The crypt wasn’t quiet that night. After Peter had delivered two new multiverse men – the man made of electricity and the man made of sand – there had been an air of constant bickering. The electrical man – Max Dillon – kept going back and forth with what Ned had previously called a dinosaur, the man with the tentacles and the ridiculous name occasionally weighing in on their discussions about human evolution. Biology had never been MJ’s strength, and the lizard kept going on about complicated equations that were supposed to describe the way in which he had altered his own DNA. If either Dillon or Octavius was unable to follow his longwinded explanations, they did not make it known. Silent throughout it all was the sand dude, who had introduced himself to the others as Flint Marko. Still, there would be no sleeping tonight.
“-cannot be saying that we should all turn into lizards again. Honestly man, I get it, it would make us tough, but who would want the scales and all that?”
“They’re a valuable improvement in our strength, not a hindrance,” the lizard said. A voice that human coming out of a mouth like that was not something MJ could easily grow used to. “Your body would be immune to bullets, you would be untouchable.”
“I shoot electricity out of my fingers, I’m already pretty untouchable.”
“If any of you were untouchable, you wouldn’t be here,” MJ said, in hopes of drawing a line under their endless discussion. Ned had fallen asleep hours ago, snoozing throughout all of it and leaving her to deal with this. She wasn’t as resentful as she should perhaps be, but she did wonder how he could sleep in that uncomfortable chair, and more so how he could snore through the near-shouting in the acoustic dungeon. The air was chilled due to the winter situation going on upstairs, and even wrapped up tightly in her cardigan, she still could not find respite. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get any rest either way until Peter was safely in her arms.
Octavius stared at her intensely, and for a moment she thought he might argue with her. Then his shoulders sagged, and he looked away. The lizard – Connors, she had to remind herself, it would do her well to remember that these people were just… people – grinned a wide set of teeth at her. Where she found the courage to stand up to these men, she didn’t know. Probably in the strong magic glass between them.
She had their attention now. Might as well use it. “Look, it’s 3 am. I know I’m not getting any sleep tonight, but if you want to get some rest, now is the time.”
“How convenient that this cell comes equipped with a nice, warm bed, then,” Dillon said, a sneer on his face. “How do you suggest we sleep here?”
“I’m not suggesting you sleep,” she said, shrugging simply. It was not as if she had a nice, warm bed either. If she had to curl up on a chair for relaxation tonight, then they could very well sleep on the floor, if sleep was what they wanted. Peter had called her practical for a reason. The situation wasn’t ideal, and it wouldn’t be.
“Then what are you suggesting?”
“Shut up?”
There was complete silence in the room, for the first time since she had arrived in Strange’s mansion.
“I second that,” Marko said, eyeing the others in the room. “I’d like to get some sleep.” His unspoken words hung in the air. Who knows when we’ll get the chance again.
Dillon moved to protest, but then seemed to think the better of it. “Fair enough. I suppose you need your beauty sleep,” he said markedly, and MJ narrowed her eyes at him. He held up his hands and stepped back, sitting down against the wall of the cell and closing his eyes. A long sigh escaped from his lips. “It’s been a long time since I slept.”
They all looked it. They had been crashed into this universe without a choice, some mid-battle, about to die. MJ couldn’t imagine that they were in the best physical condition. Peter never was after a fight. Sheer adrenaline had probably kept them on their feet, but they had to be tired. She was tired, and all she had done was scour the internet for mentions of a green elf all day.
Marko followed suit as soon as Dillon decided it was time for a break, his semi-solid form losing a bit of its defined shape as he sat down. Connors, too, curled up in his cell, seemingly not too uncomfortable by sleeping on the ground. She wondered if he had done it before.
The only one who didn’t sit down was Dr Octavius, who stood silently in the middle of his cell, his tentacles hovering motionless around his body. She was struck by how tired he seemed, clear bags under his eyes. The lines in his face told her he wasn’t a young man anymore, and she wondered how anyone over forty could even afford to be a supervillain. She couldn’t see if he had shut his eyes; the glasses obscured them. Maybe this was his way of resting, simply standing there. Maybe he just couldn’t sit or lie down with the tentacles. She could see how that would be difficult. Or maybe, like her, he didn’t trust any of them enough to sleep.
MJ sat down on one of the chairs, twirling a pencil around and keeping half an eye on the men locked in the underground prison. Time passed slowly as she anxiously awaited Peter’s return. She knew she should probably be looking for signs of the elf. Peter was working right now, and probably hadn’t had a single break. But she was only human, and she felt tired to the bone. Every now and then, she threw a glance at the little contraption that indicated that Octavius’s tentacles were still disabled. Just to be sure.
“I can’t use them.” Octavius’s voice rang through the crypt, and startled MJ out of her thoughts. He wasn’t looking at her, but there was no doubt he was speaking to her.
“Okay,” she said, unsure why he had spoken all of a sudden. As soon as Peter had left, he hadn’t directed a single word to her or Ned. Ostensibly, he had been focusing on the conversation between the adults. It hadn’t escaped her notice that while he had been weighing in occasionally, he had spent most of his time looking around the crypt, carefully analysing his cell and his surroundings – whether for signs or weakness, genuine interest or sheer boredom was anyone’s guess.
“You keep looking at that thing,” he said, motioning to Peter’s apparatus with one of his human hands. “It’s not changing.”
MJ slowly rolled her chair into the man’s direction, careful not to disturb any of the others, and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was trying to comfort her. “Do you mean to tell me not to worry about the dude with four metal arms in the wizard’s dungeon?”
Octavius scoffed, exasperation visible in the lines around his mouth. “You said it yourself. We’re not invincible. And whatever your friend has done to my actuators, I can’t change it from his prison cell.”
So he had been inspecting the place for a way out, after all. She found that she couldn’t blame him too much. It’s what she would have done too. And he was right, of course. He was powerless, and after the time she had spent with Spider-Man, she was no longer intimidated by stuff that, frankly, should scare the shit out of her. But if he truly wanted to scale down his intimidation levels, she did wonder… “Why don’t you take them off, then? I mean, I can’t imagine that it’s comfortable.” They had to be heavy. If Peter was to be believed, the tentacles were solid, which means he was carrying at least her entire body weight on his back, and maybe even more. Sitting down, not to mention lying down, had to be impossible with those attached to his body. “You might actually be able to get some sleep.”
To MJ’s surprise, Octavius laughed at that. The sound was mirthless, and for the first time she thought she might actually feel a touch of fear at his demeanor. Or perhaps she just felt stupid. “What’s so funny?”
“I can’t take them off,” he said indignantly. He adjusted his tone, as if he were speaking to a small child. She found that she liked it more when he treated her just like the other adults. “They are attached to my nervous system.”
“They are… I’m sorry, they are what? Why would you do that?”
“Such insolence!” Octavius’s voice dropped to a venomous hiss, his eyes appearing a darker shade behind his glasses. “We don’t need to answer your curious questions.”
“I mean, you’re the one who started talking. I was quite happy over there,” she said, and she gestured to Ned’s sleeping form.
Octavius moved his head as if physically trying to shake a thought. MJ was ready to move back to her spot behind the desk, when he spoke again, his voice soft. “It wasn’t on purpose. It was supposed to be temporary, but they melded to my body during an experiment. So I can’t take them off.”
His anger had dissipated completely, and his head was bowed once again. He went from absolutely terrifying to a humbled old man. Perhaps he was the most dangerous individual in the dungeon after all. Dillon and Connors were volatile and explosive, surely, but at least they were predictable. This man was anything but that. “Do you want to?” she asked, against better judgement.
He wasted no time answering, a bit of snarl returning to his voice. “No, we don’t.”
“They could be taken off, though,” she said. “I suppose if someone were to cut them off–”
“I would be left with immeasurable pain. They are attached to my nervous system, after all.”
“How would you know until you’ve tried?”
Octavius paused for a moment, breaking eye contact with her and quietly muttering to himself. No, not to himself. Was he talking to the tentacles? “They tried, in my universe. They died.”
“Oh,” MJ said stupidly.
“We didn’t mean to kill them, we just… We tried to protect ourselves.” He spoke quickly, his voice taking on a frantic quality, and he bowed his head once again, his eyes closing in apparent pain. All these people had issues, of course. But this guy had issues.
“Relax, it’s not as if we’re going to persecute you here for crimes committed in another universe.” Still, she wondered just how many people he had killed. How many the tentacles had killed, and if there was even any distinction between the man and his octopus-like limbs. An idea came to her. “You are talking about we. Is it like – are the tentacles actually part of you? As in, I get that they’re attached to your body or whatever.” Just trying to imagine how that would physically work gave her whiplash. “But are they also in your mind?”
“They are part of my consciousness, yes.”
“So it’s like…” She carefully considered her words before she spoke. “It’s like you have four extra arms, but also four extra voices in your brain?”
He frowned, like he had never quite considered it before. “I suppose.”
“Shit,” she said. It had occurred to her that perhaps he was not entirely sane before. Considering Octavius’s revelation, it was a miracle that he could string one comprehensible sentence after the other.
“Maybe take a leaf from your own book, Michelle,” a voice suddenly piped up. Dillon turned his head into their direction and opened his eyes. “Kindly shut the fuck up.”
Octavius once again bowed his head, conceding to Dillon’s request easily, and MJ stood up from her chair, ready to drag it back to the table. “Try to get some rest,” she said softly, before turning away.
“There is no rest,” he said, and she understood him now. To him, it was never quiet.