Chapter 2
Peter heard the crying from a few houses away. It was just on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen, and he had just passed it on the way to Double D’s place. It had taken him a second to actually realise what the noise was.
But when he finally realised, he had to resist the urge to hit himself.
Crying children, he found, either did it loudly, with tears and snot and red faces, or they did it silently, with heaving chests and huffing breaths, constantly sniffling and cheeks red from constantly wiping away the tears.
This kid, the little girl crying silently, couldn’t have been more than six when he found her in the alleyway. She was dressed in a ratty Dora the Explorer nighty, tucked in tight behind the dumpster. She was on her butt, with her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking gently, like she was trying to calm herself down.
He had moved the dumpster out of the way, and knelt in front of the little girl, making sure to lift his mask up over his chin so she could see him smiling.
It had taken her a minute to recognise him, but eventually she did, moving to stand in front of him, still wiping at her cheeks. They were red raw, her eyes bright with tears, but she looked less miserable now.
“My mummy won’t wake up,” she explained in a soft, shaky voice, like she didn’t dare talk louder. She pointed towards the half open door a few feet over. “I was shaking her, but she didn’t even tell me to stop, Spiderman.”
“Alright, Dora the Explorer,” he started.
The little girl giggled, and he smiled triumphantly.
“I need you to stay here for me, okay? Got to keep you safe, remember?”
The little girl suddenly stiffened. “No, I have to come with you.”
He tried explaining for a few more minutes, but with every word he spoke the little girl got more and more distressed, until she slid her hands into her ratty hair, fisted them, and started yanking.
With a start, Peter carefully pried her hands away from her hair, and conceded.
“Alright Dora, it’s okay. You can come with me. It’s kinda scary in there anyway, I’ll need you to hug me real tight, okay? So, I don’t get scared.”
The little girl giggled, and he picked her up, easily holding her on his left hip. Obligingly, she wrapped one of her arms around his neck, hugging him.
He stopped in front of the door, and toed it the rest of the way open, and the little girl squeezed tighter, now with both arms, and when he stepped over the threshold, the little girl buried her face in his neck, making tiny little sounds of terror.
His eyes adjusted quickly, and it became apparent why the little girl was terrified.
His own skin crawled as he stepped over the pale skinned, sunken eyed, red, and scabbed skinned junkies littering the floor of the hallway. Their mouths looked red raw, lips chapped and broken, the skin around them stretched with lines.
The floorboards were rotting beneath them, and the walls were covered in mould. It was worse in the rooms he peeked in as he walked down the hallway, the doors either hanging on a single hinge or missing entirely.
The den must be new, he realised distantly, making sure to hug the girl closer, keep her head buried away from the view. Double D hadn’t found it yet.
It was only when they made it to the end of the hallway there was a closed door, and the girl stopped making those soft, terrified noises, and went completely stiff and still. He tried the door, but it was locked. It was easy to snap, and he crept inside it.
The room was square and fairly large. There was a cigarette and money covered table in one corner, a half kitchen in another, with a door right next to it, tightly closed, and right next to the door frame where he was standing, was a single mattress, on a rickety wooden bed.
On said mattress was what could have been a corpse.
Peter swallowed thickly and forced himself to pay attention to the body. This must have been the little girl’s mother. Her hair was dark brown, but thinning dangerously, her arms were twigs, the skin between her ribs looked like it had been draped over and tightened within an itch of tearing, her hips bones were dangerously sharp, but what struck him the most was her skin.
On her inner elbows, her armpits, her upper lip, the underside of her breasts, her bellybutton, her inner thighs, and what looked like the underside of her knees were red raw, the skin so stripped in places it looked like the pores were bleeding.
At the time, the only thing he could even compare it to was that it looked like someone had taken a sander and carefully ground it down through the top layers of her skin, leaving the delicate flesh stripped below.
It was only the slight rise and fall of her chest that Peter knew she wasn’t dead. He thought perhaps, it wouldn’t be soon until she was. He didn’t even think she would last the night.
The back of his neck tingled, and he turned towards the door. It was open now and standing in place was clearly the only other sober person in the building apart from himself, and the little girl.
“The fuck? You bring fucking Spiderman here, you little shit?”
Peter gripped the little girl tighter. He knew he should have left her outside. “I don’t think its kosher to talk to anyone that way, bestie, let alone a foetus.”
The man was dressed in jeans, and a relatively clean shirt. He had the same dark brown hair as the little girl, his face pinched in fury.
The little girl began shaking twice as hard, and she sobbed hard into his neck. Peter chewed on his bottom lip. Definitely not kosher.
He shifted on his feet, relaxed his tensing body. He didn’t want to hurt the little girl.
The man slammed the door behind him, and stalked forward, one finger pointed at Peter. “Get the fuck out.”
“Yeahhh, nahh,” Peter said. The man got close enough and made like he was gonna shove him. Peter shifted the girl away from the man, and with one hand, shoved the man backwards, and shot a web at his feet.
The man cursed and snarled, face reddened with fury, eyes bulged out of his skull. Foam built up in the corners of his mouth, spittle flying as he raged at Peter.
All of this happened in perhaps just less than four whole seconds.
“Little bitch,” the man spat. He had wrapped his fingers around the paper-thin webs, and begun to pull, cutting into the flesh of his fingers until blood dripped down and spattered onto the rotted wood, staining it a dark brown, almost unidentifiable from its own dirty colour.
“Burn him, girly.”
Peter had moved next to the bed, carefully keeping the girl turned away from the man, and he almost missed the man’s words.
“Your mothers next if you don’t hurt ‘im.”
Except then the little girl, still shaking with silent sobs, lifted her hands and pressed them either side of Peter’s neck.
“BURN HIM, GIRLY!”
And the little girl, with her shaking body, tears leaking down her face, opened her mouth, and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Pain, paIN, PAIN.”
His Spidey sense erupted, entire body stiffening.
“BURN,” she screamed, before he tore her off of him. He managed to place her on the ground instead of dumping her, before it was like autopilot took on and he had no choice but to stumble backwards, his Spidey sense burning.
Out over the bodies, the rickety and rotting floorboards, into the darkened alleyway, and then up,
up
up.
Thwip
Thwip
Thwip
but his Spidey sense kept burning.
Suddenly, as he pulled on one of his webs to pull himself upwards into a swing, there was a burning underneath his armpit. With a cry he let go of the web, but the burning didn’t stop.
He landed with a stumble, falling forward into a roll on the sidewalk. He checked his armpit, but he could see nothing but his suit. Then when he tried to stand, the burning started again, but this time everywhere.
He pulled on his fabric, but it was to no avail. He felt the burning begin to eat at his skin, and then he remembered nothing but glimpses.
Swinging into the air, entire body aching as his own sweat began to burn through him, eating away at his flesh – the knowledge that the more he swung the more sweat he produced; the more adrenaline fought to dim the pain, the more sweat it created.
Then, crashing through Double D’s window, only just realising there were more heartbeats than just Matt and Wade’s. In fact, Wade wasn’t even there.
Saying, water, knowing that it was the only thing that would get rid of his sweat consistently enough to allow himself to heal enough to not feel like he was rotting from the outside in.
Kicking Luke Cage through a wall, recognising Wade’s suit, and then nothing.
“Not until I woke up before,” he finished, around a mouthful of chips. He crumbled the empty bag and tossed it to the side. Matt would deal with it later, he was sure. “In the bathtub,” he clarified.
At some point Claire arrived, morphine bottle in hand, but she had stopped and was currently gaping at him. Matt and Wade were both dangerously still, Wade with his arms folded across his chest, Matt with his hands on his hips.
Peter glanced in between the two a few times. It wasn’t that hot in the bed, but soon he would have to go back in the water, so his sweat didn’t begin to burn him again. His Spidey sense had calmed down finally, but it was slowly picking back up as his sweat glands began to be little bitches.
Claire snapped out of it, and pointedly moved Matt out of the way. Instantly Peter felt relief sweep through him. Matt didn’t move unless Matt wanted to be moved, so he wasn’t totally out of it.
When Claire finished, she stepped back, and grabbed his empty glass of water. Peter smiled at her in thanks.
He liked Claire, he decided. She was nice.
And she didn’t put up with Matt’s bullshit, which was always a plus.
“You guys are being weird,” he told them loudly. He lifted one foot out of the blankets and poked Wade in the side. “And not in your normal creepy ways.” Then he pinched Matt’s thigh. “This is more, weird creepy, than, yay we’re being creepy together and freaking out bag guys creepy.”
Neither of them responded.
Okay.
Definitely creepy.
Finally, though, Matt sighed with his entire body, and knelt back down next to the bed. “Let’s get this straight. This little girl,”
“Dora,” Peter said.
“Is a mutant with the ability to turn people's sweat into…acid?”
Peter nodded carefully. Then added, “I think it’s whatever she wants. Because the junkies didn’t have any fresh track marks, but they were definitely high.”
“The guy was whoring out Dora’s mother for money, and the junkies were licking her skin to get high,” Wade said, voice completely blank.
Kids, man.
Kids were innocent, and there were few things Wade hated more in life than kids getting hurt. Peter agreed completely, and he knew Matt did too.
“She probably had no idea what she was doing.” Claire was back, looking ashy, clutching the now full glass of water tightly in her fist. Her other hand was wrapped around her throat loosely, in what looked like an effort to calm herself down. “A little baby, acting completely on instinct, just wanting to keep her mother safe.”
The air was thick and tense, and Peter twitched uncomfortably. Matt tilted his head slightly, like was listening to something. He carefully picked Peter up, still keeping him wrapped up in some bedding. “You need to go back in the shower,” he said stiffly. “You’re going to start sweating again.”
Peter fidgeted. “We have to go after them.”
“We will,” Wade said, having walked ahead and restarted the water. It was slightly warmer than cold when Matt gently set him in. The water cascaded over him, soaking him instantly, pebbling his skin where it had finally healed, and cooling where his sweat had started to burn him again.
“But you have to stay here.”
Peter jumped upright, only by the good grace of being sticky did he stay upright. “No, I’m coming. That little girl knows me, she won’t trust anyone else. No again.”
“Peter,” Matt said, not unkindly.
“Spidey,” Wade said at the same time, and they shared some sort of unspoken glance.
“No,” Peter said. But then he shuffled underneath the spray, ruining his tough guy image slightly.
“No,” he said again. “I have to come. If she touches either of you, it's game over.”
He didn’t say why with Claire watching from the doorway, but he didn’t have to.
Matt relied on all of his senses to simply exist day to day – taking away touch would be akin to taking away Peter’s Spidey sense. Wade could probably heal, but it would take time. His skin was constantly changing, everyday a new pain he had to deal with, a new set of scars he had to live with.
He could barely do more than shoot himself in the head some days to stave off the pain. He might make it a few weeks, maybe even a month, but it wouldn’t last. Perhaps they could bring Luke Cage along, the man with unbreakable skin.
But he didn’t know how the little girl would react with those three, let alone four of them.
“I have to come, Double D. DP. You know I have to.”
Matt and Wade stood shoulder to shoulder staring at him. Claire was behind them. He could see her head between theirs. She smiled tightly at him, then raised her eyebrows slightly and mouthed, morphine.
Peter grinned.
He knew he liked Claire for a reason.