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Chapter Twenty-Nine
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Coughing and sputtering, Mary Jane stumbled her way out of the side door. The smoke was so deep in her lungs that she had a difficult time getting in a breath of fresh air. Minutes passed as she fell, bent over her knees, and continued to cough until she finally felt her bearings return to her.
She sat up with residual tears in her eyes, taking a moment to just breathe. Air had never before felt so good. The feeling of her lungs expanding and contracting with each pull of oxygen was beyond compare.
It was as she sat there when her surroundings became more acute. She looked around, blinking away the tears in her eyes to better see. She was surrounded by terrified teens doing a number of actions - crying, hyperventilating, calling the cops or their parents… it was then when the side door burst open with a kick of a foot against it and Flash ran out of the burning building with an unconscious girl in his arms. She looked so tiny and delicate that it made her heart clench. Flash set her down on the grass about ten feet away from Mary Jane before his hands started hovering over her uselessly.
"Come on, Sha Shan! Wake up, please!" He cried as he turned her head to the side to see the wound on the back of her head. It was at that moment where he must have realized that this was way beyond his capabilities as he pulled out his phone and dialed 911.
Mary Jane's attention was claimed by two jocks in letter jackets running out of the house through that same door with two people thrown over their shoulders. Mary Jane gasped as she recognized one of them. "Harry!"
He was put down on the grass roughly which caused Harry to tense up and seize his leg in pure agony. Mary Jane immediately crawled over to him. Checking his body for any signs of any other injuries. He looked a little scraped and bruised but otherwise, his leg looked to be the worst of it. "Are you alright?"
The two seniors left them on the grass, as they seemed to be in search of their friends to make sure that they made it out of the house too.
"My leg," Harry hissed out in pain, his face flushed with exertion and the leftover heat from just vacating the smoke-filled room, "I think it's broken."
Peering down at the leg, Mary Jane nodded seriously. "I think that the ambulance is already on their way." Then she looked up and around at the people gathered in the side yard… searching. But coming up empty. "You wait here. I'm going to go look for Peter to see if he made it out alright."
Harry had his eyes scrunched tight in pain as he nodded staggeredly at her. She took that as his permission for her to leave - not that she needed it - as she stood onto shaky feet and stumbled successfully towards the front yard, where everyone else had gathered. There was a lot more sobbing up front but there also seemed to be more people that looked to be in a state of shock. The fire department had yet to arrive, so she meandered through the cluttered clumps of teens huddled together, looking specifically for one boy with tousled brown hair and dashing good looks.
The longer that she searched and came up empty, the more that an ice-cold fear grew in her as panic started to claw its way up her throat.
"PETER?" She cried out, turning about in circles, hoping that he would call out to her and that in her desperation, she had somehow missed him earlier.
But no one responded to her.
She sprinted back to the side of the house, looking to see if she somehow hadn't seen him over there. "PETER?!"
She was on the verge of tears now but this time it had nothing to do with the smoke.
Harry's eyes shot open at her sudden reappearance as well as her desperate cry. His upper body shot up so that his elbows supported his weight. "You haven't found him?!"
"No!" She cried, her fingers went up to knot at her hair in a desperate need for something to hold onto. "I don't think he's made it out yet!"
As she said this aloud, the implication suddenly struck her. Peter was still inside of the burning house.
She gasped and turned on her heel to face the house in question, her skirt whirling about around her. She didn't even hesitate. She ran for the still-open door.
"No, Mary Jane!" Harry cried from behind her and she could hear his grunt of pain as he tried to unsuccessfully get to his feet, "Don't go back in there!"
"I have to, Harry!" Mary Jane yelled over her shoulder, not even daring to stop for a moment. "It's Peter."
She heard his cries after her as she entered the door into the back hall, as well as his demands that someone stop her. Immediately upon entry, she started coughing from the billowing smoke. She fell to her knees, where the air was clearer for both her lungs and her eyes but didn't allow herself any time to stop and adjust.
A loud crash resounding up ahead of her caused her to jump and clutch at her speeding heart.
"What's the matter, Spider?" A vaguely familiar voice taunted with underlying laughter as it echoed down the hall, "I thought you said that you liked to dance?!"
The hand that had been on her heart went up to cover her gasp. Spider-Man? When did he get here? Dread filled up in her… Was he fighting her dad? Was he the cause of all of this destruction? But the voice that she heard didn't sound like her father at all… who else was here?
Shaking with fear, she forced herself to steadily crawl onward as she pictured Peter's handsome smile in her mind's eye - giving her the strength that she needed to keep moving forward. She had to find him. She just had to. If she couldn't…. With a violent shake of her head, Mary Jane forced the dreadful thought out of her head. No. She would find Peter.
As she approached the end of the hall, she peaked around the corner into the large living room where majority of the party had been taking place. It was completely devastated now, hardly recognizable to the glitzy house that her and Peter had been so in awe of only hours previous. And it wasn't difficult to guess at why…
She watched in rapt amazement and fear as Spider-Man dodged the attacks from her father and - she gasped but slapped a hand over her mouth to cover up the noise - Flint Marko. The Sandman was still alive?! Last she had seen him, he had completely deteriorated down to mud before flowing down into the sewer system. She had been considering it a death by self-defense, because there was no way the Sandman would have stopped going after her or Spider-Man until one or both of them had stopped breathing. But she had apparently been wrong about this assumption. And now her dad was attacking Spider-Man along-side the man who tried to murder his own daughter?
Her heart clenched at the thought but she forced herself to ignore it. She waited for an opening to advance forward and it only took a moment before she saw her chance. With the three's attention preoccupied, Mary Jane dived forward behind what used to be a white leather couch - but now more resembled an oversized charcoaled marshmallow. Once covered, she waited on bated breath for someone to have seen her and to whip the couch aside to discover her hiding place.
It never came.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she whipped her head around her nearest vicinity.
No sign of Peter…
"I do like to dance," Spider-Man choked out, breathless, but still forcing to keep his tone light. If she didn't know him so well, she would say that the tense lilt in his voice was non-existent. But since she did know him well- There was another smashing sound and Mary Jane cringed at the sure volume of it and what the damaging sound could imply. "I'm just not used to having such an ugly partner."
She heard a cry of frustration from her dad as she looked for her next opportunity to move further along into the room. "WHY WON'T YOU JUST FUCKING KEEP STILL?!"
She got her chance! She lunged from behind the couch so that she was now hidden behind the bar. Shattered glass was all over the floor. Peeking up over the lip of the bar, she surveyed the area. Her heart clenched painfully. Still no sign of Peter.
"Oh, I don't know…" Spider-Man quipped as she watched him dodge a double-onslaught of both sand and molten lava, now sticking to the ceiling next to the chandelier. "Maybe because this is a high school party and you're the dumb one who decided to bring a fire-arm."
Spider-Man launched himself off of the ceiling straight at Flint Marko, kicking straight through him as his entire body burst into a storm of sand at the impact.
Laughter started to echo as the Sandman immediately reformed his shape. "When are you going to learn that kicking and punching me just doesn't work, you absolute child?"
His arms lunged out to try and strike at Spider-Man but he dodged and flipped in the air, ending up by the DJ booth before stopping and leaning his elbow against it casually. What the hell did he think he was doing?!
"I've got a question for you, Sandy. When you worked the corner of 7th Avenue in Brooklyn, did you happen to accept sand-dollars as a form of payment?"
A cry of pure rage bellowed from deep within Flint Marko's chest as his whole body lunged forward to grab at Spider-Man. Mary Jane nearly screamed.
Spider-Man flipped out of the way and landed, now trapped in the middle between the two villains. She wracked her brain to try and think of something to help - her mind split between finding Peter and saving Spider-Man. She agonized at such a choice.
"All I want is my daughter! Please." Her dad cried, desperation in his tone. And despite everything, despite years of his verbal abuse and neglect, she felt tears well in her eyes at the statement. But her dad didn't want her in the way that a father loved his daughter… no, he only wanted to possess her. Her chest clenched painfully. Everything about this hurt.
It was so difficult to see them now as the rising smoke had started to become even more dense. She could only see the outlines of their forms from her vantage point, which also made searching for Peter a lot more difficult.
Spider-Man turned to face her father, all the while Sandman was morphing behind him once again. "Well, you can't have her," Spider-Man said, his voice definitive and broaching no argument before it softened somewhat as he said, "I'm sorry."
Mary Jane watched in horror as her dad's golden skin discolored into a deep, angry red. Was he getting even hotter? How was that even possible? "THEN I'LL HAVE TO KILL YOU TO GET TO HER!"
Mary Jane screamed as her father sent out another blast, this one so white-hot that it resembled lightning. Her cries were drowned out by the noise of pure chaos in the room as the blast was sent hurtling toward Spider-Man's chest. At the same time, Sandman had formed an axe behind him, and with a battle cry, he swung it back for the right amount of impact to bring down on Spider-Man's head. Was this it? Was he going to die? Mary Jane was prepared to rise to her feet to find a way to stop it, but she already knew now that she would be too late. Her tears were hot and sticky on her cheeks as all she could do was sit back and watch. Completely useless.
But at the very last second, Spider-Man leapt high in the air with a twist of his body - and the blast that had been meant for him instead struck Flint Marko in his sandy chest.
Mary Jane staggered back as she watched the resulting impact take an immediate effect. Flint Marko's body started to crystallize and harden as he cried out in agony… until all that was left was a statue.
Did-Did he just turn into glass?
Spider-Man landed on the ground in a crouch in front of her father, who… wasn't looking too good now. In fact, he looked positively ill now as he swayed on his feet. His color had returned to a pale gold. Did he over-exert himself with that added heat? As if to prove this, her father fell to his knees, seemingly unable to keep upright.
"It's over, Mark," Spider-Man said, his tone soft… regretful. "I can get you help."
But in a last ditch effort, her father sent another blast right for Spider-Man's face. She gasped as it made purchase with his mask, immediately burning the lenses and charring the fabric. Spider-Man staggered to the side slightly from the impact, his back was now to her so that she could easily see the pure hatred on her father's face as he looked up definitely at the boy who had him cornered. Spider-Man paused and reached up to grasp at his mask before he whipped it off of his head.
Mary Jane choked on the inhale of contaminated air as she gaped - for the very first time - at the sight of the back of Spider-Man's unmasked head.
She couldn't look away, no matter how hard she tried. All that she could do was take in the details and supply them to memory.
He had brown hair… tousled and wild from being in the mask.
Beyond that, she watched as her dad's eyes widened before he exclaimed, "You-!" But that was all that he had managed to get out before Spider-Man pointed both wrists at him and doused him completely in his web-fluid. All she could hear now within the webbing cocoon was the muffled-shouting that she couldn't make out the words to.
Spider-Man continued to douse his webbing all over her father, making sure to cover every surface of his golden skin. It was as he was shifting to the side to coat from a different angle, when Mary Jane was alarmed that this could be the moment that she could see Spider-Man's real face for the first time.
But the chance never presented itself…
The wooden beams groaned above them and a split-second later, the ceiling burst and fell down in a rainfire of debris on top of the forms of Spider-Man and her father.
"No!" She cried, staggering to her feet, all the while trying to maneuver through the dust and smoke the collapse had caused in its wake. As she got closer, she could see that the wooden beam that had piled on top of them was on fire. Her father would be fine. He had proved that he could withstand any amount of heat. But Spider-Man… She turned about in a wild circle, trying to find anything that could help her when she spotted a long metal pole at the far end of the room. Mary Jane ran for it, grasped it in her hand as she sprinted back to the unconscious form of one of the boy's she cared for most in this world. Without wasting any time, she gimmied and wedged the pole underneath the beam, before pressing down on the other end to use the momentum to lift the heavy wood off of Spider-Man's head. Gritting her teeth, she then pushed so that it landed off to the side. The fire and smoke were starting to get overwhelming. She could barely breathe. The heat of the surrounding flames were nearly scorching at her skin… But still, she trudged on. She was not going to give up.
Bending over, she struggled to lift Spider-Man's prone form into her arms as she held him up from underneath his armpits. She pulled his upper body flush against hers before she started to stagger backward, trying to find another exit out of the house. The way that she came in earlier was now blocked from the collapse of the ceiling. She shifted her attention toward getting them to the back of the house, hoping that a way to escape would present itself there. She coughed and gagged as smoke continuously filled her lungs. But she forced herself to keep going. She had to do this. She had to save his life. And she told herself that she was confident that she would succeed… because she was Mary Jane Watson, dammit.
She was able to shuffle and maneuver them through the kitchen in the back, which was luckily not on fire but still full of the mounting black smoke. She hacked against the onslaught of it as she struggled to maintain a hold on Spider-Man's heavy form. She looked back and nearly cried out in relief at the sight of the door that led to the back yard. The sight of it bolstered her resolve and adrenaline pumped in her veins as she found the strength to make their way towards it. When she reached it, she struggled to get a grasp on the handle and it took a few tries before she was able to turn it with her sweaty palms. She sobbed in relief when it finally turned with a click before she pushed it open with the force of her shoulder.
The night air felt drastically cold against her over-heated skin as she stumbled with Spider-Man onto the back patio. And this was where her strength failed her as she fell back to the ground on her behind, while Spider-Man fell with her, his head thankfully landing in her lap. She fell back and let her head rest against the cool tile of the exgravatant patio, coughing and trying to get in a deep breath. Again, it took several minutes before she was able to recover enough in order to get any oxygen deep enough in her lungs. Then, she opened her eyes, having not even realized that she had closed them in the first place, and looked up at the starless sky - a complete and empty void of black while in the city.
Another moment passed before a bit of her strength returned to her. Slowly, as to not over-exert herself any further, Mary Jane lifted her head as her muscles ached and rebelled against the action.
But as soon as her eyes caught sight of him, she gasped and sat upright in direct defiance to her throbbing body, her spine rigid as she gaped down at the face of the boy that she knew. His face was bloodied and scraped, and there was bound to be plenty of bruises that were already purpling on his alabaster skin. But it was unmistakable to her as to who this was.
Peter Parker… was Spider-Man.
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AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Please leave me a comment/review! I hope that you enjoyed this chapter.
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