ribs
Cassie has learned to love her new home.
It is small and dirty and she never gets to leave, but it’s home. Hers and Peter’s. The bloodstain on the floor, the rusty faucet leaking cold water, the rattling pipes in the ceiling, their rusty bucket bolted to the floor. The concrete bed, the scratched out words underneath, the huge door with the food slot at the bottom and no handle.
It’s home.
She naps one afternoon because she wants to sleep away some of the hunger, and when she wakes Peter is beneath the bed, scratching at the wall with that crooked nail. She can hear the noise as he does, scratching and scraping in slow strokes; he must be writing something.
“Peter?” she calls out.
The scratching pauses for a moment, and then it continues.
She climbs down from the bed and tries to see what he’s writing. He’s lying with his back to her, “Peter?” she says, because he didn’t answer her.
It’s close to time. She doesn’t know how exactly she knows it’s nearly seven o’clock, but she does know. Maybe it’s the sound of the people outside shuffling anxiously, the way Charlie sometimes paces outside his door for minutes before it begins.
He’s coming. They both know he’s coming.
“Peter?” she says again.
Sometimes he doesn’t answer her at all; sometimes he’s in one of his moods. He gets grumpy sometimes, her big brother, and Cassie knows she should leave him alone but can’t help but wonder what he’s writing. She kneels beside the bed so she can see, but she only gets a glimpse of what he’s writing—the rest of it is blocked by his body.
“What are you writing?” Cassie asks.
The scratching pauses. “Nothing,” Peter says, without looking at her.
It's not long before she's tired of waiting, and she announces, "My turn!" as he continues to write.
A sigh from him, and it takes a few minutes but he drags himself out from beneath the bed and offers the rusty nail to her.
And as Cassie grabs for the nail, she gets a glimpse of what Peter has written there, the letters all crooked.
GODFATHER.
“Peter?”
“Yeah?”
“What’d you wanna be? Before you grew up?”
“Grew up? I’m not a grown-up, Stinger. I’m sixteen.”
“Sixteen’s a grown-up.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s… you know what, fine. Fine. I’m a grown-up.”
“So what did you wanna be? A superhero, right?”
“Uh… An engineer.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone who…makes things. Fixes things. Makes them better.”
“Oh. But you’re Spider-man now.”
“Well, I, uh. I didn’t know I was gonna… That was an accident.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Spider bit me on a field trip a couple years ago.”
“What kind of spider?”
“Don’t know.”
“Was it big?”
“No, not really.”
“Did it hurt?”
“I mean… A little. Not much.”
“Were you scared?”
“Not really. It was just a spider.”
They play school sometimes—Peter teaches her anything he can remember. Addition and subtraction, although multiplication is really hard. She knows lots of stories now; Peter has taught her all of Harry Potter now, at least what he can remember. They don’t have much to do here with their toys taken away, so they make their own things to do. Snacktime, sometimes, with spare bits of cardboard from the Happy Meal Boxes and gulps of water from the faucet.
Peter knows how to braid, so sometimes in the morning, if he’s well enough, she’ll sit cross-legged in front of him and he will braid her hair. He explains how he knows—something about his best friend’s little sister, about his Aunt May, about getting along with girls better than boys when he was younger.
“Is she your mom?” Cassie asks him.
“Aunt May?” He brushes at her hair with his fingers, combing slow. “No, she’s… She’s like Jim. She’s my mom like Jim is your dad.”
She frowns; she can feel Peter pulling now, beginning the braid. He is way too slow; Mommy was always much faster. “Jim is my dad,” she says.
Peter keeps braiding, tugging gently enough that it doesn’t hurt. “Then, uh. Yeah. I guess she is my mom.”
It doesn’t take too long. When he is done, she reaches behind her head and touches the braid; they have no mirror, but she can feel it, and it doesn’t feel quite right.
“That’s not how Mommy does it,” she mutters, puffing her cheeks in frustration. “She always does two.”
“Cassie–”
“I know,” she says, dejectedly. “Mommy’s not here. No one’s here.”
Peter makes a weird face then, half of a frown, and he drops his hands away from her head. “I’ll do it again if you want,” he says,” ‘just gotta let me rest for a second.”
It did wear him out, although she’s not so sure why. Cassie didn’t know that something so little could make someone so tired.
“Yeah, do it again,” she orders, and Peter sighs.
The second time, it takes him longer, and afterwards he goes to take a nap beneath the bed.
At seven, they take him away, and Cassie shuts her ears until Peter gets back—her good hand over one ear, her arm pressing against the other, just like Peter taught her. It’s a whole hour, and Cassie spends the whole time thinking up a new game for them to play. After a very long time, the door opens. Two men haul Peter through and drop him on the floor with a thunk. His whole head is wet, his hair leaking droplets of water everywhere, leaving a small puddle on the ground. When Cassie asks what happened, he just shakes his head and hugs his arms around himself.
Peter’s grumpy the rest of the night, quiet and staring at the door, and he refuses to play.
That night, Peter sleeps poorly, waking several times during the night. The third time, his dreams are so bad that his arms flail into her, waking her up. She has to squeeze her brother’s hand several times to wake him, and still it takes him several minutes to remember where he is.
And afterwards, as she’s falling back asleep, Cassie can hear her big brother crying quietly with his face turned to the wall. “Peter?” she whispers to his back. It’s covered in marks from something—sharp lines of bruising, some bleeding a bit around the edges. She doesn’t know what could make that kind of mark on someone; thinking about it makes her feel a little bit sick. “Peter? Are you okay?”
Peter’s shoulders shake again—another sob—and she watches his hand move up and press over his mouth, muffling the sound. Still he doesn’t answer; Cassie wonders if he heard her at all.
He goes back to sleep quickly then, his face still covered by his hand.
“Peter?”
They’re laying on the floor together after dinner, rubbing their half-full bellies and dreaming up at the ceiling. The lightbulb above their heads has gone out again, forgetting that it’s daytime. Their room is windowless, so the only light comes now from a faint glow on the other side of the room: the crack beneath the door, the thin lines in the food slot, and the slight crack at the door hinge.
“Yeah,” Peter says, and he sounds very old.
“I think we’re far away,” Cassie says. “Really far away. And that’s why Mommy and Jim can’t find us.”
Her brother sniffs. “Maybe,” he says.
“Like Antarctica. Or the North Pole.”
“Sure.”
“Or the moon! Do you think we’re on the moon?”
He laughs a little. “Yeah, Stinger.”
“Maybe Charlie’s an astronaut,” she says. “And he has a space suit! That’d be so cool…”
At the mere mention of the man, Peter’s face drops. He gets quiet after that, like they’re playing the quiet game, and he doesn’t talk to her for a while. She’s not sure what Charlie did to him today. There were no new marks on him, no bruises or wounds.
But Peter won’t ever tell her. He doesn’t talk to her about that stuff.
“We’re underground,” he says at last.
“Really?”
“Mm, hm.”
“How do you know?”
Peter explains it in his soft voice, and she can see it in front of her like a drawing: green trees and rushing streams, chirping birds and iron-thick dirt. An echoey cave and a clanking lid. The sound of the guards’ boots coming down the ladder.
“Took me a while to figure it all out,” he admits, “but I’m sure.”
“We’re under the ground?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Where, New York?” she asks, and he barely shrugs. “New Jersey?”
“I don’t know.”
“California?” That’s where she lived with Daddy when he got his super suit. Maybe that’s where they are now. “Are we in Califo—”
“I said I don’t know, Cass,” Peter snaps.
“Why don’t you know?”
An irritated huff. His mood has soured like milk, and when she opens her mouth to ask him another question, he says firmly, “Cassie, don’t make me say it again.”
“But I—”
“One more time and we’re playing the quiet game.”
Cassie hates the quiet game. Peter always makes them play it when she’s being bad.
She doesn’t understand why Peter doesn’t know. He’s a grownup, and grownups know everything. So why doesn’t he know where they are?
But Peter never lies to her. Never, ever, ever. He promised.
“You can hear all the way up there,” she wonders, “because of your super powers? Right?”
Peter nods in agreement—a tired yes.
“That’s so cool,” she whispers, because she knows Charlie’s around somewhere, and she doesn’t want him to hit her again. “What can you hear?”
Peter looks up and closes his eyes. “Birds,” he says. “Sometimes.” A moment, and Peter tilts his head up—his ear facing the ceiling like a dog listening outside its crate. “Uh, rabbits, I think. Digging. A couple deer.’
“Deer!” Cassie squeals excitedly, “I want a pet deer—”
Peter makes a sharp shushing sound at her.
They wait for a moment for her mistake to fade into the silence—to make sure that Charlie’s footsteps aren’t thundering down the hall. “No yelling,” Peter says, when it’s over. “You know we don’t yell.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, I forgot.”
“We can’t forget things, Stinger,” he says, very seriously. “When we forget the rules—”
“—bad things happen,” she finishes, very quietly, quiet enough that he will be proud; with a little nod of his head, she knows he is. “I’m sorry.”
Peter doesn’t say anything for a while. “I can hear some squirrels, too,” he says.
“Really?”
“Mm, hm.”
“How many?”
“A lot.”
“Like twenty?”
She can hear him smile. “Sure. A moose, too… maybe.”
“A moose?”
“Mm, hm.”
“What’s he doing?”
He closes his eyes again, her big brother, and he doesn’t open them again. “Eating?”
“Eating what?”
He shrugs.
“Is he with his friends?”
“No, he’s by himself.”
Cassie nods, thinking. She wishes she were an animal outside this bunker, that she were free to room among the trees. “Is he lonely?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Is he scared?”
“Why would he be scared?”
“Because of the bad guys,” she clarifies. “Because they could hurt him.”
Peter pauses. “No. No, he’s not scared.”
“Why not?”
“He’s too big to be scared.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“You’re big,” she says, “and you’re scared.”
He frowns, and Peter sits up with a close-mouthed sound—a grunt of pain. “Time for bed,” he declares.
“But I’m not—”
“Bed,” he says. “Now. Go get your toothbrush.”
They got these toothbrushes from Ava a long time ago—a tube of toothpaste, too, the spicy grown-up kind. They ration it in small dollops; she’s gotten used to the taste. She brushes her teeth at the sink and washes her face with her hands and goes to the bathroom as Peter shuts his eyes.
When she’s done, Peter goes, and it takes him much longer than it did her—hobbling over to the toilet and painstakingly hauling himself up to the sink.
The drain hasn’t been working lately, and the water fills up in the sink basin as the faucet runs. For a couple extra seconds, her big brother looks down into the sink.
What is he looking at?
Cassie realizes then, with sudden understanding; With the light above them, he might be able to see himself in it. A mirror, kind of. A reflection. Finally, Peter spits out into the sink and wipes at his mouth, looking much more unhappy than he did a few minutes ago.
“Peter?”
“Mm, hm.”
“You think they can hear us?”
“Who?”
He’s talking quietly, with as few words as possible—Charlie broke several of his ribs on his right side, and now he’s guarding it with one arm, breathing in tight, restrained gasps.
“The animals,” she says. “Outside. Can they hear us?”
“No,” he says. “Don’t think…so.”
“What if I yelled really loud?” she asks.
Peter shakes his head. “Sorry, Stinger. Not the way…it works.”
“They don’t want to help us?”
A long pause. “Don’t think they know we’re here,” he says.
Does anyone?
Cassie thinks, and she thinks, and she thinks.
“What about the bugs?” she asks. “Can they hear us?”
“Don’t think so,” he says.
“You should tell them we want more friends.”
“Cassie…”
“You’re Spider-Man! You can talk to them!”
“I can’t talk to them, Stinger.”
“You can’t?”
He shakes his head, just slightly—a no.
“Then what can you do?”
“Whatever spiders do. Climb, shoot webs…”
“Spiders lay eggs—do you lay eggs?”
Peter stares at her, giving her a funny look—and then he starts to laugh. He’s laughing hard enough that it hurts him, and he winces.
It’s rare to see Peter happy like this, and she misses it.
Peter coughs out another sound—tired laugh. “No, uh… My best friend… He used to… Ask me stuff like that.”
Cassie’s heard Peter mention his friend a few times. She doesn’t know his name. “Is he a superhero, too?”
“No, he’s… Well, he’s my… He’s my guy in the chair.”
“What’s that?”
Peter laughs again, and this time he lets out a dry, hacking cough that’s followed by a rough groan of pain. He goes quiet for nearly a minute before he answers in a weak croak, “Nevermind.”
He looks sad—a pleasant kind of sad—and as the smile drains from his face, Cassie asks, “What’s his name?”
“Ned,” he says, and she likes how happy he is talking about this. It’s something so unlike the Peter she knows now—something she rarely sees anymore. “We’ve been friends since… Well, forever. Since middle school, so… like seven years?”
Seven. That’s how old Cassie is, that’s how long Peter has known this boy Cassie’s never met. “That’s a long time,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says, with that odd smile. “It is.”
He falls asleep like that, sitting up, because it hurts too much to lay down. Cassie can’t tell what he’s dreaming of, but it must be good because he sleeps soundly through the night and doesn’t wake her with his movements. And when breakfast comes in two lukewarm Happy Meal boxes, Cassie is hungry, and Peter is still asleep—so she eats them both before he wakes.
“Peter? Peter. Peter.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to the spider?”
“What spider?”
“The one that bit you.”
“Oh. I… I don’t remember. It was kinda fast. It fell, and then… I think I stepped on it.”
“You killed it?”
“Yeah, I… Hey, it’s okay, Stinger, it was just a spider.”
“Yeah, but… Mommy says… Mommy says it’s not nice to hurt things, and you—you—you killed it…”
“Hey, hey, hey… Cassie, look at me. It was fast, I promise. It probably didn’t feel a thing.”
“Are you—are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure.”
Peter’s getting thinner, his muscles withering away. His face looks different, too, and some of his wounds have begun to scar over. Those marks have begun to layer, too, crawling up his neck and making his face look all lopsided. One day, he comes back from the outside and his jaw is all crooked—bent on the left side, making his chin poke out. “You look weird,” she says when they wake up the next morning, because his face is all red-and-purple, so swollen that his mouth is big on one side. “Super, super weird.”
Peter doesn’t like that, so he makes them play the Quiet Game after, even through lunch. “Peter,” she complains, and he breaks open those Happy Meal boxes in fast, angry movements. Like usual, he hands her that box of fries first and she shoves them into her mouth fast as he splits open the burger with his hands. That’s how it always is, because Peter is bigger—he gets half of hers. “I want my half,” she says, through a mouthful of fries. “I want both of mine!”
He doesn’t say anything, continuing to eat her half of the burger. Peter usually eats fast, but today it’s very, very slow, him pressing bites into his mouth and swallowing them whole without chewing.
That’s making it worse, she thinks, watching him eat like he’s not hungry—because she is. It’s pressing at her belly whole, snarling at her, and she’s just so hungry…
“You stole mine, ” she says. “You’re mean.”
Peter ignores her, continuing to eat in painstaking bites. He’s still angry with her about what she said, she knows, so they’re still playing the quiet game. “Mean!” she says again, with more noise. “You’re mean!”
He glares at her.
“I hate you!” she shouts, and she knows she’s much too loud, but part of her wants them to come hit him—hit him and hurt him and make him feel bad the way she does now. “I wish—I wish Charlie took you away forever!”
Her big brother says nothing—she hates that he’s quiet, she hates that he won’t talk to her, because Peter’s the only thing she has–she hates that she doesn’t have Mommy and that Daddy is somewhere down the hall and instead all she has is this frown-faced boy covered in scars and burned on one side and all twisted up inside, glaring at her now like she’s something bad. “I hate you! You’re mean and I hate you!”
A sharp sound from Peter—a click of his tongue: an angry be quiet.
Now Cassie’s mad.
She’s so mad that she throws her fries at him—bits of yellowy fries go everywhere. “I hate you!” She doesn’t care that she’s hungry and he’s hungry—she hates him for keeping them here, she hates that he gets to leave and she doesn’t, she hates that he gets half of her burger, hers— “It’s mine! Mine!”
Sound down the hall.
Peter gives this wide-eyed look at her, and she doesn’t even care; she throws the rest of her Happy Meal at him and howls, “You stole it from me! You stole—”
Peter forces himself up and pushes her backwards towards the bed—and he’s saying something but still she doesn’t care—she shoves back at him, but he gets his hand around her good arm, still trying to push her under the bed— “I hate you!” she cries, trying to free herself from his grip. “I—hate—you—”
The door opens, and Peter whirls around, standing now between the shadow in the doorway and Cassie, holding her back with one arm.
Cassie closes her mouth; all the fight drains from her body at once as she stares shocked at the woman in the doorway. A grown-up, white and brown-haired. A lady.
Her legs tremble a little. There’s someone here.
“Kids getting a little loud, Parker,” the grown-up says, tipping her head up.
She looks young, maybe a little older than Peter, feigning the air of someone much older. She’s wearing a college T-shirt, and Cassie reads the letters clearly: NYU. Peters eyes flick down to her shirt and linger there for a second, and then down further, watching her hands, waiting for her to move, but she doesn’t.
“Charlie doesn’t like that.”
“I know,” Peter says, and his grip on her arm tightens: a silent don’t move.
The lady stares past him to Cassie, tipping her head to get a good look; Peter shifts so that Cassie’s head is pressed into his back—so the guard can’t look at her, and Cassie can’t see anything past Peter’s clothed back.
“Better keep an eye on her,” she says.
“I am.”
There’s a long moment where Cassie can’t see anything at all—and neither Peter nor the grown-up say anything to break the silence.
The lady shuts the door then, and the lock clicks.
Then the door is shut; Peter waits for the footsteps to fade, and then he looks at her, Peter Parker with his broken face, Peter Parker who steals her food, Peter Parker who stood between her and the guard.
He exhales—relief, and releases his grip on Cassie’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
His eyes are dark; his face is still broken, and his face tenses in pain as he opens his mouth. “I know,” Peter says, breaking their silence.
Whatever hate Cassie had trapped in her chest dissipated when that door opened—the hunger in her belly lapped by fear. “I won’t do it again,” she says.
Peter grimaces. “I know,” he says again.
“Peter?”
Her big brother hums back at her—barely a sound—acknowledging he heard her.
“What’s heaven like?”
A long silence, a slight shift, and a small breath. “Don’t know. Never been.”
Cassie laughs at that, because it sounds funny, but Peter doesn’t seem to think so. He stays quiet, and when he goes quiet, she does, too.
They’re in bed now, laying down—Cassie on the inner side next to the wall, Peter on the outside facing the door. It is nighttime, and they should be sleeping, but Cassie is still awake.
“Sorry,” she says.
“It’s okay.”
Long silence, filled with Peter’s pained breathing—strained. In and out, and in and out, and in and out again.
“Is your mommy there?”
Another pause. “Sure,” he says.
“And your daddy, too?”
“I guess.”
“And your—”
“Yeah, Stinger, all of them, okay? Now go to sleep.”
The light above them is off—so she can’t tell if his eyes are open or not. “Are they lonely?” she asks.
“Who?”
“All the people. In heaven.”
This time, his head turns. He’s looking at her, she thinks, but she really can’t tell. “They’ve got each other,” he says.
Grown-ups know everything, and Peter is a grown-up, so he must be right.
But how could it be heaven if they didn’t have him? How could his parents be happy without him?
The ceiling is dark above them, and the room is dark beside her; she can’t see anything beyond the nighttime pressing at her eyes. “Peter?” she calls out, although he is right beside her.
“What?”
“Do they miss you?”
Peter takes a while to answer; as she waits, Cassie wonders what they will do to him tomorrow; she hopes he will be well enough to play when he gets back. “Go to sleep, Cassie.”
“Do they?”
He moves again. She thinks she can see him in the night: dark against darker, his body shifting on their blanketless bed. “They’re happy there,” Peter says quietly. “Okay? Everyone’s happy in heaven.”
Cassie thinks about Peter’s parents then, the ones he rarely speaks of. She thinks of Tony Stark, who she’s never met. Of his Aunt May and his Uncle Ben. The people she’s only heard about in stories—Peter’s stories.
Then she thinks of Mommy and Daddy, eating breakfast in the kitchen—a world beyond hers. So far away that she’s not even sure it’s real. Jim in his police uniform. Mommy in her work clothes. Singing in the kitchen, eating at the dinner table, driving in the car, sleeping warmly in their beds.
Heaven, she thinks, although it isn’t, not quite. Heaven to her, at least.
“Do they miss me?” Cassie asks.
Peter pauses again, and he takes a couple strained breaths before he answers again. “Who?”
“Mommy,” she says, thinking of her mommy’s blonde hair. “Jim.”
“Of course they do,” he says. “They love you.”
“But they’re not here,” she says, and she feels so much like crying that she can feel her eyes burn. “They didn’t—they didn’t come get me.”
She used to think that after soccer practice sometimes, when Mommy was late picking her up. They forgot me, she’d think, vividly and cruelly, kicking her cleats at the ground. They don’t love me.
More breathing. Peter pauses for a while. “They’re trying to find you,” he says. “It’s just hard, Stinger. They don’t know where we are.”
“They should try harder,” she announces. “Why don’t they try harder?”
He sighs. “That’s not the way it works,” he says. It’s something Peter says sometimes when Cassie asks him questions, and it makes her scratch at the wall in her frustration.
They have spent days and days here—practically an eternity.
So why haven’t they found her yet?
“Are they dead?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“They could be dead, right?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, with a strange look on his face. “They could.”
“Like Ava?”
“Like Ava.”
There are a few of the guards who have died now. She remembers the man who Renee shot during one of their escape attempts—how he bled out fast onto the floor, Peter’s shocked face as the blood continued to spread, the way he gurgled and thrashed until he was still.
“Like Frank?” she asks,
A pause. “You remember his name?”
“Yeah, I remember,” she says. “Haroun said. When the red-haired lady shot him.”
Peter stares at her—a tinge of worry in his gaze.
“He bled a lot,” she adds, because it’s true. Cassie points to the spot on their floor that’s still there. She tried to get it out once while Peter was sleeping, but it’s too stained—the leftovers of Frank still there. “He was yelling. That was scary.”
Peter doesn’t like when she talks about things that have happened. Like the sound of Charlie’s fist meeting Ava’s face—the sound of her going quiet forever. Like the blood coming everywhere from Frank’s neck. Like anything that happens outside of this room.
Cassie tips her head into his arm. “Are they in heaven?” she asks, although she’s not sure why.
Peter doesn’t respond for a long while.
“Peter?”
He hums a little—acknowledging he’s heard her.
“Are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ava was nice,” she says firmly, “so she’s in heaven, right?”
Above their heads, the water pipes click faultily—the water humming as it rushes to the radiator in the wall.
“Do you think she’s in heaven?” Peter says quietly.
She knows that voice; it’s like when Mommy talks about Santa, or when Jim talks about the Tooth Fairy.
“Yeah,” she says. “She was nice. Nice people go to heaven. That’s what Mommy says.”
Long silence. The radiator rattles again, but it doesn’t get any warmer, and Cassie clasps her arms around herself. Peter shifts his arm away from himself, and Cassie crooks himself into the empty spot beside him, laying her head against his warm chest. He curls his arm around her shoulders, a warm weight, grounding her. He is bonier than he used to be, all sharp edges, but she buries in anyway, her face into the rough denim.
“I think you’re gonna go,” she whispers.
“Where?” he asks. “Heaven?”
“Yeah.” She’s very sure about this, because everything about Peter is good. “You’re Spider-man. You’re a superhero, and superheroes go to heaven.”
“I don’t know,” he says tiredly, “Not doing much Spider-manning anymore.” He sounds a little sad again, so she presses her face into his side, and he tightens his arm around her.
But Peter’s right. He doesn’t have a special suit, he doesn’t have his webshooters, he doesn’t have anything.
But even though Peter’s powers are weaker now—his cuts taking longer to heal and his bruises taking longer to fade—she still thinks Peter’s a superhero. Even now, he gathers the strength to move between her and Charlie. He still goes and fights the bad guys every day and comes back to her alive.
He’s a hero to her, at least.
This is her home now.
It’s getting harder and harder to remember what her home was like before this one.
Home from before—with Mommy and Daddy and Jim, with Ant-Man and first grade and trips to the zoo. T-ball on Wednesdays and soccer on Thursdays and church on Sunday mornings.
Every morning, Jim made her breakfast and packed her lunch. Every afternoon, Mommy picked her up from school. Every evening, Jim came home in his police uniform and helped Mommy make dinner—lasagna, meatloaf, mashed potatoes. Burgers and grilled chicken and green beans. Every night, Mommy turned on Curious George until it was bedtime, and Cassie would go upstairs and brush her teeth, use the step stool and smile at the mirror.
And every night her daddy would drive over and sing her a song before bed. “...in the sky with diamonds,” he’d sing, in that goofy voice he always used. “Lucy in the skyyy with diamonds.” In the song, the girl’s name was Lucy, but Daddy always switched it for hers.
She and Peter don’t have step stools or mirrors or Curious George; they don’t have school or dinner tables or soccer practice.
But some of it’s the same. Every morning, she and Peter eat breakfast. Every afternoon, they eat lunch. Every evening, Peter comes back home and lays on the floor for a while. And sometimes, rarely, if Peter’s well enough, he sings her a song before she goes to sleep.
He’s bad at singing. Really bad. But Cassie likes hearing it anyway.
Tonight, she dreams she’s sitting at the kitchen table and it’s her birthday. She dreams her mother is giving her birthday cake. “Can I have another piece?” she asks. She’s with Mommy, so she’s allowed to ask for seconds.
Her mother’s face wanes and blurs in front of her. Mommy’s blonde hair. Mommy’s freckled cheeks. Mommy’s long nose and blue eyes and small mouth and shaggy bangs. “Of course, sweetheart,” she says, and she cuts an enormous piece of cake and pushes a plate towards her.
In her dream, Cassie keeps asking for more, and Mommy keeps giving it. As much as she wants. Slice after slice. Whipped cream and sweet icing and soft cake. “Another?” she asks, and her mommy cuts her another piece.
Cassie’s never hungry in her dreams. Not with Mommy.
She keeps eating, but she’s so tired. Even in her dreams she’s tired, sleep pulling at her eyes, and eventually her head tips into the kitchen table. Her cheek squishes onto the plate—her face smeared with blue icing and rainbow sprinkles. She can hear her Mommy move around her, and she picks her up gently, the same way Peter does.
“Time for bed,” she says, and Cassie just buries her face in her mother’s sweater, pretending she’s sleeping.
Mommy always holds her when she’s falling asleep.
Is she too big to be held now? Too old? Has she seen too much?
Grown-ups don’t go to school, and now she doesn’t either. Grown-ups leave home and don’t come back, and that’s what she did. Does that mean she’s not a kid anymore? Does that mean she’s a grown-up, too?
Grown-ups don’t get held and carried to bed. Would Mommy ever hold her again?
Cassie pretends she is little and stupid—like she hasn’t seen horrible things, like she hasn’t chewed hungrily at the skin of her thumb, like she hasn’t clawed at a man’s face until he bled, like she hasn’t stabbed her sharpened toy into another man’s back, like she hasn’t heard Peter cry in the corner of the room and clasped her hands over her ears so she didn’t have to listen.
Mommy carries her all the way up the stairs, a slow sway, and Jim opens Cassie’s bedroom door with a long creak. Her room is all blurry, too. Were her walls rough gray or painted pink? Was her bed soft and pillowy or hard like concrete? Was there a lock on the door? Was there a toilet against the wall? Was there a nightlight glowing soft in the corner?
Cassie holds on tight to her mommy’s knitted cardigan. It smells sweet, like detergent, like dryer sheets, like warm soap. She feels herself start to fall—feels her mommy start to lower her down onto the bed, and she clutches hard onto her mommy’s sweater so hard that she pinches the skin past cloth. “Cassie,” Mommy says, and Cassie just holds her tighter. “Honey, let go.”
Cassie doesn’t want to let go.
Her mommy’s face is getting stranger by the second; her straight nose turning broken and bruised, her blonde hair turning dark and matted, her pink cheeks turning pale and gaunt, her soft sweater turning to rough black denim. “Stinger,” says Mommy, but she’s not Mommy anymore. Cassie opens her eyes and finds a teenage boy instead, dressed in his jumpsuit and bleeding from one side of his head. His scarred face, his crooked hands, his tangled hair, his caring eyes.
“You okay?”
It’s Peter. Her Peter.
Peter, who protects her; Peter, who loves her; Peter, the brother she never knew she had.
Cassie reaches out with both arms for him.
“Peter? Peter? Peter. Peter, Peter, Peter—”
A weary sigh.
“Can we play a game?”
“Cassie….”
“Please?”
A long pause. “I’m tired, Cass.”
“Please, please, please…”
“Tomorrow.”
“But I wanna play now…”
“Cassie, please…”
“You never wanna play anymore!”
“Cass…”
“I want Daddy! He always plays with me!”
“I know—”
“I want Daddy!”
“You know he’s not here,” Peter whispers. “Cassie, please—”
“I want—”
“Not today, Stinger,” he chokes out, “please don’t do this today, I’m tired, I’m so—I’m so fucking tired…”
She sighs in frustration.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you promise?”
She wants him to answer, to truly answer, not give some half-hearted sigh—but she knows that’s all she’s going to get.
“You have to promise. You have to pinky promise.”
A sigh, and a beat. “I’m tired,” he says, and he doesn’t hold out his pinky like he usually does. There is a spot under his eye that has scabbed over completely—she’s not sure what happened, and Peter doesn’t ever tell her what happens beyond those doors, so she can only wonder.
He’s always tired now. Too tired to play, too tired to speak, too tired to do much else than lay on the floor and sleep.
Cassie sits now, hugging her arms around her chest, feeling more alone than ever. All she wants now is to leave this room, to be back home with Mommy, Jim, and Daddy.
Home, she thinks, but she’s having trouble remembering it now.
Maybe this is her home now; maybe this is her family, too.
Cassie wakes in the middle of the night.
The light is on above her head—it flickers on and off, on and off. The lone lightbulb above is their only source of light—old and yellow with a twisted wire inside, surely hot to the touch. It’s surrounded by a metal cage that keeps them from breaking it—thin enough that a hand could not squeeze through, and a finger could only reach far enough to graze it. It’s an old light, on some broken time system that no longer works. Sometimes on during the night, sometimes off during the day.
And tonight it is on.
It is a small room—so any time Peter moves or makes a sound, Cassie wakes. She hears him shift around a little and then get up, limping the few steps to the locked door.
He does this sometimes when he thinks Cassie is sleeping—checking the door for flaws. Peter takes his hand and runs it along the smooth edge of the door. It’s how it always is, and how it always will be—smooth. Then Peter’s hand grazes over the useless frame—the hinge is on the other side. There’s no screw to touch—the entire wall and door is smooth. There’s no lock to pick, no handle to pull, no hinge to break open. Nothing.
There’s no way out of here. They both know that.
It doesn’t seem to stop Peter from trying.
Her big brother presses at the food slot, trying to pry it open with his thin fingers—one hand and then the other, the bottom and then either side. His fingernails are bitten so low that he has nothing to pry up with anyway, so he wedges his fingers beneath the food slot and attempts to pull.
What would happen if he got it open anyway? Neither of them could fit through. They don’t have the key to the door’s vibranium lock. They don’t have the password to the door at the end of the hall, or the password for the one after that. Cassie doesn’t have the strength to run; Peter doesn’t have the ability to.
They don’t even know where they are.
Her brother keeps pulling at the door, useless, until his messed-up knee leaves a bloody streak on the concrete floor.
And eventually, Peter gives up.
He sits down by the door with his back to it, tipping his head back until it hits the door with a soft thud. His knee is an ugly mess, but Peter doesn’t seem to notice the pain. The fabric is torn wide open, and she can see it—all bloody from the movement, swollen with white bone peeking through skin.
It looks like it hurts.
Their light is still on, stupidly blinking above their heads, so Cassie can see her newfound brother quite clearly in the night. It flickers again—a glimpse of nighttime, just for a moment. She wonders if the lightbulb knows it’s in a bad place. If it knows what’s happened here.
And then it comes: her brother’s familiar voice, barely a whisper in the tiny room.
“I’m Spider-man,” he whispers to the unyielding ceiling. “This isn’t happening—this can’t be… I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, right? This is just a really, really bad dream.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “This isn’t…”
He opens his eyes again. They’re a little shiny, a little red, and he looks up at the lightbulb above them both—the one trapped in a cage like the two of them. “You gotta get me out of here. You… You have to. Come with the Avengers or Captain America, or whoever. Anyone, I’ll take it.”
What is he looking at? Who is he talking to?
“Send an empty suit,” he says, with a tang of resentment. “I don’t care. Anything. ‘Cause I can’t… I think…” He shakes his head. “I’m done. Okay? I can’t... I don't want to do this anymore. So can you come get me? Please?”
Who is he talking to?
Maybe he’s talking to the birds outside. To the spiders, if they’re listening. To Charlie, maybe, or to the birds beyond the layers of concrete and vibranium rebar separating them from the world above.
But Cassie thinks he’s talking to God. Something about the way he’s looking up.
But truly, who could be listening? Who could be out there looking for them? Who could be coming to save them?
“Because I think I… I’m…” Peter looks down at his knee. “I’m not… I’m not…strong enough. I can’t. Please, please just come get me. I’ll never ask for anything else, I’ll never bother you again…”
His mouth twists with something hateful, and his hand clenches in the denim fabric of the jumpsuit. “Doesn’t even matter. You’re not coming to get me. You don’t care.”
His chest is heaving; the light clicks off above him for a second. When it comes back on, Peter’s drawn up his knees up further, ignoring the pain, and is glaring up at the ceiling, brow furrowed.
“Have you even tried?” he accuses, his voice raising to a tough hiss—quiet enough not to be heard outside, loud enough that Cassie can hear every word clearly from the bed.
From where she’s laying, she looks up at the ceiling; there is nothing there save the light. Nothing there to be angry at, nothing to point at, nothing to make Peter scowl up there with such a violent intensity.
“It’s not fair—why the hell did you do this to me? You just had to drag me into your Avengers shit, right? Why’d you have to pick me, anyway? Could’ve found someone else to do your dirty work in Germany, right? Someone stronger?”
She’s not sure she’s ever seen him mad, not like this. She doesn’t like it.
“It’s not fair!" he snaps, glaring at the ceiling. “Why is this happening to me? Why’d you do this to me? Why’d you have to pick a fight with Captain fucking America and drag me into it! I wish I’d never met you! It’s not—”
A huff of anger leaves him, his face twisting again, and he says, “You did this to me and you’re just—” His voice cracks, splits, like a branch breaking from a tree. “How come you get to sit in your pretty little lab with all your fun little machines and tinker away—and I’m stuck here? You know what they’re doing to me? You know what they’ve...” He shakes a little, his chest caving in and out, and then he stabs his finger into empty air.
“This is your fault,” he says. “You did this to me, man! You—”
His voice cracks again, and he shakes his head, pressing his hand to his face and taking a couple shaky breaths.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Don’t…” He trails off. “Just help me, okay? I need your help, and I’m asking for it now—just, like, help me, is that so hard? I need you. It’s been… God, how long has it been? A month? Almost?”
They’ve been trying to keep track on the wall, but there are so many other tick marks there—dozens of people who have been trapped inside—and sometimes they forget to keep track. Sometimes Cassie wonders what happened to all the other people who lived in this room. Were they little like her? Were they big like Peter? Did they miss their mommies and daddies, too?
“I’ll be good, okay? I promise. I’ll stop wasting my time on stupid stuff like Legos and Star Wars—I’ll never ask you to see one of those stupid movies again. I’ll—I’ll get good grades, I won’t drink or do drugs… I’ll—I’ll eat all of May’s terrible cooking and I’ll never be late, or—or miss decathlon practice…” He’s shaking his head now, pressing his hand to his forehead. “I’ll take the SATs, I’ll get a good score, I’ll get into a good college.” Tears well up in his eyes, and he rubs at them with his fingers, trying to wipe the tears away. “MIT, right? That’s where you… That’s where you wanted me to go, right? Whatever you want, man, whatever you want, I’ll do it. I’ll be—I’ll be perfect.”
He gets extraordinarily quiet.
“I’ll watch the Godfather with you.”
His head falls forward, just a little, and then Peter looks up, straight at the ceiling, resting his head on the door. “Sounds like such a stupid movie. Long, too, right? It’s got that one guy? Marlon… whatever…” He goes quiet for a long time then, and the room fills with the sound of his slow breathing.
“Can’t remember his name,” he says after a while. “Uncle Ben liked him.”
He sounds sad.
Peter always sounds sad.
“Gonna be joining him soon, right?”
He lets out a strange laugh, and then he covers his face with his hand, and then he starts to cry. Tears bubble up and come down his face in lines. He’s crying, really crying, brushing away the tears with messy swipes of his hands, and his face crumples, miserable, before he wraps his arms around himself and tips his head into his knees, an attempt at self-comfort.
He doesn’t say anything at all for a while, a crying mess, still hugging himself.
Cassie’s seen him cry before, but never like this—never when he thinks no one is watching. It’s horrible—loud hiccuping and mucus-filled sobs, sniffing and crying and making sounds like someone’s cut him open wide.
She didn’t know grown-ups cried like kids do; she didn’t know grown-ups needed to.
It goes on like this for a few more minutes—Peter hugging himself so tightly she wonders if it hurts. The tears come fast down his face and his neck, and he wipes uselessly at his eyes with his palm,wincing as he does so.
Peter is always there to hold her when she cries; who’s there to hold Peter when he cries?
“Please. It feels like I’m—”'' Peter pauses, and he tips his head back against the door, looking up, and he breathes shakily out. “I’m not gonna make it much longer. I… I’m not…”
“I could do so much,” he says, and his voice sounds raw from all the crying. “I was out there, I was saving people, and I was doing good, I really was. And now I’m… I’ve got one little girl asking me to save her, just one, and I can’t even do that.” Cassie can feel him look at her. “It’s on me now, anything that happens to her—and so much has happened… All because of me.”
“With great power, you know…” he says. “That’s what May says.” His neck tightens. “Used to say.”
His neck tightens, and then he lowers his head, staring down at his skinny wrist—at the scars looping around his forearm, at the newfound wounds still weeping a little blood. Some of those stitches Cassie has done herself. “Not so great anymore, right?”
His face is still wet—Cassie can see it in the light. Mommy would’ve taken her sleeve, gathered it into her palm, and wiped her face dry. Is that something she is supposed to do? Is that something grown-ups need, too?
“I wanted to be like you,” Peter whispers, and this time his voice shakes. “I think I was, maybe, for a little while… And now, I’m… I’m…. I’m not sure if I’m…”
He combs at his hair with his fingers like he did for her—it snags: it’s getting longer by the day, curling past his ears to his neck, oily and sticking to his jaw. His bangs are overgrown now, covering his forehead and tickling his eyebrows.
“Please, just… Just—please. I don’t know how much longer I can… I don't have my suit. I don't have Karen or May or Ned or you. Just me in here, and I'm… I’m…. I'm losing it, I really am.”
He looks down at himself and from the side Cassie watches his face twist up as he pinches at the scarring around his wrists, scratches at the marks on his neck.
“You’d probably hate what I am now,” Peter says. “Don’t know if there’s anything worth… saving…anymore…”
It feels weird watching him like this—she should close her eyes, but she doesn’t.
“I’m–I’m scared. I don’t wanna—” His voice cracks into an inconsolable whisper. He wipes at his nose, and then at his eyes, and then at his nose again with his hand. “I wanna go home.”
He puts his head down a little, and then for a very long time, breathing strangely.
Then Peter looks down at his wrist. He turns it over then, palm-up, and he makes an odd motion with his fingers, curling his two middle fingers into his palm and extending the two outer ones, poking his thumb out—aiming his hand at the wall. Peter sticks his arm out further, and then he grimaces suddenly, a gasp of pain, then just drops his hand into his lap. A little red seeps out, and he clasps his other hand quickly over it, squeezing the wound shut.
He stares dully at the floor, his hand still clasped tightly over his wrist; he presses his mouth into a thin line. He swallows; his eyes look terrible, all swollen with tears—the skin around them pink and red and worse.
“I’m never getting out of here, right?” Peter says, much quieter, eyes glued to the ground; at last, he looks up again—up at their unyielding ceiling.
Peter takes a shaky breath—in and then out—and he squints up at the light like it hurts.
“Right?”
Her big brother is silent for a while, and Cassie can hear the rush of water in the pipes in the ceiling. That faulty click in the radiator. The hum of the lone lightbulb in its cage above them, still stubbornly on.
“Peter?”
He looks at her. There are tears on his face, all shiny in the flickering light.
“Who are you talking to?”
Peter looks down again, where his hand is still clenched around his bleeding wrist. His face goes flat, and his shoulders move—an exhale.
“No one,” he says.
No one at all.