Spider-Man movieverse fic: The Cost of Wearing Masks (22/24)

[seriousfic]

Peter wished he could call up a memory of his uncle, or his parents. Instead, all he could think of was the time in middle school when he’d had to climb a rope after eating what he’d been sure were bad clams the previous night. He’d looked like an anemic scarecrow in his basketball jersey and long shorts, his glasses thick and unwieldy.

The coach had told him to go up the rope – “hustle hustle hustle!!” – and he’d gone. But he’d kept falling off too. His hands had been slick with sweat and his balance had kept deserting him. The coach had made him keep climbing back up until it felt like he was climbing Everest; if he had gotten any higher, there wouldn’t be air.

Finally, he had faked his way into a trip to the nurse’s office. Aunt May had made a phone call to the principal’s office and the coach was slightly more forgiving from then on. But Flash and his cronies had never let him forget it.

Now he was dangling three hundred feet off the ground and he longed for the meager muscles he’d possessed back in middle school. They’d probably be more up for the job than the strained muscles he had now.

The pumpkin bomb’s explosion had knocked him backward, whistling through air until he’d glanced off a ray. The pain had been excruciating. Then he’d grabbed hole of the tip of the ray; sharper pain, he’d grabbed on with his burnt hand. He’d switched to his other hand and obtained a small respite just as the Hobgoblin descended toward him, holding Mary-Jane in the crook of one arm. With the other he sadistically slapped at Spider-Man as he circled around the dangling hero.

“You know what my dad's last words to me were?” Harry asked. His voice and face were calm in deadly contrast to the lunacy of his opened mask and the violence in his trembling body. “He said he was proud of me. He said I was his boy and that he was going to make up for losing sight of that. And then you killed him!”

“Mary-Jane, it’s going to be alright,” Peter said, weakly reaching for her with his free hand. “I promise you, I won’t let him hurt you…”

Harry savagely cut in front of him, the jets of his glider flaring volcanically. “Look at me! You took away my only chance to connect with my own father! Do you know how that feels!?”

“Yeah. I do,” Peter said quietly. He felt numb, ready for the killing blow, and only Mary-Jane’s terror kept him from simply blacking out. “Please, Harry. Let her go. Do what you like with me, but let her go.”

“Okay.” Harry let go of Mary-Jane. She dropped onto the glider and her feet lost traction on its curved surface. She toppled off until Harry grabbed her by her flame-red hair, making her scream in a mix of terror and pain.

Peter gritted his teeth, agonized. “Harry! For God’s sake, Harry!”

Harry pulled her back, burying Mary-Jane in his chest in a grotesque pantomime of comfort. “S’okay, MJ. I won’t let him hurt you anymore. He hurts everyone, you know.”

“You’re the one hurting me.” The tears in Mary-Jane’s eyes didn’t reach her voice. It was a beacon of strength that made Peter smile, even now. Thatta girl. “You can stop this, right now. You’re our friend, Harry. Come back to us.”

Harry petted MJ’s hair. He grinned ghoulishly when he saw how this made the line of Peter’s jaw set with anger. “I’m sorry, MJ. Sorry you chose him over me. Sorry for you. Because now you’re the enemy. And you’re going to have to suffer for his sins.” A nose-mounted spotlight traipsed over him. Harry shook his head and when it stopped his smile had gone from ghoulish to good-natured. He slapped Mary-Jane’s ass. “Say, MJ, have you been packing on the pounds or what? Here, Pete, take her for a sec…”

He gave Mary-Jane a shove and Peter wanted to close his eyes, block out the world, as he caught her with his free hand. He was acutely aware of every bead of sweat on his palm, the way Mary-Jane’s skin slickened against his. His glove had run ragged and he prayed to anyone who would listen that the remaining material would provide a firm enough grip.

Harry shot up, mask slamming shut, and fired rockets into the news helicopters. Mary-Jane screamed and hid her head as they exploded, like fireworks, slow-motion waterfalls of fire cascading down into the bay. Harry returned, smoke still trailing from the cannons of his glider.

“You think I’m a monster, Harry!?” Peter shouted. “Look in a mirror! How many people have you killed in the last week?”

”One less then I should have!” Putting the punctuation mark on Harry’s feral cry, blades shot out of his glider. They sat poised at Peter’s throat as Harry crouched over him, glider a smooth black emissary of death crushing Peter’s chest. “You’re a born loser, ‘Spider-Man’. You’ve never really won anything. Not even Mary-Jane. All you’ve ever done is managed to survive. And now you’ll fail at that too!” Harry backed up, the blades glistening in the moonlight. “But don’t feel bad. As you die, you’ll be able to watch Mary-Jane dropping in to join you. I’ll send for Aunt May next. I’m going to salt your earth, Peter… totally erase you from the planet.”

Peter’s voice was quiet, but firm. “Don’t do it, Harry.”

“Or else what? You’ll do what, exactly?”

“Whatever a spider can.”

Harry laughed so hard that his afterburners kicked in, jamming him forward so fast that when he buzzed Peter, the swiftness of his passage started Mary-Jane swinging like a pendulum. He continued his dopplering cackle as he flew around the crown, throwing out goblin grenades like party favors. Some exploded harmlessly, and some took out chunks of the statue, spritzing Peter and Mary-Jane with painful debris.

Peter looked down, wishing he could shuck his mask to let Mary-Jane see his face. “MJ. MJ, listen. I’m gonna have to let go of you.”

Mary-Jane’s eyes grew wide with fear. “No, don’t!”

He rubbed her hand with his thumb, comforting her as best he could. “I’ll catch you. I always catch you.”

“Please!” she screamed in denial.

“This is it, Peter!” Harry roared as he accelerated toward Peter.

“I love you,” Peter told Mary-Jane simply, just before he let her go.

She dropped, poised in mid-air for an instance, then snatched away as Peter forced himself into action. He spun up and forward, landing a kick right on Harry’s chin. Harry veered upward as Peter continued his spin around the ray, coming down in a crouch from which he springboarded up to ram the glider with his shoulder. Harry was knocked clear. Peter hung from the glider to swing a kick into the falling Harry, spiking him into the Lady Liberty’s crown. Harry fell right on top of Octavius and his feuding tentacles, screaming as the tentacles savaged him.

“Happy birthday, Harry,” Peter said as he kicked off the glider into a descent. He contorted his body to slide between two rays, then shot out weblines to pull himself down the statue toward Mary-Jane. She was still falling, trying bravely not to scream and distract him.

The air was soothingly cool as he plummeted. It caressed the skin that’d been exposed in his battle with Ock, brought forth a sort of serenity in him. He was catching up to Mary-Jane. It would all be okay.

He caught her up in his arm, feeling her warmth, the curves that filled out her slender frame. Capping the rush of adrenaline. He embraced her and shot a webline up. It hit the statue, but they were going too fast. The webline was ripped from his hand. Terminal velocity. He shot another webline. This time the masonry of the statue crumbled when their weight was applied to it.

“Uh-oh,” Peter said as he fired out more weblines, each barely managing to slow them.

“Uh-oh?” Mary-Jane echoed.

“It’ll be okay, I promise…” he turned, looked past Mary-Jane to the approaching ground. It was so close and so large that Peter could’ve imagined they were a crashing starship, about to be marooned on a planet of finely-manicured grass. “Hang onto me!”

Mary-Jane wrapped her arms around his neck. With both hands he shot webbing down, weaving a fast cushion. Ten meter below them. Spider-Man spun so that his back was to the ground instead of Mary-Jane’s, wrapped his arms around MJ, and braced for impact.

They hit. The sudden violence of it stole Peter’s breath, started little fires of pain throughout his body. He grunted hard and took the impact, absently wondering how hard they’d been going as he sat up. Mary-Jane was sprawled across his chest.

“Whew, that was a close one.“

She wouldn’t answer him. She couldn’t answer him. Her eyes were closed and her lips gently parted, as if in sleep.

“What’s wrong? I saved you, you can’t be…”

He tried to cast his mind back through the insurmountable gulf between now and when she’d been vital and alive and his. They’d landed. The impact had rattled them both, but he had the strength to take it. Mary-Jane… Mary-Jane was only human.

It was like the harm had passed through his invincible body and into hers, like an arrow that had passed him up to sink into her breast, or a burglar that had run by him to… no…

“Oh, God no… Don’t be dead, MJ, you can’t be dead…” He looked up and around frantically, half-expecting his aunt or uncle to be there to make everything better. Someone had to. He saw human forms moving at the edge of his vision, news people and cops and surely, one of them had to be a medic. “She's not breathing! Someone help!”

He pursed his hands between her breasts and began pumping, trying to restart her heart. “C'mon, wake up. You can’t be dead…”

Without a second thought, he pulled off his mask and gave her mouth-to-mouth. Her chest rose and fell. But she didn’t breathe, she didn’t live.

”No. No! You can’t be dead! Don’t you get it? I saved you… you can’t die…”

The whine of jet engines brought Hobgoblin down, close enough that the wash of his glider bent the blades of grass they’d landed on. ”Oh, but she can. Don’t worry, Peter, you’ll join her soon enough…”

Peter looked up, his face bare, something in him not seeing Harry as an enemy but just wanting solace from anyone, even the friend he’d lost. Even the murderer. “Harry… why? How could you?”

The Hobgoblin tapped his chin in mock-ignorance. “Whatever a spider can, eh? I guess a spider can’t catch!” He cackled insanely as he jetted back up the statue, criss-crossing its magnificence with his glider’s vile exhaust.

Hatred burned in Peter, like fresh gas flooding an engine. He pulled on the mask. It was good and warm and welcoming.

“Osborn…” he said.

And he jumped. Straight up. Grabbed onto the statue and jumped again. Ripping right through a ray to land on the stump he’d left.

“OSBORN!!!”

The Hobgoblin threw an RB bomb at him. It split into several Razor-Bats, which Peter disabled with a fine spray of webbing. Clogged, they fell harmlessly to the ground and quaked like broken toys.

Harry sneered as he drew another bomb from his bag. Spider-Man ripped a ray out of Lady Liberty's crown and threw it like a javelin at Hobgoblin, who blasted it apart with the pumpkin bomb. The explosion literally knocked him for a loop.

“Now you're getting into the spirit of things! But I'm afraid our final battle will have to be put on hold. After all, there's so many more people in your life who I can hurt. Your beloved aunt. That ditzy little neighbor of yours. And that secretary at the Daily Bugle you're always flirting with. Face it, boy... you haven't begun to suffer!”

He rocketed away.

Spider-Man watched him with hunter’s eyes. “That makes two of us.”

Comments

The_Lurker

[(Anonymous)]

Wow! Just...wow...
'He pulled on the mask.It was good and warm and welcoming.'
Nice. With 2 chapters to go, Pete won't cocoon himself up and become The Spider like in the Shrieking storyline, but the mask comment made me think of that.
'Osborn...OSBORN!!!'
Blade flashback alert! Lol It worked for Wesley Snipes, it works for Peter even better!
Your fic keeps getting better end better a chapter at a time. Why must it end? WHY??? ...and also...MJ! NOOO!!!!!