He looks deathly afraid.
But of course, this is New York, and you can always find people like that. The Big Apple may have the lowest homicide rate of the major U.S. cities, but that doesn't mean it's exempt from society's other evils.
And everyone knows this.
The man staggers through the station almost blindly, weaving in and out of crowds and invisible people that only he can see before finally coming across one of the bathrooms.
He runs into it.
And proceeds to bolt into a stall and hurl.
Later, we find that same man at one of the grimy bathroom sinks, hands braced at the sides and eyes intently focused on the mirror.
There's something unnerving about his gaze–slightly off-kilter, yet there, keeping track of what's in front of him and what is not.
He stares at himself for a few minutes, the only man in a tile room echoing with the hollow plink of a faucet that can't quite turn off, before clearing his throat and glancing down at his hands.
Something in them frightens him, and within seconds of looking down he turns on the sink, desperately fumbling before simply plunging his hands beneath the stream.
He scrubs frantically.
Red slowly drips down into the drain and spirals into pink before diluting entirely, an invisible smudge dripping down into a pipe and later nothingness.
The scrubbing stops.
The faucet is turned off more calmly than it was turned on.
Peter Parker looks at himself in the mirror again, though this time he brings a hand to the reflection and taps the surface.
"What," he whispers, trying to understand what he's seeing, trying to make sense of the blood dropping into the sink, "did you do?"
His reflection only blinks back at him in reply, but Peter hears something in his head that only answers the deepest fear.
What did you?
That little voice in the back of Pete's head finally answers his question when they get back on the train (his hands shaking and his heart thudding dully in his ears).
You nearly killed a man, the voice says solemnly, quiet and low.
This is not new. It has happened before, a guilt that gnaws at the bottom of Peter's stomach and writhes in his intestine.
But something happened differently today that didn't happen before.
Pete wasn't Spidey.
He was only Pete.
It was in self-defense.
The voice doesn't accept the excuse.
And that justifies it?
Pete shifts in his seat and tries to calm down, tries to regain what little sanity he has and
get it together.
Piece the puzzle, Pete. Puzzle the piece.
He had known that it would be impossible to perform the interview in the first place, like sticking himself in the middle of a conversation between two people he didn't know and expecting them to greet him like a friend, but that was beyond his control.
He had done what Jameson had ordered him to do.
And in the process almost killed a man.
But how?
Peter frowns and brings the heels of his hands to his forehead, closing his eyes. His only train companion–an ebony-skinned mistress of Manhattan–sits at the opposite corner and only looks over at Peter with mild interest.
The beginning was simple enough: Peter went down near Bay Ridge, turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with a man who should've been in a looney bin.
Simple.
Then it got complicated.
The candidate for insanity was–in fact–the very man who Peter was supposed to interview. He'd somehow gotten word that he'd be discussing Mary's story with someone else, bumped into the thin, brown-haired man with a camera and came to the conclusion that this was Mary's substitute.
He was right.
But there was something in his stance, his posture and even how he spoke that made Peter think that something was off.
Maybe it was what he said, how he reacted to Peter's information.
"Mary's sick," Peter explained.
The man laughed. "I bet she is."
"Do you mind if I...?" Peter reached into his pocket, got out the recorder and instantly the weird smile on the man's face vanished, replaced by something cold and flat.
"No recorder." the man said. "You're a reporter, right? Use some goddamn notebook or something. No recorder."
Weird. Odd. But what had Peter been expecting? Someone probably had been cultivating the relationship with the interviewee for months and he was conducting their interview,
"Do you want to stay here, or is there a certain place we can go to talk?" God, he felt like a moron, trying to play a part he never was designated for.
The man stopped, and for a moment he looked pensive.
And then a smile came back on his face.
"Yeah," he said, "lemme show you where me and Mary would go..."
He started walking.
And foolishly Pete followed.
They rounded a few more corners–Peter tried to keep track of where they were, lest he got lost or something–before the man abruptly came to a halt in front of one of the many run-down buildings closer to the docks.
Peter looked up, noted the broken windows, the graffiti sprayed near the front door (some gang insignia Spidey knew but he didn't want to acknowledge) and the door itself (a few bullet holes, cracking metal and wood) and felt the hair on the nape of his neck rise.
"Is this a joke?" He asked, bringing his hands to grip his camera almost protectively.
The man looked at him, eyes shining, and shook his head.
"No joke." the man said seriously. "Business as usual."
Why didn't he just knock him out, right there? Why didn't he just suddenly balk and run off?
Why did he stay?
The train jerks to a stop and Peter's body sways with the movement, startling him out of his thinking and forcing him to raise his eyes from his hands.
The mistress gives him a sultry stare before stepping off. The lights overhead flicker dully.
And then Peter's alone, back in his brain.
It had to have been curiosity. Instinct was screaming that he run, get lost and go away, but he insisted on staying.
A train-wreck in front of his eyes. He had to know how it ended.
Peter followed that man into the building, eerie it may have been. He tried to maintain that professional persona, keep up the b.s. that he totally knew what he was doing and what the man was doing was totally normal, but it abruptly fell flat.
The interior of the place was ripped to shit, tile floors cracked, wood splintered and doors hanging off barely-there hinges.
There was furniture. Ugly, moldy, dusty furniture, but furniture nonetheless.
And there were rooms with stuff in them.
But Peter turned the corner, blindly following his guide and ignored that, instead focusing on the greasy hair that graced the back of the guy's head in front of him.
"Here," and the man began to slow down, turning another hallway and suddenly exposing a concrete floor with dim fluorescent lights buzzing.
"I think this is where Mary left off last time."
He turned towards one of the doors, a fireproof creature that probably used to grace a hotel, and gently nudged the door open.
Peter was tall, but the man was big and wide–a beast. He tried to look over his shoulder at what was there, in that dark room, but the man shouldered him to the side and went in first, turning on a light (Peter heard the pull of a cord) and disappearing around a corner.
There was an expulsion of breath.
The man spoke again, muffled behind the corner.
Peter took a step forward.
"Yeah," he said, voice sounding slightly strained. "This is where we left off last time."
It took seconds. Maybe even nanoseconds.
Peter Parker looked into a room full of metal containers and plastic boxes, heard hissing to his right and then turned.
Blink-of-the-eye evaluation.
Peter became Spider-Man.
And the man that was his guide became a monster.
It was only his reflexes that saved him from the needle–the man had abruptly swung back from the corner, clenching in his right hand a hypodermic and Peter simply reacted, throwing himself backwards and spinning as the man flew by.
Time slowed and Peter tried to reason with himself.
He had two options, and he could only use one.
No Spidey. Not here, not now.
He could try to run away; a thirty-something male caught in a dangerous situation who went to his instinct and fled. It made sense, was reasonable–and Peter knew he was much faster than his guide.
But it was too late. He was thinking too much. The man was swinging back and this time the arms were faster, stronger.
Peter ducked, hearing the whoosh of the arm over his head, before standing and reaching out with his right hand, grabbing the man's collar. The left hooked through the forearm before clenching on the back of the man's upper arm, and Peter pulled hard, forcing the elbow into a breaking positionas he tried to get the grip loose on the hypodermic.
The man thrashed–Jesus, he was strong, stronger than what an ordinary guy should've been–and suddenly struck out with his foot, trying to break the tenuous balance Peter had to make him fall.
It almost worked.
Almost.
But Peter moved backwards with the move, following the foot with his own. Big Man fell, and Peter–unwittingly caught in his own trip, still trying to resist becoming Spidey (he couldn't do that here, not now)–fell with him.
The lock broke. Peter couldn't hold it if he wanted to keep himself away from the needle.
They both rolled–Peter trying to get to the door, towards freedom, the Big Man towards something else–and then Pete was on his feet, backing away.
"Listen, Mister," and he was playing his role well, the frightened yuppie who didn't want to get his ass kicked, "I–"
Big Man was back in a speed that could've been called dizzying.
And the hypodermic was still there.
"You're gonna die, kid." It was simply delivered as the man brought himself into a crouch. "That's it."
He rushed him. A blur that Pete only saw from metas, mutants and other freaks of the like suddenly came up from the ground and just like that, the needle was in his palm.
No time to duck, retaliate, protect himself.
He had a four-inch long needle embedded in his palm, and a leering man depressing the plunger.
Something began to trickle through Parker's veins.
And then the facade broke.
He vanished.
With a roar, Peter swung upwards, letting loose on the muscles that had longed to be released and backhanding the man's face.
Blood splattered. There was a grunt on the man's part, surprise as he tried to tighten the grip on the needle burrowed in Parker's hand. The pain was searing, the needle a hook in Peter's muscles, his nerves, but he ignored it, instead moving closer to Big Man and backhanding again.
More blood. The human might have been strong but he was dealing with a different creature.
Peter took a step inwards--now moving between the man's body and his arm–and brought his left arm under the guy's right elbow.
His impaled hand acted accordingly, jerking backwards slightly before shoving down, hard, on the hand that was clenched on the needle.
The elbow broke.
And the man fell, screaming.
Peter glanced at his hand, the hypodermic obscenely lodged into his palm, before reaching down and yanking the needle out.
Glass sprayed. The needle continued to burn him after leaving.
Big Man wasn't so big now, wheezing as he fought to get back to his feet. Peter didn't give him the chance to get back and took the step forward, kicking the man in the chest.
He went back down.
And Peter was at his neck, choking.
"Why?" Peter snarled.
Something told him that it wasn't him talking, that this was all wrong).
The man gasped, wheezing, brought his hands to Peter's iron ones and tried to break the grip.
Peter squeezed harder, the message clear: I'm stronger than you, it won't work that way.
Another snarl, this time accompanied by a shake. "Why?"
The man shifted, breathing high, before he tried to speak.
"She knew too much," he gasped.
Mary. A coworker he knew nothing about except that she was probably more than sick.
"And me?" he asked, still speaking in that weird way, sounding harsh and croaky.
The man's mouth opened and closed, a fish out of water.
"No interview," he said. "Too many questions."
The rational part of Peter, the one that had been hiding behind the medula oblongata, peeked out suddenly and frowned.
The man's speech was garbled...confusing.
And then it hit.
He's a druggie, you're a druggie...
Peter glanced down at the hands that were trying to pry his off the man's throat and observed the wrists.
An angry red mark was showing itself just on the underside of the radial.
We're all druggies!
Shit. He shot himself up before attacking Peter.
And then he shot Peter up.
The focus turned. Peter relaxed his grip just slightly before speaking again.
"What did you give me?"
The man stopped wheezing, stopped breathing, and for one terrified instant Peter's brain returned to him screaming You killed him.
But then the man gasped, chest jerking, and he began to laugh.
A choking, wheezing, dirty sound, but the man--close to unconsciousness, bleeding profusely and right arm broken–began to laugh.
It was unnerving.
Too unnerving.
The thing masquerading as Peter didn't like it.
The pressure that he had reined back on he released, squeezing down and smothering the laughter in the man's throat. Peter vaguely heard the man mouth something that sounded like an 's' but he ignored it.
More squeezing.
The guy was still laughing.
The thing playing Pete abruptly jerked the man's neck up, and then brutally snapped back down.
Big Man's head hit the concrete.
And then there was no more laughing.
Blood is seeping through the cloth that Pete wrapped his hand in and he's trying not to notice, trying to force himself not to go back into that room and hear the thud as that man's head hit the concrete.
He knows he didn't kill him. There was a definitive pulse and definitive breathing.
But he did leave him there.
The train stops again, shuddering and wheezing as it starts to get tired, the night wearing down on it, and Peter picks his head up again.
A glance at the station sign, at the station itself.
Peter picks himself up slowly, flexing his hand, and stands.
He walks out of the doors, forces himself to go up the stairs and out into the New York night and takes the corner to get home.
Peter walks up six more flights of stairs, fumbles painfully for the key in his pocket and then pushes the door open with his knee.
The flat is silent. Still no M.J.
He doesn't know if he should be grateful or start breaking down.
He stands there, at the threshold, for a long moment, and simply closes his eyes, trying to figure out what he's going to do now and how he's going to explain this.
The eyes open.
Peter walks over to the bureau (shoved over in a corner of the tiny living room, they didn't have any other place for it when they first moved in) and opens the top drawer. A small leather book, old and battle-weary looks up at him, and him down at it, before Pete gingerly takes out the book and thumbs through the pages, searching.
Malter, Manning...
Murdock.
He'd grin if he wasn't scared shitless at himself.
Pete picks up the phone lying nearby and dials the number. The phone rings four times–he's glad that the guy doesn't answer, maybe make this easier to explain–before the beep of the message machine makes itself heard.
Pete makes the message simple, from one average-Joe vigilante to another. In another few minutes, he'll probably call M.J.--more than 1,000 miles away in god-forsaken Montana, visiting her cousin twice-removed or something--and confess to her, brokenly, that something has gone terribly wrong.
As it is, he tries to focus on the present.
"I have a problem."
Peter hangs up.
A/N: Truth be told, I was at a loss for more than two weeks on how to continue with this story, and when it finally came down to the point where I needed to do something to get plot moving, I finally just decided on this.
I personally don't like it, I think it's woefully out of character and I think that I need to re-evaluate where I'm going with this crossover, but ultimately it's up to you guys to decide whether or not this turn of events is okay.
And if it's in the proper tense. ;)
Many thanks to Gollum's Fish and P'tfami for their reviews and P'tfami's informing that I had written the chapter previous to this one without any tense errors. There was much rejoicing. :) Let's see if the same goes for this one, though...