The pasteles are, as always, delicious. The plantains perfectly green, the sofrito with the right amount of bite, the pumpkin ripe despite being out of season. Rio Morales has never failed to make Miles eat three times the proper serving with this meal, and her streak is continuing.
Miles shovels a full one in his mouth, swallowing all attempts of his throat to begin choking because of all the ways he could die, suffocating on food is the most embarrassing, and so he simply won't allow it to happen. Rio rolls her eyes and passes him a napkin. He takes it with only a slight heat to his cheeks.
"It's delicious," he defends, which is a terrible defense, because they've got the same food and neither of them are choking. Judging by Jefferson's raised eyebrow, that argument is noticed and dismissed.
Miles sinks a bit into his chair and cuts the next one in half.
"They're not going anywhere," Rio says, eyes curling up. Miles chomps down another and pointedly does not look at her. "Take your time, papi."
"I am," he mutters, and cleans through the rest of his plate in two bites.
Jefferson rolls his eyes and Rio snorts, a welcome sound in the winter chill that their heating unit can only take so much edge from, and Miles sticks his tongue out at them. See how they feel when he–
His phone buzzes.
Silent, no audible chirp, but it's second nature for his eyes to flick to the stove, where 6:00 blinks with quiet anticipation. He shuts off the alarm with a brush of his fingers.
The conversation dies a hesitant death.
Miles tries for a grin, but it probably falls a touch flat, judging by Rio's face. "Sorry," he says, and he's apologizing for more than just leaving early, he thinks. "Time to– I'll be back in a bit, alright?"
"Before eight," Jefferson puts in, as is their own back-and-forth; Miles tends to finish pretty early anyway, but he's got to go to Visions tomorrow, and they're sticklers for a proper night of sleep. Which. Probably a good thing they don't know what he gets up to on the vast majority of nighttime hours.
There are pros and cons of living a double life.
But that's a question for later, when Miles can bitch and moan about it to Ganke with no intention of ever finding an answer, so for now he just bobs his head, grabs his plate, and pushes away from the dinner. He rinses off the last of the pork filling, sets it in the dishwasher, and tugs one of his thicker jackets on from its hanging peg near the door; then he's stepping out, locking it behind him, and making for the stairs. A quick hop and a jump with his spider strength—the building barely gives them AC in the summer, there's not a chance they'll ever put security cameras in the stairwell—and he's at the door.
He pauses for a second. Raises his hand, splays it over the latch, stares at that.
Then he pushes through, and he's on the roof.
It's December, so the sun's already set, but New York has a wonderful habit of catching sunlight and trapping it in every available square of concrete until it's hearth-warm and melting away the snow even in the dark. There are a few piles scattered around, fragile-bodied flakes drifting beyond from stray clouds, but Miles has two jackets on and a mission, so he's fine.
It could be one of those brick-cold days, where icicles freeze under your nose and exhaling hurts, and he would still be here.
Tradition, after all.
Miles pads forward, seventeen steps, and looks up at the mural.
There's a streak in the upper corner, a bit of erosion since last week; he'll touch that up next time, when he's got his cans with him. Or, well. The cans that he lets Jefferson know about. The many, many others he keeps hidden are tucked under his bed at his dorm, where his dad's much less likely to find them. But next week, it'll be easy to take… azure, he thinks, and sharpen up the line of the leftmost spike. Have to keep it looking nice.
"Hey, Uncle Aaron," Miles says softly.
The man smiles down at him, like always.
"It's been a year," he offers as an opener, because it's the only thought running through his head, has been for what feels like forever. This little ritual is just that—a ritual, but today's date is, well.
Important.
Rio and Jefferson had floated the idea, gently, of giving him the urn, but he didn't want it. There's something about a location to go to; they couldn't afford a cemetery plot in Green-Wood or anything like that, so cremation it was, but this mural feels more important. More meaningful.
So, a year after his uncle's death, Miles goes to the roof and looks up at his smiling face.
He sits, bracing his weight on his palms and kicking his legs before him. He has to crane his neck to keep looking at the mural, but that's nostalgic in its own way; with his growth spurt, he now gets to look people in the eyes. This is a return to the old that isn't unwelcome.
Most of the time. He really does appreciate being taller.
"Physics is going well," he ticks off, drumming his fingers on his knees. "We've got a group project coming up, and my partner—Althea—is already organizing meeting times. Which, uh, is a little worrying, since my schedule has been terrible recently. There's been this new villain in Williamsburg that's been impossible to catch; I've been going at least twice a week and she's still kept out of sight. I think Althea's going to end up doing more than me, which sucks, but I'll do my part. I always do."
He huffs a bit of a laugh, leaning back, batting lazily at snowflakes with a free hand. "Spanish is going… not great in comparison. They're still teaching us Castilian, and man, if Mamí ever hears what they're using, she'd pull me out of Visions entirely. At least it's the best class to skip for Spiderman things, since I already know it."
The mural smiles down at him. Don't give your ma a heart attack, he imagines, deep and warm with a hand on his shoulder.
"It's hard, though," he admits, in the way he never will to his parents. "I don't have enough time to study like I should, and Ganke lets me borrow his notes but he's got, like, the worst handwriting imaginable and I don't want to ask him to tell me what he wrote since he's already letting me copy off his notes, so. I end up missing a lot. Sometimes I think it's just dumb luck I've made it as far as I have."
Nah, man, he can almost hear. Not 'bout that; where's your drive? Getting there was all you.
But then, somewhere off in the city, a motorcycle revs—claws scrape through metal—the voice modulator bites and growls–
Miles squeezes his eyes closed. "Shut up."
There's no response, of course. Hard to say something when you're dead.
He opens his eyes, bare slits in the dying light left behind by the sun that's long-since fallen beneath the horizon. It's just Aaron. There's no motorcycle, no claws. Just his uncle, smiling down at him, framed by initials and blue-yellow streaks. That's it. That's all there ever is.
"Shut up," Miles hisses again, even though no one's talking. His hackles rise, staring at the mural, staring at the unchanging smile. "You're– the Prowler's dead, alright? He's dead."
Snow swirls before the paint.
"He's dead," Miles says, and it's stupid, because it sounds like he's trying to convince himself. But he doesn't need to. There's a proper official medical record saying that's true. The Prowler and Uncle Aaron, both dead, both gone.
But there's only one urn.
Part of Miles died with Uncle Aaron. But part of him died when Uncle Aaron became someone else.
"It's just–" Miles grabs at his hair, forcing himself to stare directly into the mural's eyes, burning the image into his retinas. "You put bandaids on my knees which I slipped. You read me bedtime stories when my parents were out. You showed me places to tag. That's– that's you. Nothing else."
Uncle Aaron keeps smiling at him. He doesn't do much else, these days.
Miles looks at him, and he feels his heart skip, and he hears the sound of fighting, and he sees the jagged outline of a purple-black cape.
Then he can't see anything, because tears splash uselessly down his cheeks.
Uncle Aaron wasn't perfect; Miles knows that, knew that. Spent some time in prison, worked odd jobs because of it, never really reconnected with his brother after all those years. He was a thief, Jefferson had said, when Miles was young and innocent and didn't know criminals existed.
But a thief isn't the Prowler, and a thief isn't a murderer.
Miles doesn't want to. But sometimes he lays there and wonders what would have happened if he had been just a bit slower, if his hands hadn't unstuck from the subway ceiling; would the Prowler have stopped? Or would he have completed his mission?
Would Uncle Aaron have?
Were they different?
He wonders. Then he wonders why he has to wonder, when he should already know. And then he confronts the fact that maybe he doesn't know, and that's a pain that aches worse than any clawmark or gunshot.
"He's dead." It's barely a whisper.
What isn't said is so are you.
Miles hates the Prowler. He hates him for helping Kingpin, for attacking Peter Parker, for trying to kill him.
And he hates him for turning Uncle Aaron into someone else.
He stares up at the mural, at his own penmanship, the three-prong crown overhead. Rest in power. Uncle Aaron smiles, always does, warm and bright and two-dimensional.
"I wish you weren't dead," Miles whispers, and it's true. It's more true than anything he's ever said.
But.
It's not the only truth.
"I wish you weren't the Prowler."
New York hums and bustles around them, snow picking up in evening winds, subways rumbling and cars screeching to honking stops. His webslingers bite into his palms.
Uncle Aaron smiles down at him. He only smiles.
"It's been a year," Miles says helplessly.
There's no response. There never is.
Miles knows that, now.
Next week, he'll come back, and he'll touch up the mural and make sure it still looks as new as the day he did it. He'll leave dinner on Sunday early, say goodbye to his parents, and disappear back up to the roof where he can just talk.
Everyone who knew he's Spiderman is either dead or gone—gone to Florida or gone to other universes, impossible to access, impossible to ask. Maybe Princeton will help him to get there, though he hasn't worked up the courage to ask his parents yet, but Miles has no one else who knows and he just– he needs someone. He needs to talk about it, in the way he can't with the joking attitude he keeps with Ganke or the shuffled awkwardness with Mrs. May. He had someone, someone who understood, someone who knew, and then–
And then they jumped through the collider, and Miles is alone.
So he comes to the mural of a dead man, and he talks to someone who can't talk back.
Uncle Aaron would know what to say. But Uncle Aaron is also the Prowler, and maybe Miles doesn't know what that means anymore.
There's no time for that, though. So he stands, brushing snow off his jeans, tugging his jacket back over until the sleeves hide his hands. It's cold and he's feeling it, fingertips numb, and he hasn't looked at his phone but he thinks he's been here for longer than he planned. His parents might be worried.
"Next week," he says, and his voice comes out tired. He's tired. "I'll tell you about that physics assignment, alright? And if I manage to catch that villain." He scrubs at his face. "See you then."
New York echoes hollowly around him. Miles heads inside.
He stops in the doorframe and looks back—Uncle Aaron is still there, still smiling, still unchanging. There is no sign of the Prowler beyond the jagged spikes of the backdrop that could, maybe, be his cape. They could be only decoration. It could be nothing.
For everyone else, he's just Aaron Davis, and that's it. Uncle Aaron, smiling, no Prowler in sight.
Miles misses him.
Stays missing him, still.