Variant Strain

- - -

The ride back to the Watson house had been quiet and uncomfortable. Peter was starting to get used to that kind of awkward silence. There was something sad about that.

Aunt May had driven. Peter had shotgun. The Watsons took the back seat. Anna had talked at MJ the whole ride, speaking in a low murmur that normally wouldn't have been audible from the front seat, but Peter's hearing had been a little too good.

He'd done his best to tune it out. He concentrated on the radio, which was blaring out some smooth Jazz station that Aunt May liked. Or trying to concentrate on everyone's heartbeats instead of Anna's comforting babble.

That was pretty much what it was. Peter had been a failure at distracting himself and unfortunately far too good at eavesdropping. There had been a lot of telling MJ that it would be alright. That her dad couldn't get to her anymore. That "it wouldn't be like back on Staten Island". Peter could tell Anna wasn't entirely convinced, but willing to talk herself into it. MJ simply sat there, stiff and tense. His covert glances up to the rear-view mirror showed her face was in that blank mask from earlier. In contrast to their earlier fury, her eyes just seemed... cold and empty. Lifeless.

He was glad he'd never played poker with her. No, that was a bad joke. She looked... beaten. Not literally. There had been some smudges where her cunning make-up job had revealed the bruises beneath.

She looked like someone ready for the chair, came Cletus's drawl. Memories of his fellow prisoners as they passed by his cell on the way to old Sparky rose up. MJ's face didn't hold the acceptance that death was coming as an inevitability. That was different. Those men had walked with a light step. They had no more worries of fears. Those men had embraced what was coming and in so doing had been freed. No more burdens. They'd let all of those go.

MJ was the other sort . The kind that knew they were going to die. Knew it as a certainty and wanted no part of it. But neither could they do anything about it. The terror chased the desire to live, that chased the hopelessness that chased the terror. Round and round and round.

All of that filling the heart and mind up to overflowing til there's no room for anything. It's too much to sort through at once so her face had blanked out, not sure what else to show. There was an echo in that too of someone who'd been taught not to show anything, because if they did... bad things would happen.

That's what it looked like in the rear-view mirror. Peter crossed his arms over his stomach and tried to keep the shakes down.

Aunt May gave him a concerned glance then, but he gave her a small smile and shook his head, murmuring back that he was fine.

The fight hadn't taken much out of him. If anything, he might even have enjoyed that bit of sheer physical contest where his life hadn't been on the line. Not a life-or-death struggle against monstrous things... just a brawl where... where it so happened that he completely outclassed his opponent. Why had she said that? Was the thought that she could use him to kill her father the only reason she'd wanted to hang out with him?

But he couldn't. He wasn't... well... he was a monster. But he didn't want to be monstrous. He had to admit to himself that he was a killer. No question... but he wasn't a murderer.

The Drago was just preemptive self-defense, his own voice sneered back. That was no less murder for having done it to something that dangerous. Maybe he could get a pass because it was practically reduced to an animal, but he had chosen to kill it. He had held it down and done what he needed to do, no matter how much he had hated it or hated himself for it.

Some things need killing. A gruff voice murmured. The Gentek security guard who'd become the Hunter, he realized. The one who'd given him his hand to hand skills earlier. The man who'd lost his name and most of himself when he'd succumbed to Jessica's allure.

The line he'd drawn for himself he realized, were the infected. They had to die. But Brian Watson for all that he was a drunken, abusive animal that deserved to be put down for hurting MJ and being a hateful waste of a human being... Was he any less deserving than death? He was dangerous too. Was he any less capable of causing violence and destruction just because he wasn't infected with Hydra?

Was Peter being unreasonable in hoping to avoid having to kill?

It would've been stupid to do it there, boy. Use your head, Cletus scoffed.

He found it odd that the voice of Cletus had piped up as the voice of reason until he realized why that thought had occurred. Cletus was an expert at killing people and getting away with it. His reasoning was obvious. Cletus had no objections to killing Brian Watson. In fact he was all for it. He just didn't want to get caught. The graveyard had had too many witnesses. He would've had to have killed everyone to make sure no one caught him. In the full daylight and in the open? It would've taken too long.

Another wave of revulsion ran through his body at that thought of having slaughtered everyone at the funeral. Or it was queasy hunger. It was getting harder to tell apart and that was another thing that terrified him.

He'd protected MJ. That's what she'd asked him for right? To protect her. He'd done exactly that, so where did she get off demanding a murder from him?

He closed his eyes and sighed. If women were all this complicated, he probably was better off with being a hermit. There was a bit of wordless acknowledgement from the Donna part of him and the impression that wasn't quite words, but more the idea: There's always men.

He shuddered at that too.

- - -

Peter had retreated to the bathroom almost as soon as they'd gotten back. He carefully stripped out of the suit he'd been wearing. Aunt May had made a point of purchasing it for him for the funeral. He hadn't had time to eat it and he was beginning to feel a little guilty about doing that to his clothes. As he set it aside, he stared at his reflection once more, his clothes reforming in a blur on his body.

It had been worrying him all morning. He realized belatedly that he'd switched out to nudity to take his shower that morning and hadn't actually fished anything out of his pockets first.

His wallet along with all of it's contents were perfectly fine. There was a damp, slightly tacky feel to the leather when he'd pulled it out, but it hadn't ended up like the dollar bill. IDs and everything still looked like normal rather than one of his bad photo-copy duplicates and he could drop them onto the counter with no problems.

The ring of keys from the Thunderbolt he'd knocked out in the alley in Manhattan. The man who'd been watching Ed Whelan's place. Anderson. That was it. It bothered him that he'd become so adept at violence that he couldn't even remember everyone he'd assaulted. As he set the keys down he remember the trick he'd learned from MJ and formed copies of the keys between his fingers out of whatever the plastic-like bone material he could produce. At least he didn't have to carry the keyring around. It made more sense to ditch them rather than carry them around.

The little plastic case that he'd put the scrapings from the side of the house and the hair samples from his shower however hadn't fared as well. What he'd pulled out of his pocket stuck to his hand and while the plastic case looked fine on the outside, opening it revealed an extremely biological goopy mess of tendrils within. It didn't have the Hydra smell. Not even the dead Hydra smell. It was just clearly all him. Not even the little plastic baggies had been spared. As he held the case in his hand, he shifted it and it broke apart into writhing tendrils before settling into his hand. He groaned. He'd have to sneak back to the house for some more samples and this time, he would make sure not to pocket it and hide it somewhere else until he could run what tests were he needed to do. He frowned at a thought and held his hand out. It blurred and he had a clear plastic baggie laying in it. The skin of his palm underneath the transparent material had gone the color of raw meat. Well, that's one more material available to play with, he mused. Then frowned.

He shifted to Cletus's jeans and hoodie once more, but this time instead of denim and polyester he thought of other materials. He knew the Hunters he'd consumed had been wearing scraps of their para-military uniforms. He was fairly sure those had been made of kevlar. He smiled as he felt the material covering him shift in feel to the tougher material. Well... hopefully that would help with any future bullets he'd have to take.

His own voice drawled, Anticipating getting shot again. When did life turn into an action movie?

He fished in his pockets once more and pulled out his phone. That at least seemed fine. The plastic case was sticky and he really didn't want to know what caused that, but everything worked. He frowned as he realized that there was a text message from an unlisted number and wondered how you would even be able to send a text without showing the originating phone number. The message read simply, "This is Hank. We need to talk." And there was a phone number with a Manhattan area code in the message. Which was also odd, since if the text had come from that number, you'd think that would have been in the text message's 'from' field.

MJ's anonymous phone came out last. It was also in good condition. He considered calling this 'Hank's' number with the prepaid phone. It could have been a trap of some sort. Whether the Thunderbolts or Jessica, he didn't know. Curiosity again. The same curiosity that send him into the Bellevue Hive.

He was about to dial when there was a knock on the bathroom door.

"Peter? Are you decent?" MJ's quiet, hesitant voice filtered through the door.

He stared, not sure how to reacted to the question. Actually not sure how to react to MJ period. She'd been nice to him. She'd listened to him. She'd been... friendly. But he didn't think he owed her a murder for that.

The door suddenly popped open and he flinched back as she poked her head in.

She was smiling, but it was forced. She looked tired. "Hi." She said quietly.

Peter's inability with small talk manifested once more and he grabbed at the first thing that popped into his head. "You didn't actually let me reply. Were you hoping to catch me naked?"

Her smile became slightly less forced and a small bit of animation lit her eyes. "You're naked right now."

He blushed hard and fought down the sudden, useless urge to cover himself with a towel. He was too distracted to stop her when she slipped entirely into the small bathroom and closed the door behind her. She was still dressed as she'd been for the funeral and her purse dangled from one shoulder.

They stared at one another, both trying to find something else to say.

"I could have sworn I locked that." Peter said finally.

"The lock doesn't work right." MJ replied, still quiet and pensive as she leaned against the door. "If you lean on it just right it always pops open."

"Ah." He replied as he took a seat on the closed toilet lid. There wasn't really room for him to go anywhere else unless he wanted to have the conversation from the shower.

Silence reigned once more.

Maybe trying to talk in the shower would've been more productive.

For all of Peter's cleverness with numbers, people remained one of those big mysteries for him. He licked at his lips as the silence stretched to a brittle and awkward length then finally decided that his best bet was probably to go with directness. He didn't know any other way.

"So... that was your dad." He made it as much a question as a statement.

MJ nodded miserably, unable to meet his eyes. Her arms had folded across her stomach, clutching protectively. "You should have stopped him." Her voice was soft but flat and lifeless.

"I did." Peter replied defensively. "Now the cops have him and--"

She looked up and the fury in her eyes silenced him. "And they're going to let him go. This isn't even going to be the first time the cops have taken him. He's going to get out and he 's going to be mad. Really mad."

Peter replied incredulously, "What was that earlier? His way of being friendly?"

MJ snarled. "No. No. He's going to be really mad. He's going to come back and I'm going to end up like mo--" She cut off sharply and looked away again. "He got away with that too." She continued, her voice dead once more.

Peter didn't need her to finish. "Why would the cops let him go?"

MJ sighed. "We're... we're well off. Money talks. And dad has... he knows people. He's got friends... some of them in the police. Some in the mayor's office. He's always been good at talking to people. He'll convince them it wasn't anything he did. He'll make them think MJ's just... 'acting out' again. And nothing's going to change." Her voice got quieter and quieter as she spoke. Her hands clutched harder at her stomach and Peter realized that the bruises on her face hadn't been the only ones she'd had. "He'll just be madder. So... he'll hit harder. And take... longer to finish."

Peter's expression grew hard, he wasn't sure if she meant it took him longer to finish hitting her... or something else, but he blurted out, "That's sick."

"That's what happens." Her voice was flat once more, but she seemed to catch the look on his face and she responded with a snarl, "You're going to call me a liar too now, aren't you?" Her eyes were blazing again and he wasn't sure he knew how to deal with her bouncing back and forth between surrender and anger. It was surreal.

Peter held his hands up in a placating gesture. "No. Of course not. I saw your dad. He's an animal."

"A rabid animal." MJ said, taking a step forward and putting her hands on Peter's shoulders. Her eyes met his and he couldn't quite reconcile this with the sweet, teasing girl who he'd spent the day with. "You know what you have to do with a rabid animal, Peter." She said, her voice was quiet and dead again, but there was urgency in it. "You need to put it down."

Peter gestured helplessly, not sure how to respond. Not sure what response he could give her that wouldn't set her off.

"You should have." She snarled out, but then she swayed and seemed to catch herself. Peter got back to his feet and helped hold her upright.

She chewed furiously on her lower lip. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I just... I don't mean to take it out on you." She said with a weak smile. The fury seemed spent and she was almost herself again. Assuming the 'herself' she'd been showing him yesterday was the real thing. "I'm... I'm really mad at myself. Not you. It's not your fault."

"It's... uh... it's okay." Peter said slowly and uncertainly.

"No, I'm... I shouldn't have tried to rely on you to do it." She said softly and seemed to be content to let him hold her. "When he showed up I was actually going to do it myself. I was ready, but I just froze."

"What're you talking abou--?" He began to ask, but she unlatched her purse and reached into it. She pulled out the handgun they'd stolen from the Thunderbolt.

It looked absolutely massive in her dainty little hand.

He stared and she nodded, tucking it back into her purse. He was stunned that she had it on her at all. His sense of smell had picked up on it, but he'd glossed it over. The unused gunpowder and gunoil smells had been there, but masked by MJ's scent. It frightened him that he could have missed that. Even more the thought that she had been planning on using it. She'd joked that hanging around him was dangerous, but he'd never imagined that she might actually have really meant to use it for real.

"I was so scared." She murmured, pressing against him and her warmth felt delicious considering how cold he suddenly felt.

"I knew I could do it. I had the gun. I just couldn't reach in. It should've been easy, but it wasn't... and I didn't mean that, okay?" She looked up at him, meeting his eyes and hers were clear but worried and tentative. She seemed even younger than she actually was. "I don't really expect you to kill him. I'm a big girl. I don't want to be a weepy damsel in distress." Her voice hardened and she clung harder to him. "I can do it myself."

She sounded like she wanted to convince herself as much as him. Peter swallowed nervously.

She looked into his eyes and hers glittered once more with that ugly hardness that he'd only seen in flashes. "When I do, though... can I ask you for a favor?"

"... um... sure?"

"You can take care of the body, right?" She asked seriously.

"You're asking me to help you dispose of your father's corpse when you kill him." He said very slowly and carefully.

She nodded solemnly.

He licked his lips and she mistook the nervous gesture for one of hunger. Her smile came back. Sweet and bright and beautiful.

Peter stared.

Then almost jumped to the ceiling when another knock sounded on the door.

"MJ are you in there?" Anna asked gently.

Peter expression turned panicked and he was all set to look for a window to exit out of, but there wasn't one. He briefly considered if he could fit into the air vent above him.

MJ seemed completely calm now and held onto him gently, "Yes, Aunt Anna. Peter and I were just talking."

Anna popped the door open and looked in, taking note of the light embrace the two teenagers had. Her expression was unreadable and Peter realized MJ must've learned it from her. "Just talking?" Anna asked gently.

Peter caught the wicked grin on MJ's face as she replied, "Well, I was just about to offer him a hummer in the shower to cheer him up."

Peter sputtered. Anna laughed just a little and he noted that she seemed relieved that MJ was cracking jokes.

Anna folded her arms with mock sternness and the motion did interesting things to her cleavage which almost distracted him from the feel of MJ against him. "Better not, young lady. We've got lunch in a bit and May's much more conservative than I am."

"Uh... that's true." Peter coughed, still a bit nervous.

Anna continued, her expression still mock stern, "Wait til she goes to bed."

Peter's expression was stunned. MJ began giggling. Anna couldn't keep up the expression and her face cracked into a smile.

MJ slipped away from Peter and gave Anna a fierce hug before she went up the stairs to her guest room..

Anna continued to regard Peter for just long enough for a blush to begin to form on his face. "I'm glad you were there, Peter."

"Thank you, ma'a-- I mean, Anna." He mumbled.

Anna said seriously. "I've never seen MJ bounce back from seeing Brian that quickly. I've never seen her take to someone as quickly as she's taken to you." She smiled and it was directed entirely at him. "You're something special, Peter."

His blush deepened and his words tripped over themselves. He wanted to tell her that there was definitely something wrong with MJ. That there was a gun involved. That her niece was planning on murdering her brother. He could tell her, but then MJ would feel betrayed, wouldn't she? Then she'd tell everyone about him. About what he could do.

He stood, stammering and blushing as Anna took a step into the bathroom and gave him a hug, which completely froze him. MJ Watson had been very nice... very pleasant... Anna Watson was... something else. his contemplation of the brief contact was cut off as she kissed him lightly on the forehead. "That's for protecting her from her father, Peter."

He swallowed nervously and he could almost swear the point of contact tingled and burned. She leaned in once more and kissed his cheek lightly and smiled. "That one's from me." She said and stepped back, her expression dark. "Brian was never picky about who he'd hit when he got into one of his moods. It was fun seeing you kick his ass." Her smile had come back.

Peter's brow furrowed as he interpreted that statement quickly. He forced his nerves to settle and simply replied quietly. "He won't touch you or MJ. Not while I'm around."

- - -