Hello, friends, and welcome to Chapter Thirteen! It has been far too long, and for that I apologize. Life has been a roller coaster of late, but I'm trying to get things together and finish out this story so I can move onto the final part of this trilogy. As a side note, I've been considering starting a page; if you would be interested in helping me out to make these chapters go a bit faster or put in a request for a particular story, let me know. As always, please read and review; I greatly appreciate it and each of you!

Chapter Thirteen

Doom.

Dread crept its way into Carol's bones. She thought back to all that Peter had done the previous year, the defeats and humiliations that he'd brought down on Doom's head.

Peter had broken him.

Destroyed Doom's plans, shattered any hope the supervillain had held for using the Super Soldier Serum and the Vita Rays to become "perfect."

And had—one arm bleeding from the shoulder, several cracked bones in his face—not only beaten Doom in a straight fight, but had brought him low.

Peter had not only seen Doom's face, but mangled it far worse than whatever accident had scarred him previously.

And given Doom's penchant for revenge…

"That can't be right," she said, taking Doctor Strange's hands in her own. She could feel unusual cracks and ridges in his bones, remnants of the damage from the car accident that changed his life forever. "Please tell me there's another option. Blackheart, Mephisto, anyone."

Strange shook his head. "Demons do not have the power to freely manipulate living souls. The soul must be first given to them in contract."

Carol rose from the sofa and walked, running her palms through her hair. She took a few steps, plopped back down on the sofa, then stood again. She needed something to hit.

It couldn't be Doom. The only reason Peter had been able to beat him before was because Doom underestimated him. In fact, that was a mistake people frequently made with him. His endless jokes and laughter threw his enemies off guard, and…

Her mind went back to his laugh. She hadn't heard it since… she couldn't remember. Even at the party they held in his honor he'd been quieter, more reserved. She realized she hadn't heard a laugh… a genuine, Peter Parker guffaw since before she'd left for space.

And now, if Doom was involved, she might never hear one again.

No. That is not a road you want to travel down, Carol. Stay positive.

"Alright," she said, lowering herself back onto the sofa. "Assuming that Doom is the one who performed this… ritual? What does that mean?"

Strange shook his head. "It could mean any number of things, most of which we are ignorant of. It's possible that Doom could know everything, or he could know nothing. There's no way to be sure."

"Wait a minute," Tony said, leaning forward on the sofa and setting his glass on the table. "I thought Doom was just a genius, like me or Reed. An evil genius, but the man gets credit where it's due." His eyebrows pushed together, wrinkling his forehead. "How is he pulling off magic rituals?"

A knurled, misshapen right thumb and forefinger gripped the glinting gold eye medallion around his neck. "Doom has been studying the mystic arts since his mother died, and has become one of the most powerful practitioners in the world. He has, on more than one occasion, been considered for the position of Sorcerer Supreme."

Tony opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead his eyes darted left and right a few times, his head turning slightly with their movement. After a moment, he found his voice again. "I thought the Sorcerer Supreme was supposed to defend Earth from magical threats or something, right? How could that be Doom?"

"The Sorcerer Supreme is not bound by any particular altruism or moral outlook," Strange said. "He or she is, simply, the strongest."

"That's a bit terrifying," Tony said.

Strange nodded. "Indeed."

Carol cleared her throat, and the two men turned to her. "Can we get some focus here, please?" she said. "Do you think Doom knows where Octavius is keeping Peter?"

Strange rubbed his hand over his beard. "As I said, there's no way to be sure. He could know everything about Peter: who he is, what Octavius was planning to do with him. This could be his plan, for all we know."

"So is Doom controlling this new body?" Tony asked. "Manipulating it with magic puppet strings?"

"No, nothing like that," Strange said. "If we operate under the assumption that Doom knows as little as possible, then he would have simply performed the ritual that placed Octavius's soul into this new body."

Carol rose and took a few steps away from the sofa, running her fingers through her short blond hair before resting them against the back of her neck. "But we're not even sure that it is Doom, right? There could be some new player on the field?"

Strange shook his head. "Not one that I wouldn't have felt, or heard of. There is no way to amass that kind of power without attracting attention. I am good at my job, after all."

Before she could ask another question, Wong appeared in the doorway with a phone in his hand. "Pardon me," he said. "But there is a man on the phone claiming to be at Avenger's Tower with information that could lead to Spider-Man's whereabouts."

XXXXXX

The flight back to Avenger's Tower was one of the shortest Carol had ever taken. The thunderous boom of her passing caught up with her about five seconds after she landed in the Tower's lobby. There she was greeted with sight she never expected to see in her life.

Deadpool. Standing next to an easy chair, drinking a cup of coffee.

She approached the mercenary, already feeling the wrinkles of irritation run up her back, prickling up the hairs on her neck. But if Wade had found something that could lead them to Peter, she was willing to be civil.

"Deadpool," she said, "I hear you…"

"Nope," Deadpool replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not giving you squat until you do something for me first."

Carol could feel a vein pulsing in the side of her neck. "Wade, if you have something that can lead me to Spider-Man, I suggest you hand it over."

Deadpool turned his head toward her. "Oh, I fully intend to. I just need you to do me one teensy-weensy favor." His index finger and thumb squished together to form an almost imperceptible space.

Her left eye twitched. "What?"

"When you find Spidey," he said, "You have to get him to apologize to me for stealing my color scheme."

Carol could feel the muscles in her forearm tightening as her hand curled into a fist. "What did you say?"

Deadpool slumped his shoulders. "My color scheme. C'mon, don't tell me you haven't noticed his new red-and-black suit thing? That's my thing. He aped my thing, Captain Hotpants!"

Carol was seriously considering blowing his head off. In fact, the only thing saving his face was that she would have to wait for it to regenerate before getting any information out of him. Fortunately the sound of repulsors and clanking armor told her that Tony had finally caught up with her.

"Please tell me this isn't our guy?" Tony said as his helmet retracted into the back of his armor.

"Don't hate… just because I'm prettier than you…"

"Are you serious? With a face that looks like it got drowned in boiling grease fat?"

"At least my beard doesn't look like it was drawn on with liquid eyeliner!"

"Guys!" Carol exploded—literally, a burst of energy pulsed out of her body, knocking the two of them back several inches. "Wade, what do you have?!"

Deadpool's right arm shot into the air, his index finger extended as far as it would go. "Oh yeah! Deus Ex Deadpool coming right up!"

Reaching into a pouch strapped to his leg, Wade produced a small tablet computer. "Boom! I get to be an Avenger now, right?"

"For a tablet?" Tony asked.

"For Spidey's tablet," Deadpool replied. "You know, the one he had on him the day he was kidnapped?"

Tony turned the device over; the case was red, with a black spider in the center. "Spidey had a tablet on him?"

Deadpool nodded. "Dropped it when the fight started."

"But how did you find it?"

A large smile spread across Deadpool's face, deep enough that they could see it through his mask. "Well… I heard you guys were on the lookout for Spidey, so I had my ear to the ground—not literally, that would be stupid—and I heard some kid was trying to sell this thing to a pawn shop. So I liberated it from him."

"And this is supposed to help us find him how?" Carol asked.

Tony waved a hand. "He didn't leave here that day looking for that fight," he said, "He left looking for Octavius. It's possible that wherever he tracked Ock to through the helmet is on here somewhere."

He pressed the button at the top, and a small smile crossed his face. "You think you might know the password?" Tony asked, holding it out to Carol.

She took the tablet and looked at the screen. The background image was one he'd taken of himself, in the middle of a fight with Venom. How he managed getting pictures of himself like that for so long I'll never understand. Looking closer, Carol realized she recognized the photo; it was taken during the Siege of Asgard, when she and Peter had fought Venom in the nearby small town of Broxton, Oklahoma. In fact she saw herself there—in her old Ms. Marvel costume—flying toward the symbiotic monster, about to punch the beast into the asphalt.

Carol laughed a bit to herself. I'll bet he misses that old costume. Her smile deepened as she though more about the picture. It was subtle; anyone else would've seen a picture of Spider-Man in a fight. But Carol understood the significance of that day. After all, Venom had been the one to inadvertently spill the beans about her feelings for Peter.

She swiped her finger to the right, and opened the password screen. She tried several combinations: his uncle's birthday, Aunt May's, the day Uncle Ben died, the same for Gwen. Then she thought about the background picture, and tried the date of the Siege; still nothing. And she was running out of chances before the tablet's security would wipe the memory.

Before she could try another combination, Tony placed an armored hand over the screen. "Wait a minute," he said, turning to Wade. "What made you want to help Spidey in the first place? Who paid you?"

"Yo mama."

"Wade. Who paid you?"

"Yo daddy."

"Wade…"

"Yo greasy-greasy granny!" Deadpool ran around the room in a large circle screaming "Oh!", his fist in front of his face. "Snap! You just got served old school, son!"

Tony grabbed Deadpool's bandolier and headbutted him. "Who signed the check, Wade?"

Deadpool shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. "Alright, alright, fine. It was Dr. Doom. He paid me ten million Latverian francs to…"

Carol was on him before he could finish the sentence. Her eyes burning white-hot, she held Deadpool's head between her hands, the heat pouring off of them scalding their shape into his mask. "What did he tell you?!" she yelled, her voice a pulse of energy unto itself. "What did he want you to do?!"

"Keep my head out of hot spaces, for one thing," he choked out, trying to wiggle his way free of Carol's grasp.

"Wade!"

"Mother of tacos, I was kidding!" Deadpool said, pushing at Carol's arms as effectively as a mouse would push at a tree. "No one hired me!"

"Then why would you want to help Spider-Man?" Tony asked.

Carol could feel Wade's damaged skin beneath her fingers now, burning with the energy she was putting off. She didn't care. He'd grow it back.

"Aaah!" Wade screamed. "We're mask buddies!"

It was enough to make Carol let go of his head, at least, if not calm down entirely.

"You're what?" Tony asked.

Deadpool rose back to his feet, glancing at Carol for a second before answering. "We're mask buddies. You know—red mask, white eyes, black outline; our masks look the same. We're mask buddies."

He stepped closer, nose to nose with Tony. "And nobody messes with mask buddies."

Carol's fire burned all the hotter. She didn't know why they'd listened to him—Deadpool was incapable of taking anything seriously. The tablet was probably an iPad he'd stolen and slipped a cover onto.

"Besides," he said, turning his head to her. "I know a little bit about being separated from someone you care for."

Carol picked the tablet up from the floor, and studied the screen again. Peter, fighting Venom. Her, in the background. She thought of Peter's birthday, but immediately dismissed it. Peter wasn't self-absorbed or stupid enough to use his own birthday as a password. Then she thought of her own, but realized she'd never actually told Peter what it was.

That didn't mean he didn't know it, so she tried the numbers; no luck. One chance left.

I know a little bit about being separated from someone you care for. She heard Deadpool again in her mind. She wasn't sure if he was directing his comment at her, for how she felt now, or at how Peter felt while she was in space.

Carol entered the date of their anniversary; at least, what she considered their anniversary—that first night together, then talking it out over coffee the next morning. Her finger twitched over the last digit. If she was wrong, the tablet's memory would be wiped, and they would lose whatever lead to finding him was contained within. But that wouldn't put them in any worse of a situation. And getting it right could mean a much better one.

She pressed down; the screen hesitated for a moment before opening onto a map, and Carol released her breath.

A small blip appeared over an address in Westchester. "We've found him, Tony," Carol said, her voice and hand both quavering as she handed over the tablet.

"I want to run it through what we've found in Octavius's scanner first," he said, taking a moment to check what was on the screen, "but I think you may be right."

Next to the them, Deadpool cleared his throat. "I take thank yous in the form of check, money order, and make out sesh."

"You want Tony to make out with you?"

Wade cocked his head. "Not particularly, but I'm not opposed to it. Would be good blackmail material."

Carol extended her hand. "How about apology?"

"That works too."

They shook, briefly, before Deadpool pulled his guns from their holsters. "So, when do we go on the big rescue?"

Carol patted his shoulder. "We'll take it from here, Wade," she said.

"But… but… mask buddies…"

"Thanks for the help, Deadpool," Tony called as he walked toward the elevator. "We'll call you if we need you."

As Carol followed Tony, she heard Wade behind them. "But… but… dangit! No fair! I wanted to be in the big awesome fight scene!"

XXXXXX

"So what happened, Otto?" Peter asked. The pinching against the flesh between his shoulder blades had increased as Peter leaned back into his prison. Sandman's attack had either knocked a piece of metal loose or broken something. Either way it was the only thing Peter had to exploit at the moment, and he needed to keep Octavius distracted to do it. "Explain it to me."

Octavius smirked, a short burst of air escaping through his nostrils. "You remember my previous body, I'm sure," he said. "Broken. Paralyzed." Octavius stepped forward, gripping Peter around the throat and pressing his head into the machine. The metal shard dug further into Peter's back, almost piercing him. "Your fault."

He backed away, and with a small laugh made a slight gesture into the air as he released Peter's neck. "Word travels fast, Peter, even in our circles," he continued. "And what you did to Doom last year was nothing short of spectacular."

Doom? What could he possibly… oh my God…

"When I heard what you'd done I knew he would want revenge, but would be in no position to do it himself," Octavius said. "So I went to him. And I made him an offer: stave off my death, and I will not only tear the life from Spider-Man, I will make his name a blight upon the lips of those who once cried out to him for salvation."

Peter knew, right then, what had happened. He had seen Doom's power with the mystic arts firsthand. Somehow Doom had taken Otto's soul and placed it in the cloned body standing before him. But he needed to keep Octavius talking. And some information wouldn't hurt. "So Doom knows who I am now," he said.

"No," Octavius replied. "He placed me in this body while it was still incubating. I didn't even know who you were until it was done growing."

It made sense, in a way. If Doom had known his identity, there was no way Aunt May or Harry or anyone he cared about would've lived longer than a day.

Octavius shot two web lines into the ceiling, creating a swing for himself. He sat down and began tinkering with the web shooters on his wrists. "After that, it was just a matter of timing. Testing you against your comrades with the Octavian Lens, learning for a certainty just how powerful you really are. Tricking you into coming to see me in prison."

He looked up from his web shooters and threw his head back with a laugh. "Sometimes I can't even believe it. I spent nearly six months as you, running rampant in your skin. I committed atrocities, Peter. There may be some who will have kept faith in you. But many will remember your Spider-Bots watching their every move. Your Arachnauts patrolling the streets, little more than a gang."

Snapping forward, Octavius slammed Peter's head against the back of the machine. "And there will always be hundreds who watched you murder a man in cold blood. Shoot him in the head with his own gun."

That memory in particular weighed on him. Peter could remember his own voice, trying to dissuade himself. He could still feel the metal of the trigger beneath his index finger, oddly warm from where the rifle had been in Massacre's hand. The recoil. The blood spattering against his costume, the red dotting his vision through the lenses of his mask.

"And the absolute best part," Octavius continued, "Was how easy it all was. No one even noticed anything was wrong."

Octavius turned away from Peter, back to the table where he'd placed their masks. Peter took the chance to push the muscles in his back and shoulders as much as possible, and the pinching feeling nearly turned into a stab. He could hear an almost imperceptible give in the metal, but knew it would take much more force to get it to break further.

And he could feel that the metal at his back was right between his shoulder blades. Near his spine.

"It was as if they'd expected it all along. Your friends in the Avengers." Octavius held the two Spider-Man masks, one in either hand; Peter's—symmetrical web pattern, wide white eyepieces—and his own—blood red coloring, asymmetrical web lines, black lenses. "As though they knew all it would take was a little bit more pressure, and they'd find you with blood on your hands. Captain America didn't question it; neither did Iron Man, or Cage, or Logan. I fought them, Peter. I fought them, and the only thing they tested was to be sure I wasn't a Skrull!"

Octavius stepped forward and slipped Peter's mask over his face. "No one suspected a thing, Peter. Not your friends, not your co-workers, not your comrades. Not even your precious Aunt."

Peter again went scouring through his memories, seeing how supportive his aunt had been about pursuing a doctorate, about dating Anna Maria, when she'd known he was with Carol.

Octavius was right. None of them had thought anything was wrong with him. They'd all thought what Octavius had made him do was a natural progression, something that was within him, something that just needed the right push to come out.

What did that say about their belief in him? They could offer up all the apologies and throw all the parties in his honor they wanted, but actions speak louder than words. And their actions while he was running around thinking himself to be Octavius spoke volumes.

They all thought he was one step away from madness.

"That is, of course, until Danvers came back from space," Octavius said.

Peter's head snapped up at the mention of Carol's name. Carol had known, instantly, that something was wrong with him. And it hadn't just been Peter manipulating the right hand. He could see through Octavius's eyes, the minute he'd said her name that night standing in front of his apartment, she'd known he wasn't himself.

Carol had been the one to convince the others something was wrong. Carol had been the one to rally them behind her, to fight for a friend they didn't know was lost.

Carol had been the one to hold faith in him, to believe that the things Octavius had forced him to do were not things of which Peter himself were capable. That he was a better man.

"And don't think she'll avoid paying for that little transgression, Peter. Along with all the others who forced me into this failsafe." Octavius continued, gesturing to his cloned body.

He was trying to threaten, to make Peter afraid, but it was too late. Octavius had given Peter the reminder he needed: that there was still someone out there who believed in him. Who trusted him. Who knew him.

Who loved him.

And that she was worth fighting for.

The thick metallic door opened, and Octavius slipped his own mask over his face, just as Mysterio entered the room. "We're ready, Otto," he said.

And as the Superior Spider-Man stepped out of the room, Peter Parker came to a decision: it was time to stop wallowing and fight.

No more guilt. No more dwelling on what he'd done as Octavius. The man himself had plenty to answer for.

So, with a few deep breaths through the nose, the Amazing Spider-Man flexed his shoulders and back.

And began to push.