dining with wolves II
MM: you are a good friend brett
Now that’s what he liked to hear.
BM: you alive?
MM: yes
BM: scared us for a minute there matt
MM: sorry
BM: is there a plan here that I know nothing about?
MM: yes
BM: glad to hear it. feel better soon yeah?
MM: 10th & W 46th Do you have dinner plans tomorrow?
Interesting.
BM: no I’m off duty
MM: Peter and co invite you to join them. Time is 11.
BM: kinda bold of them to make a reservation don’t you think?
MM: not as bold as you’d think. I’ll tell Peter you can make it.
BM: you coming?
MM: no I’m not allowed to drink so what the fuck is the point
Brett couldn’t help but laugh.
He spent the next day camped out in bed, sneakily reading casefiles that he definitely, certainly hadn’t brought home with him.
Maynard texted him with a sixth sense for his activity levels and asked him where the fuck the Mitchells' file was.
He then spent a fun hour checking his house for bugs. He found none. He did find a lot of dust, however, and, with all his books and dvds already out on the table and floor, he resigned himself to cleaning the bookshelf.
Which turned into cleaning the kitchen cabinets too, because why the fuck not?
That in turn, turned into sweeping the floors, scrubbing the counters, bleaching every available surface in the bathroom, and, just when his workphone started screeching in the bedroom, vacuuming out the couch and the carpets.
He turned off the vacuum and went to the bedroom to answer his phone.
It was the Captain.
“Sir?” he said into the receiver.
“Mahoney. Turn on the news.”
Ha. As if Brett had cable. He went and opened his laptop and found a livestream on CNN, then proceeded to place his jaw on the table.
“Do you know anything about this, detective?” the Captain asked.
Forget that.
There were so many of them. There was a black and white Spiderman with blue slippers. And a black and white Spiderman wearing an honest-to-god trenchcoat, which buffeted as he pivoted around the corner of the block with a black and red Spiderman tossed haphazardly over his shoulder in one arm and the smaller black and white Spiderman in the other.
There were one, two, three, four, five blue and red Spidermen gunning it the fuck away from a building, right on the heels of Mr. Trenchcoat And Goggles. And that speed was warranted apparently, as out from one of the freshly evacuated building’s boarded up doors smashed Wilson Fisk. The man himself, somehow out of Riker’s. Somehow back in a suit.
The Spideys were emphatically not fucking with that.
One of the guys—not Peter, that was for sure, he was way, way too tall and lanky—took one look over his shoulder and broke out into a panic visible even to Brett’s eyes from his shitty laptop screen.
That must have been the Spiderman that Peter had told him about. The one who’d died at Wilson Fisk’s hands. The one who’d been left screaming out for hours and hours, days and days to the rest of them.
Yeah, if Brett turned around and saw the literal cause of his death staring him straight in the face, he’d kick up the speed a couple notches himself.
One of the shorter Spideys, who might have been Peter, but it was hard to tell when they were all wearing similar suits, seemed to sense his compatriot’s anxiety and stopped in the middle of the pavement. This kid whirled around and started running towards Fisk.
Brett covered his mouth.
“Oh my god,” he muttered.
“Yep,” the Captain said.
“I don’t—is this live?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Captain, someone should—”
“People are on it. Rikers is on lockdown. You’re on medical leave. I just need you to tell me one thing, Mahoney, that is it.”
Brett swallowed and watched as, from out of frame, the little black Spiderman came hurtling back onto the scene toward the small Spiderman who had braced himself for impact. He was preparing to be a distraction for the others.
“Yes, sir?” Brett murmured almost absentmindedly.
The red and blue crew came to a halt just before they managed to get out of frame themselves. They’d realized collectively that they were missing one of their guys. They turned back and put on an amazing show of gestures which said ‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?’ loud and clear back towards the black Spidey and the rogue red and blue munchkin. They started freaking out even harder when the Spiderman with the blue slippers ducked right through their troop, too.
“Were you aware that there were multiple Spidermen, detective?” the Captain asked.
Not like this.
This, Brett could not have imagined in a thousand years.
“No, sir,” he said. “Peter told me that he was the one and only.”
The Captain made a thinking noise through the phone and then sighed.
“Well, I guess it can’t be helped. He must not have known about the others until—well, now, I suppose,” he said. “I guess the task now is figuring out which one is him.”
And a task it would be.
There were four pint-sized Spidermen. The one with the blue slippers was definitely a young girl. The kid in the black, who, between the girl and the brave little red and blue toaster beside him, had planted his feet wide in preparation for Fisk’s oncoming charge, Brett did not think was Peter. He seemed a little too spindly, even for Pete.
That said, another half-sized red and blue suit had just scrambled back to join the line-up and it was anyone’s guess whether or not he was Peter.
Brett couldn’t tell.
What he did know, however, was that that line of kids was about to get trashed.
His heart leapt to his throat and his breath froze in his chest and, at the last possible second, one of the taller Spideys threw out a hand and a line of web to the wall of one of the buildings on the kids’ left hand side. It created a clothesline of sorts right in Fisk’s path. One of the other taller Spiderman lunged low like a pitcher and hurled a ball of web towards the window of the building the troop had just escaped from.
The shit that followed happened so fast it was hard to track.
Fisk charged into the web. Trenchcoat appeared out of nowhere to lunge ahead of the line of minors. He met Fisk head on when the web broke.
Two of the tall Spidermen vanished from the frame. The guy who was left had been putting his back into pulling the web he’d thrown as taut as he could; he crashed to the ground when the line broke.
Fisk got two hands on Trenchcoat’s face and started to squeeze.
The minors sprang forward; the two red and blue suits went for Fisk’s hands. The young girl slid under Fisk’s legs and broke out in a run back the way he’d come.
The black Spiderman leapt over the broken web after her but stopped at Fisk’s back. He shouted something to the red and blues from behind Fisk’s massive bulk, and just when those two had gotten Fisk’s hands off of Trenchcoat, a flash of light broke out and Fisk dropped to his knees and started shuddering and jerking violently on the screen.
In the wake of this moment, everything seemed to go still. The black Spiderman took a step back. The last tall Spiderman got up and ran out to put himself between Fisk and this kid. He held firm when Fisk started to move again. When he started to shuffle and stand back up. He turned slowly to loom over the tall Spidey.
Brett couldn’t hear what they were saying but talking was surely happening. The tall Spiderman seemed to be negotiating. He made a lot of gestures with his hands.
Whatever he was saying, it was really getting to Fisk.
Maybe he was explaining the situation.
Maybe he was telling him that he was being used as a prop. Manipulated just the way that he did others.
Whatever it was, Fisk roared and started to throw meaty fists at the tall Spidey who side-stepped and dodged them while pushing the black Spiderman back with him.
“STOP,” the camera’s audio managed to catch from the distance. “STOP THIS. I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU.”
Dude.
What?
Fisk was trying to kill this guy and he didn’t want to hurt Fisk?
The Spidey caught one of those hands with the side of his head and right on top of the beat following the impact, he slammed a right hook into the side of Fisk’s own head, and the man dropped right then, right there.
The other Spideys went still. The big guy held still a moment himself, as though he was shocked at what he’d done. He then crouched down and checked for a pulse.
There was a heart-stopping moment in between his stillness and the nod of his head that just about gave Brett heartburn.
The Spiderman stood up and made a gesture at the two identical mini Spideys, one of whom felt all over his suit and then yanked out a phone, and even though he was far away from the camera and half concealed, kneeling by what was sure to be a thoroughly-traumatized Trenchcoat, Brett made out the familiar flash of Peter’s highlighter yellow phone case.
Gotcha.
He was on Trenchcoat’s left. Which meant that the kid on the right was from another universe.
Police cars started to arrive on the scene. The bevy of officers that sprang out sent the troop of Spideys to gathering each other up and getting the hell out of dodge. Peter and his twin yanked Trenchcoat up and took him with them as they ran out of frame. The black Spiderman grabbed the big guy’s wrist and ran the other way.
Only then did Brett realize that he was still holding his phone to his ear.
The call had ended.
He put it down on the table and shakily took a seat.
MM: peter wants you have his personal number
Brett’s fingers jittered when he picked up the phone and carried on jittering as he tried to answer the text.
BM: is he okay?
MM: yeah
BM: is his friend with the coat okay?
MM: which one?
BM: trenchcoat
MM: sorry I don’t know that one.
MM: you can ask peter. Foggy will send you his number.
Brett received the text and was surprised to feel like he’d finally jumped a huge hurdle in his and Peter’s working relationship.
Pete had guarded his personal number closely so far.
BM: hey kid this is detective Mahoney. Matt said you wanted something?
PP: oh hey detective! Just wanted to know if we’re still on for dinner.
What the fuck?
Was this some kind of joke?
BM: are you okay? Are you friends okay? What happened back there?
PP: we’re good. Benj’s goggles are wrecked and he’s sad and blind af atm, but everyone’s more or less in one piece.
Benj? That was Trenchcoat’s name?
Actually, scratch that.
BM: he’s blind????
PP: not like DD. He just can’t see for shit is all. He’ll be fine. So we have decided on take out, if that’s cool with you. No one’s got clothes for eating in. Do you like Ethiopian?
This shit was surreal.
He didn’t really know how to dress to meet a fuckload of Spidermen, but he figured that the detective coat wasn’t it. He left it at home. Put on some walking shoes and the jacket his mom bought him three years back. He grabbed a scarf and headed out, feeling weirdly nervous.
Peter told him to come to the orange perch. He named all his perches by colors. This one was orange because of the traffic cones which lived permanently around the staircase up to the rooftop.
Brett brought a first aid kit, just on the off chance it would be needed.
It was freezing and dark on the staircase. He opened the door out onto the roof and nearly shat himself at the sudden rousing cheer that met him.
And there they were.
A fuckload of Spidermen, gathered like butterflies all over the roof.
Peter, sans mask, stood up to meet him. He came over and beamed up at Brett, then turned back to the others and said, “This is my detective. The good one.”
The Spideys gave a more or less cheerful hello. They were, on the whole, battered and scratched up, but in good spirits. Trenchcoat (or Benj?) squinted Brett’s way and in doing so revealed literally white skin and black hair.
He looked young as fuck. He turned and flicked the guy next to him in the shoulder, pointed and murmured something.
The Spiderman who responded to him looked exactly like Peter. Exactly like him, except a good ten years older, with wild hair and stubble. He pawed at his suit a bit and produced a glasses case which he offered Trenchcoat. Trenchcoat squinted at that, too.
Bless him.
“Let me introduce folks,” Peter said, tugging lightly at Brett’s sleeve.
“That’s Benj over there with the coat. He’s from 1933; he’s a private investigator.”
Benj put on the glasses the guy next to him offered and freaked out. He practically threw them off.
“That’s Tats,” Peter said, waving at the dude who had just barely saved his glasses from a tragic ending. Tats looked up and smiled and waved.
“He’s from a verse with like, a million copycat Spidermen in it. He’s harnessed their power for evil.”
Tats laughed.
“That’s Blondie,” Peter said, gesturing to a blond guy watching the proceedings with a hand on his chin, partially concealing a smile. He looked like Benj, except he actually had color in his face.
“He’s the multiverse Spiderman,” Peter explained. “He’s the one who was calling out to us all.”
Blondie flickered his fingers in a cutesy little wave without moving his palm from his chin.
“Next to him is Miles. He’s Spidey 2.0 in his and Blondie’s verse.”
Miles was the black-suited Spiderman. He was black boy with sweet cheeks full of baby-fat. He was laid half across the girl next to him’s lap as she held what looked to be a phone out of his reach.
“That’s Gwen,” Peter said, referring to the girl. “She’s Spiderwoman. The guy who decked you is her problem.”
“He’s been handled,” Gwen promised, stretching her arm farther as Miles leaned over harder for the phone. “Sorry about your head. I can give him a matching concussion if you want?”
“That’s cool, thanks though,” Brett told her stiffly.
She shrugged.
“That’s Peter B,” Peter continued, breezing happily through this offer of violence.
Peter B snapped awake at the sound of his name. He looked like Blondie and Benj, but brunet and much, much older than both of them.
“Wha’s happ’ning?” he slurred.
“We’re introducing people,” Gwen told him.
“To who?”
“That’s Shortstack’s detective. He’s the good cop.”
“There’s a good cop?” Peter B asked. “Where’s a good cop?”
The others snickered. Peter B looked around and finally found Brett.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Hello there, Officer. Did you need, uhhhhh registration or something?”
More giggling.
“B, you don’t have a car,” Miles pointed out.
“I don’t?”
“Or a license,” Gwen snickered.
“How do you know?” Peter B demanded. “I could drive a car. I’ve driven hella cars. Catch me out here not driving cars, I dare you.”
“He’s old,” Peter told Brett sagely.
“I’m not that old,” Peter B huffed.
“He’s like forty,” Peter stage-whispered. “And divorced.”
A scandalized gasp rang out among the Spideys and Brett realized belatedly that this was a joke.
“I’m not fuckin’ divorced,” Peter B snapped back at them. “We talked about this. I am happily married.”
“He was divorced,” Peter told Brett.
Peter B’s jaw twitched in irritation.
“You’re the size of a rat,” he announced.
Peter jerked his face his way immediately.
“You wanna go, old man?” he demanded.
Peter B. threw a dismissive hand at him and grumbled something.
“Speak up if you wanna be heard,” Peter said.
Peter B threw louder, more grumbly and cantankerous muttering his way. Miles imitated him to Gwen and the two of them giggled. Peter B growled their way and they giggled harder.
Peter scowled, huffed, then decided to ignore Peter B in favor of waving over to the final Spiderman on the roof tucked up against Blondie’s shins, apparently absorbing his heat.
“That’s Funsize,” Peter said.
“Hi,” Funsize said.
He was Peter.
No, for real.
They were one and the same. Standing next to each other, they were completely indiscernible.
“Funsize is just like me, but his mutation isn’t as aggressive and he’s got, like, people skills or something,” Peter said.
Funsize smiled and laid his cheek back down onto Blondie’s knee. Blondie petted at his hair a little. He was not bitten, shoved, hissed at, or even squinted at for his trouble.
Damn. Yeah. People skills, Brett was making a note of that.
The Spidermen were tired from their ordeal. They were chill. And entirely too comedic to be real. Benj kept trying on people’s glasses if they had them and rejecting them all vehemently. When asked what the deal was with them, he announced that they made it so he could see individual lights out over the city and that shit wasn’t kosher.
It was then determined that what Benj actually needed in his verse was a new glasses prescription. He’d hear nothing of it. He claimed that he’d gotten along just fine with his old goggles, thanks. He just had to go get a new pair.
Tats offered to make some for him and the insult nearly got him shoved off the edge of the building. Peter B barked their way to settle down and to Brett’s surprise, teasing aside, the younger folks listened to him.
Once the youth were more peaceably chattering at each other again, Brett glanced over and noticed a huge bruise on Peter B’s knuckles. He came to logical conclusion that he was the one who had decked Fisk.
“You didn’t kill him,” he noted while the kids showed each other memes on their phones.
Peter B lifted an eyebrow his way, then shrugged.
“I don’t kill people,” he said.
“But you could have,” Brett said. “You pulled that punch.”
“Fisk is only my problem in as far as I let him be my problem,” Peter B said. Blondie came over and settled into his side. Peter B gave him a long-suffering look, then begrudgingly took off the khaki jacket he was wearing and handed it over. Blondie wrapped himself up in it happily.
Funsize came over shortly after and climbed into his lap and they both cuddled in the heat.
“I got better things to do than waste my time thinkin’ about the ethics of killing a kingpin. And I decided ages ago that that kind of thing wasn’t my call to make,” Peter B said, watching the other two. He shifted his gaze back to Brett and tipped his head to the side. “Unfortunately, though,” he said, “I don’t got the benefit of a good cop. Shortstack’s a lucky kid.”
Now that was going a little far.
“I’m nothing special. My captain assigned me the job,” Brett told him.
Peter B chuckled.
“Yeah, it’s ‘cause of your captain you’re out here fraternizing with a load of impossibilities,” he said.
Miles came over and, seeing Blondie and Funsize tucked together, wriggled his way into Peter B’s lap and thumped his head expectantly against his shoulder. When Peter B failed to respond, Miles helped him out by capturing one of his hands and pulling the arm around himself.
Peter B looked down at him.
“You cold, too?” he asked.
“Mm.”
“Wanna head back?”
“No.”
Peter B gave Brett another look of exhaustion. It graduated to a look of exasperation when Gwen shoved Miles over and pressed herself against the other side of Peter B’s chest.
“Why do you run warm?” she demanded. “Everyone else’s got the colds, and you’re all hot.”
“It’s all the handsome,” Peter B told her. The kids in his lap gave him matching flat expressions, then pressed back against him. Gwen blinked at Brett.
“My dad’s a cop,” she said.
No shit?
“Mine too,” Miles hummed.
Dude, seriously? Wasn’t that cutting it a little close?
“Yeah, but that’s kinda our lot,” Gwen said. She yawned.
“Are we done being cold yet?” Peter B asked the group, which, Brett realized, had generally migrated into a mass around him and Peter B. Peter was tucked up with Tats who hugged him to his chest. They were mutually rumbling at each other.
Fuckin’ weird, man.
“Hello? Hello? Am I talking to myself here?” Peter B fussed.
No one answered him still. He sighed.
The two in his lap sounded like they had started rumbling, too.
“I’m not doing this with y’all,” Peter B said. “We have done this enough. Benj is gonna drool. It’s gonna be embarrassing.”
Benj made a sharp noise of offense.
“What’s ‘this?’” Brett asked.
Peter B grumbled.
“Purring,” Blondie finally said. Brett looked at him in surprise.
“You’re purring?” he asked.
“Yes. Feel.”
Blondie took Brett’s hand and laid it on his chest. He was warm and his sternum was vibrating lightly.
Woah.
“You purr?” Brett asked Peter. Peter blinked at him from his happy home in Tat’s grip.
“Yes,” he said.
“Does Stark know?” Brett asked.
Peter smirked and pressed in closer to Tats; Tats, who was rumbling like an electric fan. Damn, that sure was a noise, wasn’t it?
“What does it mean?” Brett asked.
“Nice things are happening,” Miles said.
Huh.
Noted.
Brett looked at Peter B.
“Do you purr?” he asked.
“Fuck no.”
“He does,” Gwen said. “He’s just annoying about it. He’s doing it right now.”
“I’m not,” Peter B sniffed.
“He is,” Miles promised. “’Cause he likes us.”
Peter B stood up and dislodged the kids and the unity of the group.
“I’m going home,” he declared. “Y’all can be presumptuous on your own time. Blondie, jacket. Peace, y’all.”
Blondie was loathe to relinquish the coat, but he gave it all the same.
“That’s probably our cue. Miles? Shall we?” he said as Peter B stalked off, stepped over the side of the roof and seemed to vanish into thin air.
Miles made an unhappy sound.
“You guys can meet up again later,” Blondie said soothingly. He removed Funsize from his lap. Tats accepted him into his ever-louder embrace. He and his two mini-mes hunkered in close to each other.
Miles huffed and relented. He stood up and came over to stand with Blondie.
“Bye, everyone,” he said. “We’ll see you all around. Call us if you need anything.”
“Call me first,” Blondie said.
He and Miles swept off into the darkness on the far side of the roof, away from the floodlights. Their shadows disappeared with them.
Benj got up next and waved at Gwen to follow him. Then Tats hummed and swayed and announced to his minis that he had work in six hours and only two monsters left in his stash.
“This happy union must part,” he said, standing up. “But I’ll be seein’ y’all around yeah? Stay out of trouble. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
The remaining boys snickered.
And then there were two.
Funsize turned to Peter and offered a hand.
“Don’t tell them,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”
“They already know,” Peter said back to him. “Dr. Banner for sure.”
“That’s okay, Dr. Banner is neutral ground,” Funsize said. “But don’t let the others know. Not the full extent.”
“You think?” Peter asked.
“Tats and Blondie and B say that the Avengers don’t gotta know all our business,” Funsize hummed. “I think I’d like to keep a few secrets.”
Peter nodded.
“Peace, man,” he said, holding out a fist. “Thanks for the backup.”
Funsize met the gesture with his own knuckles.
“Thanks for not biting anyone this time,” he said.
He turned and walked away and, just like the others, seemed to melt into the air. That left just Brett and Peter. Peter’s ears were turning red.
Brett stood up and took off his jacket.
“That it?” he asked. “We done now?”
Peter accepted the jacket. The tips of his fingers barely made it out of the sleeves.
“Yeah,” he said. He looked out over the city. “They’re good people.”
Yeah. Yeah, it seemed like they really were.
FN: BRETT MAHONEY
FN: I HAVE BEEN INFORMED BY RELIABLE SOURCES THAT YOU GOT TO MEET PETER’S ASSOCIATES
BM: yeah they’re chill
FN: im jealous tell me everything matt says one of them is stupid handsome
BM: how could matt know that
FN: he does. He just. does. Which one is it? I need to know my enemy.
BM: fogs you cannot be jealous right now. These folks are literally from other dimensions
FN: MY JEALOUSY KNOWS NO BOUNDS
FN: for real tho. Are they cool? They seemed pretty amazing on tv. Matt says that he’s worked a job with a couple of them before. He said he likes the tall one. And the blond one.
BM: I could see that.
FN: which one is my nemesis
BM: foggy.
FN: jk jk jk
FN: oh! Also I have had every avenger and vigilante under the sun wandering around my office asking me loaded questions about you. Just so you know, you went out on a date tonight, yeah? You don’t want to talk about it. It ended badly.
BM: lol thanks fogs.
FN: Matt has additionally informed me that Peter’s special skill is a secret one and he “has no control over it.” Officially. If you catch my drift.
BM: I got it.
FN: perf. Anyways. Nemesis. Go.
Brett came back to the chaos of work. He endured the Captain’s orders for him to find out more about these Spiderpeople. He endured Maynard and Brewer and Goldberg’s overblown fussing over his fucked up head.
He endured a surprise, double-teamed visit from Colonel Rhodes and Sam Wilson who dragged him out of the station for a “coffee break” at a café where they sat on the opposite side of the table from him with purposefully open and relaxed posture.
Brett laid his chin in a palm and surveyed this.
“I don’t know what y’all want from me,” he said.
Colonel Rhodes had seniority and diplomatic expertise. He leaned forward with folded fingers.
“Peter trusts you, detective. More, sometimes, than he trusts the rest of us. And we have concerns that he might be sharing information with you that he’s not comfortable sharing with the rest of the team—which is perfectly fine, by the way. Young people need confidants. But in this case, specifically, we just need to bridge the gap. You know, so the kid is as supported as he can be.”
Hm.
Well, it seemed to Brett from the conversation he’d witnessed between Pete and Funsize that there had already been some discussion among the Spiderfolks about whether or not the depth of their connections should be public knowledge.
Among the older ones, the implied answer appeared to be a resounding ‘go fuck yourself, squares.’ The younger ones were still in the process of deciding.
“Knowing about the multiverse could put you in a precarious position, Brett,” Sam Wilson added gently. “We, as a team, don’t want you to get mixed up with this kind of thing or the people who want to know about it. For your own safety, detective.”
Okay?
And?
Sam and the colonel traded expressions.
“I don’t know if you’re understanding—” the colonel started.
“Sir, I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m a cop,” Brett interrupted. “I’m always in danger. But more than that, I’m just a cop. I go in, I do my job, I leave. The only reason I work with any of y’all is because it helps me do my job. You are making a huge mistake if you think that I give single shit about any alien thing or multiverse thing or what the fuck ever else you’ve got going on in your day lives. As long as something happens outside my jurisdiction, I cannot emphasize enough to you how much I do not care about it. So, the kid talks to me, yeah. Okay? And? I am literally bribing him to talk to me. That’s the point. If he’s talkin’ to me, and not to you, I don’t see how that’s a me-problem. That sounds like a you-problem. Or an Avengers-problem.”
He paused to glare from one face to the other.
“Furthermore,” he continued acerbically, “If you think I’m going around natterin’ on about multiverse-this or vigilante-that in my personal life—man, you guys don’t know shit, if you’ll excuse my language. Colonel, Mr. Wilson, to be completely honest, I know more about you, as individuals and a whole, than you all know about me. And I like it that way. And I’d like to keep it that way. So I’ll keep your super-secrets or whatever, so long as you and your people respect the boundaries of the relationships I’ve set up here, alright? And this? This right here? Dragging me out of work to make sure I’m keeping your secrets? This is crossing that line. This is what makes cops dirty, you know that? It always starts with good intentions. Always.”
He waited, surprised at how irritated he suddenly felt about the whole thing.
Sam and the Colonel exchanged another set of expressions. Sam shook his head and sighed.
“I’m sorry, Brett,” he said. “You’re right. This is crossing the line. It does seem like we’ve misinterpreted a few things here. And I am personally sincerely sorry for that. I guess it’s easy to forget motivations when you spend so much time with someone.”
Damn right it was.
But that was not necessarily what was driving Brett at the moment. He swallowed back the bile that came up at the realization of what exactly that driving force was.
“Is that all, then?” he asked the men across from him.
Sam nodded.
“That’s all,” the Colonel said.
“Then I’ll be going. Thanks for the coffee,” Brett said.
He stood up. He grabbed his coat. And he walked out of the door and let its tinkling bell sound off after him.
Do you believe in fairytales, detective? Wade had asked him.
No.
He didn’t. He believed in people.
People believed in fairytales. And people were the ones who made reality, so as long as people believed in fairytales, they’d make them come true.
These vigilantes—these people he’d been chasing for nearly a year now.
They believed in fairytales.
They believed in worlds where there was good and evil and they believed in what they were doing. They believed that they were helping people.
They weren’t so complicated as folks made them out to be. They didn’t want to be. That’s why they forewent the official institutions. That’s why they ducked from the Avengers, the X-men, the law, and the police.
The people in those places believed in fairytales, too. But they liked to make them complicated. They wanted and needed to make them complicated.
And Brett respected that there were many reasons for that complexity. He did.
Complexity often serves a purpose.
But it also offers too many choices. Too many directions to go in. With that kind of thinking, fairytales all start melding and bleeding together until the whole thing was one dark, unknowable wood, a forest filled with wolves and ogres and giants.
After a while of wandering, the people who waded into that forest started to lose themselves to it. They started to become the wolves and ogres themselves, even without realizing it.
Brett had spent his whole career trying not to get sucked into the woods. Trying to walk the balance between complexity and simplicity.
It was hard.
It was grueling.
It had resulted in friendships and break ups and trust being broken and melded all over the damn place.
But if Brett was allowed to make his own fairytale, which he had decided he was, then it went like this:
One day, there was a cop who believed in making the world a better place for his family and friends and his community. He wanted to be a good person. He wanted to spend every day of his life helping the world become better than it was the day before, however big or small that looked.
The end.
There were no ‘buts.’
There were no ‘ifs.’
Sure, there were risks. And there were forests and woods and ogres and heroes.
But just because those things existed didn’t mean that he had to spend his life dilly-dallying in them and tumbling around, getting all torn up by teeth and thorns.
He was allowed to just walk through the woods. He was allowed to just talk to people to get what he needed, when he needed it. He was allowed to make friends and lose them and to make sacrifices that didn’t always work out.
Things were allowed to be that fucking simple.
So Brett was allowed to decide, whenever he wanted, whether or not he believed in a sixteen-year-old kid and a whole lot of other kids and people, who had in mind for themselves a similar type of fairytale. And he was allowed to read their stories and carry their secrets if he so damn chose.