Chapter 11

The Queen's Man.

Eight months ago.

"Food's gonna get cold if you don't touch it," Cindy said, looking at him from across the table. She raised her fork from her plate, pointed at his slice of pie while she still had a piece of sausage on her fork before she popped it into her mouth with a wink. He'd spent the morning dry humping his girlfriend at the breakfast table so the innuendo didn't go over his head.

There was something about her, something surreal and something off. It… tickled him, made his skin crawl. Not in a bad way. If feeling like he wanted to jump out of his own skin wasn't bad. She had him on high alert, paranoid as hell. The monkeys in the basement of his brain were coming up with all sorts of fun stuff for Cindy Moon.

"I'm not hungry," Peter said, moving his slice of pie around the plate. It was around 40% of everything he'd said since they arrived. Almost made himself believe it was all just an extended fieldtrip, except no one was throwing stuff at the back of his head from the back of the bus and Uncle Ben hadn't signed a permission slip.

It was the first stop outside of Manhattan. Bathroom breaks, lunch, dinner at a little diner integrated into the station. Had already set in that he had no clue where he was in the world, where he stood, or if he had PTSD for seeing himself get pinned to a wall like an arachnid variant of an entomology showing. Funny how existential dilemmas like that went out the window after a girl waltzed up to him, said she knew who he was, and followed him out the city like she had nothing to lose. That wasn't suspicious at all.

It kept him from sleeping much on the ride there. From figuring out what he'd do next. Going back to the F4 or the X-Men wasn't on his list. He wasn't about to come crawling to their door with his tail between his legs and begging for help. Could see that pity party coming a mile away. Probably should stop thinking about his own corpse. Corpses. That had to be narcissistic, not to mention bad for his mental health.

Still, Uggo Parker and the Human-Spider had definitely been him. Tried to help, end up hurting, and ended up dead. He wondered if that was going to be a trend he followed before long.

Cindy smiled at him. Peter tried not to shiver. Something about her was wrong off. Big. Could be the paranoia, he'd latched on to the fact that he didn't know anyone, couldn't trust anyone. Her having powers like him didn't change that. But Cindy was all calm, all serene. Pale like she barely saw the sun and… cute. Soft ivory skin and long dark hair with wide dark eyes, dressed in a tiny hoodie and t-shirt, tight jeans, and shoes that looked in style. He guessed. He was still wearing the bargain bin clothes Ben bought for him last year.

Maybe she was another vampire. A vampire with spider powers. Thanks, Johnny…

"Who are you?" Peter said, cagey-like as he was stuck playing connect-the-dots in his head. Made a list of who she could be, or what. She had powers like Jessica. Jessica had been made because of Otto. Otto had kept the chimera that killed Gwen and if Peter ever saw him again…

Maybe they'd found a way to give his powers to other people, and he wondered if he could expect to get ganked anytime soon since they wouldn't be needing him anymore. Yeah, he was definitely getting paranoid. Still wasn't the weirdest part. When he had managed to grab some sleep on the ride here, he dreamt of Jessica and their hug some more. And when everything else had been nightmares, visions of Gwen being murdered by the thing with her hair and body, but not her face, or his corpses, or MJ's, or Ben's—or anyone else's—capping off all of it off with a weirdly peaceful dream of hugging his vagina-rocking girl-self? Not too bad. Probably the best he could hope for. He had problems.

Cindy ate some more sausage, quirked her brow at him, all furtive-like. "I told you," she said with her mouth full, "Cindy Moon."

He frowned. "Right... Question 1 down, 19 more to go."

"Then will you eat?"

"I'm not hungry," he said again,

She sighed, frowned. "I spent money on you," she said quietly. "Eat."

His head… tickled. Before he grabbed his fork he made a fist. "Who are you?" He asked.

"Wow, echo much?"

He flexed his fingers, brought them up to the table… and grabbed the fork. She was putting him on edge. "Where'd you come from? …Where did you get your powers?"

She clicked her tongue. "Question 2, 3… Huh. You really didn't notice me, did you?" She muttered. "We went to the same school. I saw you get bitten by the spider."

"It was a crappy day for me. Bit by a big, ugly spider. Thought I was going to die or lose my hand. Kind of hazy on the entire thing."

"That's fair." she said. "We were in homeroom together last year. I sat behind you. Back of the class."

"Did we ever speak?"

"…No. Question 4."

"Then how would I possibly know who you are?" He asked harshly.

Cindy smiled self-deprecatingly. "Question 5. You wouldn't. I… can't say I was ever any good at rockin' the genius-brain like you though. While you were making straight A double pluses I was middling at C minus. We both got made fun of for it though. …I just thought we had something in common."

He worked his jaw. Didn't want to feel bad for a complete stranger when his plate was so full of problems, but it was almost a reflex at this point. He felt like an asshole. "I don't remember seeing you around school at all," he said, repressing the urge to apologize for it. He bit the inside of his cheek. "…Sorry."

Cindy brightened a little. He shivered. "I was in and out. Mostly out. Then all the way out. I… didn't have the strongest- whatchamacallit… constitution? Biggest thing I went to, ever, was the trip to Oscorp. Got sick not long after seeing you get chomped on by that spider. Lucky me, huh?"

Peter looked at her. Then he started to eat his pie. It was apple. Pretty good once he felt like he wasn't fighting against his hand. "Yeah. Lucky."

"You gonna be okay?"

He shrugged. "I'll get up. Been worse."

"You really have," she nearly gushed. "I watched your fight with big green—Osborn, not the Hulk—and then the one with that black tentacly thing, and the one with Rhino, and then with the Reavers-"

Peter wondered if she was some kind of stalker—probably didn't have a right to be weirded out. His girlfriend was a self-proclaimed superstalker and he still remembered exactly how many pictures and posters of him she had covering her walls at Xavier's Mansion—63. Yet here he was in some no name diner with a new girl. Had a feeling this was something else Ben Grimm would say he shouldn't do. Wondered what other sage advice the Thing would have about this.

"Am I weirding you out?"

"Not nearly as much as I'm used to," he said sardonically.

"You deserve a lot better than what you're used to," Cindy said simply. "You've helped so many people. They just-"

"People are stupid. Heard that before," he said, terse. "Thanks."

"There's stupid and then there's too dumb to live," she said. "They're worse than stupid. Question 6?"

"What can you do?" He asked, waved at her with his fork when she have him a curious look. He kept his voice quiet. "You got bit by the same spider I did, right? You did… that. I can't. What else can you do?"

She smiled slowly. Like she knew something he didn't. "I call it 'weaving', but… a few things. Like I said, we have so much in common." She started to make another sculpture out of webbing. It was a box this time. She stuck it to the underside of the table.

He watched her and thought of his clone. It was too easy to think of her. Clone-him, girl-him. Jessica. She was a bucket of weird-magnets. And calling her 'clone' made her seem like… less. Made all of them seem like less. It hadn't been their choice to be created from him. Doubted they would even like him, or like being him. He sure as heck wasn't his biggest fan, but he wasn't going to be the one to write off the Freakish Parker Quadruplets as experiments, less than human.

A real monkey wrench in the gears of his life? Sure. That didn't make them any less of a person, individually, but collectively? Were they were a female, brainwashed, insane, six-armed pain in his ass? Definitely.

Cindy frowned slightly, snapped her fingers in his face. "Hey, earth to Peter. You there?" He waved her hand away. "I can lift a car, at least. Not as strong as you, I don't think, but I can pack a punch." She tapped her bicep. "And I'm… kind of fast? I don't really know."

He squinted. "How do you not know?"

"Question 8. I tried doing what you do. Once. Haven't made a habit of it. Don't think it's for me," she said, taking a sip her drink.

It explained why he never heard anything about someone else with spider-powers in New York—he was the only person dumb enough to do that. Couldn't really hold that against her. "…Are you a stalker?" Just his luck that out of everyone to know his identity, a stalker would be one of them. A stalker with spider-powers. Jesus jaywalking Christ.

Cindy put her hands up. "Wow, question 9 already? No. I'm just… kind of alone, you know? Ha, just like in school… But you have spider-powers, I have spider-powers. There's a, you know, connection," she said rolling her hands between them. Peter stared at her. She sighed. "And when I look at youand I get this… feeling. Like I can do it. And then I don't, because… well, I've seen the stuff you have to put up with. Sucks."

It felt like she was digging at him. "Question 10," Peter said shortly.

"Shoot."

"Are you going to try to kill me?" He asked, staring her in the eye. "Because I'll tell you right now. A lot of people have tried so far." The only reason he was still alive was because of sheer dumb luck. Maybe that's why the rest of his luck was so crappy.

"Is this because I'm a girl? Not all females eat the males. Males eat females, you know." She winked at him. He rolled his eyes. "And did you know it's the males that sacrifice themselves so their children can have something to eat? So romantic." She sighed, dreamily. "No, I'm not going to kill you Peter."

"11. You gonna go after my family, then?" He asked tightly. What family, Jessica? Yeah, that was rich. Even if she was as bad as him at protecting people, at least she could protect herself. God help him if it ever came down to saving his life though. They didn't have the best track record for saving their own lives.

She raised her eyebrow. "Just what type of person do you think I am?"

"The kind of person who gets abilities and doesn't use them to help others," he said flatly, "If I can do it, you can do it."

She rolled her eyes. "How noble and feminist of you. How's that worked out for you so far?"

Peter scowled. "You with the government?"

She smirked. "Question 12. Just what kind of life are you living, Peter Parker?"

He grimaced. "Answer the question."

"No, I'm not with the government. Question 13?"

"The webbing," he said quietly, not wanting anyone to hear them. "The sheer amount of muscles you'd need to do that is… impossible to have in your fingertips. And to sculpt them, it's autonomous. Alive. That's not normal, not even possible." It was hard to keep the fascination out of his voice. Cindy noticed.

"Duh. You crawl on walls. We're not normal." He couldn't argue that either. According to the smartest man on the planet, he was a genetic abomination. And 'cute', if that man's girlfriend, the smartest woman on the planet, had anything to say. Those were things every young man wanted to hear.

"People are normal. Normal peopledon't get chosen for these gifts. We did." She looked at him with a look in her eye that he couldn't place, a slight twitch on her lips. "We're exceptional."

Peter nodded like he understood. He did. Understood the hairs rising on the back of his neck and the red flags popping up again. She was probably insane. Cindy rolled her eyes like she heard that. "You help people though. Even when they call you a killer, a monster, a criminal."

"I have a responsibility."

She gave him a half-lidded look. "Says who?"

He sighed. "Someone once told me 'With great power, there must also come great responsibility."

"You didn't answer the question, but okay," she said, "Alright. What does that say about being irresponsible with yourself? How does that imply that everyone else is moreimportant than you? The person who puts his life on the line for them?" He didn't answer. "And how's that turn out for you when the entire city still throws it in your face? Cops shoot at you, people call you a freak and nothing you do is good enough. They made a movie about you, remember? Did you get anything from that? They make commercials mocking and demonizingyou. Spreading lies about you in the papers like they do the mutants."

Peter downed his drink. "Next question."

She shook her head. "You fascinate me… Helping people, even when they don't deserve it."

"It's not my place to decide who deserves to live or dies!" Peter snapped, keeping his voice quiet. "I have a responsibility."

"Says who? Who told you that defending them was your responsibility? Your problem?" She frowned. "And if it's not your place to decide that, how is it any place of yours to decide to save people at all?"

Couldn't come up with a rebuttal for that either. She made a good point. Responsibility? Who decided that he had a responsibility to anyone? Uncle Ben wouldn't have wanted thisfor him. And where had it gotten him? He wasn't in it for the glory, not anymore, but you'd think a guy could catch a break instead of getting his DNA used like a sperm sample by suits and labcoats. Instead of being booted out of his home, having nightmares about watching himself get killed by the guy who tortured him and co-stared in a movie he didn't even get paid for, only to walk free because the gummit gave him a deal.

And then he either gets his friends killed or hurt. Ruins their lives or ends them. Get family killed, nearly killed. At the end of the day Peter Parker's track record was piss poor. "Next. Question," he said, bitter to the core.

Cindy laughed. "Shoot."

"How did you find me? How do you know so much about me if you're not a stalker?"

"Well I said I'm not from the gummint. We won't count that one. And no, I'm not a stalker, but I do follow your instagram page," she joked, shrugging. He had an instagram page? "I'm not with Nick Fury, and-"

He'd been waiting for that. Just another inconsistency to prove the theory tickling the back of his brain. The table crunched like aluminum foil when his hand twitched. "I never said a damnthing about Fury," he whispered dangerously. "New question. Who. Are. You."

Slowly, Cindy put her hands up. He watched them close, ready to bolt. Couldn't fight her here, didn't want to. She was right. He didn't need to. She wasn't his problem, or a problem at all. She could be, but didn't have to be his. He could just walk away. "I have another power. It's-"

"Tell me why I don't believe you," Peter hissed. "Maybe it's the fact that the spider that bit me got squashed, so you couldn't have been bitten. And that was the only one to get free so don't tell me another got to you. So I'm going to ask you one more time, 'Cindy'. Who are you?"

Cindy stared at him for a long while. "Sit down," she said, looking him in the eye. He sneered at her. "Sit. Down." He fell into his seat like a bag of lead. She looked cautiously around the diner, sighed. "Technically I never said I was bitten by a spider," she said hesitantly. "My name is Cindy Moon. …I'm a mutant."

"You're a friggin' telepath…" Peter groaned, kicking himself for not noticing it before. He squirmed in his seat but couldn't move. "Again with the telepaths. What, do I just have a sign on my brain that says, 'practice your freaky deeky mutant powers on me?"

She flinched. Here he was again, being pulled around by another telepath but she was the one who flinched. "Do you… not like mutants?"

"I don't like people who go into my head," Peter growled. Jean Grey and her, they'd would probably get along well. He managed to stand up the slightest bit. Then fell to his seat again like he was being tugged by chains. He fought it, didn't stop until he could stand up all the way. His jaw was as tight as a vice when he did. "My girlfriend's a mutant."

"So progressive. Much impress. Is that the brunette one you left behind? Or the red-head?" Cindy said.

"Get out of my head."

She sighed. "I can't, okay? That's the other power. I can… hear you," she said. "Feel you. Not even like telepathy, I don't think. That's how I found you, I can-" he glared at her, not believing a word. "I'm telling the truth! I can talk-"

He smiled like ice. "Bravo. Learn that in homeschool?"

Her eyes widened. "You are smart, aren't you?" She laughed to herself. "Okay, Mr. Detective, okay. Sit down." He didn't move. "Sit down, Peter. I'm not going to make you."

"Read my mind and tell me what I think of telepaths right now. Then ask yourself how I feel about being told what to do."

She narrowed her eyes and they… turned red. Peter felt his knees buckle. He resisted it and she looked frustrated. People were starting to stare. "Unless you want everyone to start screaming 'mutie', and for police to pour in here, you really should sit. The bus driver is the type to kick us off for that sort of thing and I don't think you want to fight some 'innocent' 9-to-5 blueboy. Not everyone is as kumbaya as you."

He sat. Begrudgingly. "Kiss my ass."

She rolled her eyes. "If you want. Like I was saying, this is my ability. Like you with your spider-sense—cute name, btw. I can't turn this off. I can hear you, the other yous too, before they… I talk to spiders, bugs. I control them, and really, really it's kind ofweird for me." She laughed. "Fun though."

"I'll make sure to get the world's tiniest violin for you," he said, scowling at her. "You could be helping people."

"Don't give me that look," she scoffed. "Again, I've seen how that turned out for you. Your clones? How's the family life going? Still getting the nightmares?" She hissed, leaning forward. "Because I am too."

He ground his teeth. "What do you want from me?" He asked harshly. "Help? In case you haven't read that part of my mind, I'm not the best person to go to for that. I tend to let people down."

"I was thinking that I could help you, stupid. To do this." She held out her hand underneath the table and began to… weave webbing over it, making a glove. "To stop the nightmares. I know things. About our powers. Things that can help you."

That tagged him. "And what do you want in return?" He asked. "What do you get from this?"

She gave him a sad, understanding smile. "A friend? I can count on one hand how many of those I have. Look, we're alone, Peter. We can help each other. " She grabbed his hand. Gentle. Soft. Peter felt his mind get hazy, cloudy. "Besides, what's a Queen without her King?"

He pulled away. "What?"

Cindy only smiled. "You have your name. I have mine."

Roll call came. The people who were staying stayed, and then they were back on the road again. Not having anywhere else to go and spending a chunk of his money on the ticket, Peter had no choice but to get on. Doubted he had a choice since he was sharing a seat with the 'teenaged mutant telepathic Spider-Girl'. Or the 'Queen', which wasn't presumptuous at all.

The lights on the bus were off. It was still night. Peter had his head on the window and tucked into his jacket. He looked out the window. Cindy looked with him, invading his personal space like they knew each other all their lives. He wondered if she knew she was making his skin crawl. "You really don't like telepaths, do you? Or mutants?"

"Telepaths, not anymore," he muttered, watching as she looked at him blankly with dark eyes.

"1 out of 2 isn't bad," she shrugged. "Do you not like me?" He looked hard at her. "Wow, Jean Grey is giving us a bad name."

"I don't care that you're a mutant." He said, nestling himself into his seat. "...What now?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Are you going to come with me?"

He glared at her, the girl without a brainfilter apparently, but didn't say anything. New York was behind him, and everyone else. No commitments, no worries. No responsibility. That sounded nice. Shacking up with this girl didn't, but he didn't really have any other option, did he?

When he nodded, Cindy cheered and leaned on his shoulder. "Do you think you'll ever go back?" And he looked at her, wondered if she was peeking into his mind. He decided he didn't care. There wasn't a thing he could do about it except shoot her dirty looks and get an ulcer. She smiled. "Whoops."

"I don't know," he said after a few more seconds of glaring at her, before it faltered. "Where are we going?"

"To meet someone I know. The person who helped me. His name is Ezekiel. He knows a lot more about our situation than anyone else. But I know things too. We can help you."

He snorted. Hadn't said he needed help and he wasn't about to ask for it. But… this was good, right? "Is he family of yours? Your family full of spider-powered mutants, is that it?" He whispered, almost laughing at the idea.

She bit her lip. "No. My family didn't take finding out I was a mutant so well."

"…Why didn't you join the X-Men?" he asked, more curious than he was perturbed. "They'd help you."

"Why don't you?" She countered. "They don't exactly have a phoneline where you can enroll for 'freaky deeky mutant powers'." He wondered how much of it was true, but it wasn't like he'd ever tried asking about it. Wondered how much phone traffic they got from terrified parents who thought their kids were freaks. "Ezekiel said that was a bad idea. They get enough flak as it is too. Helping ungrateful people. Or their folks. No thanks."

Peter frowned. He was tired with this subject. "It's not about if they're grateful or not. It's because it's the right thing to do."

"Says who?" she countered again, and again he didn't have a response. She was so close and that made him uneasy. His bones felt like jumping beans in his skin and she smiled like she knew it. "I think feeling gratitude is the right thing to do. Recognition too. Especially when you help people."

"Some things are more important than glory," Peter sighed.

"Whatever you say," Cindy yawned, bored and leaning against him again. She snorted. "Hey… did you know Eugene Thompson still wets the bed?" she asked. "I read his mind too. It's more difficult to do than yours, you're always here up there, but I did it." She said it like it was something to be proud of. "He has a below average penis too. And he's a quickshot. Explains why he's such an asshole."

He cringed in disgust. Imagining what was in Flash's pants wasn't something he ever wanted to know. Seeing his own corpse was better. "I really don't want to know about another guy's junk."

Cindy ignored him. "You, though, you have a…" she blushed like she was too shy to say it, bit her lip. "Far bigger than average one. …Want me to give you a handjob?"

"What?" he snapped, jerking away from her, quieted down to not wake up the other passengers. "I- what?"

"Ya got a dig bic. You're pent up," she said. "You're balls must be blue. I could… help you," she said, putting a lock of hair behind her ear. "It'd be fun."

So she wasn't just a telepath, she was a pervert. "I have a girlfriend," he said. "No thanks."

"She's not here. Just a handy! It wouldn't even be cheating!" He glared at her. "I could just make you take it out you know," she said, licking her lips. He tensed. "But I won't. Just a quick 1-2… Hundred. I'll swallow if you want."

Utterly unused to a girl blatantly propositioning him like that, him, he tried to change the subject, and took a deep breath. "…W-Why did you name yourself Queen?"

Cindy played with her hair. "'The Queen," she corrected. "And aside from the fact that the King eats the Queen's ass and she sucks his balls?" She teased, waggling her eyebrows, making him look away from her. "I grew up in Queens, I have spider powers, I control spiders. Spider-Queen, right?" He nodded slowly. "You have spider-powers, so you're like, the King to my Queen. We should consummate."

"We really shouldn't. We won't."

She giggled perversely. "Hm… You ever had a girl sit on your face before? You want to try it?"

"No," Peter said, remembering that morning with Kitty and how she'd fallen through him. That didn't count, but… his pants were getting tighter. Putting his head to the window again, he closed his eyes, smacked her hand away as it crawled along his thigh. Telepathic, perverted, and couldn't take no for an answer. It was going to be a long ride-

"No to which one though?" she chirped innocently, interrupting his thoughts. "Teasing you is going to be so fun."

He sighed, tried to distract the both of them. "Where is this place of yours?"

"Massachusetts. We're going to see the Liberty Bell together. It'll be fun."

"That's in Philadelphia," Peter groaned.

"What you said. Sure thing."

It was going to be a long ride.