Hello, friends, and welcome to Chapter Six! I'm BACK! I swear, I'm really sorry this took as long as it did. I was nearly finished with it over a month ago when my computer crashed and took the whole thing with it. I was fairly dejected about the whole thing, and it took me forever to get back in the saddle. But I'm here, and updates WILL be coming. SOON.
Also, if anybody is heading to New York Comic Con, I'll be there hanging out and trying to sell my original graphic novel.
Please, as always, read and review, I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for the patience and understanding!
Disclaimer: All characters owned by Marvel.
Chapter Six
"You okay, Slick? Your hands are trembling."
Peter held Anna by the shoulders, his arms extended as far as they would go. The ring on her finger still glittered, even in the dirty yellowed light from the bulb overhead, and each glint into his eyes caused him to suck another heavy, shaky breath in through his nose.
Anna tried to step back and take his hands, but found the cast around his right arm instead. "Oh my God, Peter, what happened to your wrist?"
He couldn't bring himself to look at her. Each time he tried, his mind was accosted with another stream of memories: her tutoring Octavius through the dissertation process, staring into his eyes as she spoke; her standing on a step stool in front of his stove, trying to carefully measure ingredients as Octavius fumbled with whatever machine was in front of him.
Her body writhing on top of his as his hands played across her torso…
"Peter?" she asked. "Are you alright?"
Anna's voice had a sense of being alien while at the same time sounding familiar. It was insane. Octavius had been in love with her, but Peter Parker didn't know this woman. A steady rumbling had been growing in the back of his skull, not unlike his Spider-Sense, but almost as though it were trying to project itself outward.
Like it was trying to warn her that he was the danger.
"Listen, I know you're really serious about your plans and I kind of messed that up, but…"
"Stop." Peter snapped. "Just… stop for a second."
He could feel blood boiling in his fingertips. He heard her shoulder pop from his squeezing. He wanted her gone.
An image of throwing her through the window passed before his eyes. A small measure of revenge.
He could just lie. Tell her he'd been unfaithful. That he was gay. Anything, just to get her out of the apartment and out of his life. He'd certainly lost enough women he cared for through his lies.
But no. None of this was her fault. She hadn't known that the body she was attracted to didn't belong to the man she fell in love with. She wasn't responsible. Regardless of how skewed it might be, Anna deserved some measure of the truth.
Peter let go of her shoulders and crossed the room to the couch. "Take a seat," he said, gesturing to the chair across from him.
She obeyed, crawling into the recliner, and faced him.
The squeak of the overhead fan was the only sound in the apartment for a few moments.
"There are some things I need to tell you," Peter said. "When I'm done, I guess we'll see how you feel."
He could see the wrinkles in her forehead, her eyebrows pushing up into her black bangs.
"You know that I make tech and stuff for Spider-Man, yeah?" he said.
She nodded.
"Have you ever heard of Doctor Otto Octavius?" he asked.
"Of course, Peter, you practically won't shut up about him, about how much of a genius he was," she said.
"Right," Peter said. "Have you ever heard of his alias?"
"I know he was Doctor Octopus," she said. "One of Spider-Man's bad guys. But he died about six months ago or so, right?"
"Yeah," Peter said. His voice was rough, throat thick with phlegm. He cleared it. "Well, not exactly."
He ran a palm through his hair. "Before he died, Octavius managed to hit me with some kind of robot thing."
Anna leaned forward in the chair, her thumb playing with the ring.
"Somehow it transferred his consciousness into my mind," Peter said, "Basically saving him from death."
"For the past six months, Doctor Octopus has been in control of my body."
Anna's thumb flicked the ring off her finger and into her right palm. "Why?" she said after a few seconds, her finger rolling the diamond around in her hand. "Why you?"
Peter shook his head. "I'm not sure. Best I can figure is he was biding his time, trying to get close to Spider-Man."
"And your doctorate? And the company?"
"Spidey's told me tons of times about Ock's giant ego. The guy probably couldn't live with himself without being recognized as a genius. Having a company with 'his,'" Peter made quotes with his fingers, "Name on it was just icing on the cake."
She stared at the ring in her palm. "And us?"
Peter sighed. "That was…" he sighed. "I'm sorry, but that was all him. I have some fuzzy memories of it, but that's all."
Anna nodded. "So, what you're telling me is that a dead super-villain invaded your mind, took over your body, and what? Proceeded to live your life as he saw fit? A fresh start, just to bide his time and get close to his nemesis?"
"I guess so," Peter said.
"Well," she said, sliding off the end of the love seat, "I'm sorry, but that is the biggest load of crap I've ever heard."
Anna walked around the small table between them, then grabbed the cast around Peter's forearm. "What happened here?" she asked, shoving the ring underneath the plaster and into Peter's palm. "Did Octavius-as-Parker slug Spidey in his lantern jaw?"
"No, I..." Peter said. "That is, Spider-Man figured out what was going on, but he had to distract Octavius while one of his Avenger buddies entered my mind and forced Octavius out."
Peter held up his arm. "He broke my wrist. The pain worked as a distraction long enough for someone to get in and clear Octavius out."
Anna shook her head. "Seriously? That's what you're going with?"
"It's the truth, Anna," Peter said.
"Right. And I'm Captain Marvel," Anna replied. She pulled her coat and scarf down from the hook on the back of the door. "You know, Peter, if you wanted to break up with me, you just had to say so. You didn't need to make up stories."
She pulled the door open, but hesitated at the threshold. "I guess I'll see you at work on Monday. I supposed that's one of the things Doctor Octopus did that you don't mind keeping, huh?"
An echo rolled through the apartment as the old wood slammed into its frame. Peter waited a few minutes before rising to turn the lock, his hands pulling his hair back. He leaned against the thick oak, and his eyes glanced again at the cabinet beneath the sink, the one he opened so rarely.
Like he had the night Carol left.
But that wasn't what he wanted. He walked into the bedroom, where he was waylaid with another barrage of memories. It seemed that Anna Maria had overridden anything that had remained of him in his apartment. Her scent was everywhere, almost permeating the walls. Sitting on the edge of the bed only made it worse. Full scenes were returning to him, now, rather than hazy images, and he could feel his frustration building with each moment he stayed in that room.
It was late, and he was exhausted.
Rising from the bed, Peter opened the closet. He saw the box laying on the floor, Octavius's handwritten minute-by-minute outline of his proposal next to it. He pulled the ring out from beneath his cast and dropped it in a shoebox on the floor, along with Octavius's note. He reached up into the ceiling and moved the false panel, pulling down a spare costume and web-shooters, along with a first aid kit.
Smashing his arm into the doorframe, Peter shattered the plaster cast around his wrist. Wincing, he opened the first aid kit and pulled out a large syringe, which contained a viscous, blue-green gel, a sample of the enzymes Tony and Reed had used to mimic Logan's healing factor after Kang the Conqueror's attack.
They'd made Peter swear to save it for an emergency. But to Peter, there was no greater emergency than the one he was in right then, because if he didn't get out of that apartment, things were going to get broken. Probably nosy neighbors.
He jammed the needle into his forearm and pressed the plunger down. It stung at first, felt almost like fire beneath his skin, but soon it began to cool, and Peter could feel his broken bones stitching themselves back together. After a few minutes, he tested himself: full rotational range of motion, making a fist. It felt a little numb, tingly, like how his jaw would feel after a shot of Novocain, but the pain was gone. He clipped the web-shooters onto his wrists and checked them, then pulled on his costume.
Peter climbed through the hole in his ceiling and onto the roof. He heard the movement and bustle of the city beneath and around him, caught a whiff of the scents that only New York could bring. He was still getting used to having his senses again. Leaping over the side, Spider-Man swung into the night, confident in the freedom and escape that web-slinging had always brought him.
As he swung over the streets, he saw something new in the eyes of the few New Yorkers who were out in the early morning hours. Rather than the usual cries of "Menace!" or the occasional smile and wave, every single eye he caught as he swung through the concrete canyons was wide.
Afraid.
Peter landed on a rooftop and ran across, but as he leapt to the building adjacent, he heard the sounds of struggle coming from the alley below.
"Shut your mouth!" a man said. "Shut your mouth or I'll blow your brains out and finish with what's left."
Scaling down the side of the building, Peter saw a man kneeling down in the scant light from the street, a gun shoved underneath another human chin. His right leg pressed against a chest, his knee stabbing into the sternum. Peter heard the clinking of a belt being pulled open, the ripping sound of a zipper being pulled down too quickly.
Spider-Man dropped into the alley behind them, his feet silent, his rage preventing his mouth from cracking a joke. He fired a web onto the gun a pulled, catching the blackened steel in his hand.
Rising, having to hold his jeans up with both hands, the assailant took a step back, his eyes so wide and his pupils so small that they resembled two pinpricks on a sheet of paper. As the man stepped away, Peter got his first look at the victim's face.
It was another man.
Messy brown hair, brown eyes. Peter found himself a bit unnerved at the similarities.
The criminal took another step backward, and having buttoned his pants, raised his hands in attempt to ward Spider-Man off. "I swear, I didn't know this was your turf, Spider," the man said.
Peter walked forward, the gun trembling before he crushed it in his hand.
The man backed into the wall and turned his head away, knowing there was nowhere left to run.
Pressing his mask against the man's nose, Peter webbed him to the wall.
"Please don't kill me."
Peter raised the broken gun, intending to web it to the wall next to the assailant, but instead his mind was hit with another memory, this one stronger, more vivid:
Octavius stands in Grand Central Station, staring down the rifle at the damaged, weak man kneeling before him. A polished metal sheet gleams on the left side of the man's cranium, and tears streak down his cheeks. "I'm… scared?" he says. "Fear. First time years, I-I've actually felt something."
Someone groans behind him, a reminder of the dead and dying in the room. Because of this man. Because of this gun.
"Real emotion," the man—Massacre—says. "It feels… wonderful."
Octavius hears a slight whisper in his mind, a still, small voice saying Massacre could still be cured. That there might be hope.
But Octavius knows better. He's been here before, seen dozens upon dozens of others just like Massacre. They never changed. They never will.
"This changes nothing," Octavius says. "You are who you are. That killer will always be hiding inside you."
He'd like to say that the gun trembles, that he hesitates. But that would be lying.
"There is only one solution here."
The sound of a gunshot snapped Peter back to himself. The assailant's weapon was laying on the ground, crushed beyond use. Peter turned away from the man to see the victim standing now, leaning against the green steel of a dumpster.
"I swear I thought you were gonna kill him," the man said.
Peter put a hand on his shoulder. "Stay here until the police arrive," Spider-Man said. "They'll need to take your statement."
The man nodded.
Spider-Man leapt into the air, and swung into the night. There was no escape here. There was no escape anywhere.
His webs carried him to Avengers' Tower, where he crawled through a side window unnoticed. It seemed that Octavius hadn't spent too much time there, so it was the least likely place to generate any more flashes of memory.
As long as he stayed away from Carol.
There were many things he could watch and relive if he had to. But he couldn't see the first night again.
Peter climbed into the corner of the ceiling in the common room, and curled himself into a ball. He hoped that he might be able to find some kind of rest there.
If only his mind would quiet.
XXXXXX
Carol couldn't sleep.
She was back on Earth. She was home.
But it didn't feel like it.
She threw the covers off herself and walked over to her window. She thought about throwing her costume on, going out to do some hero-ing, but that wasn't much her style.
It was just something she picked up from Peter.
Carol thought long and hard about what happened to him. Mind control. His body being used against him the way it had been. Trapped inside, forced to watch while Octavius did things that Peter would never do.
She could relate.
She considered going to find him when there was a knock at the door.
Throwing a robe over herself, she opened the door to find Doctor Strange standing there.
"Hey, Doc," she said. "What brings you here this late?"
"Is Peter here?" Strange asked.
"No, he went back to his place," Carol said, her voice heavy.
"Good," Strange said. "We need to talk. Come with me."
Carol followed Strange out to the common room, where they sat across from each other on opposite sides of the small table.
"What's going on, Doc?" Carol asked. "Is this about Peter?"
"Yes," Strange said.
Neither of them noticed or heard the shuffling coming from the ceiling.
"Is something wrong with him? Is Octavius still there?"
Strange shook his head. "It's just something that I think you need to know. That Peter absolutely doesn't. You understand?"
Carol frowned. "I don't like hiding things from him."
"Trust me, Carol, when I tell you, you'll know why it must be."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "What could be so bad?"
Strange leaned forward, his fingers intertwined in front of his face. A few moments of silence passed between them before he spoke again.
"Peter was never possessed by Otto Octavius."