Uncle Ben dying on the pavement, blood like a sticky red carpet beneath him.
Gwen dying.
Mary-Jane; not dying but afraid, in danger.
People he got to too late.
Many photos that stick in the dusty file cabinets of the back of his brain stay there, under the greasy wax pen marking of "dying", but Peter's realizing that this new one is one of the few that strays away from the usual theme. It's made a new folder all for itself.
Peter saw the Sight last night.
And he wishes he didn't.
It's not...you know, the drug itself–hell, that's just an injection, wham, bam, thank you ma'am–but how those people moved afterwards that gave Pete the willies. It was...eerie. Something choppy and weird like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
He hated that movie when he was a kid.
Now that he thinks about it–he still hates that movie...and he's turning thirty-one soon.
Peter blearily looks in the bathroom mirror and tells himself to focus, tells himself to grab a hold of the toothbrush (right–there!), put some toothpaste on it (but not too much, you dunce!) and brush his bones that break down stuff for him, but he's distracted.
Very, very, distracted.
A part of him wanted to get down there the second he saw them–the Sighted/Sight/Creepy-Druggies/Freaks–but Matt restrained him.
He finds it ironic now to have had Matt tell him to back off–the boy from Hell's Kitchen restraining the surburbanite of Queens–but at the time it had seemed anything but.
"We have to wait," Daredevil told him. "We can't do this right now because we don't know anything. I don't know anything."
The two had evaluated each other for a moment, and then Peter shot a look down at the creepy things (to which he didn't quite have a moniker that fit) and clenched his jaw.
"What was this, then? Show-and-tell?"
Daredevil gave the blind-man stare. "No. This is a watch-and-learn time. Watch"–and he pointed down with his cane at the masses below them–"and learn."
Peter watched. And then he realized.
They couldn't go down there...not yet, anyway.
Toothbrush bristles scrape the back of his jaw, tearing that area of gum and bone that he never quite manages to brush well and pulling him back to reality.
Peter's reflection stares blearily at him in the mirror. He makes a face.
Mondays aren't happy days.
Especially since Jameson happens to be in his prime at nine o'clock in the morning.
Alice says that he's not a morning person, but they both know that the truth is that Jameson's not a people person. Period.
The teeth are done. Peter looks down, spits into the sink and cleans it out. He nearly puts his brush back into the holder–M.J.'s not even here and he's still stuck on those rules–and shoots another glance in the mirror.
Peter Parker, thirty-one years old, engaged in a dispute of spouses, engaged in a Chinese-Fire Drill routine for the amazing Spider-Man and engaged in a life he doesn't quite know he wants, stares back at him.
M.J. suddenly sounds at the back of his head.
Smile, Pete.
He obliges.
He's gotten higher up in the Newspaper realm, and though Jameson is still the snarling editor from hell, Peter's not the nineteen-year-old who stumbled into the Daily Bugle looking for a job to buy a car.
Grudgingly, Jameson has accepted that.
"Parker!" he snarls as Pete slips through the office doors. Pete has gotten past the point of stopping in his tracks like a deer-in-the-headlights, but even now he stops abruptly and raises an eyebrow.
"Where are those photos of–"
Slap. Pete throws the manila on Jameson's desk and takes a step back.
"Eight shots, take your pick," he says.
Jameson glances down at the folder, then back up at Parker, then back down at the manila again. A second passes by of that rare-to-find silence before Jonah Jameson flips open the folder and glances at the pictures.
It only takes him a nanosecond to decide what he thinks of it.
"Crap." he announces, slapping the folder shut. "This is all crap."
Peter is used to this–this game the two must play in order for Peter to get the photos bought–so he goes along with it, shrugging and trying to act mildly indignant. "You told me that Spid–"
"Spider-Man?" Jameson snorts, waving a hand airily. "He's old news, buddy. Old news. The guy hasn't been doing anything for weeks."
Peter has to blink. He has to.
"W-w-what?"
The fact that Jonah Jameson thinks Spidey was old news seems blasphemous and almost...perverted.
Jameson raises an eyebrow. "What, do you think I'm kidding?" a spin in the chair, a quick standing to the feet. "Robbie gave me the numbers yesterday, and I'm beginning to realize we can only peg this guy for so long before people don't buy it anymore."
Like hell.Jameson's the Hearst of the century; 'You give me the photos, I'll start the war'.
"I mean, don't get me wrong–"and Jameson turns around with a cigar magically held in his right hand as the sentence-enhancer "–I hate that son of a bitch, but for now we're gonna try a different approach."
"Different approach?" The question spills from his lips before he even has time to muffle it
Jameson curls his lips. "Yeah. A different approach."
He takes the manila and contemptuously throws it behind his desk, aiming for the trash-can but missing.
"We have three big-wigs coming in today and tomorrow, Parker, and I want you–" the cigar serves as a deadly pointer, stabbing with quick efficiency in Peter's direction– "to be there. If Spidey won't come out and play, I'll have to pick on the usual suspects."
Ah. So he's not giving up on painting everyone as evil foes of the common man. He's just picking on a new victim.
Comforting. It is comforting.
Jameson hasn't entirely changed.
"Parker!"
The snarl, the glare from hell. Peter snaps back to attention.
"Yes?"
"Did you hear me? Wayne Industries is opening that new skyscraper down near Bowling Green."
So it's Wayne Industries. So they're a big company. There's something more here and they both know it.
"And?"
Jameson snorts and sticks the cigar in his mouth–unlit but surely chewed.
"I hate Gotham–can't stand that shithole–and don't like the fact that Wayne's reopening down here. The last thing we need is another outsider butting in."
Parker only went to Gotham once, but he wasn't too fond of it, either.
Wayne Industries?
Peter doesn't study the Times all that much, but from what he's heard it's not an entirely bad company.
But he's not Jonah Jameson, and Jameson thinks that everything is the anti-Christ.
So be it.
"Anything else?"
"Yeah." Jameson moves around the desk, picks up a sticky left randomly on the corner and hands it Peter. "Mary's sick, and I need someone to do her work for her today. Dabble in reporting. I need an interview done with this guy at two o'clock. Can you do that?"
Peter glances at the name, the place and the time and tries to catalogue backwards.
"Um..."
There's a look in his boss's eye that brooks for no argument.
"Yeah."
Clap on the back. Barely hidden wince on his part.
"Good kid, Parker. Good kid. Now get lost."
Peter does so quickly.
One part of Peter loves watching the Suits work their magic behind the microphone, armored in their Armani suits and Rolex watches while another part of him–the middle-class kid from Queens–watches on in disgust.
Right now behind the camera, though, that probably is all irrelevant.
Big-Wig #1–his white hair fluffed up in an almost mane-like arrangement–hits the podium and begins amid polite applause. Peter doesn't even listen to half the junk he says and after a while begins to zone out, focusing elsewhere and on things besides what he really has to pay attention to.
Big-Wig #2 comes up. Peter snaps a few photos, notices the crowd is about as enthusiastic as he is.
More babbling.
Eventually though, the crowd shifts, and Pete finds himself refocusing. An elbow attacks him from the right, and then the left, and then Peter realizes he's in the middle of a photographer smack-down, each vying for the best shot that they can get before someone's fat head gets in the way.
Peter ducks under a swinging camera, trying desperately to protect his own, and weaves through the huddled mass to relative safety. He finally gets to a point where he can actually see the hazy blue sky above him and slowly raises his head so he can see what the rush is all about.
Big-Wig #1 was boring.
Big-Wig #2 was the same.
Big-Wig #3, though, apparently has a charm that the other two didn't match.
Peter doesn't need to squint. Like the rest of the American middle-class, he already knows who this is about.
"...and I can easily say that Wayne Enterprises is incredibly flattered by the reception New York has given us today."
It's a deep baritone, ringing more strongly over the thrum of the crowd that the last two did. Peter recognizes the voice and the face and can't help but frown slightly in distaste.
Bruce Wayne.
In his younger years the man was like the American version of Prince Harry; tons of money and toys but having no real purpose in life but to go out and make a fool of himself. Granted, the man has matured over the last couple of years, but there is still that residue left from his earlier stints that has made him a target in the eyes of most of the middle and lower class and a fun topic for the tabloids.
Which, coincidentally, Peter happens to work for.
He takes three shots, hears the almost non-stop barrage of clicks behind him from fellow camera-comrades and then slips through the crowd, trying to get away.
Pete has an interview to do.
And he doesn't want to be late.
A/N: A filler chapter leading to what we could call action...I'm sorry it bounces between time as much as it did, but transition chapters tend to be a pain that way.
Many, many, many heartfelt thanks to P'tfami and Spawn Guy...they told me what I have been doing wrong and what to fix (among them, the proper spelling of Spider-Man), and as of now I'm trying to get better. It's going to take time, but I'll get there.
Next up: Interview with Likely-Homeless-Man. And it's a little creepier than expected...