Say Something
The motorcycle Uncle Aaron drove them back to his apartment with was fast. Fast enough that Miles flinched whenever they made any sharp turns through the alleys of Brooklyn. The man kept his bare hands over Miles’ as they both held the handlebars but the imbalance he’d been feeling since he woke up this morning was threatening to overwhelm him. When they stopped, Miles didn’t register his Uncle lifting him off the bike until he was placed on his feet. He stumbled the second he was let go of and Aaron bit out a curse as he caught his nephew by the shoulders and gently eased him into a sitting position.
“You good?” He asked, hands shifting over Miles’ frame as though he was feeling for some life-threatening wound. Miles blinked twice, hating the feeling of his clumpy lashes sticking together, and responded with an honest, “Hell no.”
Uncle Aaron sighed and Miles wanted to laugh at the familiar noise but it was as if he’d never been capable of laughing at all. “Just give me a minute, man, I just gotta hide the bike and I’ll take a look at your ankles when we get inside, you hear me?”
He swallowed, saliva iron tinted from the blood still sluggishly dripping from his bitten lip, and nodded once.
“Miles, you can’t shut down right now,” Uncle Aaron said, the mask he had put back on during the ride had deepened his voice and Miles twitched when the man leaned closer.
“I’m not,” he defended weakly, “I’m not…shutting down. I heard you.”
“Your eyes are unfocused.” Uncle Aaron pointed out. Miles knew the man was worried, deep down he knew that this whole night was just a cosmic mistake, that if Uncle Aaron knew he was there he wouldn’t have listened to Fisk. But it happened anyway and now his usual explosion of emotions and thoughts was gone. He was numb.
Uncle Aaron covered the bike with practiced movements but Miles didn’t look in his direction until the dark boots were in his line of sight again. The whites of the Prowler’s mask were squinted as he observed the alley and Miles distantly remembered there being no cameras in Uncle Aaron’s building.
Probably looking for more witnesses, Miles concluded cynically. When Uncle Aaron’s gentle hands reached to lift him up he immediately felt a pang of guilt for even thinking like that. Tucking his face into the purple fabric of the suit, Miles sniffled and forced himself to focus on their trip up the fire escape stairs. The soft clangs Uncle Aaron’s boots made on the metal stairs sounded a lot less menacing than they did on the train tracks but that was probably because they weren’t chasing him down anymore. He squeezed his eyes shut, remaining still in his Uncle’s arms even when the man had to go through a quick struggle to fit them both into the window.
He was set down on the high-back leather couch in a smooth transition before Uncle Aaron disappeared into his bedroom, door closing halfway as the man shifted furniture around to go through whatever routine he went through to remove the Prowler costume. Miles didn’t want to catch sight of anything more so he kept his eyes shut and reached into his pockets.
His fingers brushed the override key.
He ripped his hands out of his jacket as a flash of one exposed eye, bright blue and pained, crossed his mind again. The owner of those eyes was dead. Gone with one heavy slam of Wilson Fisk’s meaty fists. God, Spider-Man had been squished like an actual spider and Miles hadn’t even seen it coming. The vigilante had always gotten back up, it was the motto that had kept him serving NYC with a smile for over a decade. And now he was gone.
He slipped a hand into his hair and pulled on the curls while his feet tapped against the area carpet. The pain in his ankles and the grip he had on his hair kept him grounded and for a blessed moment, the chaos of tonight left his mind. He could pretend that he was supposed to be here and not in his tiny Visions dorm room with his stranger of a roommate. Yes, he’d taken the Q train to Benson Avenue, jaywalked across the street, and then climbed up the fire escape by himself to peer in and see Uncle Aaron sitting on this very couch doing un-Prowlerly things. In this scenario, Spider-Man would probably be swinging around, hopefully in another borough, and Fisk would be doing…taxes or something.
Fisk would not kill Spider-Man, Spider-Man would not be fighting the Prowler, and the Prowler would not be working for Fisk. And Miles would not have the key to saving Brooklyn in his jacket pocket.
He tore the offending clothing article off of himself with shaky hands. The apartment was chilly and with a displaced pang of annoyance he realized the window was still open. He got up, shuffling on aching legs, and reached the window within a minute. He pushed it down slowly, eyeing the streets below as though Fisk would be taking a promenade down a street of irrelevant red brick apartment buildings in the middle of Brooklyn. A tingle crept up the back of his neck and he tossed his head in a unnatural movement to get rid of it.
Someone’s behind you, it whispered, demanding his attention despite his refusal to immerse himself in it. He dipped his hands into his red sweater pockets, pleased to make contact with nothing but his phone and the pieces of gravel that had gotten attached to it after dropping it in the tracks numerous times. Look behind. LOOK!
He turned his head, nibbling on his split lip and pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth when the newly formed scab opened again and soured his mouth with the tang of blood. “When you said you did freelance jobs did you mean engineering or did you mean that villain shit with Fisk?”
His uncle didn’t tell him to watch his mouth, didn’t twitch at the disbelief lacing his tone when he said Fisk’s name. It was almost like he hadn’t even heard Miles in the first place. “I gotta take care of your legs,” Aaron said instead of answering. Miles turned completely, finally shutting up his sixth sense but triggering another whirlwind in his head. His uncle…well Miles could see the cat-like grace his uncle possessed now. He understood where the ability to leap gates had come from. He understood why his Uncle was still able to pick him up without a single complaint.
A cat burglar, Jefferson Davis had told his son when Miles was still completely unaware of the fact that criminals existed. When he was unaware of what prison meant and why people go. Your uncle was a cat burglar and before you were born he got caught and he had to spend some time in prison.
The masked man was a cat burglar infamous for his lurking. It’s where the numerous ominous names came from. Multiple reports of a lean figure slinking around top floors one moment and then gone the next. All these sightings were accompanied by the loss of expensive items or top-secret company documents. And as the years went on, the masked man seemed to slip higher into criminal rings until he was classified as a villain. The dead bodies and various police chases definitely helped solidify the status.
Uncle Aaron had been caught as Aaron Davis in 1998 and spent three years in prison before being released on good behavior with a short parole. In 2004, Miles was born and Uncle Aaron had used freelance engineering jobs to stay afloat in a city that was still reeling from a terrorist attack. In 2005 the first sighting of a masked man fleeing the mayor’s penthouse passed over every PDNY police captain’s desk and sent the city into a frenzy again. The masked man could not be identified by voice, race, or DNA. He was fully covered, completely thorough, and seemed to have a special talent for terrorizing the upper-class citizens of NYC.
The night the masked man had officially turned into the Prowler was the night Officer Davis had stepped through the door with a pinched expression. He would walk past his son who was doodling animals over his kindergarten math homework, place his chin over his wife’s shoulder while she cooked, and whispered the story of a man found by the piers stabbed by a masked figure.
“The witness was saying the perp was prowling around the area, waiting for the victim, and then just stabbed him when he finally showed. It was like a hit was put on the-”
“Shhh, not around Miles, mi amor.”
He was plucked up from under his arms when he continued to stare at the man with an unreadable expression. A med kit, not unlike the one his mamá had tucked in the hallway closet, was spread open on the coffee table. Uncle Aaron was silent for a moment, taking Miles’ left foot and pulling his sock down so it rested underneath the claw marks before he started speaking.
“Yeah, I actually do freelance engineering work,” Uncle Aaron spoke lowly, “but when I told you I found the spot last night through an engineering gig, that…wasn’t the truth, man.”
Miles hissed when the anti-disinfectant was applied to the wounds, he lashed out on reflex and kicked Uncle Aaron in the knee. He didn’t apologize. “So…Is the truth that you were working for Fisk?”
“Yeah,” Aaron responded, holding a roll of bandages after he was done cleaning both bloodied ankles, “that particle accelerator has been Fisk’s main project right now, so…”
“So,” Miles repeated incredulously, “So? Spider-Man is dead and you tried to kill me too!” The bandages were being wrapped around the ring of claw marks. Gently. Precisely. It reminded him of the day Uncle Aaron taught him not to make his work so drippy. “How long have you been the Prowler?” He demanded.
Uncle Aaron shook his head, and for the first time since the tunnel, looked him in the eyes. “It started by stealing things, then over time it became more than that,” Miles hated the tears forming in his eyes, “it turned into contracts and then hits, and then Fisk heard of me and it was all over from there.”
“Do you like…killing people?” And Miles had probably committed his own type of murder when the question registered in Aaron’s mind. He placed Miles’ bandaged feet down and slowly put his hands on both sides of his nephew before he carefully considered his words.
“I killed my first target when you were 5. You wasn’t even a lil man yet, you were still just a baby, Miles. And my…employer knew who I was. Threatened to get the police on my ass and I knew if I got picked up again I wouldn’t be seeing you until you was grown.” He took Miles’ trembling hands and brushed his thumbs along the small palms, “I was pacing up and down them piers like a damn clown, but I got the job done. I did it, went home, and you were there so I needed to keep my head in the game. And y’know what the news was saying about it?”
“The suspect was described to be prowling along the length of the pier.” Miles quoted quietly. He never paid attention to the news. Could care less about the chaos going on in the city as long it didn’t affect his family. But somehow, 5-year-old baby Miles had paid attention to one of the most enticing news segments of the year and tucked it into his memory banks. Uncle Aaron nodded, a tired bob of his head before he glanced at the floor to Miles’ left.
“The Prowler stuck and before I knew it, I’m Wilson Fisk’s bodyguard,” an unsteady pause, “and his assassin.”
“Does he know who you are?” Miles pushed out, tears falling into his lap as he stared at their connected hands, “I ain’t hear him say your name so he can’t-”
“Nah,” Uncle Aaron denied, “after the first employer died, I made sure. I was always masked.”
“So, he ain’t gonna come looking for you here, right?”
“No,” Uncle Aaron frowned, watching him as he slumped back into the couch with a shaky exhale, “most he can do is call. Why?”
“I’m scared,” Miles admitted, pulling his hands away and hiding them away in his sweater pockets once again. “I was tryna tell you something important before…everything. And it- Spider-Man said he could help but he’s dead, and I don’t know what to do with them-”
“What are you talkin’ about, Miles?”
“That night we went to the tunnel, I got bit by a spider,” Miles admitted softly, head tossed back to stare at the ceiling, “and now I have…powers. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with ‘em, Uncle Aaron.”