Found: Spider-Kid in Need of a Hug

by althor42

The kid was incredible. Jefferson had admitted that to himself early on. But he was a kid, and Jefferson had always known he'd die a kid if no one saved him. The day had finally come that Jefferson thought he'd failed; that Spider-Man had gone to his death, and there was nothing he could do. Things didn't get any easier when the mask came off.

2. The Less Said the Better

His mom shook him awake a while later, just like she'd promised.

"And how are we doing today?"

Miles tensed at the new voice in the room, very much disliking that he couldn't see who it was. But then recognition came to him.

"Dr. Chase?" he asked. He'd met the man on a few occasions during different hospital events, and his mom had already mentioned that he was the doctor who had been working on him from the very beginning.

"That's right. It's good to see you again, Miles," said Doctor Chase. "Good to see you conscious, at any rate."

"Mmm, not so good to be conscious," Miles admitted.

"Yes, I've been hearing that the medication we have you on hasn't been up to the task. How is the pain right now?"

"Five out of ten, I guess," said Miles. His mom had brought the pain scale home to query about his stomach aches and skinned knees.

"How bad has it gotten, so far?"

"Like, an eight, but like, a full-body eight."

"We're going to be reformulating your opiate protocol, but we're waiting on some blood work until we do, and even then, we'll have to run it by the hospital board. It's going to be a little while before we can see about upping the dose again."

Miles nodded.

"So, you're going to look at my eyes?" he asked.

"Well, I'm going to be looking at a whole lot of you," said Dr. Chase. "Is that where you'd like to start?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Let's get to it, then," said Dr. Chase.

The doctor approached him and began unwrapping the band of gauze that went around his head. Though it hadn't been all that tight, even just losing that felt a little relieving.

"You're going to feel a little pull from this tape here," said Dr. Chase.

The tape was holding down the two sand-dollar-sized pads they had covering his eyes. As soon as they were gone, Miles pulled open his eyelids, struggling against the accumulated gunk and crust.

"Everything's cloudy," he said, fear stabbing in his heart. He could barely see the difference between light and dark, and what if this was permanent?

"Alright," said Dr. Chase, not sounding alarmed at all. "We're going to use a little water to clean everything out. Rio?"

"I've got it," she said. "I've got a little squeeze bottle, Miles. I'm going to use it to flush out your eyes, okay?"

"Okay," said Miles, not sure if they were expecting it to make a difference or not.

He must have been doing a bad job of keeping his cool, because his dad, sitting opposite his mom, took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

"Try to blink every few seconds," his mom told him, as she pressed a pad to the side of his face, to catch the water, he realized, "but otherwise hold your eyes open for me, okay?"

Miles nodded.

He hated this, being so completely dependent, even if it was his mom.

It was a tiny stream of water that hit his eye. It wasn't painful, but definitely uncomfortable. It took a good bit of concentration not to squeeze his eyes shut. It took him a few seconds to realize (painfully) that he was holding his breath.

He hated this.

But when that eye was finished, and his mom was dabbing away at the area with a gauze pad, he saw an improvement.

"It's not cloudy, but…it's still really blurry."

He could make out the forms of everyone around him, and the colors of what they were wearing, but not much more than that.

"Let's get the other eye, mijo, and then Dr. Chase will see how things are looking."

It was a little easier doing it the second time, if only because he knew this time that it would actually help (and also because he was realizing just how dry his eyes had been).

"I think this one's less blurry," said Miles when it was done. He spent a few seconds testing opening and closing his eyes in turn. With his right eye, he could make out actual facial details on the people around him. Everything was just colorful blobs to his left.

"Then you're better off than you were two minutes ago, so that's progress already," said Dr. Chase.

"You're just like, super optimistic, aren't you?" asked Miles.

"It's easy to be optimistic with a patient like you," said Dr. Chase. "You keep on beating the odds, we'll have you out of here in no time."

"Sounds good to me," said Miles, though, to him it didn't feel like he was recovering quickly at all.

"Alright, let's get a good look here. I'll be shining a light in your eyes, sorry to say, but if you could just stare straight forward for me, that would be perfect."

Miles had never found eye tests to be a good time, but at least it was just a tedious kind of unpleasant, which was markedly better than every other sensation his body was dealing with.

"Well, the good news is the cataracts don't seem to have come back," said Dr. Chase.

"I had cataracts? Wait, what are cataracts?"

"It's when the lens in your eyes turns opaque," said his mom. "It's a good thing it cleared up on its own because you would have needed surgery to swap them out, otherwise."

"Okay, but then what's making everything blurry?" he asked.

"I'm thinking glaucoma," said Dr. Chase. "Most likely due to inflammation; it's throwing off the curvature of your eye. Once we get you sitting up in a bit, I'll bring in a bit of equipment to take a closer look to see for sure. But I'm thinking it should go away as the inflammation goes down."

"And if it's not due to inflammation?" asked his dad.

"Then we'll have to look at some other potential causes. He may just wind up needing glasses if there's long term damage to the eye causing the malformation, though there would likely be surgical options to correct it."

"Everything else checks out though?" asked Miles.

"Other than the lack of production from your lacrimal glands. We've got some eye drops for you to help keep your eyes moistened."

"Is that going to heal?" asked Miles.

"That's going to depend on how bad the damage is. It is a regenerative tissue, but it may not if the damage is too extensive."

Miles didn't like the idea of having dry eyes for the rest of his life.

"Okay, what's next then?"

What was next was removing bandages from all over his body, because there was damage all over his body, if mostly contained to the front of him. It was pretty relieving getting the bandages taken off of his hands and arms. Having some mobility in his hands was nice, and even if his arms were still hooked up with tubes and wires, he still felt like he was just that much more mobile. Though, as relieving as it was, more movement also brought more pain with it. It kind of made Miles wish he'd stayed asleep.

"So, I thought my healing was like, in high gear at first," Miles said as his arms were poked and prodded at. "Shouldn't this little stuff on my skin have healed already?"

"Hmm, they did actually. These lesions are the second wave, and they are still healing pretty well. If not for our little ruse, I'd suggest leaving some of these uncovered."

"Our ruse?"

"We're pretending the damage is a lot worse than it is, and that's why we can't get a good picture of you," said his dad.

"Oh," said Miles.

"Not these hands though," said Dr. Chase. "We saw some of the worst damage here, so this is actually a lot improved from how you were when you first got here. But the tissue here still definitely needs bandaging."

Miles couldn't make out the damage on his hands very clearly; he just knew they hurt.

It felt really good to have the bandages taped down on his chest removed, up until he decided to take a really deep breath, and then everything just hurt so much.

"Why does breathing hurt so much?!" he cried as his mom did her best to comfort him without being able to scoop him up in a big hug.

"You took a lot of damage to your lungs," said Dr. Chase.

"Ohhhh, radiation sucks so bad," said Miles.

"Breathe through it, mijo," said his mom.

"Breathing hurts," he reminded her.

"You going to stop breathing?" asked his dad.

Miles huffed, and that hurt too, but no, he wasn't going to stop breathing.

"Come on, Miles, breathe with me here." His dad took Miles's hand and placed it on his chest.

Miles breathed with him for a bit. The effect was lessened with a leaded apron between them, but he could still feel the movement of his father's chest with every breath.

"You haven't had to do that since I was a kid," he said eventually.

"Who ever told you you weren't still a kid?"

There was a lot more poking and prodding around his chest and abdomen than there was around his arms. Mostly just the normal physical check-up sort of stuff, except not with the accompanying good bill of health Miles was used to. There was a lot of tenderness in his stomach. There were areas that were supposed to be soft that were firm instead. Apparently, while his insides weren't as bad as his outsides, they'd still taken a good bit of damage.

"Alright, Miles," said Dr. Chase. "Time to go below the belt, here."

"Mmmm, pretty sure radiation stops at the beltline," said Miles.

"Afraid not," said Dr. Chase. "But you get to decide if one, both, or neither of your parents stick around."

"Uhhhh."

It had been a while since Miles had felt comfortable running around their home in his birthday suit. His dad hadn't seen him undressed since Miles had gone to Visions, and they weren't sharing the bathroom so often, and it had been a good bit longer since his mom was allowed to walk in on him changing. And in fact, that part of his last physical exam had been done with just him and the doctor. So really, he didn't want either of his parents to hang around.

"Um, Dad can stay," he said.

He didn't want to be alone with this, and he hadn't realized that until he'd had the option put in front of him. For the first time, he let himself accept the fact that he was afraid. Not of how weak he was in the moment, or how close they were to someone discovering his secret identity. He was scared for his health. He was scared he wasn't going to recover. He was scared that at any moment, Dr. Chase was going to pronounce something that was going to be permanently wrong with him.

His mom put a comforting hand on his forehead before she left (kisses would wait for when he was less radioactive). Dr. Chase started unwrapping him further.

"Wait, what the heck is that?!" asked Miles, feeling a swoop in his stomach when certain things were delicately revealed.

"That would be a catheter," said Dr. Chase.

"That's been there this whole time?!"

"Just about the whole time you've been here," said Dr. Chase.

Miles groaned in distress. This was so not okay, and for the record, he was so tired of discovering new things going on with his body that had been masked under the deep pain that pervaded all of him.

"Well, can it come out now?" he asked, deeply uncomfortable with its presence.

"When we've assessed that you're mobile, and can handle things on your own," said Dr. Chase. "And please don't try to rip this tube out like that other tube you yanked out. That wouldn't be fun for anyone."

Miles groaned again, not caring how dramatic he was being. His dad gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"You'll be glad to know, the tissue around here heals pretty quickly," said Dr. Chase. "The lesions have healed almost completely."

"So I definitely, um, I nuked my stuff?"

"Well, Miles, you nuked pretty much your whole body. Your 'stuff' included. Even now, there's still some swelling evident in the gonads, and the surrounding lymph nodes."

"That's not good," said Miles.

"Inflammation is an integral part of the healing process," said Dr. Chase. He settled a cloth over Miles's midsection to move on to his left leg. "In that sense, swelling is actually a good thing."

"Okay, but…is everything still going to, um, work?"

Dr. Chase gave a thoughtful hum. "You know, this is going to be another one of those things where I have to say that we're just going to have to wait and see how things are healing up before we can say one way or another. And of course, I'm saying that a lot more for you, because there are things that have healed in you that really shouldn't have."

"Like those cataracts," his dad supplied helpfully.

"Like the cataracts," agreed Dr. Chase.

"So…"

"Neurologically, you've been doing very well," said Dr. Chase. "You've retained good blood flow. At this point, mobility issues aside, I'm not foreseeing difficulty with bladder control or urination, nor in achieving or maintaining erection."

God, this was mortifying. Why did he have to ask about this?

"As far as hormone and sperm production, that's the one that's more of a 'wait and see,'" said Dr. Chase. "The gonads also have healthy blood flow, but what level of function they're at, it's hard to say. We've only seen a small drop in testosterone levels, which is a good sign, but we can't rule out complications down the line. Eventually, you'll want to see a reproductive specialist to assess your swimmers, but there's a very real possibility of infertility."

"Oh," said Miles.

"It's way too early to worry about that, Miles," said his dad.

Miles nodded. Having kids one day wasn't even something he'd ever put much thought into, but somehow it still hit kind of hard to hear it.

He kind of felt like he was feeling too many things, at the moment, and he wasn't quite sure what all of those feelings were. But he realized that one of those things he was feeling was shame. Shame that he might not be able to live up to an aspect of manhood that he'd never even put any thought into. Shame that his dad was there to hear about it, even if he still didn't want his dad to be anywhere else but there with him.

He didn't pay too much attention to his legs being examined. There were more lesions there. Something about a blood clot he'd had. As long as his legs would work fine, he'd be okay. The doctor tapped at his knees with a mallet and swiped at the bottom of Miles's feet, and declared his reflexes were fine.

"I think we can upgrade you to a hospital gown, at this point," said Dr. Chase, "since certain parts of you don't need to be so wrapped up at the moment."

"A hospital gown would be nice," said Miles, who hadn't realized he wasn't wearing one until the exam had started, and was relieved that no one would be handling his bits anymore at the moment.

They got a gown on him, and his mom came back in the room, but even then the exam wasn't over. It just got more painful and exhausting, as Miles needed to move around more.

"Could you bend this for me, Miles?" asked Dr. Chase, holding out a metal rod.

"Uhh, sure," said Miles. His hands and arms were sore and protested the movement, but he bent the rod all the way around in a loop. He didn't think this was a normal part of a physical exam.

"Alright, super strength is still in evidence. How did that feel? Any harder than it usually would be?"

"Everything's harder than it usually would be," said Miles. "But, um, it was tiring. I wouldn't want to have to do it again right now."

"Alright," said Dr. Chase. "Can you stick to things with your fingers? There's still burning to your fingertips, so I don't want you to try to stick to anything substantial. Maybe the fabric of the top bedsheet?"

"I sure hope I can," said Miles, remembering how he'd fallen from the ceiling before. He let his fingertips press down onto the sheet and then lifted up. The bedsheet pulled up with him.

"There we go," said Dr. Chase. "We'll try again with something heavier when things are more healed up. Any idea how it works, though?"

"Someone told me it's electrostatic force," said Miles.

"Interesting," said Dr. Chase. "Now, we definitely don't want to try out your electric shock ability here in the hospital. But can you see if you can turn invisible?"

"Uh, sure," said Miles. He let the coldness wash over him that he always felt when he went invisible.

"That's crazy," said Dr. Chase. "Oh, look at that, your oxygen meter thinks you've disappeared. How does it feel to be invisible? Now, I mean, not in general."

"I just have to concentrate on it to keep it from dropping. I don't think it's straining anything."

"Is there a limit to how long you can stay invisible?"

"I don't know," said Miles. "I've never tried to hold it up for too long."

"Well, let's not try to find a limit today," said Dr. Chase.

The next thing he wanted to check on was if Miles could sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed. He could, with a lot of shifting and groaning to get into position, and rearranging of tubes and wires. It was deeply uncomfortable.

"Alright, well now's a good time to get a better look at those eyes of yours. I'll be right back. Rio, if you could administer the eye drops?"

"No problem," said his mom to Dr. Chase's already retreating back. To Miles, she said, "You're doing really well."

"If you say so," said Miles.

Putting in the eye drops was uncomfortable, but a very mundane kind of uncomfortable. Miles couldn't make out much of the cart the doctor wheeled into the room, past that it had some big clunky thing on it.

"Alright, Miles, to start off with, there's a pad right here for you to rest your chin on. And a pad right here to rest your forehead on. I think we've got the machine at a comfortable height for you, but let me know if you need me to adjust it."

"Okay," said Miles, letting himself be guided forward to set his face into the contraption.

"You'll hear some whirring of motors as I get this thing aligned. And once I do, then all you need to do is keep your eyes forward for me."

"Okay," said Miles.

"When the machine's doing its thing, it's going to blow little puffs of air at you, so don't be surprised when it does."

"I don't know if I can keep myself from blinking when it does," Miles said dubiously.

"Don't worry about not blinking. All you need to do is look straight ahead."

"If you say so," said Miles.

The machine whirred, and a soft green circle of light centered itself on his left eye. As promised, it spat puffs of air at him. Miles tried not to blink, because he really felt like he shouldn't, but blinked anyway. But apparently that was fine because the doctor just moved onto his right eye.

"So what's the verdict?" asked his dad.

"Definitely glaucoma," said Dr. Chase. "There's a good bit of pressure built up in the eyes right now, causing the distortion. Moving on, how about we see if you can stand and balance."

Miles could, with even more shuffling of tubes and wires, for all of three seconds before he collapsed back on the bed hurting all over.

"Good," said Dr. Chase, "that's good."

"Doesn't feel good," said Miles, feeling like he'd just run a marathon without any water breaks.

He'd thought he'd feel better being able to see, even if everything was blurry. But he'd never felt so vulnerable as right then, knowing how completely incapacitated he was. (He didn't see getting himself to the bathroom in his near future).

"You've made so much progress, Miles," said his dad. "You don't even know."

"And you're going to make so much more," said his mom.

"Are we done?" asked Miles. "I don't…"

"That's about enough for right now," said Dr. Chase. "One more thing though, I'd like to see how you're handling fluids. I know you had some ice chips earlier. Do you think you could handle some water with a straw?"

"I mean, I sure hope so," said Miles.

It did hurt to swallow, but Miles was able to get the cup of water down.

"Great," said Dr. Chase. "Maybe later in the day, we'll see how you handle some juice."

"What about food?" asked Miles.

"We'll see how your stomach handles the juice, before we start with some nutrition shakes, and soft bland foods," said Dr. Chase.

Miles didn't like the sound of that. But he didn't have long to ponder it, because he fell asleep soon after the doctor left the room, while his mom and Nurse Felix were putting new bandages on him.

!

When Miles woke up again, it was to the sound of a video playing from somewhere. It was just his dad in the room with him. His dad was sitting in a chair by the window, looking at his work computer, the source of the audio.

"I just think that he's done a really good job. Honestly, it's like we had a pretty smooth transition from one Spider-Man to another. Obviously, he just saved New York, so I'm not complaining."

"And do you have any concerns about his age?"

"Sure, but like, what are you going to do?"

"Do you think that the state should try to stop him?"

"Dude, how do you stop Spider-Man?"

"Cesium-137, apparently," his dad muttered.

Or an explosion followed by two massive fists, thought Miles.

"He saved me," says a new voice. "A bicyclist knocked me into the street, and that boy pulled me back from being run over. At the time, I just thanked him. I hugged him. But knowing what happened to him, how young he is, I should have told him to go home to his mother."

Miles resisted the urge to squirm uncomfortably.

"Does his age change how you think of him?"

"Of course. He should be home playing video games, not putting his life in danger."

"Do you think that the state should find a way to keep him from being Spider-Man?"

"No, I just want his parents to keep him home."

"I think he's a menace," says a new voice. "Probably put the bomb there himself."

"The hell?!" his dad asked.

The hell, Miles thought

"What do you base that belief on?"

"It's a false flag operation, obviously. White nationalists try to destroy New York, a majority white city, by the way, and a black kid stops it? That's totally contrived. He's probably not even in the hospital."

"Man, shut the hell up," his dad murmured. The click of his mouse signaled the sudden stop of the video. "Put anything on the air these days."

The room fell into silence, offset only by the noises of all of the machines around him. Miles had never been a fan of silence.

"You guys haven't said how angry you are with me," he said.

His dad looked up from the screen.

"Well," he said, closing his laptop, "we're definitely not happy with any of the decisions you've made to be Spider-Man."

Which was more diplomatic than Miles was expecting. He considered that maybe he should get himself hospitalized every time he was caught doing something he wasn't supposed to.

"Am I in trouble?"

"I don't even know what the appropriate parenting response is to finding out your kid is a teenaged superhero vigilante."

Miles perked up. "You never called Spider-Man a superhero before," he said.

His dad started. "That's aside from the point," he said.

Miles felt kind of frustrated, because he really just wanted his dad to get to the point, lay down the law, let him know what was going to happen. Would his parents pull him out of Visions so they could keep a better eye on him? Would his dad actually put a GPS tracker on him? How grounded was he? He needed his computer for school, but that still left his phone and all his art supplies as things his parents could take away from him.

And, "We're not happy with any of the decisions you've made," still means they're angry with him, and he'd really like to know how much.

Maybe some of his frustration showed on his face, because his dad said, "Hey, you know none of this has been easy on your mom or me."

"Yeah, I know," said Miles.

"I don't think you do," said his dad, "because you weren't there when I was going out of my mind worrying about the spider-kid dying of radiation exposure, only for you to walk out of that building vomiting blood, and having a seizure. You weren't there when your mom was on the roof of the hospital waiting for a patient she thought for sure was going to die no matter what, and it was you that they pulled out of the helicopter. We have been stared down by the prospect of your death over and over these last few days, and it hurts, Miles."

"I'm sorry," said Miles.

"If you're apologizing, does that mean that you'll never do it again?" asked his dad.

Miles opened his mouth to say…something, but no words came out.

"That's about what I thought," said his dad.

"The city needs me," said Miles, thinking again about how much people may have needed him these last few days when he wasn't able to be there.

"So do your parents, Miles."

"I never wanted any of this to hurt you guys," said Miles. "That's one of the reasons I kept it a secret."

"Secrets don't protect the people they're kept from," said his dad.

They fell into silence then, but Miles was still so filled with a nervous energy of all the things left unsaid. Miles had spent so much time asleep lately, and before that, they'd spent so long not talking about things. Now his dad didn't even want to talk about how much trouble Miles was in. Well, Miles didn't want to sit in silence.

"You never asked Spider-Man about, um, Uncle Aaron."

His dad huffed a breath through his nose.

"I guess not," he said.

"I always…I thought you'd ask," he said.

"Well, it was obvious pretty quickly that…that he'd been shot. And none of the spider people then were seen using a gun. Not really your guys' MO, I guess. And, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that you had been trying to get him away from all the violence. And, in the wreckage of the collider, we found the gun that shot him, with Fisk's prints all over. So, I never really needed to ask you, I suppose. Aaron went to work for Fisk as the Prowler, and he got caught in the cross-fire of Fisk's crusade. I guess, I never asked because…I want Fisk to face justice for what he did to your uncle, but every time I happened to come across the spider-kid, all I wanted to do was make sure he was safe. And asking him for his testimony about a crime lord's murder never really fit in with that."

"It wasn't cross-fire though," said Miles. "Uncle Aaron saw that it was me there, at May Parker's house, and he stopped. He pulled my mask back down so no one would see me. He wasn't going to hurt me, and when King Pin saw him stop, he just shot him. He just shot him like it was nothing, even though he could have shot me instead."

And Miles has been wanting to say this for months now.

His dad was up and by his side in an instant.

"Miles," he said. His big hands were delicate on Miles's arm and the side of his head, as he leaned over Miles in a loose approximation of a hug. And Miles hated that he was so delicate right now he couldn't have a big bear hug.

"You should have never had to have dealt with any of that."

"It's my fault," said Miles. "If I hadn't been there-"

"If you hadn't been there, then your uncle would have still been working for a man who would kill him for a single misstep. If you hadn't been there, then the last thing your uncle ever did wouldn't have been anything so noble as protecting his nephew. Your uncle made so many mistakes in life, Miles, but I know he would have chosen to protect you a million times over, even knowing how it would end."

"I still don't…how could he do the things he did? Uncle Aaron, he…I still don't get how he was Uncle Aaron and the Prowler at the same time."

"Oh, Miles," said his dad. "It's…" He took a seat next to Miles and took a deep breath. "Your uncle always compartmentalized his life. He had the people he truly cared about, and everyone else was either…a distraction, an asset, or a threat. I think it was his way of surviving in a world that had never been kind to him; a world that had treated him like a threat since the age of twelve. He guarded his heart by reserving it for a select few, and locking it away from everyone else. Your uncle loved you so much, so he only ever wanted to show you the best version of himself."

"I miss him so much," said Miles, "and sometimes I feel guilty because I know he hurt people, and…"

"You don't ever have to feel guilty for missing him, Miles. Not ever. I miss him every day. You knew him as his best self, and it's a tragedy that that version of your uncle lost its chance to grow over the hurt and the brutality that he'd learned. Even if, a part of me is aware that…that at least he's never going to hurt anyone again. Even as a part of me is relieved that he was able to do one more truly good thing before he died. But I know he saw something in you, Miles. He saw how strong you are; your strength to give your heart out to the people around you, even after all the crap you have been through. If there was one thing that he and I were on the same page on when he died, it's that we wanted to protect that part of you. We've never wanted you to lose the things that we gave up to overcome this world."

"I never wanted him to die for me," said Miles.

"I know," said his dad. "But there was never going to be a version of events where he didn't try to protect you."

"Did they, um, did they charge King Pin with it?" asked Miles.

"They did," said his dad. "A few weeks ago, actually. They added the charge."

"You never said," said Miles.

"Yeah, well, I didn't know you knew about everything," said his dad. "I didn't know how to tell you that Wilson Fisk had killed Aaron without telling you all the rest. I didn't want to damage your memory of your uncle."

"Too late," Miles said morosely.

"Was that…that day at May Parker's house, was that the first time you ran into the Prowler?"

Miles shook his head.

"King Pin had him chasing me," he said. "I was there when, um, when Peter Parker died. They realized I was there."

"That was the night you came home," said his dad.

Miles nodded.

"It was my fault, um, he found me a second time, and I thought I lost him, but I led him to Mrs. Parker's house, and then…"

"God, Miles, everything you've had to deal with…you're a kid, Miles. Don't you understand that you shouldn't have ever had to deal with any of this? Shouldn't have ever been exposed to any of this. How many people have you seen die?"

"I…six," said Miles. He swallowed hard, painfully. Spider-Man didn't always get to trouble in time.

"That's not okay, Miles, you're a child."

"I'm Spider-Man! It's my job!"

"It's not a job, Miles! You didn't sign up for this, you're not getting paid for this, it's illegal! You're not even old enough for a work permit, for god's sake."

"But Spider-Man means something, Dad, and I'm the one that was chosen to carry it on after Peter Parker."

"Please don't for one second ever think that bringing Peter Parker into the conversation is a good defense for being Spider-Man."

"He was an amazing Sider-Man!" said Miles.

"And it killed him, Miles!"

"I know it did! I watched him die! He told me to hide, because I was the only one who could save the city, and I did, and I didn't even try to do anything when King Pin killed him. He knew that protecting this world was more important than his life. If he hadn't been there that day, if he hadn't done what he did, we all would have died when King Pin used his collider. So don't say that Peter Parker shouldn't have been there, or that it wasn't worth his sacrifice, because it was! He saved us! And you're wrong, because I did sign up for this. I never asked for spider-powers, I never wanted to be a superhero, but when I had it all put out in front of me, I chose! I chose to do this. I chose to be Spider-Man. I gave me this job, and I'm old enough to save the world, because I already did when I was younger than I am now!"

"But who's going to save you?"

"I don't know," said Miles. "I'm just…I've been doing my best, okay? And I think I've been doing an okay job. This is the first time I've gotten hurt real bad."

"Three months isn't exactly a stellar track record, Miles," said his dad.

"Yeah, well, it's not like dirty bomb's just pop up all the time," said Miles.

«Oh, good, you're awake,» said his mom, stepping quickly into the room as she completely derailed their conversation. «There's a social worker here to see you.»

"A social worker?" asked Miles, feeling a bit of whiplash from the sudden change of topic.

His mom took a couple of the big round pads they'd had over his eyes, and set them on his face, before slipping a prepared circlet of gauze around his head over them. There's already plenty more bandages around his forehead, cheeks, and chin, leaving almost the entirety of his face covered. Miles wrinkled his nose at being blinded again.

"You've been in the hospital for the last four days without a parent or guardian as far as the state's concerned," said his dad. "They need to figure out what to do with you."

"Uhhh," said Miles.

"Just don't tell her any identifying information," said his dad.

«Tell her you're tired and don't want to talk,» said his mom.

"Wait, does everyone think Spider-Man's parents abandoned him?" asked Miles.

«Of course they do,» said his mom. «Now remember to be tired.»

"I am tired," said Miles.

"Yeah, just like that," said his dad.

He heard his mom leave the room again, and he and his dad waited in awkward silence.

Miles hadn't been intending to say all of the things he'd just said.

"Hola, chico, you still awake?" asked his mom when she came back in.

"Yeah, I'm awake," said Miles, not really having to act at all to let his exhaustion seep through. "I kind of feel like I'm going to fall asleep again."

"Oh, well, just try to stay awake for a little bit longer, and try to talk to this nice lady who came to see you," said his mom.

Was it Miles's imagination, or was she laying on her accent more than she usually did?

"Who's there?" asked Miles, hating that he had been blinded again.

"Hi, there," said a new voice. "My name's Ashley. I came to talk with you a little bit today."

"Okay?"

"I'm something called a social worker. Is that something you're familiar with?"

"Um, I guess," said Miles. "You're like, CPS?"

"That's right," she said. "With the Department of Children's Services of New York. I'm here to make sure that you're being taken care of okay, and figure out where you'll be going when you're well enough to discharge from the hospital."

"Um," said Miles, "I'll go home, I guess."

"And where's home, for you?" she asked.

Miles shifted uncomfortably.

"I'm really tired," he said. "Could we talk another time?"

He felt absurdly guilty for saying so.

"I could come back another time," said Ashley. "But before I go, could I ask how you've been doing here?"

"Mmm, everything hurts," said Miles. "And I can't stay awake much."

He let his eyes close behind the bandages. His eyelids felt heavy, and he couldn't see anything anyway.

"Do you feel like you're being taken care of okay?"

"Well, I'm alive, so, probably," said Miles. He wondered what she'd do if he said he wasn't.

"Have you been feeling safe at the hospital?"

"Not really," said Miles. He thought he'd have to lie more than this.

"What makes you feel that way?"

"Everything?" said Miles.

"Is there anyone here that makes you feel unsafe?"

He was not with it enough to be having this conversation.

"No, just everything sucks, and I got a bunch of enemies who know where I am now," said Miles.

"Is there anything that would make you feel safer?" she asked.

"Not really," said Miles. Nothing she could do, anyway. "Can I go back to sleep now?"

"In just a minute. I also need to tell you that there's going to be a court hearing in a couple of days, where your case is going to be discussed."

"Wait, I thought you were a social worker," said Miles, tensing up at the words 'court hearing.'

"I am a social worker. This isn't the kind of court where you're in trouble. It's not a delinquency hearing. It's the kind of court where judges can make orders to keep kids safe and make sure they're taken care of."

"But…" Miles wasn't sure what to even say to that.

"We'd really like it if your parents or your legal guardians could be there. If they could show that they're in a position to take good care of you, then we wouldn't need to be involved quite like this. If there's anyone I could contact to notice them about the hearing, I'd be happy to get in touch with them for you."

Miles shook his head.

"Also, I have to ask, because the court is going to want to know, if you happen to have any Native American ancestry?"

"Huh?" asked Miles.

"American Indian," she clarified, in case that was what Miles hadn't understood. "There's a law that says that it's important to notify a tribe if we know we're working with one of their kids."

His dad had mentioned before that they had some Chickasaw heritage, but Miles honestly didn't know much more than that.

All he said was, "Well, we're not in any tribe, so…" He didn't think anyone could track him down by knowing such a little tidbit of information, but he didn't want to give them anything.

"Alright, well, I'll be back tomorrow to talk with you more about it. There's also going to be a children's attorney who's going to be contacting you. It's their job to represent your voice to the judge and to advocate for your best interests. That's especially important because it looks like you'll still be in the hospital during the hearing."

Represent your voice, and advocate for your 'best interests.' Miles was pretty sure that that meant that the attorney would wind up saying something along the lines of: My client wants to swing off into the sunset, but he's just a dumb kid, so let's put him in a group home.

"Kay," he said. "I really am going to sleep now, though."

"Alright, I'll head out then. I'll see you tomorrow. And I'm going to leave my card with Nurse Rio here, in case you want to get any names or contact numbers to me, in the meantime."

"Kay," he said again.

"Rest up now," she said by way of goodbye. "Could I talk to the both of you, please?" she asked his parents.

Miles had actually been planning to go to sleep again. But he couldn't help but eavesdrop. Blind he may be at the moment, but he still had his enhanced senses.

"How has his recovery been going, relatively speaking?"

"It's slow but steady," said his mom. "Better than we could have hoped for."

"Does the doctor have any kind of timeframe on when he might be discharged?"

"No," said his mom, "there are too many things left unknown."

"I don't suppose you know yet what his medical needs may be when he's discharged?"

"A normal recovery period for something like this would be years," said his mom. "There would be a long list of medical needs that I could report to you. Right now, he needs glasses, eye drops, antibiotics, complete intravenous feeding, immune system support, and wound care. I don't know if he still will when he's discharged."

"Wouldn't that be something? And Officer Davis, does your department share the child's security concerns?"

'The child's?' They were talking about Spider-Man!

"Of course," said his dad. "That's why we have officers posted here."

"Have there been any attempts to breach the security?"

"So far, just a photographer from the Bugle."

The social worker made a noise of disgust, which Miles' shared. Were they just going to take a picture of him unconscious, and vulnerable, and only wearing bandages? Even just the thought of a picture like that getting out there made him deeply uncomfortable in a way he couldn't quite put into words.

"That was about my reaction," said his dad, who hadn't told Miles that someone had tried to breach security already.

"Do you believe the current security is adequate?"

"I wouldn't say 'no' to more," said his dad. "The kid has plenty of enemies. Some of them have the resources to try something. The sooner I can get him to a confidential location, the better."

"And what's your assessment on his AWOL risk?"

"Well, right now, he can barely stand," said his dad. "But when he's recovered, there's not really much we could do to contain him without pulling out all of the stops."

"Can you comment on whether or not charges are pending against him?"

Miles's gut churned.

"You would have to take that up with the city attorney's office," said his dad. "There hasn't been a warrant out for Spider-Man's arrest in years, but the delinquency court may have other ideas."

"But to clarify, there's been no official arrest?"

"That's correct," said his dad.

"That makes my job more and less complicated."

"How's that?" asked his dad.

"Collaborating with juvenile probation is a whole other process to deal with, but I wouldn't mind the help in keeping him in one place."

"It'll take an awful lot to keep him somewhere he doesn't want to be, once he's healed. You sure you'd get what you want out of that?" asked his dad.

"I'm sure we don't know who he is, or where he lives, or who his parents are, and that means we don't have any kind of leverage to keep him from going out and doing this all over again."

"Maximum security seems a poor way to repay him," said his mom.

"So would letting him die," said the social worker. "You have any other ideas?"

"Mostly just trying to talk sense into him while we have him here," said his dad.

"I'll wish you luck on that."

"So, if you don't think he'll stick around, why go forward with a dependency court case?"

"Procedure," she said. "We'll get Medicaid in place for his treatment. Establish legal authority to make medical decisions. And maybe we will figure out who he is; tomorrow or a year from now. Court lays a groundwork that could help us to effect services at some point in the future, even if he does AWOL now. To say nothing of the fact that he could be discharged with continuing health problems that prevent him from AWOLing, and we'd need to have jurisdiction to actually have a foster home for him to go to."

"And if his parents do come forward?" asked his dad.

"It would take care of the issue of caretaker absence, but we'd have plenty of questions about their ability to keep him safe. Questions about where they've been, up till now, especially if their son's been missing and they haven't filed a missing persons report."

Miles's gut churned with guilt.

"There actually have been quite a lot of missing persons reports filed since the evacuation," said his dad, and Miles felt a whole new kind of guilt because he'd left the city in complete chaos.

"I guess I hope he's one of them," said the social worker. "Honestly, I'm not sure which I'd prefer, if they knew and didn't stop him, or if they somehow failed to realize their child was a vigilante out at all hours of the night."

"I suppose I don't know the answer to that," said his dad.

Miles wished he'd just gone to sleep like he'd said he would, instead of listening in while someone judged his parents right to their faces, unknowingly, for his actions.

Miles wished he could tell the social worker it wasn't their fault they hadn't known. That they both worked full time, and Miles was away at boarding school where he was supposed to be okay. His grades were good, and he hardly ever got caught being AWOL. And Miles always made sure to change his voice around his dad. They couldn't have known, and they didn't deserve any of this.

Miles didn't want to hear anymore. He shouldn't have been eavesdropping in the first place. He focused his ears on the machinery in his room instead, and let the sounds pull him down into a listless sleep.

!

"Sir?"

Jefferson was pulled from his bleak thoughts by another unexpected visitor, though like the last one, he really should have known they'd be by eventually.

"Howie," said Jefferson, getting up to meet him at the door. "Hey, how have you been doing?"

"I've been okay. Everything's been wild, and I've got ridiculous OT, but I'm hanging in there. Yourself?"

Jefferson huffed a breath. "Better, now he's not comatose."

"I still can't believe it was little Miles," said Howie.

Jefferson wished he could say the same thing. He'd had a lot of time to think lately about all the little things that should have given it away.

"Is he going to be okay?"

"He'll survive," said Jefferson. "Beyond that…it's all up in the air."

"He really saved us," said Howie. "I hate that he's suffered so much for it."

Jefferson just nodded.

"I um, I came by because there's been a development, and the Captain didn't want you hearing about it on the news."

"What is it?" asked Jefferson, his mind immediately going to the name 'Miles' suddenly being on every pundit's lips.

"Federal agents have just arrested Lieutenant James Saughy," said Howie.

Jefferson's mind stalled for a moment before processing what he'd just heard. First placing Lieutenant Saughy as their liaison with the Law Enforcement Coordination Program. Then came understanding, and the question of how the FBI had lost a terror cell with enough radioactive material to make a major city uninhabitable had a clear answer. It hadn't been the FBI's fuckup, not entirely, if they'd actually sent information to the LECP to advise major city's of the potential threat.

"He sold us out," said Jefferson, feeling such a rage.

"That's what everyone's assuming, but we haven't gotten official word on the charges," said Howie.

"He knew our mobilizations, our response times, our disaster plans."

"Yeah, and he knew when a quarter of our helicopter fleet would be off-line and the perfect time to leak the news to create maximum gridlock," said Howie. "But that's not the only reason why no one could get to us. Bomb squad east had their copter in for that scheduled maintenance. But bomb squad west? Theirs just wouldn't start. That's why they had to wait for another copter to mobilize to get them. There hasn't been an official statement it was sabotage, but…You think there's more?"

"More ways he screwed us over?" asked Jefferson.

"More conspirators," asked Howie.

Being a member of a minority group in the PDNY, even a rookie officer like Howie knew that the force was lousy with bigots, with who knows how many of them being full-on white supremacists. They were a cancer in the ranks that needed to be excised (and needed to be acknowledged in order to be excised), but Jefferson had never quite thought of them in terms of organized undercover enemy agents. Now, he didn't know how else to think of them.

"Do we know if Saughy had business in that precinct?"

Howie shook his head. "Not that I've heard."

"Then yeah, there might be more cops in on it," said Jefferson.

"They have to do something about it, now, right?" asked Howie. "There's no more excuses, they have to…they have to purge them out. Sergeant Potts; Officer Baker. A lieutenant just aided and abetted a terror attack on New York, that means they have to get rid of those guys, right?"

It was almost enough to make Jefferson wish there was another mole. Because when had one dirty cop ever been enough to purge out the rest? Sergeant Potts was a racist curmudgeon, and he was also a decorated officer.

"I don't know, Howie," he said. "But you know you're way too green to be naming names, right now, don't you?" He hated saying so, but it was his job to look out for Howie and his career. "If there's any kind of house cleaning, you leave it to more established officers."

"If there isn't… Could you still do this job, if there isn't? If the PDNY could go through something like this, and not do anything about it?"

It was a question he hated to have put to him. Jefferson had put so much of himself into the PDNY. There was so much of himself wrapped up in the ethics of protect and serve. He'd always known there were problems in the PDNY, but there were problems everywhere. It hadn't changed the fact that Jefferson had been able to do good work for his community.

Still, he had to say, "I don't know."

Howie sighed. "I think I do."

Jefferson nodded and felt a stirring in his gut as he considered that even as they were talking about reform in the department, the both of them were involved in a conspiracy to cover up Miles's secret identity.

As if sensing his thoughts, Howie asked him, "So what are you going to do about Miles?"

"I've had four days, and I still haven't figured that out, yet," said Jefferson. "Other than trying to ground him until he's thirty. What do you think your parents would have done if they found out you were a teenaged superhero."

Howie snorted.

"What?" asked Jefferson.

"You know, I don't think you ever used to call Spider-Man a superhero?"

Jefferson huffed.

"And my dad was old school. Kept a switch in his office just for me. I wouldn't recommend that, though."

It made his gut twist just to think of it.

"My mom always asked me questions, though. If I did something wrong, there must have been a reason, and she figured if she could solve the problem, then I wouldn't make that same mistake again."

"And what do you think about it, looking back?" asked Jefferson.

"Well, I talk to my mom a whole hell of a lot more than I talk to my dad," said Howie with a shrug.

"Yeah," said Jefferson.

"So I guess you've got to ask yourself, why was Miles sneaking out to be a Superhero? What did he get out of it?"

"I don't know that he gets anything out of it. He talks about it like it's some sacred duty that's been entrusted to him."

"Hm, 'With great power comes great responsibility," said Howie.

"You read those comics growing up?" asked Jefferson. Howie probably would have been in high school when they first came out.

"What New York kid doesn't?" asked Howie.

Miles sure had. "And yeah, it would be easier if he was doing it because he was bored, or if he wanted the attention. I can keep him busy. I can give him attention. My arguments for him not going out to be Spider-Man are that it's dangerous and it's illegal. But he knew that already. He decided it was worth it. He knows he can save people, and that's what's important to him."

"I bet that it doesn't help that you're proud of him for it," said Howie.

Jefferson hadn't realized he'd been that transparent about it.

"Damn right, I'm proud of him," he admitted. His son had saved New York twice. The whole world, depending on how bad the singularity would have gotten from Fisk's collider. There was a strength of character that Miles had shown over the last three months that had nothing to do with being able to catch speeding cars.

"So, you know there's been another leak?" said Howie. "It might have been Saughy, some last act of revenge before he was arrested, but who knows?"

"What is it?" asked Jefferson.

"Footage from one of the helicopters at the scene. Of Miles being decontaminated. It's already hit a few stations. You still can't make out his face much at all, so there's that."

"They're airing that on TV?" asked Jefferson.

Howie nodded.

"Why didn't they shove a camera in his OR while they were at it?" he asked, fuming. They had already tried, he supposed. They would have censored the footage, but still, Jefferson had to assume that it had been leaked online first, and that was his son naked and dying thrown up on the nation's televisions for the ratings of it, being passed around on message boards to be viewed by who knows who. Miles, of course, was going to be devastated. "They had no right to air that."

"It's already sparked a bit of controversy that they did," said Howie.

Jefferson shook his head. "I just want to take Miles away from all of this," he said.

"See if country living has enough excitement for any of you?" asked Howie.

"I've had enough excitement for one lifetime," said Jefferson.

He wasn't sure what it said about him, that Howie gave him a dubious look.

!

«Do you think you can hold this?» asked his mom.

«I think so,» said Miles, flexing his hands a little against their bandages. It hurt to make a fist, with how much damage his hands had taken, but he could manage holding something.

His mom handed him the cup, and he used two hands to hold it, but he held it. Fortunately, there was a straw.

The juice was bland, though Miles wasn't sure if that was because his tastebuds were still recovering from being nuked, or if it was just that watered down. The blistered tissue in his mouth was pretty much healed, but he suspected his tongue might take a bit longer.

«Just a couple of sips for right now,» said his mom.

Miles wanted to down the whole thing. He wasn't as hungry as he would have expected with a completely empty digestive tract, but his body was still giving him signals to keep drinking.

«Could you taste this for me?» asked Miles.

«Does it taste off to you?» asked his mom.

Miles shook his head. His mom took a sip.

«It's a little weak,» she said.

«Only a little?» asked Miles.

«Can you tell what flavor it is?»

«Grape?» asked Miles.

«No, it's apple,» said his mom.

Miles hummed disappointedly. The last thing he wanted was to lose his sense of taste.

Well, maybe not the last thing. He wasn't sure his vision had gotten any better yet. Still. At the very least, he was pretty sure tastebuds grew back just fine even in the absence of spider powers. He'd burnt his enough times already.

«How's your tummy feeling?» asked his mom.

«Okay, I think,» said Miles.

«Let me know if it starts to bother you,» said his mom.

«You got medicine for me if it does?» asked Miles, who thought that nausea was one of the worst ways for the body to mess with you.

«I do,» said his mom, «already approved by your doctors.»

«What, all of them?» asked Miles.

«Just about everything goes by all three of them,» said his mom.

«I still feel kind of weird about Dr. Christie,» said Miles.

«Is that because of her bedside manner, or because-.»

«Because she's a metahuman specialist, and I'm kind of stuck here?» supplied Miles. «Also her bedside manner.» He couldn't help but think of Dr. Octavia, and how she had been so keen to watch the effects of inter-dimensional displacement on Peter B. Parker as it was slowly killing him. Dr. Christie had been present for the autopsy of Miles's predecessor. There had been an article about it, how Peter hadn't donated his body to science, or anything like that, so they hadn't been able to study it extensively in all the ways they wanted. Dr. Christie had still been able to put out a couple of papers from what's she'd observed from the autopsy though.

At the time, Miles had been creeped out at the notion. That of course Peter Parker shouldn't have been a science experiment in death. He still felt that way to an extent, but now he found himself in the awkward position of benefitting from Dr. Christie's experience and being worse off for the fact that she hadn't been able to learn more.

«I think she's pretty well focused on making sure you get better,» said his mom. «And I'm pretty sure Dr. Chase wouldn't stand for it if she tried to sneak in to run experiments on you in the middle of the night.»

Miles snorted a laugh. «I'm just saying, I bet she's got a vial of my blood tucked away, she's gonna smuggle it out with her when she leaves.»

«Yeah, that would be a little creepy,» agreed his mom. «I'm still really glad she's here, though. She's been a big help. She and Dr. Nguyen dropped everything to rush out here for you.»

«I know, mom,» said Miles.

«Well, I hope you think about how much work they put into keeping you alive before you think of rushing out into danger again.»

Miles didn't know what to say to that. They still hadn't really talked everything out, and it still felt like the conversation was hanging over their heads, what his parents were going to do about him being Spider-Man.

«I think my stomach feels okay,» he said.

«Alright, you can finish the cup, and we'll see about letting you have a meal shake later.»

«Yum,» said Miles, hating how slow the healing process was, even knowing that he was basically racing through it.

«Maybe not a whole meal shake,» said his mom. «Start you out on vanilla, before we try chocolate.»

«Hmmm.»

«You keep making progress like you have been, we'll have you eating the greasiest spiciest street foods we can find in a week,» his mom said conspiratorially.

Miles grinned.

«How about your ghost pepper asopao?» asked Miles.

«Do spider-powers give you an iron gut?» asked his mom, «because I seem to remember your mouth enjoying that more than your stomach.»

«Not sure about the spider powers,» said Miles, «but I'm willing to suffer for it.»

«Well, you better take care of your recovery if you want to eat it again,» said his mom.

«Oh, I'll be good,» said Miles.

«You're always good," said his mom.

Miles smiled.

«Hey mom, were you really not happy with any of my decisions?»

«Is that how your dad said it?» asked his mom.

«Yeah,» he said.

«Hm, well, I'm happy with your decision to care about people,» said his mom.

«Is that a decision?» asked Miles, feeling like his mom might be splitting hairs to find something positive to say to round out his dad's all-or-nothing take.

«It's always a decision to care,» said his mom. «It's a decision that you make over and over again, every day. I just wish you'd found a different way to do it.»

Miles didn't. His dad would be dead if he hadn't, and he felt like his parents kept on forgetting that. It wasn't like Miles made a habit of butting in where he wasn't needed. He didn't go around interrupting cops, or paramedics, or firefighters unless the situation was already out of their control, or his spider-sense was giving him a warning. He did his work when and where people would get hurt if he didn't.

He decided to change the subject.

«Hey, Mom, I'm sorry about those things the social worker was saying.»

She furrowed her brow at him. «Do spider-powers give you super hearing?»

«Uhhh, yeah,» said Miles.

«Well, that's good to know.»

«I mean it,» said Miles. «She didn't know what she was talking about. There wasn't any way for you to have known.»

His mother squeezed his shoulder. «A mother should know,» she told him.

«Because her dutiful son tells her when he becomes a superhero, or because you're supposed to have ESP?»

«Because I should have recognized that something had changed,» said his mom. «I should have recognized my own son's body running around in a unitard on the TV. I should have known where you were in the evenings.»

«Okay, that second one's silly,» said Miles. «What, were you supposed to recognize me as Spider-Man by the shape of my arms? My distinctive calves? You're not going to say my bottom, are you?» It was exactly the sort of thing she'd say to tease him, so he had to preempt her.

«Every inch of you," his mom said.

«That's unreasonable,» said Miles. «It's all unreasonable.»

«Do you think that no part of your father recognized you? You know how he felt about Peter Parker, but then he completely changed his tune for you.»

«Maybe,» said Miles, and it kind of made him perk up a little to think it, but also, his dad had been down there in the supercollider, and that had to have meant something to him, «but at least he actually got to interact with me. You never got to do that. And I don't know how you think I've changed. I'm pretty sure I'm still myself.»

«No?» asked his mom. «Your confidence used to be a lot more shallow, I think. Since you became Spider-Man, I think you've been more fully yourself.»

«You think so?» asked Miles.

«You don't?» asked his mom.

Miles shrugged.

«I thought it was just the new school. I thought you'd found somewhere you could be your best self. I shouldn't have assumed, though.»

«That's still nonsensical!» said Miles. «Literally, you couldn't have known.»

«We'll have to agree to disagree," said his mom.

Miles felt miserable. «I don't want you to feel guilty because of what I did.»

«Did you forget that your father and I are still responsible for you?»

«Not that kind of responsible,» said Miles.

«Yes, that kind of responsible,» said his mom.

Miles growled. Then he stopped growling because growling hurt.

«Is this a return of monster-Miles?»

«Mom!» Miles complained. 'Monster-Miles' was what he'd called himself when he was having a snit when he was little. His mom always liked to bring up embarrassing things from when he was little. «You know I'm not a little kid, anymore. I've made my own decisions.»

«You're thirteen,» said his mom. «You have a few more years yet until you get to make the big decisions.»

Miles huffed. Maybe they were going to have to agree to disagree for the moment.

«I'm sorry my decisions hurt you,» he said.

«All I want is for you to be safe, my son.»

«I know," he said. The problem was, that's what he wanted for his family, too. So far, those had been mutually exclusive goals.

«Tell me about how your anti-bullying day was at school,» said his mom.

«Way too long,» said Miles. He knew his mom was trying to change the subject from anything to do with Spider-Man, but he couldn't help but think about how things could have been so much different if he'd been able to respond to his spider-sense hours earlier.

«Did you learn anything?» his mom asked him.

«Uhhh, don't be a dick?»

«I hope they said more than that,» said his mom.

«It was a bunch of iterations of: here's something people get made fun of for, and here's why it's not cool to make fun of it. And then, hey, let's break up into groups to talk about how we've been impacted by bullying.»

«Did you get anything out of it?»

«Hey, the only people I bully are criminals, and no one said anything about being nice to them.»

«I guess I was wondering if you'd had anything to share with your classmates,» said his mom.

Miles shifted uncomfortably. He was the biracial kid who started school at five hardly talking outside of the home and never above a whisper (except for when he was really upset), who'd transitioned to being a seven-year-old with way too much energy who wouldn't shut up. It wasn't really until he was about ten that he'd sort of found his groove. Sure, he'd had things he could have talked about. But he was at a new school with all new classmates who thought about him a certain kind of way, and he didn't want to show them what he'd had to overcome. He'd somehow managed to recover from the whole 'gluing' his hand to Gwen's hair incident, and he was generally thought of as a reasonably cool guy. Why bring up the past (even if it didn't feel very heroic to hide it)?

«I mean, I've just met these guys, and you need to be a level-seven friend at least before you learn my tragic backstory,» said Miles.

«Well, maybe I should get your teachers together for their own anti-bullying group session,» said his mom.

In grades one, two, and five, she and his dad had really gone to bat for him against some really awful teachers. Grade two, Ms. Tanick had let his classmates vote to put duct tape over his mouth for a whole afternoon.

«I don't know,» said Miles, «I think they might not have appreciated me saying that all the worst bullies I knew were teachers.»

«Are you having any trouble with your teachers?»

«Nah, things have been really good at Visions,» said Miles. He had a history teacher that was a bit of a grouch and a hardass, but he was an equal opportunity grouch, so Miles never took it personally.

«Any trouble with the students?» asked his mom.

«It's honestly a pretty chill school,» he said, a little worried that his mom actually was looking for an excuse (or just a silver lining) to pull him out, but also telling the truth. «Honestly, some kids actually did open up in the groups, and everyone was like, respectful, for the most part?» He couldn't imagine that happening at his old school.

Not that his old school sucked, or there weren't lots of cool people there. There were just also a bunch of people there that were actively looking to make other people miserable, which was (mostly) absent at Visions.

He considered that serious anti-bullying programs, low student-to-teacher ratios, and a good handful of teachers who gave a damn actually did some good. Miles had had good teachers before, but they'd seemed few and far between. Kindergarten teacher? A sweetheart. Third-grade teacher? A lifesaver. Sixth grade STEM teacher? She'd made science sound fun for the first time Miles could remember.

«Have you been happy there?» his mom asked him.

«Yeah," said Miles. It still surprised him how well he'd settled into the school.

«What do you like so much about it?» asked his mom.

Miles shrugged. «I guess…you can relax there. It's like, no one's looking for an excuse to be awful to you, so you can actually sort of be yourself.»

Yeah, he was confident as Spider-Man because he had spider-powers, but he was confident as Miles because, after a couple of months at his new school, he'd realized that he didn't have to be so careful about putting his best foot forward at all times. He didn't want to say that he was his 'real' self now because he'd hardly been anything fake before. But he used to curate his real self, so no one would suddenly remember quiet-Miles, or loud-Miles, or tantrum-Miles, or decide that there was something new wrong with him to give him a new antecedent to his name. At Visions, sure, if you did something embarrassing, or said something kind of stupid (and there had been plenty of that in the days surrounding his getting his powers), someone would make a joke out of it, but he just hadn't really seen it get nasty there.

«Plus,» he said, wanting more to say in favor of it, in case his parents were thinking of pulling him out, «there's a lot of good teachers, and I'll totally qualify for the scholarships when I graduate. And, their digital media class is super well funded.»

«Making any other friends?» asked his mom.

Miles almost brought up Gwen, but he hardly wanted to bring the conversation back to Spider-Man. «You know me, I'm Mr. Popular,» he said instead.

«How have you been acclimating to the dorm life?» asked his mom.

«Pretty good,» Miles said uncomfortably. «It's so much easier getting group projects done, or group studying.»

«I suppose it is very…convenient,» said his mom.

Miles cringed. His parents were so considering pulling him out.

«I think everything about the school's convenient. They just got all these great teachers all together, and great facilities, and motivated students. Plus automatic scholarships for 3.0 GPA at graduation. The school's great on a college application, too.» He was basically regurgitating all the things his parents had been telling him when they made him go in the first place.

Instead of saying anything, his mom just squeezed his forearm and let the conversation die.

Miles was used to feeling better after talking things out with his mom, but at the moment, he only felt worse. He suspected because they hadn't actually talked anything out, as was becoming the pattern.

«Can I have my laptop?» he asked. «I've got an essay to write.»

His mom had brought him his computer and his textbooks, and Miles had a whole bunch of work to catch up on.

«Can you type with your fingers bandaged up?» asked his mom.

«I might be able to hunt and peck,» said Miles, frustrated at one more thing he couldn't do. He used to be able to type decently fast, without much having to think about it. Now he might be able to hunt and peck.

«How about I help,» said his mom. «I'm a pretty good typist, myself.»

«That could help,» said Miles.

«What's the essay about?» asked his mom.

"Lord of the Flies," said Miles, using the English title.

"Oh, that's a bleak one," said his mom, perhaps switching to English herself to be in the right mindset for an English assignment.

"They're all bleak ones," said Miles. "The scarlet letter, the Outsiders, the Awakening, the Metamorphosis, Great Expectations. Then they complain about kids being depressed."

"You'll have to propose your own reading list, then," said his mom.

"Seriously, I hated the Awakening," said Miles.

"Lord of the Flies kind of starts out fun, don't you think?" asked his mom.

"Sure," said Miles. "A bunch of kids on a tropical island, no grownups, swimming all day. I'd love reading a story about them working together to get rescued, or like, they turn the plane wreckage into a boat, and sail home, or something."

"Is that what you're going to write about?" asked his mom.

"Maybe I should," said Miles.

"What do you think your teacher wants you to write about?"

"Oh, ooh-woo, Simon's a Jesus figure, and he dies for the sinful boys, who all get rescued in spite of being awful. Mankind is full of sin. Something about faith in higher powers."

"How many essays have they probably read like that?" asked his mom.

"Well, that's a good point," said Miles.

"So what do you want to write about?" asked his mom.

"I don't know," said Miles. "Something about how it's a post-war novel, and that makes the author see everything the worst way possible? And like, maybe it would be more subversive to acknowledge the dark parts of humanity, but still have the characters dig down and find the best parts of themselves, and build a society together. Like, the opposite of Lord of the Flies. They all start as these disparate kids fighting and failing to get by, and they have to struggle to unite and thrive."

"Alright, then how do you write an essay about that?"

"Good question," said Miles.

!

Miles and Rio were busy talking literature when Jefferson got back from the courtesy office. He'd finally finished his after-action report yesterday evening, and it had taken a while on the phone with the Captain just now, reviewing it for approval.

He wasn't finished with all the rest of his work though, of course, so the moment he was sat down he had pulled out his laptop and opened his call log to make note of the voicemails he'd accumulated. A couple from his sergeants, with questions about the work he'd left in their lap when he'd taken this 'protective detail.' One from a whole different DCS social worker with questions about a DUI arrest he'd made, where there'd been a child in the car. One from an Assistant City Attorney regarding that same case as well as a domestic violence arrest he'd made. There was also a voicemail from Miles's school a couple of days ago.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Davis, this is vice-principal Hawkins at Visions Academy. We're all wishing Miles a speedy recovery, here. Again, if Miles can think of any possible vectors where he may have contracted Mono, we would appreciate knowing, just in case it was from the school. But also, in the spirit of that speedy recovery, we're hoping to hear back from you about when we might be able to have a meeting with the family to discuss Miles's back-to-school plan. It's best to have this meeting as soon as possible so that there's as little disruption to his education as possible."

Jefferson sighed as he made a note of the VP's phone number. They still didn't even know when Miles might be out of the hospital, so he didn't know what to tell the school. Well, Rio had probably put them off when she went and got Miles's things. But they'd need to address the issue sooner or later.

"-but he liked it when I used that in my Great Expectations essay, so I don't know if I should use it again, or do something different." Miles's voice pierced through Jefferson's musings and made a connection between two previously disparate pieces of information.

"'No expectations,'" he said, making Miles look up. "Was that yours?"

"Oh! You saw that? Um, I mean, I don't know what you're talking about?"

Jefferson rolled his eyes. "Yeah, Miles, we were all over those tunnels."

"What's 'no expectations?'" asked Rio.

"It's a mural we found in the access tunnels around Fisk's collider. I'm such an idiot, I thought it looked like your art when I saw it. I don't know how I didn't think more on that."

"Sorry," said Miles, giving up on denying it was his.

Jefferson couldn't find it in him to be annoyed about it, not when Miles's voice was so expressive right now, without the pain that had layered it constantly since he had woken up. The new pain medication protocol he was on was working well, for all that the drug cocktail made Jefferson nervous.

"I thought it was really good," said Jefferson. "I got a picture of it, though it got covered in all the dust from the explosion."

"Oh," said Miles. "I got a picture of it when it was new. I wonder if it'll clean up okay."

Jefferson shook his head. "That whole section of the underground is being renovated. That wall's not long for this world."

"Aw," said Miles. "But you really thought it was good?"

"Good enough I wished it was put up somewhere legal," said Jefferson.

"Yeah, you'd probably make me scrub it off if it wasn't getting torn down," said Miles ruefully.

"May well have," said Jefferson, if privately he thought that it was a shame the work was going to be destroyed. "You'll have to share that picture with me and your mom."

"Oh, sure," said Miles.

"So that's what you were doing when you were bit, huh?" asked Jefferson.

"Yeah," said Miles. "How much did May Parker tell you, anyway?"

"A good bit," said Jefferson, who still didn't like thinking too much on everything May Parker and Ganke had told him about Spider-Man. Still, he said, "She seemed to think that your getting powers was the work of some sort of higher power." He let doubt color his voice.

"Oh yeah," said Miles, "or like, fate, or something like that."

He said it casually, with none of the weight that Ganke or May Parker had ascribed it. Jefferson wondered if the full implications had hit him, the same as it had the other two.

"Is that something you believe?" asked Jefferson.

"Well, sure," said Miles. "I literally got bit the day before we lost Peter Parker. Sort of makes you think."

"That's awful," said Rio. "If there's some being pulling the strings, then why not just save Peter Parker instead?"

"Maybe I was supposed to," Miles said, a little of the wind taken from his sails.

"No you were not," Jefferson said, a little more harshly than he had intended.

Miles wilted. "Or maybe whatever gave us powers can only interfere by loosing radioactive spiders to bite a random person. I don't know."

"You think it was random?" asked Jefferson.

"Sure," said Miles. "I think anyone could be Spider-Man. I'm just the guy that got bit. Like, it could have been a maintenance worker down there, instead, that got bit."

That was a starkly different take on the matter than May Parker's, and, Jefferson found, different from his own. Given a scenario where he believed that a higher power had given his son superpowers and engineered Aaron's death as part of his origin story. But Jefferson couldn't credit Miles as a random choice. Because Miles as Spider-Man had been incredible, and Jefferson didn't believe that just anyone could pull that off. Because the more Jefferson thought back on the spider kid, the more he saw Miles's personality, Miles's strengths, Miles's heart. It wasn't just the powers that made a Spider-Man.

"By the way, May Parker said the spider that bit you was from another universe and the future? How did you figure that out?"

"Oh, because it was glitching, and it was before the collider was turned on and all the people with spider-powered DNA got pulled through. Spider-Woman had gotten pulled a bit into the past too."

"Glitching?" asked Rio.

"Yeah, well, it's not good for you to be in the wrong universe. The fabric of space-time keeps trying to reject you; sort of tear apart your molecules. So all the spider people that came through were glitching every now and then as the universe basically tried to erase them. That's why I had to be there in the fight. Someone needed to destroy the machine after they all went through. Otherwise, one of them would have had to stay behind and die. Peter B. Parker was going to do it, because he didn't think I was ready, and I wasn't ready when he decided that, but then you gave me my pep talk, and I took my leap of faith, and I was able to get them all home."

"So…you saw the spider glitch," said Jefferson, not wanting to unpack all of that.

"Yeah," said Miles. "Not when it first bit me, but when I went back to look for it, because I was kind of in denial about the whole, having spider-powers thing. I figured I'd go find the spider where I left it after I smooshed it, and it would just be a regular spider, and I wouldn't have spider-powers. But it was very much not a normal spider. And it glitched. And then I heard a commotion, and there was Spider-Man fighting the green goblin."

"And you decided to stick around?" asked Rio.

"No!" said Miles, almost sounding scandalized. "I mean, at first it was like, oh, this is awesome, but then it was clear that things were a little too wild, so I was going to get out of there, but that was when this big beam got slammed right into me, and I latched onto it on accident, and I got dragged out into the fight, and I almost fell to my death. Or, actually, I think I could have survived the fall with my spider-powers, but Spider-Man caught me anyway."

"You were hit by a beam?" asked Rio.

"Yeah, but, not like an I-beam, more like one of those triangle frame beams for riggings."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Sure," said Miles, "it's way less dense."

"We'd rather you not get hit with any beams, Miles," said Jefferson.

"So would I!"

"Well good," said Rio, and there was humor in her voice. "See, we have some common grounds."

Jefferson laughed.

"What's so funny?" asked Miles.

"Just that our conversations have gotten kind of surreal after finding out you're Spider-Man."

"Uhhh, I seem to remember us having some pretty surreal conversations about everything you saw at the collider."

"Yeah, I guess you're the common denominator there," said Jefferson.

"Hey, King Pin was the source of all the crazy, I'm just a side effect," said Miles.

Was it crazy that Jefferson felt a flash of annoyance that Miles described himself that way? Just a side effect, like he hasn't been so much more? But none of this what Jefferson wanted for Miles.

Their conversation was derailed by a notice from Jefferson's radio. The social worker was back. Miles's things were tucked away, and bandages were put back on his face before she was allowed through security.

"Hello again. It's Miss Ashley. I said I'd come back and see you today, so here I am."

The woman was wearing a surgical gown, gloves, radiation glasses, and a lead apron, over whatever she'd worn to the hospital. The gloves and gown were unnecessary at this point, as Miles wasn't aspirating out an appreciable amount of radioactive particulates anymore, but Jefferson didn't doubt that it made her feel safer.

"Hi," said Miles, shifting a bit.

"How are you doing? Feeling any better, today?"

This time, she took a seat next to Miles, and pulled out a laptop, which she was quick to open.

"Um, sure, I guess," said Miles.

"Good," she said. "I know you were really tired yesterday, so we didn't talk very much. But usually, when I talk to kids, I have a whole lot of questions that I ask them, so I can get to know them better, and so I can make sure they're okay."

"Oh, well, I'm still okay, I guess," said Miles.

"Good, and we'll need a little bit more privacy for our conversation," she said. "Nurse Morales, if we could have the room please?"

Social workers were used to having some of their confidential interviews with police present, not so much with any other third parties.

"Of course," said Rio. "I'll just be outside, chico. You use that call button if you need anything, though."

She couldn't have been happy to have been asked to leave. Not that the social worker wouldn't have asked both of them to leave if she'd known they were Miles's parents, because talking to witnesses 101 was you talk to them alone whenever possible. But then again, Jefferson wasn't sure that either of them would let their son be interviewed alone by a social worker, barring a warrant, in normal circumstances.

"Well, how about you tell me a bit about yourself?" asked the social worker.

"Um," said Miles. "I mean, I'm Spider-Man, so I guess my hobbies are web-slinging and saving the city."

The dry look that Jefferson shot Miles's way was completely wasted on him.

"What are you doing when you're not Spider-Man?"

"Um, I guess school, hanging out with my family, hanging out with my friends."

"Any non-crime-fighting hobbies?"

"Art, I guess, but I won't say what kind, since I don't want you to actually know too much about me."

"Why is that?"

"Um, well, it's hard to have a secret identity when you blab all about yourself," said Miles.

"Do you understand that…there's a good chance that you won't be able to keep your secret identity? Or that you might not be able to leave and go home the way you're hoping to? If that happens, the court is going to be in a position to be making a lot of decisions about your life. They won't be able to make good decisions for you if they don't know anything about you."

"I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it," said Miles.

"Well, I hope you'll answer as many questions as you can feel comfortable with."

Miles deflected a lot for anything personal. Of course, he wouldn't say who he lived with, or what school he went to. Neither would he answer what grade he was in, or what his family composition was at home, or if Jefferson and Rio were together or not. He did tell her he felt safe talking to both of his parents when he had trouble, but admitted that he hadn't told them anything about Spider-Man.

"And do you suppose they've figured out that you are, now?"

"I don't know," said Miles. "I guess either they have, or they think I'm missing."

"Would you like to reassure them?"

"If I could," said Miles. "But I can't. Not until I get out of here, and I can do it in person."

Jefferson had sat through a few DCS interviews before, and he couldn't say this was really like any of those. He doubted anyone could say they'd had a child welfare investigation run quite like this one. But then, they usually knew who they were talking to when they investigated abuse and neglect.

Miles answered those abuse and neglect screening questions fairly straightforwardly. He always had enough food, clean clothes, and everything he needed for school. He went to the doctor and dentist regularly. No one hurt each other in his house. No one hurt him when he was in trouble. No one had touched him on his private parts or asked him to touch theirs.

"Except for the stuff that's happened here at the hospital," he groused.

"Has any of that touching been for anything other than a medical necessity?"

Miles's face shifted under his bandages, and Jefferson could only imagine the pinched look on his face showing he regretted even mentioning it.

"No, nothing like that," he said.

"Alright then," she said. "In that case, can we shift back to some Spider-Man questions?"

"Can't promise I'll answer them," said Miles.

"Well, okay, but I wanted to ask, you said that your parents don't know, or didn't know, at least, that you're Spider-Man. How is it that you were able to keep that a secret?"

That was a really good question.

"Um," said Miles. "Well, they both work a lot. You know, to put food on the table, and clothes on my back, and a computer in my backpack for school. And there's more to it than that, but I'm not going to say. Just that they never had any reason to think anything was wrong because I was really good at tricking them."

To his credit, he managed to sound pretty guilty to say it.

"What do you think they would have done if they had known?"

"Grounded me, I guess?" said Miles, clearly uncomfortable. "Make it so I couldn't hide it anymore. I don't know, really. But they wouldn't have let me. They're definitely against anything that puts me in danger. They definitely had every reason to think I was safe and sound, even when I wasn't."

Why did Jefferson feel like Miles was talking more to him than to the social worker?

She asked some more questions around the subject. Miles deflected. Probably neither of them was happy.

"And, since we're kind of assuming you're a teenager, I actually have some extra questions for you."

"Uhhh, what if I said I was eleven?"

"I think I'd still ask them," said the social worker.

"Hmph."

"Have you started dating at all?"

"Uhh, no," said Miles, clearly a little abashed.

"Is there an adult in your life that you feel like you can talk to, or have talked to, about your reproductive health."

"I guess my dad," said Miles, clearly more abashed.

"Have you ever been in any formal trouble for your school attendance?"

"No? Wait, that's a question I shouldn't answer anyway."

"Any trouble with law enforcement?"

"I mean, I guess I'm kind of a vigilante," said Miles.

Kind of?

"How about when you're not Spider-Man, any legal trouble there?"

"No comment," said Miles.

He hadn't; not unless you counted a completely unnecessary visit with the school resource officer after a heated argument Miles had had with his fifth-grade teacher.

"Have you ever felt like hurting yourself at all?"

"What? No," said Miles.

"Alright, and I also need to ask if you've ever felt like killing yourself."

"Huh uh, no," said Miles.

"Do you have feelings of wanting to hurt anyone else?"

"I mean, not outside of like, crime-fighting," said Miles.

"And, have any issues related to your gender identity or sexual orientation had an impact on your life, or been a stressor in your home?" she asked, which was a very roundabout way for her to ask if he was LGBT without directly asking a kid to out themself, and Jefferson figured she definitely wouldn't have asked it if she'd known Miles's father was in the room with them.

"No," said Miles.

With the teenager questions over, she started asking him questions she probably usually just asked the parents in the first place. Questions like if he had any allergies or medical conditions. Any educational needs. Miles refused to answer any of them.

"Alright, well those were all the questions that I had for you," she eventually said. "Is there anything that I didn't ask about that you think I should know?"

"Just that my parents are awesome?" said Miles.

"I'm sure. Any questions for me?"

"Yeah, when's my lawyer coming by?"

"Oh, I imagine they'll call you tomorrow morning."

"Isn't the hearing tomorrow morning?"

"Yes, they probably haven't even been assigned to your case yet. You'll probably be assigned to them first thing in the morning, and they'll give you a call after they read my detention report."

"Detention? You sure I'm not in trouble with you guys?"

"I'm sure. That's just what we call it when we bring a child under the custody of the court for protective purposes."

"Hm," said Miles. "You really can just send me home, you know?"

"We like it when kids go home," she told him. "We just need to be sure it's safe."

"And you can't take my word for it?"

"Well, from what you've told me, you've been keeping a lot of secrets, maybe lying to your parents, so that you can do some really dangerous things behind their backs. I don't want you to think that I'm judging you for that. You've made the choices you thought were right for yourself, and I know I don't have the whole picture of why you made them. But it doesn't leave me in a position to trust when you say that you'll be safe."

Miles huffed. "Safer than in some group home, or wherever you'd want to put me."

"Well, if we were to send you to a foster home or a group home, it would not be as Spider-Man. Our court system is confidential. But, like I said, we like to be able to send kids home. If we could assess your home for safety, then that could be an option. If we can't do that, then we'll have to figure out a safe place for you to go to when you discharge."

Miles didn't have anything to say to that.

"We'll see how things go tomorrow, and I'll be in touch with you after the hearing, okay?"

"Okay," said Miles.

Jefferson wanted some time after the social worker left to…maybe process with Miles the conversation he had just had with her. But Felix was hot on Rio's heels, coming in for scheduled wound care, which Miles was used to, and a sponge bath, which Miles definitely wasn't. He'd been unconscious the other time they'd given him one. The job was a little above Felix's pay-grade, but they weren't letting any orderlies past security.

"I feel a lot better right now; I think I could just take a shower?" said Miles when the subject was breached.

"You feel a lot better because you're high on opiates and muscle relaxants, mijo," said Rio. "You still haven't managed more than one step, and you'll be in so much more pain when the medication wears off if you push yourself."

"And you'll be handling as much of the actual washing as you're able to," said Felix. "I'm just here to help you with the parts you can't manage on your own. Like your back, and maybe your feet."

Like a lot of aspects of being bedridden in the hospital, the process left Miles frustrated, uncomfortable, and embarrassed. When it was over, Miles decided he wanted the room to himself for a while, so Jefferson found himself out in the hallway where Rio had already been banished.

"I hate this so much," he found himself saying. "I just want to take him home."

"It's hard being on this side of things," said Rio. "I've seen so many parents go through this, and I always thought, how could I possibly be strong enough? I keep wanting to just pull him into my lap and hold him, and I can't."

The hard part was also not knowing how quickly he'd recover, or how completely. Their plan was for him to 'escape' under his own power, but they didn't even know if that would be possible yet. Every time Miles was declared to be healing very well, Jefferson just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his healing to shut off again for good. That Miles would be left in pain for the rest of his life, or half-blind, or unable to walk across a room without wheezing for breath.

Or would he heal perfectly, and just go out again to find something that would actually kill him next time?

All his life, Jefferson had struggled against feelings of helplessness. He'd brought lawful order into his life, the same way his brother had turned himself into a mercenary, all so he wouldn't have to feel like the world could take everything from him in an instant. And it worked, usually, up until it didn't. Up until his brother took a bullet to the chest. Up until Miles got bitten by a spider. Up until someone with too much money decided to break the laws of physics under Manhattan, or acquire a city wrecking amount of cesium-137.

"He'll be okay," said Jefferson. Because Miles could overcome this, and the both of them needed to believe that. "He'll be home soon enough. Not sure he fits on your lap as well as he used to, though."

Rio huffed. "I swear, that boy grew two inches overnight. Not that he'll ever be too big for his mamá…you don't suppose he literally grew two inches overnight, do you?"

"I told you that uniform was big on him when we enrolled him."

Miles had fallen back asleep by the time they made their way back into his room. He roused for a bit for dinner, but he didn't last long into the evening. Between the medications and his body struggling to heal itself while still being irradiated, he never had much energy to spare. Even the sponge bath had worn him out, if especially because he'd insisted on doing as much of it as he physically could.

The both of them caught up on paperwork on into the evening as Miles slept, still dutifully keeping to the edges of the room while they weren't directly tending to Miles. Already there'd been a decent decrease in how radioactive he still was, but it would be a couple of weeks before most of the cesium was flushed from his system, even with the Prussian blue dye they were still giving him to help it along.

Jefferson had plenty of reports due related to his normal patrol activities, not related to city ending incidents, and he did work on those. He also worked on a Spider-Man witness statement. Miles might not be able to testify in court without sacrificing his secret identity, but the things he had been saying about the collider incident and Aaron's death could still become part of the official record, and potentially lead to further evidence admissible in court.

As it got late, Jefferson considered going home for the night like he and Rio had decided. They'd thought that one of them should go home every night to freshen up and take care of things. He looked over at Rio. She'd already fallen asleep on the couch, which made up Jefferson's mind not to go. He didn't want to leave without telling her, and he didn't want to leave at all. Frankly, if things ever got back to 'normal' he didn't know how he was going to handle going to work and sending Miles to school, because he didn't want to let his eyes off his son.

So, the chair he was in wasn't particularly comfortable, but he was able to prop his legs up on a side table and recline, and frankly, he'd slept in worse positions.

It didn't make for a very deep sleep, though.

"Wuss'at?"

That was Miles's groggy voice.

"Shhh, just some medicine. Go on back to sleep."

The smooth susurrus was one Jefferson didn't recognize.

Jefferson opened his eyes in time to see Miles yank his PICC line away from a nurse Jefferson didn't recognize.

"What's going on?" he asked, putting his hands on the armrests to push himself up.

The nurse spun around towards him, his hands going to his waistband. The moment Jefferson saw his piece, he knew what was going to happen. Jefferson's hands were still pushing himself up. By the time Jefferson could reach for his own pistol, the definitely-not-a-nurse would have already shot him.

With Jefferson down, the gun would turn on Miles, who was as far from fighting fit as he'd ever been. Lastly, the gun would turn on Rio, a witness the assassin couldn't afford. After her, he'd make a run for it, turning his gun on anyone who got in his way. Jefferson couldn't see a way out, even as he pushed his body to move faster, to reach his own piece. A man can still fight with bullets in him, and he was going to fight till he dropped.

It was as the gun was leaving the assassin's waistband, and Jefferson was trying to divert his motion from standing up to taking a knee, freeing his hands, that everything changed. Before either man realized what was happening, an enormous wooden mallet swung blindingly fast through the air and slammed the assassin into the wall behind Miles's bed.

Jefferson crashed painfully onto his knee, gaping only for a moment at what had just happened before he rushed across the room to secure the assassin's firearm.

«What's going on?!» came Rio's voice from behind him as he snatched up the weapon.

"SSSHHHHH- It hurts, it hurts, oooohhhhhh, why's it hurt so much?" Miles cried.

"Mijo!"

"This is Lieutenant Davis," Jefferson said into his radio as he pulled out his cuffs. "Security breach in Spider-Man's hospital room. Suspect is down, in need of medical attention."

However down the man was, Jefferson still put cuffs on him and frisked him. There wasn't much to find: a fancy concealed carry holster tucked under his pants, an impractically large pocket knife, and a hospital ID badge that both looked brand new, and also had a circular hole punch, instead of the obround cut he was used to seeing on Rio's. It was hard to tell if the face on the badge matched the man's, even after pulling the surgical mask away because Miles had kind of broken his face. However, looking at the picture, Jefferson had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd seen this man before. He just couldn't place him.

"I hate everything, why's everything hurt?"

"Your body's not ready to move like that, Miles," said Rio, "just focus on breathing."

Rio wanted Miles to breathe. Jefferson wanted him to explain exactly where the giant, and decidedly funky looking, wooden mallet had come from.

Another question pushed its way to the forefront of his mind.

"Did he get anything into your PICC line?" he asked urgently.

"What about your PICC line?" Rio was quick to ask Miles.

"Nothing," Miles pushed the word out through the pain he was in. "I didn't let him."

"Alright, Rio, cover his face. I've got back-up coming."

"Right," said Rio.

It was a good thing that they had things set to easily cover Miles's face in a hurry because it was only a few seconds later that a voice came from the doorway.

"Lieutenant Davis?"

Jefferson turned to the uniformed officer in the doorway. "Attempted assassination," he said. "Perp definitely needs medical attention. And who are you, exactly?"

"Officer Jennifer Sly," she said, "with the twenty-sixth precinct. I was in the ICU on another call. The officers at the doors were asleep when I reached them, difficult to rouse."

Damn.

"Flag a nurse or doctor, will you? This bastard needs a trauma team, and our guys need drug tests and observation. Then stick around; you've just joined the protection detail for the night."

"Is he okay?" asked Miles.

"He'll be fine, Spider-Man," said Jefferson, using the title to remind Miles that this new officer was not in-the-know. He was not entirely confident of his assessment of the assassin's well-being, but the man had a pulse, which was more than could have been said had Jefferson reached his sidearm. He was glad that Miles wouldn't have been able to properly see the man before he'd been blinded again; he didn't need to

Things moved quickly from there, with hospital security rushing in ahead of a medical team with a gurney. The man hadn't roused once since he'd collapsed on the ground, which wasn't a good sign for the prospect of him coming out of this without brain damage. Jefferson couldn't bring himself to care.

Once a couple of beat cops had been brought up to guard the corridor, Officer Sly came back in to take Miles's statement, because Jefferson taking it himself would be a breach too far in all of this. Miles was still shifting uncomfortably with renewed waves of pain as he spoke.

"It was my spider-sense that woke me up, I knew something was wrong, and I saw this guy. And, I know I can't see well, but I knew he wasn't anyone on my medical team. He had a syringe, and he was trying to get at my IV."

The syringe in question had already been recovered. It was completely empty; that is to say, empty of anything other than air with the plunger pulled all the way back. A PICC line, going all the way to the heart, would be the perfect way to introduce an air embolism that would have killed Miles, while potentially looking like a medical complication. With the protection detail seeming to have just fallen asleep outside, the would-be assassin may well have gotten away with it without any criminal investigation. He would have, if Miles hadn't woken up.

Jefferson resolved never to question his son's spider-sense.

"I was like, 'who are you,' and…and Officer Davis was like, 'stop right there,' and this guy was pulling a gun, and he was going to shoot Officer Davis, and I'm kind of bedridden, and I don't have my web-shooters, so I hit him with the mallet."

"And um, where exactly did this mallet come from?" asked Officer Sly, which, thank you, finally they'd get an answer to that.

"Oh, it fits in my pocket," said Miles, clarifying nothing.

"Excuse me?" asked Officer Sly.

"What pocket?" asked Jefferson. Miles was in a hospital gown and had no pockets to his name.

"It…here, it fits in my pocket," said Miles, casually lifting the massive thing by its handle. He shoved it towards his hip, where it seemed to compress down, and disappear into nothing.

"What?" asked Jefferson, blinking his eyes.

"I'm so glad I've got my body-worn camera," said Officer Sly, who was probably despairing of writing this into her report.

"Spider-Ham gave it to me. It's from his weird universe, so it doesn't really follow the laws of physics."

"What?" asked Officer Sly.

"I thought you said that everything from another universe was getting torn apart from being in our universe."

"Right," said Miles, "so I'm not sure. Spider Ham's universe has really weird physics, (that sort of break my brain to think about too much), so it might be something to do with that. But I think also that maybe keeping it in its pocket keeps it from being properly 'in' this universe, so it'll stick around as long as I don't leave it out too long. I've hardly had it out at all, so I've never had a chance to see if it glitches or not."

"Spider Ham?" asked Officer Sly.

"I really don't want to break your brain, so the less I say about him, the better. But he was one of the spider people who got sucked into our universe by King Pin's collider."

"…Right."

Jefferson sympathized with the woman one hundred percent.

Jefferson gave his own statement, and so did Rio. Officer Sly wound up posted in the hallway on guard duty afterward. Jefferson loaned her his work laptop so she could log into her own account and get her report in, preventing her from needing to go all the way to her squad car for her own, and leaving them with only hospital security in place.

Howie and Officer Biggs showed up around five in the morning to take over the protection detail. Officer Sly had already been working overtime when the incident occurred and was clocking in six hours over by the time she was finally relieved.

"We have any idea who this guy is?" asked Howie.

"Nah," said Jefferson, thinking back to the familiar-looking picture on the ID badge. He still can't place it. "He's in bad shape though, with a traumatic brain injury and a shattered shoulder."

"Well, hopefully he recovers just enough to turn state's evidence," said Officer Biggs.

"I don't know," said Howie, "he'd have to roll pretty far for a deal, with how much the whole city is going to hate his guts when the headlines start pouring in today, with how much the city loves the kid right now."

"Not everyone loves him," said Jefferson. They didn't even know if this was related to the bombing. It could have been someone tied to Fisk, or to the Triad. Or anyone, really, who wanted to operate in New York without having to worry about Spider-Man.

Jefferson did hope that the man would roll. Whether the man was with the nazis or organized crime, he wanted everyone involved in what happened last night behind bars. At the very least, it would help him sleep a little better at night.