oedipisms

The world sucks, Peter has decided.

The world is a place which is full to the brim with unwarranted anger and old, resentful deities and so much fucking violence. And Peter is complicit in every bit of it and he thought he’d made peace with that a while ago.

He was wrong.

He was so wrong. He was deluding himself that he was worthy of innocence or forgiveness. There is no amount of reasoning or justification in the world that could ever exonerate him from all of the ethically--no. That’s not the right word. Morally. Personally, individually, independently--abhorrent crimes he’s committed, been party to, participated in as an active body.

The whole of recorded human interaction was written on a foundation of universal rules which created and then shaped the ways in which power has distributed itself for centuries. The structure of this distribution nurtures and facilitates the simultaneous development of selfish and self-loathing traits in its participants, who drive themselves insane trying to reconcile the two all their lives.

No one escapes such contradiction. No one gets an out. No one gets a free pass from the twisted, unwinnable, high-stakes gamble of ethics with bets hedged on personal security.

Everyone’s a participant when existence operates on a game of spite-fueled russian roulette.

All this to say that Peter’s done. He’s done being optimistic. He’s done throwing himself at people who are trying to hurt other people in a bid for spite or power or revenge or anything else. He’s done being lauded by half the world for acting as society’s moral compass while the other half lays Spider-Man’s character bare and corrupted in the gutter beside the shattered bodies of beer bottles and fermenting piss.

He resents the superheroes he knows for their ignorance and he hates the vigilantes for their disregard towards fair justice.

He’s mad at all those around him for the collection of textured, pockmarked, ridged scars on his skin. He’s mad at the bodies he’s inadvertently sent to the grave for dying without his permission. He’s mad at himself for believing that justice existed in a universe so hellbent on fucking killing everything good or well or generous or positive inside of it. For fooling himself into thinking that hope would ever have the power to effect change.

No matter what he does to prevent it, the hope people seem to find in Spider-Man is always--always, every time, nothing ever changes, people never change, they’re terribly and evilly predictable--inevitably and violently quashed by a more fervent desire for personal gain.

Peter’s tired of fighting a battle he’s always known is going to end with him in a box made of pine, given back to the dirt from which he emerged.

He doesn’t want to inspire any kind of hope if it’s only going to be manipulated and twisted into an unrecognizable, unjustified anger and leveraged against him at some point. He doesn’t want to end up like Matt, whose past came reckoning for him in the shape of a carving fork.

He doesn’t want to end up like Wade, who clings desperately to the shredded white flag he’s been waving in the face of an apathetic god for years.

He doesn’t want to turn out like Stark or Mr. Rogers, or--god forbid--either of the Hawkeyes.

He doesn’t want to hurt the world anymore. He doesn’t.

Aunt May holds him while he shakes and tries and fails to breathe on a hardwood floor at one in the morning.

Her stolid shoulders let him know that it’s okay; he doesn’t owe anyone anything. He can get out while there’s still time, while he’s still young. He can forgive himself and close this chapter of his life. Hang up the mask, never look back.

Her voice cracks and stutters as it tells him the opposite. That which he already knows.

Great power. Great responsibility, shirked.

No fair way around it.

Peter shrugs his shoulders around a hiccup, but he’s Atlas and so the universe topples.

Peter doesn’t take time off. He really doesn’t. He just distances himself for a little while.

He calls in sick to his internship with Stark for a couple of weeks and lies to Ms. Page’s face about unavailability due to extracurriculars. He lets his burner run out of juice and buries it in the bottom of the junk drawer in his dresser.

Wade’s calls to his cell go ignored.

Matt doesn’t call him. For this, he’s grateful. Small blessings, as they were.

There are two texts a few nights after the incident on the rooftop and his subsequent crisis of identity. The first is a couple of paragraphs long. It’s context for why the guy--Abe, his name was--went after Matt. It makes the back of Peter’s throat taste like bile.

The second message is a “sorry” and a “not back on my feet yet” and the punctuation has clearly been mangled by whatever voice-to-text software it was sent with.

Good. Peter’s not ready, either.

The suit gets a few upgrades. He can’t seem to funnel his nervous energy into anything else, so he breaks out Ben’s old toolbox and tears apart the mask, strips out the boots, disembowels the web-slingers for the millionth time.

May makes a habit of checking on him around midnight to supervise the ritual washing of blackened, greasy hands and the subsequent climbing into bed. Peter usually tries to wait until she’s slunk off to her room for the night before donning the suit and escaping out the window for some test runs on the roof. He can’t bring himself to patrol.

The tabloids start speculating after the tenth day of his absence on the streets.

Wade keeps calling.

He’s spending his nights in Queens. Peter sees him every so often. Not patrolling, not doing business, not waiting. Just strolling down roads, bopping his head to a tune playing from his bright pink headphones. Loitering in public parks and on the steps of bureaucratic offices, soliciting various outdoor statues and sculptures for whatever wisdom Deadpool could possibly glean from them. He’s letting people know: just ‘cause Spidey dipped don’t mean y’all get to go apeshit in the streets.

Peter catches sight of him through a window one afternoon. He’s out of the suit and approaching the front step to Peter’s building. Peter asks May to turn him away if he knocks, which he does less than five minutes later. Loudly.

But Wade listens to May when she whispers to him through the cracked door. Peter watches him retreat back the way he came from the same window.

Peter needs a new perspective on this. A voice of reason. A voice which is used to approaching issues of politics and morality with well-proportioned delicacy and nuance. One that knows how to navigate intersectionality with grace.

This voice is MJ. It is one which is perfectly happy to call Peter out and inform him when he’s being ignorant or when his privilege is clouding his judgment.

May’s delighted when he tells her that MJ’s coming over to help him with assembling a part on the suit. It’s a lie, but a small one. MJ will probably want to prod at the suit regardless of whether or not Peter asks her to.

She shows up at their step, arms laden with pasta salad and a boxed collection of tiny precision screwdrivers. Her hair’s pulled up and into a puffy bun on the top of her head. She’s gotten an undercut in the time since Peter last saw the underside of her hair.

It looks good. Very post-armageddon edgy, with a geometric design shaved into it that compliments the angle of her jawline. She’s pretty, standing there in the doorway. Flyaways backlit by the hall light.

May dotes over her and her tub of cold pasta noodles and a whistling kettle of almost-tea. MJ smiles with the dimples in the corners of her mouth and the apples of her cheeks and makes small and medium talk from a stool at their breakfast bar.

Peter hangs out on the sliver of counter next to the sink and slurps at the hot tea when it’s handed to him.

MJ takes honey in hers. That makes Peter’s heart pound a little extra fast against his ribs.

When the tea is finished and May is out of pithy one liners and fresh topics of discussion, Peter shuttles MJ down the hall to his room and deposits her in his desk chair. There, she tucks her feet up and sets about reorganizing Peter’s disastrous toolbox and its contents, which are sprawled over his decrepit desk.

Peter picks his way around the various scattered pieces of the disassembled suit and settles on his bed to watch her process.

He purses his lips and thinks about what he’s trying to say. MJ wags a finger at him without looking. “Shut up,” that finger warns, “I’m focusing.”

He waits.

She spends several minutes removing and then replacing each individual drill bit, bolt, and screw. She even color-codes the little compartment of thumbtacks. When she’s satisfied, she closes the lid, leans back, and turns to address Peter’s puppy dog eyes. “You have troubles,” she remarks, hands steepled across her belly.

Peter’s integrity goes all mushy. He buries his face in his hands, elbows braced against his knees, and replies, muffled, “I have troubles.”

He can feel the eyebrow leveled at the crown of his head.

“So many troubles.”

“Do tell, dear spider.” MJ’s tone, usually punctuated with acidic vinegar and flared nostrils, is soft like sage and lavender incense.

Peter props his chin on the flat of one palm. He mumbles, “‘M not a spider.”

“What’s on your mind, bitch boy?”

He’s annoyed. She’s not getting it. “I don’t know if I can keep being Spider-Man.”

MJ’s eyebrow returns to its usual spot. “Oh?”

Peter scowls and creaks, “I’m tryin’ to--to get a sense of what I’m doing here. What my goal is, what--what my personal moral code is.”

“Elaborate,” MJ requests, “Please.”

“Um. So. Recently. Double D got hurt really bad. As a result of something he did a few years ago that was really fucking bad, that was not good or fair or just. And it got me thinking about what I’m doing. Why I’m going out at night and forcing my version of righteousness on so many people.”

MJ tilts her head up and squints at him down the bridge of her nose. “You try to help people, right?”

Well. He tries, yeah. “That’s kind of my schtick. Friendly and neighborhood-y and sticky.”

“You help people. Why.”

“Because otherwise they’d hurt, and I have the means to stop that hurt,” he replies immediately. It doesn’t take much thought, which surprises him.

MJ closes her eyes and nods like he’s finally catching on. She says, “The means. The power. Enhancements. Whatever you wanna call it. That’s what makes your situation unique. That’s what drives you to go out there.”

Peter’s brows furrow. “That alone isn’t reason enough to excuse vigilante justice. What I’m doing is still illegal. I’m still beholden to the law.”

“Peter, the law doesn’t always reflect what’s right. It’s often written by corrupt, evil people for selfish reasons.”

Yes.

But that’s not it.

“There’s--you follow the rules--people follow the rules out of a desire to be good. To make society better.”

“People also break rules to make society better,” MJ volleys in response.

“So is what I’m doing improving things? Am I improving society?”

“I dunno, do you think you’re helping people who are hurting?”

Peter feels heavy. “It’s hard to tell nowadays,” he settles on.

MJ shifts in the desk chair so that she can better lean forward to address him. “You’re not Daredevil or Iron Man or Deadpool or any of those self-centered fucks you spend all that time around. Don’t trick yourself into believing that. Whatever happened to Daredevil, he probably earned that person’s ire by acting selfishly. At your roots, you aren’t like them. You do the work in the suit to stop people’s suffering.”

“But that suffering just transfers over to the ones I put in jail.”

She shrugs. “It’s a negative feedback loop. But the people you send to jail aren’t innocent like the ones you save. Human suffering is inherent; you’ll never be able to eradicate it. Pain and humanity go hand in hand.”

Mmm. Peter sees this and raises, “Then why do I have to break the law to do what’s right?”

MJ cackles, but there’s no mirth in it. “We’ve got to actively work against systems of oppression in order to make forward progress,” she drawls, eyeing the suit pieces on the floor like she’s just made an epiphany.

Peter waves his hand in the direction of the gloves and she pounces. He watches her in silence for a while.

“I should work on settin’ up a union at SI,” he declares.

“Psh, you’re an unpaid intern there. Interns don’t count for shit. Also, there’s definitely already a union there,” MJ argues.

“Hm. The law firm, then. Bet Ms. Page would help me. She works with the Labor Coalition office a lot.”

MJ pauses in her ripping of seams and glaring at concealed electrical to nod thoughtfully. “Could have Spider-Man do volunteer work for some labor orgs. Start aligning yourself with the workers, plus it’s within the confines of the law.”

Good fuckin’ idea right there. Some food for thought. “I hate how much working with the Avengers has made Spider-Man sympathetic with the bourgeoisie.”

MJ smirks and notes, “Sounds to me like you’re gearin’ up to turn into a full blown Marxist.”

“Girlo, we both know I got indoctrinated into that shit years ago.”

“D’aw. If Barnes heard you say that, he’d be so proud.”

“Well, yeah. It’s his fuckin’ fault and he knows it.”

MJ tosses him a signature eye roll and beams a miniscule screwdriver at his socked foot. “Get working on the boots, I’m almost done with the gloves. You got a sewing machine?”

No. But he knows someone who does.

Wade about tackles him when he shows up unannounced on his and Matt’s doorstep, arms full of a bag containing the suit and a few spools of fancy thread he swiped from Stark’s lab.

Pretty sure Stark watched him the entire time he was walking over to the workbench full of the sewing crap, tucking the thread discreetly into his coat pocket, and then strolling suspiciously away. But he never said nothin’ about it, even when Peter showed up the next time with a clearly tampered-with suit. He’s cool like that sometimes.

Wade yanks Peter into the living room and rushes around, weaving between various linen closets and storage tubs to gather sewing supplies.

It’s late afternoon. Matt’s still at work. Peter ignores the fresh hole punched through the drywall beside the TV and lays his suit out in the pattern he wants to show Wade.

He’s halfway through a stubborn curve on the torso of the suit when Matt taps through the front door. Wade pokes himself through the knuckle of the glove he’s hand-sewing and
curses.

He gets distracted watching Matt beeline for the fridge and screws up the angle of the seam. Again.

Fifth time. Maybe this bit gets to be saved for Wade to take a look at, ‘cause his fingers can’t seem to get their shit together.

The couch dips next to him. It’s Matt, crunching on salad leftovers. The untied tie slung around his neck is bright pink, but it somehow doesn’t look terrible coupled with the muted collared shirt he’s wearing. Peter takes his foot off the pedal of the machine and Wade stops picking at the glove in his hands. They stare at Matt in silence.

He catches on pretty quick. “What? Whaddid I do?”

Wade shakes his head and shrugs and returns to his fight with the needle. “Nothin’.”

“Want some salad, Pete?”

Dude. What an awkward fucking olive branch. “Sure?”

Matt hops up from the couch and returns to the fridge, careful not to knock the coffee table where it’s been pulled closer to accommodate the sewing machine. Wade and Peter exchange bemused looks.

Wade bites the bullet first. “Dearest?” he calls to the kitchen.

“Hmm?”

“We not gonna talk about it?”

“Well,” Matt responds, back turned to feel around in a cabinet full of dishes, “I figured y’all were pretty focused. Didn’t want to interrupt. You want salad too?”

Wade stares, dumbstruck, at Matt’s back. He shakes himself out of it and nods, narrates it out of habit, and adds, “Yeah, sure, whatever, but we gotta talk about it at some point tonight.”

“‘Kay. Gonna have salad first.”

Oh, he’s so chipper. Peter doesn’t know how to feel about this chipper Matt. He’s kind of terrifying.

They eat their salad and Wade glares vehemently at the knuckle of the glove in his lap while Matt recounts the outcome of an exciting day in court with enthusiastic hand gestures. Peter tries not to look at the bits of shiny red and white scarring that peek out from behind his glasses. It’s been a couple of weeks since he’s seen them and he’d sort of forgotten what they looked like.

Matt’s filling time, waiting for Peter to bring it up. Giving him room to decide when he’s comfortable.

Peter sets his empty bowl down next to the sewing machine and says, “I think I’m ready to start working with you guys again, if the fixes on the suit work.”

Matt turns his head to face him. The smile on his face is a little sad. “That’s good to hear, but I’m not sure if I’m quite there yet. I’m still working through a lot--with help. Figuring out how to accept help. But I think it’ll be a while yet before I’m okay to work with other people again.”

Wade nods across from them. “You still owe me a drywall patch from last weekend,” he points out, gesturing behind himself to the TV and the broken wall to which it’s attached.

Peter thinks about how he needs to reply. He thinks about his talk with MJ and how he’s feeling about Spider-Man. “Okay. But I want to be there if you need it. For whatever. And I want you to know that I forgive you, even if you can’t forgive yourself yet,” he says, a little hesitant. “Oh, and I’m ready to come back to the office. I lied to Karen about why I was taking time off,” he adds as an afterthought.

Matt chuckles. “I know; I heard.”

Oh.

Nothing’s sacred when this guy’s around, huh?

Wade pokes himself through the glove again and Matt confiscates the needle for the night.

It takes all of five weeks before Matt declares himself cured of depression and free from symptoms of PTSD. Neither of these assertions are true, but the guy’s got thick fucking walls and Peter’s sure he knows how to conceal trauma with the best of ‘em.

Peter’s looking to Wade for a read on this. He doesn’t seem particularly on edge when they meet up for the first time on a roof not far from Hell’s Kitchen, so Peter drops his guard and lets himself jump back into working on a team.

He gives enough trust to stop Matt from twitching his head anxiously in his direction.

The Devil leads them into a warehouse on the docks, chest puffed out with the confidence of an English Pointer. They emerge out the other side unscathed and sit on a nearby building to observe as the herd of drug pushers trapped inside is escorted into cop cars with lights on, strobing red and blue.

One officer squints and shines a flashlight at the building they’re hanging their feet from. Wade waves at her. Peter sees the whites of her eyes flash while she pats frantically at her partner’s shoulder.

Wade hollers an obscenity into the night sky and they skedaddle.

Matt says at one point that he’s got one last thing to do before he can put his shit behind him. He whispers what it is into Peter’s and Wade’s ears and when he’s done, Peter doesn’t laugh, but it’s a close thing.

Matt makes a call. Of course, Barton doesn’t pick up. Fucking characteristic of him. Matt sighs and says he’ll try from his office phone in the morning.

Peter goes home that night full of nerves that are still a little fried and a moral compass that’s still spinning a little bit. But he’s got his team back. And he’s pumped to see Barton flip his shit.