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mercurydancer · 9 months

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Burning Matches Pt 8

Wherein Everything is Terrible and Absolutely Everything Hurts

Warning Number One: Cannibalism is discussed in this chapter as having happened before. Quite frequently. If this is a trigger, TREAD LIGHTLY. There is also talk of Police Violence… both are non-descriptive and just talked about, but they are there. I don't know if I should tag any of these things, but let me know! Noir Peter's world is a FUCK, Ladies and Gentlemen, and we are still absolutely travelling along a similar vein as the comics.

“I…uh…love you all.”

It had been said so easily. Slipping out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying, an honest truth that had gutted him in a way that few things had. Torn him open to the core of his being even as he tried to deflect to the cube he still held in his hand. The cube had been true, too, but that had paled in comparison to the admission that he could sometimes still feel burning in his chest.

He had told himself, promised himself, that he wouldn’t get attached anymore. That he would step back and stay away and yet… The instant he had found others that were…that were like him, he had cracked. He’d cracked and he’d gotten attached and wound up spilling some of his guts in front of them like an egg. The only thing that kept him from crippling anxiety was the fact that he’d never see them again.

He wouldn’t put them in danger ever again.

The loneliness was shoved aside and pushed deep down into his chest, knowing that it wasn’t right to mourn for people that he shouldn’t have been with in the first place. It made it easier to sleep at night, strung up in his web-hammock wherever he could put it, making sure to check his office every day to see if anyone needed his special brand of help.

The cases his clients left would be stuck in the web that he left in the middle of the room, slips of paper, wrapper labels, whatever they could find that he would examine and choose who to help. That didn’t mean that he didn’t patrol, or he always took pay for the ones that were given to him directly (not that there was much dough to go around), but it kept him from being too closely involved with the clients. It kept him from being around people.

That wasn’t to say that he never interacted with his clients, or he didn’t spend time staking the joints where they agreed to meet him to make sure they weren’t trying to pull a fast one, but it certainly limited their interactions. It kept him safe.

It kept them safe.

For the first few weeks he was okay with this arrangement and this pattern. He was able to swing back into his routine with his usual grace, was able to keep avoiding the people that he knew would be better off without him and remain the ghost that he preferred to be. Almost an urban legend of the Great Depression, the Boogieman that came for you if you crossed The Line. The Thing that was always there watching but was something that you couldn’t get close to. Not, of course, that people hadn’t tried.

But all those people had died.

This knowledge burned in him, pounding in his heart alongside a breathed out “I love you all,” and he tried to keep that knowledge forefront. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t need anyone, that he didn’t want to have friends, didn’t want to have anyone he was close to. He tried to tell himself that he was okay like this, sleeping on the streets, wrapped in his uncle’s coat and a web, with just himself for company… He didn’t need anyone.

He didn’t need anyone. He didn’t need the Spiders who had looked at him with such understanding and such… He didn’t have the words for it. He had buried the words under layers of practiced apathy to the point where he had lost them.

The only thing he knew anymore was the burning.

At least it kept him warm.

The problem came in with the fact that Peter Benjamin Parker was unbelievably and holistically selfish.

The problem came in with the fact that anytime he was forced to interact with another client more closely, he was almost always unable to stop himself from getting attached. It should have been expected, really. He dealt with the people that Owed, the people that had Nothing, the people that were as Hard-Wrung as it was possible to be. There was a certain kinship that came from working with another in a situation like that, where a person was forced to provide so much of themselves in order to dig the other out of their hole that it didn’t take long until the one trying to do the digging found themselves burying themselves in there with them.

This had been the way with a certain Scientist and his Wife and Kid.

Curt Connors, a brilliant man who was studying…who was studying people like him. People like Peter. With a curse and power and… Curt Connors who gave him the possibility of a cure. Of something that could get rid of this thing that was plaguing him every second of every day, something that… Peter had jumped on that before he quite knew what he was doing. Peter had jumped on the opportunity to be a help to his experiments, to see if there was a possibility that some scientific explanation, some sort of scientific cure could be found.

In the process, Peter had gotten close to the man, had gotten close to Curt’s wife, Martha, and his son, Billy, the whole of them sweet and… So, accepting. They knew what he was, what had happened to him, and they still accepted him. They recognized the dangers and they knew the risks and still… Still. Peter had had a warm place to sleep for the first time since… He had had people that cared about him.

Martha seemed to sense the fact that Peter had nowhere else to go, it was her that first suggested that he stay with them. Billy had clung to him in a way that Peter hadn’t expected, until Curt had laughed and called him a hero. Billy’s hero. Peter had never seen himself as a hero. Not even with the others. But it was so nice. So nice to be with these people that were so kind and so willing to help, Peter in turn doing his absolute best to help them as well.

Peter should have known better.

Peter should have been paying more attention to what Curt Connors really wanted. Should have paid more attention to the way that he spent time on Peter’s healing abilities, on the way that any cut no matter how large or small would eventually heal. He should have spent more time paying attention to what all it was that Connors was studying.

They had given up on finding the origins of whatever it was that had bit him, but there had been talk of studying other known origins, other known possibilities, and…and… Fuck, Peter should have seen it coming.

Curt Connors was disabled. A WWI vet that had had his arm blown off, he had always found it hard to provide for his family. He had always been desperate to provide for his family all the same and had worked as hard as he could. But it was hard when you only had one arm, and in a time like this, when jobs were so scarce and competition fiercer… Even Peter’s contributions weren’t enough and considering that his time there was as limited as Curt’s current project as he still wouldn’t give them his identity, it left the family still in that fearful and uncompromising limbo. They were barely scraping by, and Curt was Proud. He was Proud and he was Smart, and so…so…

Desperate.

Curt made a Deal. He stretched out to Something, ignoring the research, ignoring Peter, ignoring everything that they had known and…

Reached.

Peter only realized what he had done when he found the remains of what had been his friend standing over the mangled half-eaten corpses of Martha and Billy.

Curt had both of his arms. Curt had none of his body, none of his mind, and none of his soul.

Curt, who had been there for him, had helped give names to what was happening to him, and been there for him. Martha, who helped patch Peter up, who had helped feed and support her husband and son as well as Peter, someone Peter had started seeing as something like a mother. Billy, who had thought the World of Peter, had looked up to him as something like an elder brother, someone that reminded him so much of Miles… They were all dead.

Peter really, really should have known.

Peter had fought against the Thing-That-Had-Been-His-Friend with the only goal being to kill him. It was too late for Curt. Curt was as dead as the wife and child he had eaten, devoured in a similar way by something wholly Evil. Something that promised the World and only brought Death. Something that took advantage of the desperate and the afraid and brought only ruin.

The battle had taken them across the city, Peter’s bullets not enough to penetrate the thing’s tough hide, and finally he was forced to get more firepower, diving into one of the speakeasies he had hidden a stash of equipment in. He had hoped it would have been enough.

Even with the Chicago Typewriter in his hand he had known it wouldn’t be, kicking the table over as the occupants ran away screaming.

That’s when They came.

They came.

Peter had stared at Them with his heart in his throat and that burning confession beating in his heart. Then he knew pain. Then he was weightless. Then he was gone.

When Peter came back, it was to the sight of Gwen trapped in the grip of that Thing that had been his friend. The others were otherwise pinned or out-of-commission, and Peter’s agony ratcheted up as he forced himself to crawl forward, intent on his gun. There was finally a chink in the Lizard’s armor. Finally, something he could use. He picked up the revolver, holding it out with agony in his chest, in his heart, in his mind, because they were here, they were here, they were here…

And pulled the trigger three times, the loud bursts of sound beating in his ears and drawing all attention.

Once for Billy, once for Martha, and once for Curt himself.

Peter collapsed before he could properly appreciate what was happening before him, and for a while he knew no more.

Peter was drowning. He was drowning and he needed to get out, he needed to get out, get away from all of the legs, all of the eyes, from the fangs… The sudden pressure keeping him from moving was reacted to with force. He fought against the tide, fought against whatever it was that was trying to keep him down, finally managing to flip them.

“Peter Benjamin Parker!”

The loud and sudden shout of his name froze everything in him.

Peter looked up, looked out, staring at this small woman that he had never seen before, a woman that… A woman that shouldn’t have known his name, shouldn’t… It took him a moment to realize why staring at her hurt his eyes. Why staring at anything hurt. It took him a longer moment to realize the person he was pinning was Peter.

He crawled away, pressing his back against the couch, fighting down the racing of his heart, of the panic trying to claw its way out of his throat. The agony that pulled across his chest was ignored, the pain in his back, in his ribs, in his head pushed back and replaced with one singular fact.

It was Them. It was Them. It was Them.

Peter wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be with Them. They talked to him, told him he was safe, that they were there, that…that it was okay, their voices blending together in a stream of comfort that he had no right to. It hurt him. His fingers tightened into fists, held against his chest, following the conversation enough to recognize that a cover-story had already been created.

They were Miles’ parents, they were in Miles’ house.

They wanted him to take off the mask.

Peter felt like laughing. He felt like screaming. The mask had stayed on for months, only taken off when he had to wash it, or chop his hair back and out of the way. The mask hadn’t even come off around the Connors. Then Jefferson Davis began speaking, calling him by name, introducing himself and his wife Rio Morales, the one that had stitched him up, the one who had taken care of him, and then introduced him to Miles. Peter listened to the way that he phrased that, recognizing that Miles hadn’t told them who he was, that he had convinced them that Peter had saved him and not Gwen.

For a moment Peter remained in limbo, listening to the promises and the thanks and the assurances, and once again proved that Peter Benjamin Parker was selfish.

Peter slowly removed his goggles. He wasn’t quite ready for the burst of color that hit him as soon as the protective eyewear was removed and counted himself lucky his vision was as poor as it was without them. If he had to deal with clear vision as well as all of the color, he thought he might go blind with shock. He couldn’t focus on anything, not just because of the blurriness but because of the smears of color that his brain didn’t understand. It wasn’t as bad as last time, the pounding of a headache didn’t follow, but it was still wildly disorienting.

He finally pulled off the mask, baring his face to the world in a way that it hadn’t been in… He licked his dry lips, nerves and fear burning in his stomach. When they asked his age, he immediately let slip the lie that he had for as long as he’d been turned at a very early 16. The looks of disbelief were surprising, the fact that no one else had thought he was a liar burning in the back of his mind, even as he hunched, and frowned, and finally spat out the truth with an irritation that he shouldn’t really feel. From there it was easy to fall into a rhythm of quips and light responses that were easy and above all, safe.

For a while he let himself believe it. Let himself be lulled into the idea that…that… He had missed them.

He had missed them.

But he loved them. He loved them and that meant that they needed to know. They needed to know what they were doing, who they were letting into their house, who they were letting around them. And above all, he needed to know. He needed to be sure…to be sure that the Thing was Dead, and that there really had been nothing more of Connors left.

“Did he change back into a human after I shot him?” Peter asked after they didn’t respond to the initial question. His head stayed bowed, his body-language as submissive as he could keep it. He knew that he was treading on dangerous ground, could see it in the way that Peter B stiffened. The way that Miles immediately turned his attention to his father, horror in his expression. He could see it in the way that Mr. Davis’ entire body-language and expression changed.

Mr. Davis stood up slowly, his eyes fixed and his mouth in a grim line, his shoulders rolling slightly. His feet moved farther apart, ready, his position at the moment as the tallest thing in the room gave him the most authority. The way the rest stayed crouched and didn’t do anything or say anything until he cemented that authority. It tried simultaneously to keep him less likely to react in violence, as well as to make sure they didn’t seem a threat.

Peter didn’t want to have to hurt Mr. Davis. He knew no one else did, either.

“When you shot him?” That simple question seemed to unlock Mr. Davis’ gaze, which flitted to Peter B and then to Miles, and then back to him. There was something like betrayal in their depths, something that let Peter know the others had fed him a story that wasn’t quite lining up with what Peter had just said. That was fine. He could still meet them in the middle in a way that kept everyone happy and kept Peter as far away from them as possible.

“Yes sir,” Peter replied easily, overriding anything else anyone tried to say, Peter B and Gwen both opening their mouths to respond before he could. Peter kept making eye-contact, a suspicion and a thought building up in the back of his mind with the dull warning of his spider-sense as Mr. Davis kept staring. He recognized the way that the other was looking at him. Peter recognized the way his hands twitched. “I shot him three times. I was trying to kill him.”

“You were trying to…” Mr. Davis was tense. His fingers twitched once again in a way that Peter recognized from his own fingers.

The reach for a gun.

“May I ask you a question, sir?” Peter asked, and slowly stood up, the carton of ‘orange’ juice in his hand, and his other balled into a fist.

“I think I should be asking the questions,” Mr. Davis started, and Peter spoke over him.

“If you ate your wife and your son would you want to live?” Peter asked, keeping his gaze locked with the other man’s, his jaw set.

Mr. Davis froze. “What?” he breathed out, the fight draining out of him at the suddenness of the question. Peter noticed the way that Peter B’s expression fell, horror and grief in the look, even as the rest of the Spiders either took a step back or put their hands to their mouths. Porker’s lower jaw fell all the way down to the ground, somehow comical while still being equally disgusting. They had all put two-and-two together it seemed.

“Would you want to live?” Peter repeated, turning his attention back to Mr. Davis, his head tilting. “Maybe you would, perhaps. I don’t know the intimate details when it comes to a relationship like that. I don’t know what anyone would really be thinking.” He let his voice trail off, knowing that there was no reason to continue.

�� There was a long pause, the other man staring at him, before his eyes flickered over to his wife, Mrs. Morales, whose hand was over her mouth, shock in her expression, and then over to Miles, who was staring at Peter with wide and horrified eyes. Miles looked over to his dad then, his expression edging towards gutted the longer Mr. Davis couldn’t respond.

“No,” Mr. Davis finally whispered, his voice guttural, almost choked. “I…I’d want to die. Is that…is that why you tried to kill him?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter replied easily. “Though Curt Connors…the man he was, was really already dead by the time he ate them. There’s no going back once you change completely. Providing, of course, that he really didn’t change back after I shot him?” he looked to the other Spiders then. Peter B shook his head.

“He didn’t change back, no,” Peter B confirmed, and his voice was thick with something that might have been grief. Peter idly wondered whether Peter B knew a Curt Connors and what his relation to the man was even as he nodded slowly.

“Good,” he took a breath, sucking it deep into his lungs, and breathing out the excess tension that Curt might not have been totally gone out with it. “Now, you’re going to let me go back to my universe, and you’re never going to contact me again,” Peter said.

“What?” came the immediate exclamation, shock and horror, and…Peter almost wanted to call it despair sounding from all of the Spiders. The hurt they were feeling was palpable, somehow visible even though he couldn’t really see all of their expressions. It was bad enough that he looked away, down at the thing wrapped around his wrist. It looked a bit like a watch, but not like any watch he had ever seen. The same watch was on every other Spider’s wrist, aside from maybe Miles, he noticed. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the watches apparently had something to do with how they had gotten there, and also why they weren’t glitching. He wondered when they slipped it on. He wondered how hard it would be to destroy it.

“You’re going to take me back and then I’m going to destroy the goober and…” Peter started repeating blandly.

“No!” Peni suddenly shouted out, interrupting his train of thought. “No! You can’t say that, you can’t mean that!” There were tears in her eyes he noticed, when he looked up, heavy awful tears, her nose beginning to run as she planted her feet, hands balled in front of her and head shaking. “You can’t mean that! I worked…I worked so hard to get us all together again!” She took a step towards him, throwing her arm around to indicate all of the Spiders, “I worked so hard to bring us back together because…because we’re family! All of us! I can’t…I can’t lose you! I can’t lose any of you again! I wouldn’t be able to take it!” She hiccupped, but there was anger in her expression, her arm lashing out and wiping away her tears forcefully. “I missed you!”

“You don’t know me,” Peter responded simply. “You don’t know what I’ve done or what I am or…”

“You’re Peter Benjamin Parker!” Peni beltedout. “You’re seventeen-years-old, you lost your Uncle Benjamin and you were bitten by a radioactive spider! You don’t know what color is, but you love it, even if it gives you a headache!” She took a breath. “You protected me, you were willing to die for us until you realized you couldn’t, you…you saved Miles’ life! You’re a hero! You…you got up even after that…thing sliced you open, and you shot him before he could kill Miles like he killed his family! We…we know enough about you to know that you’re a good person! We knew enough about you to know that…that you would have a reason for why you shot him! It’s the reason we were willing to let Miles bring you here! We…we trusted you, and you proved us right!” she wiped her face again, fighting against more tears, taking angry steps forward.

Peter didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything, everything caught up in his throat in a way that it never was. He couldn’t remember the last time someone talked to him like this. It was very obvious that Peni took this silence as a dismissal, or maybe even as a challenge. She took his free hand in both of hers, holding tight to the long white fingers that stood out in contrast to the delicate color of her own small fists.

“I’m not going to lose you again!” she hiccupped, still staring up at him in a way that made the tears that he could barely see before so much clearer. “You said you loved us! You said you…you loved us, and I never got to hear it.” She wiped her face, and Peter felt momentarily stunned. She hadn’t heard him. She had leapt into the portal before the words had come spilling out. “How can you love us if you want to leave us?”

“I need to leave because I love you,” Peter found himself saying after the silence grew to be too much, after the guilt that was the last thing he really recognized as an emotion burned too brightly. “I can’t be selfish anymore. I can’t stay here with you. I can’t be the one that hurts any of you.”

Peni’s eyes widened, shock in her expression, before her eyes narrowed, and she stared up at him. “You…you said the spider that bit you was magic…” she whispered. “Not radioactive.”

“Yeah,” Peter replied softly.

“You’re…you’re like the Lizard,” Peni managed, her eyes widening. “You…”

“No!” Gwen suddenly screamed out, all attention immediately snapping to her. “No! That’s not fair, you…you can’t be! You can’t be! It’s not fair!” She was looking at Peter like she had never seen him before, and Peter couldn’t read her expression clearly, but he could see that she was almost…afraid? “But you’re not! You…you’re…human! You look human, you look…you haven’t changed!”

“I haven’t,” Peter agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that I won’t.”

Gwen gave a soft sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, her hands going up to her face, even as Peni latched onto his waist, and Miles sat on the ground, his hands over his mouth, Porker having sunk into his own half-crouch, blue eyes focused and so…sad. Peter didn’t know what to do about the one who was holding onto him so tightly. He hadn’t been held like this… His arms remained immobile in the air above her, locked in the limbo of wanting to hold her, and wanting to keep her from getting more attached.

Why did this have to hurt so much?

“Wait,” Mrs. Morales suddenly spoke, holding her arms out as though she was trying to calm a raging beast, her attention on everyone around her. “Wait,” she repeated softly. “I…I have some questions. I have a lot of questions. I want…I want you to answer them.” She pointed to Peter. “I want you to answer them and tell me precisely why the one who saved my son thinks that he’s going to become some sort of monster. Did you make a deal?”

“No,” Peter replied softly. “I didn’t.”

“Then…why?” she asked, and Peni backed away at the statement. Peter’s heart lurched at the sudden lack of contact, missing her warmth immediately. “Why did you get your powers? If…it wasn’t because you made a deal, why would you change?”

Peter stared at her for a moment, biting at his lip.

“What’s your hardcore origin story?” Miles asked suddenly, staring at him, and Peter blinked.

“Miles,” Mrs. Morales hissed, but Peter found his lips twisting into a semblance of a smile. He remembered murmuring that when Miles began talking about his Uncle being a supervillain. His poor Uncle. “No puedes decirle algo así a alguien! Discúlpate ahora mismo, jovencito!”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Morales,” Peter said. “I don’t mind.”

“Rio,” she stressed, turning her attention back to him. “I…want you to call me Rio. And please, drink that juice! You’ve been holding it for so long!”

Peter blinked, before looking at the juice in his hand. “Oh. I forgot I had it.”

“Can’t you tell when you’re holding something?” Mr. Davis asked, the first thing he had voiced in a while, exhaustion filtering through the tone. Peter held his hand up, revealing the fact that he wasn’t really holding it, more his fingers were sticking to it.

“I don’t notice after a while.”

“…” Mr. Davis stared at that for a moment before shrugging. “Alright. Hardcore origin story, what is it.” His expression was still vaguely challenging, his eyes still fixed as though they could pin Peter to a wall. Or arrest him. Peter almost sneered.

“Jeff!” Rio snapped, and smacked him on his shoulder.

Peter gave another slight smile, before sighing and finally bringing the orange juice carton to his lips and chugging it down. It was a weird mixture of sweet and fragrant, something he wasn’t at all used to. It almost got stuck at one point, a cloying sweetness, but he forced it down. He wasn’t about to hack up free anything. He finished it finally, wiping the back of his mouth with his other hand, catching the stray beads of orange juice he had missed and licking them back up before he could truly appreciate their bright color against his white skin. Waste nothing, want nothing.

“We…have napkins, dear?” Rio put out softly. The endearment struck him in the heart, and Peter hunched.

“Sorry, I…”

“Great Depression, it’s fine,” Peter B interrupted immediately. “Totally get the habit. Sit, please.” Peter B gestured to the couch and Peter sank into it, watching as the rest sat around him, their eyes intent. He should really be leaving. He knew that the longer he stayed the harder it would be…

God, Peter wished he wasn’t so selfish.

“You…you said you lost your Uncle Benjamin?” Porker asked softly, eyes narrowed slightly.

Oh. They were going for the big traumas. That was okay.

“I did,” Peter responded easily, almost softly.

“Did you live with them?” Peni asked. “Were your…are your parents dead, too?”

“Dead and buried,” Peter responded. “Considering how they went…I should have known that my uncle was…or my aunt…” His fingers fisted and he suddenly found himself cold. He reached out and Peter B almost immediately handed his Uncle’s coat to him, wrapping himself in it and feeling in the pocket. After a moment of searching he pulled out his thrice-broken, barely-held-together-with-tape, round, wire-framed glasses, and slipped them on. He fought against the familiar stabbing in his skull for a moment as he stared out at them all, taking in the surprise in some of their faces, the shock in others.

They all had such color to them. Colors he couldn’t name, but wanted to, painting them all such interesting shades, so different, but so beautiful all at the same time. He loved it, the way they contrasted and complimented each other. The different shades of hair, of eye-color, even the way their skin changed. Smatterings of darker colors on light. Beautiful.

And yet it still gave him a headache.

“This isn’t pretty,” Peter whispered. “The only two constants in my life have been death and hunger. I didn’t want to…because it’s…”

“I’m sure we can take it,” Peni said, her eyebrows pinched. “It’s you. We…care about you.”

“If it’s too much…” Peter whispered.

“We’ll get you to stop,” Mr. Davis said, and Peter focused on him. Would he really.

“I grew up in Hooverville,” Peter finally said, biting the word out through his teeth. “When my parents were killed my aunt and uncle took me in.”

“Killed?” Peter B asked, his eyebrows pinched together.

“Murdered, maybe,” Peter shrugged. “I don’t know what you call it when a bunch of coppers were the ones that killed them.”

Mr. Davis jolted in the way that Peter had expected, Miles jerking his head in his father’s direction in a way that Peter had also expected. The horror immediately covered up by suspicion was also expected, and Peter had to force himself once again not to sneer.

“Why did they shoot them?”

“No good reason,” Peter responded easily, leaning back. “Unless you count the peaceful organization of a Strike a good reason.”

“But…” Mr. Davis started, leaning forward, eyes wide, that suspicion fading back to horror. “They can’t do that, that’s not…that’s not what the police are about?”

“Protect and Serve, right?” Peter asked, and when Mr. Davis nodded, Peter’s mouth twisted into another painful smile. “Well, the only thing they protect and serve where I’m from are the ones with the money.” He laughed, an ugly thing that he almost immediately tried to choke down. “The one’s who’ve got the money are the ones that need to be striked, and the ones with the money are the ones that pay the cops, and the…” He took a breath.

“My aunt and uncle were the same way,” he continued when no one else said a word, Mr. Davis looking distinctly upset, that horror he had originally seen the only thing left in his expression. “Always protesting, always championing some little thing. My uncle…he always used to say that ‘If there is too much power, then it is the responsibility of the people to take it away,’ and boy, did he try.” He let out another laugh and this one he couldn’t bite back. “He tried-he tried right up until the Goblin had him-he had him eaten alive!” He managed to bite out between cackles, his fingers balling into tight fists. “I was the one who found the body. He just left him in the middle of the room. Left him there to gather flies and…” he cut himself off physically, biting down into his tongue.

That was enough.

“Dios mío,” Rio whispered, her hands flying over her mouth. The rest had similar reactions, hands over mouths, skin turning lighter in some cases as the blood rushed away from faces. Peter Porker had turned a sickly color, but it was Peter B that stumbled to his feet and left the room. There was the faint sound of retching coming from the bathroom a short while later, and when Peter B finally returned after the sink had been run, he had an odd gray cast to his skin, his face and hair damp.

“He had him eaten?” Mr. Davis managed, voice soft and hard all at once, a mixture of something like horror and disgust in his face.

“I thought it was dogs at first,” Peter said softly. “It turned out later to have been a man.” Peter B looked like he wasn’t going to be the only one to get sick. Horror and disgust and… All things that Peter had seen before. All things that he had felt before. He was so tired. “But I think that’s what gave me the final incentive to realize that it didn’t matter what the fuck any of us did, unless something happened to them, to the people with the dough, and the coppers, and the convincers…nothing was going to change. And I wanted to be the one that did something about it. But I had no idea how. Until I met Ben Urich.” He sighed. “I’m not going to bore you with this part. Long story short, he became my mentor, until I realized he was taking money from the very same people that he was professing to hate. But I didn’t learn that in time. And I also didn’t learn it quick enough to stay the hell away from one of his operations. I walked right smack dab into the middle of it. And it bit me."

“What happened?” Gwen asked, staring at him, her eyes wide, eyebrows pinched. He could see the tear-tracks now that his glasses were on, see the desperation and the fear mixed with such deep weariness…

“Group of men working for the Goblin were bringing in an art piece. Never seen the like before or since. Some kind of tribal thing, but they never mentioned who, or where, or what. All I know is that one of the men dropped it and it broke and…spiders came out.” Peter’s voice hushed involuntarily, his fingers balled into fists, thinking back to that moment, the moment where hundreds of legs, hundreds of eyes, hundreds of fangs swarmed up the man who had been carrying the end of the crate, all of them biting and ripping and… “They ate him alive, screaming for help that couldn’t be given, and that’s when I noticed the spider on me.” He grinned, looking at the back of his hand.

“I couldn’t scream,” he continued softly, “they’d hear me, even over his screaming, and I couldn’t shake him off, I’d climbed onto a rafter, and if I moved suddenly, I’d fall… That’s when it bit me, and it was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life. I may have screamed, I don’t know. All I know is one minute I was in that warehouse and the next… I was in a web.” He rubbed at his face, pushing his glasses up, exhaustion settling over him. “I don’t know how to explain what I saw, not exactly. Just that I wasn’t alone. It was there with me.”

“What…what was there?” Peni asked softly.

“It. The God of Spiders, or…Spider-God, or…I don’t know what it is. I don’t know who it is. We tried to research it, Connors and I, which is…which is how I knew him, but we couldn’t find anything. No texts exist that detail what exactly it is, all I know is that spider bit me, and then it was there, and I…I definitely screamed then.” Peter kept his hands over his face, leaning back slightly. “‘Why do you tremble, little man,’ it asked me. ‘My bite brings death only to those of evil intent…’” he whispered the words out, forcing them out through gritted teeth, not even trying to mimic the words that had been spoken in such a way that they tore into his mind, his heart, his ears, his everything. Driven into his very soul like nails across a chalkboard. “‘I will bestow on you a greater torment… The Curse of Power’ it said, and it did. I woke up and I was cocooned in webbing. It was the most frightening experiences of my life, but I had power and I could help.” He took a breath. “I should have been paying more attention.”

“It’s a curse…” Rio whispered. “It cursed you.”

“Worse, it follows me, and I can’t…I can’t let it hurt you. You have to let me go.”

#spiderverse #spiderman #burning matches #rio morales #jefferson davis #peter parker #peter benjamin parker #peter porker #peni parker #gwen stacy #spiderman noir #spidernoir #i need y'all to understand that the original spidernoir comics were the bomb #and also terrifying to think about #i have a lot of fun with this #consider this a warning #still a lot of fun though #seriously though this is a warning #burning matches gets HEAVY

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