help me, I did.

I asked because I needed him. No — I asked because I wanted him. Because I wanted to feel his hot life under my bruised, burnt fingers. Wanted to touch something that even I couldn’t ruin. 

Because I wanted, and because I could.

He nodded, and stubbed out his cigarette, and pulled me by the hand to his narrow bed. I fell helpless into the abyss, an uncertain adventurer in uncharted territory.

“Want you,” he said, “want you all the way,” and I could only nod, trusting him to be my guide.

He paused as he reached under the bed, seeing, as always, more of me than I wanted him to see, even in the dim light.

“Don’t worry, Benji,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

It was still a shock when he rose to his hands and knees, pushed down his shorts, and reached between his legs. His fingers were thick with petroleum jelly, shiny where they disappeared into his body. He caught me looking and threw on the facade of a cocky grin, pulling me down to drape across his back.

I fumbled, my shaking hand trying to put it in all wrong, and he had to reach back and guide me home with a hiss.

“Normally,” he said, voice tight, “I tell ‘em to close their eyes, pretend I’m a dame. I know that’s not gonna work so good for you, but the view’s still better from back there.”

And all of a sudden I felt sick, felt more than a little cruel as I stared down the line of his back, lean through the flimsy cotton of his undershirt.

“Will you turn over?” I asked.

He froze. “You don’t want that.”

“You said I could ask for anything,” I reminded him.

“Didn’t think you’d ask for that,” he muttered, pulling off of me, and I instantly felt cold and small. I sat back on my heels, yanked off my own shirt, tried not to look at what was bobbing, shiny and obscene, between my legs.

He rolled over and welcomed me back inside. He winced, and I brushed his face, and he plastered on a smile. 

“Don’t you worry about me, darling.” He winked, somehow making the simple gesture overwhelmingly obscene. “Some things in life are better with a little pain.”

My brow furrowed and I tried to be gentle, frustrated at my incompetence. He pulled me down, pressed his face against my neck, urged me with sweet words to take what I needed. To take everything, if it came down to it. 

I fell into him, consumed. Even as he yielded, I was somehow the weak one; like Samson, shorn. Like by taking me into his body he was taking me for keeps, like his scars were an amalgam of all the men who’d been inside of him before me.

Jealousy flared hot and I drove in harder, wanting to take him right back, as though I could chip a piece of him away and keep it with me always. He clung to me, his choked moans sinking into my skin, blistering up into red welts. I bit hard into his shoulder as I poured over the edge, feeling the weal of a scar thick and soft under my teeth.

He stroked my sweaty back, kissed the side of my face, cooed sweet nothings as I got my breath back. I was slow to leave him, slow to leave this moment of being molded to him. He grimaced as I sat back.

“Are you alright? Did I — was it too much?” I asked.

“You were perfect,” he said, sitting up to pepper my face with kisses. “You sure know how to give a lady a ride.”

I reached down, throat clenching as I found him soft and dry. 

“Can I — ? I’m sorry, please let me make you feel good.” 

He made an unhappy noise in the back of his throat, but let me pull him into my lap, between my spread legs, cradling his back against my chest. I kissed moist apologies up and down his neck, rubbed them into his skin with my sticky fingers.

The Vaseline made it easier to do for him what he’d shown me how to do last time. The loose slide of skin still felt strange under my hand, but wrapping around him from behind I could almost pretend it was myself I was touching in the darkness. I coaxed him back to me, worked the lubricant into his skin as though I could work myself into his body, stain him to the core like he had stained me. 

After, he pulled away to one side of the bed, back against the wall. We shared a cigarette, and I felt almost fortified against the job ahead of us. 

Harry and Gwen were dead. Others lost, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the ones who had no one to miss them. Wade’s greatest enemy sat in a shining office one borough away. But I felt as though I’d drawn strength from him, and he from me.

“We’ll go to Extremis tomorrow,” I said. “Break in at night.”

“They’ll be there. They’ll be waiting.” He didn’t say no.

I shrugged. “We’ll take the fight to them. We can’t afford to wait. Not after Harry.”

His cigarette bobbed slowly as he nodded. He cracked his knuckles, rolled his neck. “Hate to kick you out after such a lovely evening, but this bed ain't even big enough for one, and there are a few loose ends I should tie before I sleep.”

It twisted something inside me, something that had been a tiny bit hopeful.

Foolish. He was right about the bed. And I did feel a sudden need to get back to Aunt May; to hold her close, to know that she was well. I set about gathering my things.

“Mind if I wash up?” I asked, hesitating as I went to do up my trousers. 

He nodded to the door at the corner of his room. “Help yourself.”

The water closet was just as cramped as the rest of the place, barely enough room between the john and the sink to take a piss and clean myself up as best as I could. It wasn’t until I had finished putting myself together that I finally dared meet my own eyes in the mirror.

Was I different, now? Had what had happened between us changed me, flooding my veins, curling pervasively into my lungs? Or had I been changing since the day I met him, incrementally, too subtle to notice?

Harry’s death had changed me, I knew that. How could it not? His death, and the horrible memory of him still and silent in that hospital bed, forced into a coma for his proclivities. Steve Rogers’ spiteful face, the set in his jaw as he spat at my feet. Gwen Stacy’s soft hand on my wrist, the fondness in Felicia’s eyes, the pain in her voice when I went to her consumed by my own problems on the night Gwen died.

I could judge my own broken desires, could hate myself for being like I was. Could I hate them?

And what about Strange and Wong, the work they did, the comfort they shared? Was that the face of lechery?

My reflection had no answer. It gazed back, a little more wan, a little more tired, but all in all the same face that had always greeted me. How could what we had just done not change me?

There was a photo wedged into the corner of the mirror, and I memorized its details out of habit. I furrowed my brow, leaned in close. 

It was old. Wade’s squad, bound not in the blood that flowed through their veins, but the blood that splashed up their boots. An older man — Stryker? If so, the years hadn’t been as kind to him as they had to Wade, scars excepting. Wade, two unified parts of a boyish whole. A sour young man with close cropped hair, and another, old and irritable. But none of them held my eye. It was the man in the middle. The man that Wade squeezed tight to him, glancing over with stars in his eyes. 

A man who had tousled brown hair like mine.

A face I knew as well as my own.

My reflection went pale, and I yanked the photo down. 

I careened out of the bathroom, chest full of righteous fire. “Why do you have this?” I demanded. Wade jolted up in shock, then his face shuttered shut. 

“Don’t touch that,” he snapped, hands clenching like he wanted to snatch it, but didn’t want to risk hurting it.

I recoiled from him, backed up until my back hit the door.

“Why do you have a photo of my father?!”

My words turned us both to stone, and the room held its breath.

“That’s not funny, Benji,” he finally croaked.

“No,” I said. “No, it’s not. It’s not funny at all that your lover was called Dickie. Short for Richard, I figure? Did you know?”

“Why would I know?” he half-yelled, hand tangling in his hair.

“The night you met me. You asked me about my name. Parker. Is that why you had to have me?”

“Of course not! Do you think you’re the only person with that name? Why would I think you were his son? He didn’t even have a — ” He fell back like I’d smacked him. “What year were you born?”

I gaped. “What?”

“What year?” 

“1912, what’s that got to do with anything?”

The blood drained from him like he’d seen a ghost. And maybe, in that moment, he had. “He never said.”

“Never said what?” 

I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Never said he had a kid. Never said he had… a wife. We were… he said we were gonna be together.” 

His hands shook as he tapped out a cigarette. Fatima Turkish Cigarettes like he used to smoke with Dickie out on the front. Fatimas like Uncle Ben used to snag from Hester Street Pharmacy with his baby brother, running laughing down to the docks to smoke and dream.

My father’s brand in Wade’s mouth.

A worn photo of Richard Parker, young and full of life, in the corner of Wade Wilson's mirror. 

He had to light the match three times before it took. “I didn’t know, Benji. I swear.”

I swallowed hard. I believed him. But even so…

“You killed him,” I told the room, lowly.

“You think I don’t know that?” he shouted, then cursed, lowered his voice. “I know that. And I have to live with that, and I’ve been living with that.”

I shook my head, pressing myself to the door. “No. You made your peace with killing your lover. But you killed my father. I don’t even remember him. So now you get to live with that.” I took in a breath, closed my eyes tight, fighting a sudden and awful urge to cry. “And you get to live with it alone.”

“Please, don’t leave.” He reached for me, and I flinched back. “Benji — ” 

“Don’t call me that,” I shouted. “That name was my uncle’s, you don’t get to call me that!”

He staggered as I dodged around him, vaulting over the window frame, grabbing my coat, making sure I had my mask and my hat firmly in hand. “Please,” he begged. “We’ll figure it out, Peter. I love you. Please, stay.”

A laugh forced out of my throat, harsh and awful. “You don’t know how to love.” He deflated in on himself, painfully small. “Get the hell out of my city. If I ever see you again, I will find a way to kill you.”

And then, as seemed to be the way with him, I fled.

I hated him, hated everything he was, with every fiber of my being.

So why did it feel like it was my own heart I had just broken?

End Part 2

Next: “They Made Me a Killer”

Chapter Text

Part 3

“Midway in the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto I

I slept.

There was work to be done, important work. I had failed Gwen. I had failed Harry. I couldn’t live with myself if I failed anyone else. But my eyes were heavy, and my heart heavier, and so I slept.

Aunt May was used to my strange hours. So when her knuckles landed ever-so-delicately on my door, I knew it was one of two things — either I had lost track of all time and all responsibility, or something had happened worth disturbing me. Something vitally important.

I was on my feet in an instant.

“I’m sorry, bubbeleh,” she said through the crack in the door, “I know you were out late working. It’s only, Sarah Rogers is here. Steve’s gone missing.”

Mrs. Rogers was even more translucent than the last time I’d seen her. Her eyes were swollen pink, and if Sam Wilson hadn’t been at her side, stroking her hand, I don’t know that she would have been upright. 

“He went by the Greenwich Clinic,” she said, and my heart plummeted. “They had some new treatment for his asthma, he said. Some fancy study. Something about it didn’t sit right, but it’s just… it’s so expensive. And now he’s… They said he’s… But they won’t let me see the body.”

Her face crumpled, and she buried her mouth into her handkerchief.

“There was a fire at the clinic last night,” Sam said. “An explosion. But I got a man inside at the morgue. There were no bodies.”

I recognized Mrs. Rogers’ stricken face, because it was the face I imagined Aunt May wearing for me in those darkest of moments. Terror for the only family member she had left.  A plea that, if she just asked the right question, I would have the right answer. 

“If he wasn’t there, where is he?”

“Extremis,” I said. The room shifted, restless and confused. “The Extremis Institute. They’re partnered with the Greenwich Clinic. I can go out today, see if he’s there.”

I didn’t promise her I’d bring him home.

Not after Harry.

“Can I have a word, Parker?” Sam asked, and we stepped out while Aunt May plied Mrs. Rogers with tea and matzo ball soup, providing what meagre balms she could. 

I’d slept until afternoon, and the porch was sweltering. I drew in thick breaths, trying to focus my pounding head.

“Why did Steve go to the Clinic?” I demanded.

Sam’s face pinched into a wary mask. “He was trying to figure out what happened to Gwen Stacy. You know anything about that?”

My shoulders sank. “I was looking into it. Am looking into it.”

Sam shrugged, a casual motion that conveyed nothing but contemptuous disbelief. “Sure, pal. That’s why he lit off to the Clinic right after he talked to you, right? Because he trusted you to ‘look into it’?”

“I am,” I protested through numb lips.

Well. Steve hadn’t believed me, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. And so he’d taken the investigation into his own frail hands. The asthma study wasn’t a lie, at least not a complete lie, Sam explained. The clinic had been offering a treatment, just like Steve told Sarah.

“Steve didn’t trust it,” Sam said. “And neither did we.”

Steve had gone in a few times, for pamphlets and information. Dragging his feet on committing, even as he dropped little hints that he was the type of person who might not be missed. The kind of person Gwen Stacy had been. But after that day — after our awful conversation — he had decided to do it. Hoping if he got inside, he could find more information about what was going on with the Good Doctor. Find out what had happened to his other friends; the ones who were still missing.

I promised him I would take care of it.

If he died, it was on me.

And even though Steve had argued until he was blue in the face (literally, I assumed), Bucky had insisted on going with him. Chain smoked a few cigarettes, practiced his wheezing. Sam would have gone too, he said, in a heartbeat, but three would have been even more suspicious than two, so he was left behind, the bearer of the knowledge of where they had gone. Bucky pulled Steve under his arm, and they set off to the Village. Sam hadn’t seen them since.

“He and Barnes…” I trailed off, not sure how to present the idea, not sure where I was even going with it. I remembered Wade’s anger when I’d shared things that weren’t my business to share.

Sam’s eyes were sharp — too sharp. I was a man who thrived in secrets, so why was it that I kept finding myself around people who seemed to see right through me? 

“Bucky isn’t,” he said. “But we both knew about Steve. Bucky worried about him a lot…” He narrowed those knowing eyes. “Steve told us not to come to you. Said you weren’t trustworthy. You wanna tell me why that was?”

I hung my head. “I was unkind to him. I was angry and I took it out on him. I was wrong.”

Sam scrutinized me for a long, judgemental moment, then nodded his head decisively. 

“Guess you’d better tell him that yourself.”

We agreed to meet at nightfall, on the back side of the Institute.

I, who seemingly no longer had secrets, showed up in the guise of the Spider. I waited alone, wondering if Sam would show up. Wondering if he would trust me. Maybe he had already gone in. Maybe he’d sold me out.

My mouth swelled with a sudden, pressing craving, and I reached into my pocket. A single battered cigarette fell into my hand. The press of smoke in my lungs felt like an old friend.

Something still itched at me. Something ugly and unwanted, a jagged stone buried deep in the muck of my anger. But as the silt was washed away by waves of fear for Steve, by ripples of hot guilt, it dug at me more and more.

Stryker had said my father spoke of me often, of me and my mother.

But the horror in Wade’s eyes when he realized his long-lost lover had had a wife and child… The hot ball of anger shrieked at me that he was lying, that he was a homewrecker in addition to his many crimes. I wanted so very badly for it to be true, for me to have one more reason to hate him.

But I knew, deep in my gut, that he had been telling the truth.

So why would my father confide his life, his hopes to Stryker, of all people, and not his own lover? What relationship did they have, away from Wade’s hopeful eyes?

Something wasn’t adding up. 

I took another drag, let the thick curls of spiced smoke ease out into the twilight, hoping they would spell out an answer.

The brush rustled to my side, and two bright eyes emerged from the darkness. Sam Wilson nodded in greeting. Without a word we were hopping the fence into lush, tranquil grounds.

Into Extremis.

It’s the Smell, 2020
Oil on Canvas
24 x 20 Inches

It was quick work for men of our hobbies to break the lock and slip our way into a back door.

The smell hit us like a slap in the face, a ravaging bite in our nostrils, forcing its way down the backs of our throats and into our skin. Stronger than ever. Medicinal, scorched. The smell of the corpse of the Ritz, the smell of Harry’s scared eyes.

This is a bad place, it blasted. This is death, and sickness. Turn back while you can, or be consumed.

We didn’t. We couldn’t. So we pressed through the intangible fog, like sailors in a Greek tragedy.

Our dark garb was, perhaps, poorly chosen, two thick spiders in a gleaming white tub. Even in the dim light, I felt horribly exposed as I crept ahead along white walls, scouting ahead for nurses and orderlies as we made our way through. We encountered no one, but I heard voices down the halls; strange, echoing Russian that I couldn’t parse, the sounds swirling around me from every direction.

I led us toward the main ward, remembering that sea of castaways adrift in their insulin slumber, green dripping innocuously into their veins. ‘Nutrients, narcotics, and a proprietary serum.’

A serum, perhaps, that made the mind susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. A substance that filled one's veins with literal fire, as the mind was filled with the fire of zealous fervor. 

I hoped we’d find Steve and Bucky there, even as my own veins froze at the prospect.

Please, let them be there. Please, let them not be there.

Please, G-d, if you’re even there to listen, just let them be safe.

The red zing of my senses noticed what my distracted mind did not. White bodies emerged from the gloom, starched folds lit in sharp relief by an ominous green glow. My ears rang with a deafening buzz. 

The staff had appeared to protect their territory.

“Sam!” I shouted out a warning to the man behind me, around the corner, and dropped from the ceiling, an avenging angel.

And then they were upon us.

They fought like the madmen they were meant to be healing, strong and vicious, eyes bright with green rage. An orderly lunged at me, fast as a snake, and I felt a crunch under my fingertips as I slammed him into the wall. No time to say a prayer for the man’s soul. No time to second-guess if he was a demon to the core, or if he was a good man with an evil forced into his veins.

Aunt May guarding over my body in a cold morgue. Or worse, desecrated and burned, consumed by flame, an instant, agonizing separation of soul from body, denied the release of gentle decay.

Kill or be killed.

Survive.

I did hesitate, though, at the first of the nurses. My fist stilled to strike the face of a woman, even when it was as ugly and twisted as the rest of them. A quaint sentimentality, and one that almost cost me everything. A scalpel bit into my side and I fell back. Sam slammed into her from the side. I twisted to the side and put a bullet between her eyes.

She started to smolder. 

My gaze met with Sam’s for a brief, fearful moment, and then we were back into the fray. The place would go up like a powder keg if we didn’t finish this, and soon.

It was easier said than done. The more they fell, the more desperate and vicious the ones who remained became. We fought tooth and nail, bones breaking, guns firing, my webs subduing as many as I could. Finally we were down to the final two. A brutish man had me on my back, and when I fired my revolver, the chamber spun empty. 

He grinned; an awful, victorious sneer. 

I swung the butt of my gun and smashed his face in.

I pushed him off of me, struggling to my feet. Sam was ensnared with that stern old nurse, Varvara. She had blood on her teeth, blood that matched the red that poured, sticky, down the side of his face from his ear. I didn’t have time to shudder in horror as I rushed towards them, wishing for just one more bullet.

She pulled her hand back to strike, scalpel gleaming.

Sam, his back hard against the wall, couldn’t even flinch.

A gunshot rang out, and Varvara crumpled to the ground.

Slowly, we turned. A young nurse stood in the middle of the hallway, feet planted wide. Her eyes cast a green glow on her crisp white uniform, and her jaw was set, and she didn’t lower her gun. Slowly, I raised my hands in supplication, seeing Sam do the same out of the corner of my eye. Her hand relaxed, the most minute of drops, the tiniest breath of relief as she let down her guard.

I webbed the gun out of her hands, turned it on her. Her face in my sights turned young, scared. A girl, really, a child with a gun and a cause.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Her accent was as harsh as the thick, scorched air. 

“I want out.”

It wasn’t clear if she was having a crisis of conscious, or if it was pure selfishness — a disinclination to become a volatile lab rat for Mother Russia, a craving for the jazz and milkshakes she saw in our American newspapers.

Whatever her reasons, she knew where they were keeping the patients. And more importantly, she knew how to wake them up. Safely.

“I’ll need you to get them out while I hold off Stryker,” I told Sam through the side of my mouth. “It’s your call.” My aim was true, my finger on the trigger strong. The smell of Extremis was getting stronger around us, the living and dead both working rapidly to destroy the evidence of themselves. We needed to make a decision, and fast.

Sam’s face was impassive, eyes narrowed as he assessed her. She tipped up her chin. Her hands in the air didn’t tremble.

Finally, he nodded. “I ain’t turning my back on you, lady.”

I lowered the gun, and she lowered her hands with it. She raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t consider you a worthy enemy if you did.”

“What’s your name, anyway, sister?”

She had turned away, leading us down the corridor, away from the smouldering kindling that had formerly been a pile of hot, rich humanity. She glanced back over her shoulder. A lock of red hair peeked out from under the starched white nurse’s hat, stuck to the sweat on her neck.

“Natalia. My name is Natalia.”

Our skirmish had brought us almost as far as to the main ward, and Natalia guided us the rest of the way. The process of untethering the sleeping beauties was mercifully easy — the closing of a valve, the precise yank of a needle, a press of gauze against an oozing wound.

“Trust us,” she crooned into a man’s sleeping ear. “You are safe in our hands. We will get you home. We will get you out. Trust us.”

He blinked awake, groggily mumbled, “Out?”

“Da,” she said. “Follow.”

“Follow,” he agreed, good-naturedly. 

My gut twisted, but I followed suit. Sam’s warm skin went gray. He had even more reason than me to balk at the idea of putting someone’s mind in bondage. But it was for their own good, so on we went down the row. They wafted like ghosts in their gowns to the far end of the room, our very own army of goylem, waiting complacently for us to get them home. My heart jumped in my throat when I heard Sam shout, “Steve!”

I rushed to them. Steve looked tiny, the small cot dwarfing him. He blinked awake. Whether it was because he was awaking to familiar faces, or because he had only been there a few days, clarity came to his eyes more quickly than the others. “Sam,” he rasped, “Sam, they shot Bucky.”

Sam and I turned to Natalia as one. My fists clenched, and Sam’s pistol rose. 

“I did not know he was one of yours!” she protested. “He fought, but he is alive. They took him to the room for special cases.”

“Keep working,” I told Sam. He opened his mouth to protest, but I shut him down. “One or two of us, it won’t make a difference in what they did to him. You need to keep getting the rest out.”

His face twisted, but he nodded. I was right, and he knew it, and so he got back to work.

I rushed out of the ward, around the corner, found the door to the room where Harry had been; the room where the seeds of his undoing had been sown, where his mind had been poisoned worse than anything his father could have done. I barely noticed that it was locked, my firm twist on the doorknob breaking the lock with ease.

“Buck, no,” I heard from behind me.

Steve had followed. How he even had the strength to stand was beyond me, let alone the stamina to keep up with my frantic pace. He wavered now, leaning in the door frame for support, but he was upright, and his mouth was set.

Bucky Barnes had not fared as well. He lay in the bed where Harry had lain, sleeping the same emerald sleep as the others, but something was different. Something was wrong.

“His arm,” Steve murmured. “They shot him in the arm. I was almost asleep, but I remember now.”

The difference, the unsettling lack  — I saw it now. The sheets lay flat on his left side, a gaping plain where there should have been hills and valleys. They’d taken his arm.

For a brief, insane moment I looked around. I don’t know what I was expecting. That they would have kept his ruined limb in some corner of their sterile white perfection? That we could take it home to bury, or that Wong’s Chinese medicine and Stranger's surgery would be stronger than bullets, than decay?

Steve was more pragmatic, and I turned to see him turning down the sheet, pulling out the needle. There was nothing but a stub, but the bandages were clean and white. Small favors that it wasn’t the mangled horrorshow it could have been. 

“Steve?” Bucky slurred.

“I’m here, Buck. I got you.” Steve stroked Bucky’s face, and I found myself surprised at how right it seemed. Bucky seemed groggier than others. I prayed it was because they had given him something to fog his brain, something to insulate him from this horror until he was safely away from this place, safe to face this new, terrible reality in peace.

Steve had an arm under his good side and I rushed forward to help him lift Bucky’s bulk, but… Steve stood up. He didn’t seem to notice, the blissful strength of one who is too busy getting the job done to realize that he should not be able to. I followed him through the door, hesitating.

There were more important matters than Bucky Barnes’ missing arm and Steve Rogers’ unexpected strength. There was enough ill-luck in this place that I needed to accept the strokes of good luck where I could.

“Go back to the others,” I said. “Help Sam get everyone out. Don’t let anyone come back for me, do you understand?”

Steve nodded, eyes wide and brave in his slim face.

I turned down the hall, then stopped short.

“Steve,” I called. He turned back, stumbling a little under Bucky’s weak, dragging steps. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say it, in case… I wanted to say it while I can.”

He nodded once. “Good luck, Parker.”

They would do what they could. I prayed they would get everyone out. I prayed the patients, unhooked from Extremis would be able to heal, that they would not meet an explosive fate the moment their lungs tasted clean, sweet freedom. I prayed that Natalia wouldn’t shoot my friends in the back.

I had done all I could for them. Now, it was time to deal with Stryker.

Next: “The Third Step”

Chapter Text

Killebrew’s (Stryker’s) office was empty.

I stood in the door, torn. I should track him down, engage him. Buy the others enough time to get away. But — Steve and Bucky had been injected with Extremis.

What if a few notes were the difference between a normal life and a fiery, agonizing death? 

That’s what I told myself, anyway, as I rifled through files and drawers. But it was more than that. It was that question that had been itched at me ever since the day I stepped into this office.

What interest did Stryker have in Peter Parker?

In Stryker’s desk, a locked drawer, the keyhole scratched up as though it was opened often. I skipped the lockpicks and yanked it open with a crack. The contents were sparse — a small red notebook and a garish yellow and red pack.

Fatimas. 

Those damn cigarettes — they used to remind me of Ben, and that had smarted more than enough. Now, I could only see Wade, could only imagine the smell of the smoke, the taste of it stale on his skin.

I tossed the pack from hand to hand, the feeling of unease growing. My father had picked them up from Ben. Wade had picked them up from my father. There was no such thing as coincidence in this line of work. What were the chances that Stryker had smoked the same brand? Or that he would take on his subordinate’s cigarette of choice?

I gave my head a harsh shake, and rifled through the notebook, flipping past page after page of neat lines of Russian. Dates, formulas, scientific notation. There was no way it was the body of research on Extremis, but it would have to be enough, so I shoved it in the pocket of my coat. 

My rough treatment had cracked the bottom of the drawer, and something seemed off. Something about the depth of it, something strange in the angles. A false bottom. I couldn’t find the mechanism, so I punched my way through. It was a shallow hideyhole, barely deep enough to hold a flat manila envelope. 

The buzz in my skull grew to a deafening pitch.

I knew, knew, without reason and without proof, that this was the missing piece of the puzzle. This was King Tut’s tomb. It was cursed knowledge, and once I cracked the seal, there was no going back to innocence. 

The envelope had my name on the label.

I unwound the twine holding it shut with shaking hands. The file went back, way back. Newspaper clippings on my graduation and my scholastic achievements. All the photos and articles I’d done for the Daily Bugle  — every single one, going back to my early days. Careful notes on every address I'd ever lived at, in clean, blocky handwriting. 

A little on my mother, too. Her obituary: Dead of influenza. Preceded in death by her husband in the war. Survived by her young son, who'd been sent to live with his aunt and uncle. This one rested at the back of the folder, paper yellowing but edges still crisp, face down, as if it had been read once and then never touched again. Why my mother's obituary?

Stryker was obsessed, I told myself frantically. He was obsessed with my father, and he became obsessed with me.

It rang hollow.

Underneath the folder, face down, a photograph. I knew what I would see before I even picked it up. I didn’t want to touch it, didn't want to face the reality of it. Char around the edges, and a sharp crease down the middle as though it had been folded and unfolded over and over and over. The ghost of a love note on the back, words of courage to a young husband headed off to war. Tears pricked my eyes at the memory of my mother's cool, soft hands on my feverish forehead as I burned up.

In the end, she was the one who burned.

I couldn't remember her face, not in real life, but I did remember those hands. And I remembered her beautiful, looped handwriting from the recipes and little notes my aunt saved to help her live on.

I didn't have to turn the photograph over; I had it memorized. A moment in time, frozen for eternity. A young family, their whole lives ahead of them. The infant looks away, clearly wishing he was with his toys. The wife’s face turns dotingly up to her husband. He stares at the camera with a cheeky grin. I'd never thought about it before. When I was young, it felt like the man was looking at me, giving me that playful grin, like we were about to go out and throw the ball around.

But it wasn't me behind that camera, all those years ago. I couldn’t help but see that face through the lens of the depravity I had, myself, known at the hands of my father's own lover. Was the cameraman handsome? Did he wink at my father, while the wife’s gaze was on her husband? Did they meet later in some secret corner of the darkroom, hands roaming under the tawdry red light? 

Stryker didn't need a photo like this. Unless he was never Stryker at all.

My fingers clenched around the photo, hard enough to crease it.

“Put that down.”

The slide of the cylinder as a bullet locked into place, the creak of a finger on the trigger.

Killebrew had found me. But he was never Killebrew, was he? And he was never Stryker.

I looked up into the eyes of my father.

Next: “Inferno”

Chapter Text

Benjamin Franklin Parker raised me like I was his own son.

He taught me everything he knew and — more importantly — he taught me that he didn’t know everything. 

In showing me he was fallible, he became wise in my eyes. In teaching me to question him, I found I rarely had to. We often debated, but we rarely argued. 

I hated when we did; it ate me up. And there was one debate that got ugly, time and time again.

You see, the Goblin’s men kept killing.

And the police kept nailing the Goblin’s men, and the Goblin kept springing ‘em back out, and they went right back to murdering. 

Again, and again, and again.

Another day, another breakfast, another copy of the Bugle to glare full of holes. The scumbag on the front wore a grin more suited to a movie star than a murderer. He even managed to make his bandaged, bloody shoulder look dapper.

“Should’ve aimed for the head,” I muttered.

May gasped and almost dropped a glass, and Ben snapped, “Peter!”, sharper than he usually spoke to me.

“Sorry,” I said, then, “No, I’m not. Some people deserve to die.”

“That’s not for us to choose,” Ben said. “By the pursuit of which man shall live.”

“Whole lot of people aren’t alive because of this goon’s pursuit. And we both know the Gobin’ll have him out by tomorrow. How many lives could be saved? The people he bumped off had families. I bet they wish someone had taken a stand.”

He shook his head empathetically. “You cannot kill to save a life.”

“Well,” I said, giving the paper a vindictive shake, “if it happened to me, I would defend myself. And I wouldn’t pull my punches.”

“I don’t know if I could,” he whispered, and the distance across the table stretched suddenly to infinity, and I set down my paper. “After the war… I just don’t know if I could. A life saved through killing isn’t a life worth having.”

I reached across No Man’s Land, grasped his hand in mine. “Even the evil lives? The wicked ones?”

"Life is sacred.” Each word held the weight of mountains. “Peter Benjamin Parker, my greatest blessing. If you take only one thing from my legacy, make it that." 

He trembled, those old, fatherly hands suddenly feeling so frail, and my heart clenched. “You don't need to worry about your legacy for a long time, uncle.”

“I’m not worried,” he said, and he piled his other hand on top of mine, and we put the debate to bed for another day.

Two days later, he went missing.

Three days later, I was the one to find the gnawed-up corpse.

One month later, Norman Osborn swept by me in a river of shit and I didn’t do a damn thing to save him.

A long time ago, a young man followed his older brother to war for blood and for glory. And while he was there, he met another, and it was a pleasant distraction from the longing he felt for his wife and his son. Back then he didn’t see the harm in going a bit astray, just so long as he righted his arrow before he set his sights towards home.

He didn’t believe in hell, you see. The way he’d learned it, the world to come didn’t include eternal torment.

It didn’t matter what he believed. Hell would find him for his sins.

It was never meant to be forever, and it certainly wasn’t meant to follow him back from the war, no matter how much his foolish lover followed him around like a lost gosling. But then they were caught, and, well, he ran. Not far, mind. He may have been a faggot, but he wasn’t a deserter. Just far enough to clear his head. Just close enough to be caught in the edge of the blast.

He woke in a trench, facedown in mud and shit and agony. He shouldn’t have survived. A quick death would have been a mercy.

Hours passed in that trench. Days. Eons. He was too weak to even turn to his back and die with his eyes toward the sky. That was how the Russians found him. His allies — or so he thought.

They tended to him with swift Russian efficiency. When he fought, they strapped him down. When he screamed, they gagged him. When he refused to comply, they applied electricity. 

They fixed him.

They healed his wounds and his scars. His rebellion and his perversion. They made him perfect, and then they made him better. 

It was beautiful in its brutality.

“You’re Richard Parker,” I said. 

“Richard Parker is dead.” The gun didn’t waver. “He died a long time ago. And you shouldn’t know that name, Spider.”

This man was a stranger. The face before me wasn't Ben’s, and it wasn't the boy in the photograph. And yet, I recognized both.

A little like Ben, in the nose. In the white hair, held maybe with the same pomade Ben had favored in those quiet moments when he allowed himself a little bit of vanity. In the lines at the corners of his eyes. But where Ben’s had always been kind, his were crazed. 

And as those eyes blazed with green fire, I knew he was very, very dangerous. 

The Russians had taken a cheater, a self-centered louse, and driven a wedge into those cracks, splintered them out like a spiderweb. And then they’d cemented those shards into the perfect monster.

“Is that why you went after Harry Osborn? Revenge?” I stalled, not really caring for the answer.

The others had so many to wake. They were so far from safety. I didn’t know if I could best him, but maybe I could buy them time.

His eyes flashed green, like Harry’s had, like the Goblin’s. “You don’t know what he did to my brother!”

“I do,” I said.  “I know better than anyone, and I’m the one who took the Goblin out. His son didn’t have to pay for his crimes.”

He sneered. “No? He would have followed in his father’s footsteps. And he had other crimes.”

I laughed, a choked thing. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

A zing by my ear, my senses yanking my head to the side before I realized a bullet had been fired. His fingers tightened around the gun until his knuckles tinged green, until I heard the tormented whine of bending metal.

“Wilson has a mouth on him,” he hissed. “Some things never change. I assume you’ve availed yourself of it — my sources did say the two of you had gotten… cozy. Men like him are a disease, Spider. Infecting good men with their pestilence.”

Two days ago, the thought of anyone finding out about me and Wade would have petrified me. Now, I felt only rage. He had used Wade just like he had used my mother. Just like he would happily use me if he had the chance. 

I wanted to punch his smug, self-righteous face. Wanted to keep punching until it wasn’t human, until it was a scarlet puddle like my mother’s broken heart the day those men in shiny shoes knocked on our door and told her he was dead.

This wasn’t the man who kissed my mother goodbye as he boarded the boat to the front. This wasn’t the little brother that Ben did right by, the same way Ben did right by me. 

But I still couldn’t bring myself to attack. 

What if Extremis was controlling him? I couldn’t save Gwen. I couldn’t save Harry. What if there was still a chance I could save him?

Maybe even a chance I could know him?

I swallowed hard. “Parker.” The name was ash on my tongue. “You can still come back from this. You can be with your son.”

“Don’t talk about my son!” 

“You’re wrong,” I said, “you don’t know the first thing about your son,” and the spider god yanked me to the side, and the gunshot grazed my shoulder instead of piercing my heart.

“You don’t get to question me.” A dark green vein pulsed up his temple, and I took a quick step back, clutching at my arm. “I survived for him. Perfected Extremis for him. Rose in the ranks, brought us to America, all so I could find my boy. And as soon as Freeman is done taking care of your nasty little band of perverts, I’ll go to him.”

I froze. He smiled, his lips a dark, cruel gash against his sallow skin.

“Oh, did you think you were stalling me? I know you didn’t come alone. I’ve been stalling you.”

I swore and rushed him, aiming for his sternum; a spot that I knew would shatter, the force of me driving shards into his lungs, into his heart.

I hesitated.

Shifted course at the last second, went for his shoulder, instead.

He dodged, using my momentum to slam me head first into the wall. A lesser man would have been dead on the spot. The world went blurry, and my skull buzzed like a far-off broadcast on a poorly tuned radio. I slid down the tilting wall, heavy-heavy-heavy.

I squinted through the nauseous haze.

My father paced, eyes reflecting a mirage of zealous purpose. He paced, and he muttered, and those eyes burned brighter and brighter, the green under his skin glowing hotter with each self-righteous step.

“We’ll change the world, Spider, you’ll see.” He laughed, a cruel thing, his teeth gleaming bright like a broken vase across a dark tile floor. “Well, you won’t. But my son will.”

“You don’t speak for your son,” I mumbled, willing my lax fingers to do more than twitch. “He doesn’t want this, Parker, you gotta believe me.”

“I’ll go tonight,” he decided. “We’re blown here, and you deserve to die for that, if nothing else. We’ve cleared out the clinic downtown. We’re ready to shuffle the rest of the stock onward and upward, raze this place, purify it of the crass excess we excised.”

He pulsed green, and I doubted he’d even make it across the complex. But if the others had fought off Freeman... if they were in the corridor, mere feet from freedom… 

I only needed one web.

Well placed, a single web over his nose and mouth would smother him. He would die unable to scream, fingers stiffening to claws as they tangled in the black strands of my rage. 

An awful way to die, and one I had never used.

He would probably give me lead poisoning on his way out — a swan song of bullets, a beautiful lesson in Shakespearean irony. That was alright. I think a part of me knew I wouldn’t make it out of this thing from the second I saw my mother’s handwriting on the back of that photograph.

One shot. 

I called on every reserve I had. Every ounce of strength. Every shred of anger. Every bittersweet drop of hope. I coiled every single part of me, clenching so tight I throbbed with it. And then I took that pain, and I coiled that up, too.

One final chance to make things right. Ben, I hope this is what you wanted from me. 

“Goodbye, Spider.” He raised the gun. 

I raised my arm.

    took a breath.

         and pulled off my mask.

“Peter?”

I collapsed against the wall, opened my gasping mouth. Nothing came out but clouds.

Green burned behind my eyelids. It snaked through his veins in great, sick pulses. Green consumed and transformed him. But his face —  

In his face, I saw the ghost of the young man who left for the war. I saw the ghost of my own face in the mirror. Under the lines of torture and hardship, under the decades of hard tempering that had turned him from a man into a weapon, I saw the face of my father. 

Green, green, green, whistling in my ears.

Poison, venom, bile, pestilence, rot, danger, stay back, this is a bad place.

“Peter…” 

His eyes met mine, young and scared.

“Peter, it’s going to be okay.”

The world went white, and hot, and I knew pain, and then I knew nothing.

Next: “The World To Come”

Chapter Text

They say when you burn, your nerves are the first thing to go. The worst pain of your entire life, and then sweet, blissful nothingness. If you live… if you live, that’s when the real agony begins.

Blissful nothingness, surrounding me, cradling me with strong arms. Even before the Spider, I was never afraid of the dark.

Gwen Stacy’s fingers were a balm on my wrist.

Don’t worry, mister. I’ll protect you. You’re safe with me.

I would doom her with that touch. I pulled my hand away.

She reached out again and I was six years old and I was burning up and my mother was rocking me in her arms, her fingers cool against my hot forehead, and I wanted to protest that I was too big, too big to be her baby.

You’ll always be my baby.

But if she lifted me, she would die. It wasn’t safe, not to touch someone as stained as me. She needed to set me down before she burned, too. I squirmed weakly in her arms.

It’s gonna be alright.

And then it was Uncle Ben, and my face was pressed to his neck, Turkish tobacco and wool and clean sweat. The man who gave me his name. The only father I ever knew, rocking me down, rocking me safely to sleep.

I'll see you soon, Ben. Mama. Gwendolyn. Countless others, the ones who wander my dreams, the ones I was too slow to save. I'll see you all soon. 

Benji, you’re gonna be okay.

I woke, coughing and heaving, cradled by the open sky.

Am I dead?

If this was death, there were cigarettes in the world to come.

“Good morning, sunshine.”

Wade’s voice was low, melodious. I rolled to my side with a groan, squinting at his shadowed form. He took a drag, and the orange glow pooled in the hollow of his cheeks. 

“Wh — ” I started, then I fell forward onto my hands and coughed until I felt hollow, until my shoulder and my side and my head all screamed in protest, and then I coughed some more. He hummed at my conniption, continuing his surveillance of the grounds like we were having a pleasant afternoon at the park. Finally, I was able to rasp, “What happened?”

A careless shrug. “Your Wilson-the-Better got everyone out, with the help of that firecracker of a Ruskie. And with Grant, who is still ninety pounds soaking wet and who I’m pretty sure can now throw me around. Gives a man ideas, ya know?”

My eyes were starting to adjust, green spots fading just in time to catch the leering grin, the waggle of an eyebrow. I collapsed back to my side with a groan, already regretting my newfound vision.

“He’s only eighteen,” I muttered to the lawn.

“I was younger. And the fellas weren’t nearly so nice. Anyway, moot point. Don’t know that he’ll have eyes for me anymore.”

The way Bucky looked when Stevie woke him up like some kinda sleeping beauty and carried him down the hall… Wade might have a point.

“How did they — ? What about Freeman?”

“Oh,” Wade cackled, teeth flashing bright in the dark, “oh, tangling with Frannie again was a fucking delight, let me tell you. He got away.” His smile soured, then roared back with a vengeance. “But now that I know he’s alive, there ain’t a place on this earth he can rest safe.”

“Wade,” I said, and the word scraped against my teeth like a mouthful of sharp gravel. I closed my mouth.

His shoulders slumped. “I know, Benji. Francis was kind enough to rub that in my face, don’t you worry.” He barked out a laugh. “Guess you don’t get to be mad at me for killing dear old pops anymore, huh?”

Then, softer,

“Are you alright?”

I groaned into the ground. “I don’t know. It’s still sinking in.” The sequence of events was still working its way through my cotton-stuffed brain. “How did I…?”

“There was an explosion. I went in for you.”

“Why?”

He smiled wryly. “Not like I can die, remember?” He took another drag, cursing at the dead butt. His smile twisted in my direction. “Spot me a smoke?”

I patted my pocket. A little red notebook, and the pack of cigarettes from my father’s desk. I tossed them over. A flash of smoke, the winding scent of Turkish tobacco.

“Thanks, doll. Anyway. I got you out. Dear old dad is dearly departed — I made damn sure of it, this time around. Grant flagged down a passing car, and Wilson and the murder minx disappeared into the shadows. Easy as duck soup.”

I stilled. “My uncle used to say that,” and I remembered saying it at the Ritz, the way his face had crumpled, the way he’d vomited, the soot and the smell and the turn of phrase all taking him straight back to a foxhole in 1917. 

Now, a sad kind of smile crossed his face. “Your father used to say that.”

“Wade.” I pushed up on my elbow, biting back a groan. “Why did you go into the fire for me?”

He considered me, long and hard, then turned his face away, showing me the ugly, scarred mask. “You know why, Benji.”

I stared at my hands. Nearby, a cricket warmed up for his midnight set.

“Well,” Wade finally said. “If you’re alright… Whole lotta world out there for Francis to be hiding in. Guess I should get out of your hair. Get out of your city.”

“Guess you should,” I echoed. Good. I was always the one running from him. It was somehow right that here, at the end, he was the one leaving. My tortured lungs clenched a little tighter.

I looked up.

His back was to me, shoulders slumping as he walked away.

I should have let him go. A queer like him was loathsome. The scum of the earth. The lowest of the low. And if I chose to keep him around — if I chose to keep him — then I was even worse. I willed myself to keep my fat mouth shut. Instead, it sold me out before my brain could catch up, and a word fell out. 

Just one single word, but enough to ruin me.

He paused, turned half-back, his half-ugly mug half-twisting into something hopeful.

“Stay.”

FIN.

Three Steps to Inferno, 2020
Oil on Canvas
24 x 36 Inches

March, 1935

It was a blustery spring day. The kind of chill that sinks right through you, miserably jarring to tired bones that had just started to believe it might be safe to thaw from winter.

And then (because it can always get worse), he blew into my office.

“I’m looking for Wade Wilson.”

I couldn’t stop the curl in my lip at that name, rasping out of this stranger’s mouth like a blunt knife through bone. The name of my… lover, I supposed.

The man grunted, eyeing my office, craning his neck up to peruse the titles on my shelves through a thick cloud of cigar smoke. My senses tingled low and scarlet under my skin, telling me something was wrong.  

Wrong with the prowling, animal way he moved. Wrong with the heaviness of his step, straining the floorboards more than a man of his stature should have. I had to fight the itch in my wrists, fight the instincts that hissed at me to web him before he made the first move.

“Haven’t seen him in weeks,” and I wasn’t lying.

Something must have come through in my voice. Some thread of hurt; the tiniest hint of fondness. He snorted.

“You’re Dickie’s kid, right?” and I jolted up, hearing scarlet in the blood that pumped in my ears, prepared for the attack —  

 — an attack that never came. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t moved, but I had, and in that movement I had revealed everything.

“Who are you?” I whispered, through the buzzing klaxon in the base of my skull.

“He probably would have called me Jim.” 

He stepped forward, the light and shadow from the streetlamp cutting a gash across his grizzled face, and I froze, the image of a wartime photograph forever burned into my brain. Wade and Dickie and Francis, children with guns. Stryker, pulling the strings on his child soldiers. And to the side stood a gruff man, older than the children (“Older even than Stryker, maybe,” Wade’s voice echoed, unbidden and unwanted in my ears).

He saw the shocked recognition in my eyes, and his shoulders shook with silent satisfaction. He smiled, and there was no joy in it.

“Howlett. James Howlett, PI. But around here, most folks call me Logan.”