Hey, guys! Sorry it took so long. I made up for it with 2 chapters! Yes, that's right, two. I tried to make them as suspenseful as possible, but I think we all knew this was going to happen eventually, haha. Either way, enjoy. I probably only have on more chapter left on this story…wow.

SPIDER-MAN: DARK WOUNDS

SNATCHED:

The black suits and dresses scattering the cemetery like a stain on the earth were slowly transforming to white as the snow came down heavier and heavier with each passing minute. There hadn't been enough notice to put up the tent and by this point it was seen as an insult to those mourning. The snow was cold and wet and it was becoming painful to sit in my seat any longer, but I pushed on, trying my best to listen to the priest as he recited his speech about Stacy's past. I shivered and found myself joined by others in the funeral party.

Eventually I gave up, letting the cold of the air and snow deafen my hearing, only the sound of my inner thoughts to accompany me. I took advantage of the moment to think over the past few weeks. The Goblin, Harry, Shocker, Kraven, Stacy, Norman, Otto; it all accumulated in a confusing plot that I hadn't put together quite yet. Of course, this was assuming that this all added up to some grand scheme. But if Norman was behind it, that was more than just a safe bet.

Suddenly, the men and women around me began to get up from their seats, tears freezing as they hit the snow covered floor. I made my way onto my feet and waited for the crowd to disperse toward the hearse and the many cars behind it. I slid my hand into my pocket and reached for my phone, but stopped when my eyes met the freshly plotted grave. I stopped halfway through dialling for Ben to pick me up and stared at the gravestone. My throat became dry, despite the snow, and I walked up to the gravestone slowly.

I stood over it, biting my bottom left, reading the inscription on the stone, the stone nestling softly atop the slab of diorite; an expensive rock. A fitting end for Captain George Stacy.

And for no reason whatsoever, I began to speak my mind. "Heh. Hey, George-uh, Mister Stacy." I shook my head at myself. "Things aren't gonna be easy from now on…you were…you were an excellent cop. Uh…Gwen's…fine. I think. I'll make sure it stays that way." I wiped my nose with my sleeve and took in a deep breath of air. "I don't know if you can hear me, but…here it goes. I'm not letting that bastard get away. He will pay. I swear it. You were a great cop, a great dad, and a great person. You will be sorely missed." A fresh gust of wind blew in, freezing me to the bone. I changed the tone. "Nice gravestone. Must cost a lot." I smiled at myself. "You'd think I'd get used to funerals over time, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If I don't go to another funeral for as long as I live, it'll be too soon." The crunch of freshly laid snow startled me, but I turned around slowly, not being cautious for danger. My spider-sense would have gone off had that been the case.

There was Gwen, cradling a purse between her arms, her platinum hair shining even brighter beneath a layer of snow. "Hey…" she whispered, moving closer.

"Hi." She stepped up beside me and I turned back toward the gravestone. "Did you hear any of that?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Sorry." I didn't know why I was apologizing, it just felt right.

"Why are you apologizing?"

"I…I don't know." I lowered my eyes. "I thought I should in case something I said was offensive."

"It wasn't." She moved in closer. "It was beautiful."

"Thanks." I whispered, not removing my eyes from the grave. "You OK?"

"I will be."

"That gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach that keeps coming up?"

"Yeah?"

"Isn't it terrible?" I was trying to make the situation more light-hearted.

"I hate it."

"Get used to it. It never truly goes away."

"Great." She sighed, her breath fuming out in a crystallized cloud. Someone called Gwen's name from the row of cars to my right. She waved and nodded at whoever it was and turned back towards me. "I've-"

"Got to go." I finished for it, smiling, but not showing my teeth.

She turned to leave, smiling at me, but barely made it three steps before she turned back and gave me a kiss on the cheek. She smiled at me one more time and finally left for the hearse. I watched as she got into the passenger side of the car and pulled away from graveyard, the trail of cars following closely behind. I felt my cheek as the cars pulled away, a slight trace of lipstick sticking to my fingertips.

I had forgotten how warm her lips were.

xXx

"How was the funeral?" Ben asked as he shut the door to the apartment behind me.

I plummeted into the couch and placed my hands over my face, head angled up towards the ceiling. "Terrible."

"They usually are." He smirked, standing next to the couch on one leg. "Did you see Gwen?"

"Yep."

"How was that?"

"Better than expected."

"Really?" Ben sounded pleasantly surprised.

"She heard me giving my last words to the Captain."

"Ah." Ben nodded and smiled, taking a seat beside me, placing the crutches against the arm of the couch. "You put on a show for her?"

"Not on purpose."

"Still counts."

"I need a shower." I moaned, getting up from the seat and heading towards the bathroom, dropping my tie on the kitchen counter as I walked by it.

"Getting ready to head out for some new 'Spidey pics'?"

"Why would I be getting more 'Spidey pics'?" I stopped outside the bathroom door and turned around.

"Well, one: it's your job, and two: Jonah needs new pics of Spider-Man by Friday."

God dammit. I forgot. "Yeah, I know. I was kidding…"

"You completely forgot."

"Yes." I made sure to smack my head against something before I got in the shower.

xXx

I leapt across buildings, diving headfirst into the next rooftop and rolled to decrease the pain, continuing my routine down the street leading to the Empire State Building. I sprinted toward the end of the building and placed my foot on the molding rounding the building and sprung up into the air, flipping backwards to put on a show for the camera, and fell between buildings. Deciding to play along with my mistake, I tumbled through the air, spinning and twirling as I headed toward the ground. With only seconds to spare, I threw out a web-line and pulled my feet back, getting ready to kick them forward for extra momentum. People gasped and cheered as I flew through traffic, my feet inches from the concrete, and launched up into the air, sticking to the side of the building. I checked my phone quickly, ignoring the cheers and shouts below.

1:12 PM.

I figured this was as good a time as ever to head back with my new patch of, hopefully, sellable pictures. My thoughts were cut short as my spider-sense flared up and I dove off the building, back toward the street and swung across to the other rows of buildings. A series of explosions rocked the building, debris and glass tumbling down to the street. I flung out a series of web-lines, a lazily made spider web catching the falling pieces of building. I recognized the explosions, the unannounced arrival of them.

Goblin.

Norman.

The hum of his glider could be heard above the traffic and the crowd and I prepped myself for his attack. Sure enough, the green bastard hovered down from out of sight and met me at eye level, fifteen feet away.

"You." I snarled, getting ready to leap at him.

"Hello, Parker." He grinned, holding in a laugh. "How was your funeral?"

I ignored him. "What do you want?"

"I'm here to give you one more chance."

"For what?"

"One chance to quit playing for the losing team. To use your powers for the greater good."

"I am."

"No, you aren't." He took in a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. "Look at you. You just pulled off an entire gymnastics routine several stories in the air, swung from artificial webbing YOU created, and now here you are sticking to the side of the building talking to yours truly. Yet, you're determined to save the hide of these snivelling pricks who will do nothing but gawk at your greatness. What keeps you going?"

"I made a promise that with great power comes great responsibility. I'll never back down on that promise."

"Oh, GOD! You have to be kidding me. That's it? Some promise you made? Maybe you truly are beyond repair." He laughed a terrible, heaving cackle. My lip began to twitch as I watched him cradle his torso as he laughed, losing his breath.

With nothing stopping me, I dove at The Goblin, catching him off-guard and knocking him off his glider. We traded blows, me with the upper hand, as we fell down the street. After about five or six punches, he landed a clean shot to my stomach, loosening the grip I had on him. He landed a second and I rocketed towards the ground. I crashed into the front end of a truck, the roof collapsing as I broke through it.

God, that hurt. "Is that all you got?" I laughed.

He didn't answer, but instead, he accelerated towards me, his hands full of bombs. I rolled back onto my shoulders and sprung forward with my hands, feet extended in front of me. I could feel his chest tighten as I plunged my feet into his path, knocking him off the glider. I followed him as the two of us headed for the street, the glider flying without direction behind us. The Goblin landed first, his breath leaving him. I landed onto of him, my feet crushing his torso. I began my assault again, my fists chapping as I beat away at his face. My spider-sense flashed and I turned around without question.

His glider was barrelling down on the two of us, its talons directed at me. I dropped down, still pinning the Goblin to the ground and smashed my forehead into his nose. He let out a cry of pain at my attack, the glider avoiding the two of us. Its talons connected with the side of a minivan, the torn metal and rug carpeted seats catching the blades. The engines roared to life, the navigational controls going off as the glider was unable to free itself of the van.

I ignored it and looked back down at The Goblin, relieved that his glider was now useless, but The Goblin had regained some strength within that two second span and landed a punch to my throat. I coughed and sputtered, falling backwards slightly and felt his foot slide out from beneath me. That same foot hit me in the chest, sending me rolling along the street until I stopped beside an abandoned car. I felt my mask and realized that it had torn at the mouth. I sighed, spitting blood from my split lip onto the street and tried regaining some ground. The Goblin caught up to me before I could stand, grabbing me by the throat and lifting me up to the air.

"You've pushed me too far." He growled, baring his teeth. "Either give up and die now or continue this worthless fight and die anyway."

"I never was very good with multiple choice." I smiled, the tear in my mask showing my emotion.

He smashed me down into the roof of the car, metal and glass launching up around me. The pain was unbearable and I gasped, unable to think of any other response. I could tell by the way he flexed his arm and the expression in his face that he was beyond pissed. Wasting no time, he picked me up again and launched me at the building across the street, the one already destroyed by his bombs. I hit the building face first. I was still in too much pain from being thrown through the car to catch myself and suffered another hit. I rolled up onto my stomach, gasping for breath and noticed a trail of blood where I landed. My back must have been pretty badly cut after being thrown into broken metal twice.

I didn't want to wait for The Goblin to catch up to me and I dashed towards the newspaper dispenser to my right. Just as I reached it, The Goblin vaulted over one of the cars, landing on the sidewalk I was standing on. I ripped the dispenser out of the ground and went to throw it, but The Goblin was already right beside me. Instead, I beat him across the head with it, knocking him over and up against the building. I hit him again and again until his body had cracked the building. I lifted the newspaper dispenser one more time, but felt a sudden shift in weight as it cracked in two. I let go of the base, the metal bouncing as it hit the ground, and kicked the Goblin across the face as he was trying to get back on his feet.

"Face it, Norman." I started, spitting blood on the sidewalk beside him. "You can't beat me. Every one of our fights ends with you running away. You know I'm better than you."

"Or maybe I don't want to actually kill you…yet." He growled, pulling himself up to his feet. I drove my fist into his stomach, knocking him back on the ground.

"What are you getting at?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

"No…I won't." I stated bluntly, getting ready to land another kick to his face.

My spider-sense went off, the back of my head lighting up like a firecracker. I snapped my head to the right and noticed that the glider was heading right for me, the minivan still attached to its talons. I went to jump straight up to allow the van and the glider to hit the building beside me, but I was too slow. The van hit me head-on, sending my body through the already damaged and cracked building. I bounced and skipped along the linoleum floor of the store I had just entered and stopped against a display case of DVDs. Customers fled the store screaming and pushing as I moaned and ever so slowly pulled myself up to my feet. The Goblin's boot pressed me back down into the floor. I stopped moving, letting myself catch my breath, and felt the Goblin's breath grace the back of my neck as he bent down to whisper in my ear.

"I've let you off fairly easy so far, but you've tried my patience and now you must be punished." I tried pulling myself up to my feet, but he drove his knee into the center of my back, knocking me down again. "Someone you love will be killed because of your arrogance. Tonight."

I felt him remove his knee from my back and I wasted no time and leaping to me feet, fists tight, but he was gone. The store empty aside from the debris left from the hole in the wall.

"No…" I whispered, running to the hole in the wall and looking out. He wasn't there. "No."

Ben…

xXx

From a distance, the building looked fine, safe. It calmed me for a second but Norman was unpredictable, insane. He could have snuck in and out without anyone noticing. Ben might still be home, dead in his seat, a bullet through his head. The image chilled me to the bone and I ran across the rooftop even faster, the apartment building the only thing in my line of sight. I jumped as far as I could, over a whole building and onto the side of the apartment. I counted the floors, stomach cold.

"Gotta go up two floors…two floors." I mumbled, scaling the building as quickly as possible. I was yelling at myself to move faster, to be him. I had to be faster, even if it wasn't possible. I stopped by the window to the living room and looked in slowly, trying not be seen in case Ben was still there.

At first glance I didn't see him and I could feel my heart skip a beat, but I soon noticed him sitting on the couch. His khakis and brown shirt helped him blend in with the leather of the couch. My body relaxed and I took a deep breath, pulling myself away from the window.

"Oh, God…oh…oh, man." I cradled my head in my arms. Ben was safe, that was good, but that meant the Goblin had someone else in store. Someone I wasn't with.

MJ…

I ran up the building and up to the roof, the gravel 'Crunching' beneath my feet as I sprung myself over the molding surround the tip of the apartment. I pulled outlay phone and flipped through my contacts to 'Mary Jane', my fingers shaking with fear and numb from the cold. Eventually, I found her number and I hit the green phone symbol without hesitation.

"Please be there." I held the phone up to my ear, still shaking.

One ring. Muffled, distant.

I tore off my mask to hear better, throwing it to the ground.

Second ring. Still no answer.

I ran my other hand through my hair.

Third ring. A slight ruffle.

I bit my bottom lip until it turned pale.

The fourth ring started and I could have sworn I was going to pass out, but the ring stopped and I could hear MJ's voice answer. "Peter?" Every muscle in my body relaxed.

"Oh, thank God!" I blurted out.

"What's up?" She sounded like normal MJ. That was relieving.

"Are you alone?"

"What? Why?"

"Are you alone?" My voice became louder.

"My aunt's in the living room."

"Where are you?"

"My house." She sounded confused, slightly scared.

"No, no, no. What room?"

"My room."

"Lock the door." I was becoming demanding, but the situation called for it.

"Why?"

I ignored her. "Just do it! Windows too."

"What's going on, Peter?" She started to become annoyed."

"Do it! I'll explain later!"

"No. Explain now!"

"Do this for me! Please! Lock all doors and wi-"

"Explain! Now!"

"GOD DAMMIT, MJ! JUST LISTEN TO ME!" I screamed, almost falling to my knees. She didn't answer and I began to get nervous again. "M-MJ?"

"I'm here…" She whispered.

"Please…just do it. It's important. I swear I'll explain later."

She took a second to answer. "OK, Peter…but you better explain this."

"I swear to God."

"OK…gimme a second." In the background, I could hear her lock the door and then move over to the windows, locking them too. "OK. Done. Anything else?"

"Uh…" C'mon, Parker! You need to be safe! "Do you have blinds?"

"Yes."

"Close them."

Another second until she answered. "Done."

"Thank you…so much." I took a deep breath and watched the steam curl up and into the air before disappearing into the chilling, winter sky. "If you notice anything suspicious, call me right away."

"Like what?"

"Anything. Anything that doesn't seem right."

"OK. I'll try."

"Thank you. Goodbye."

I hung up before she could answer back and dropped to the ground, letting the phone drip from my fingers and onto my mask. I cradled myself, still shaking slightly. While it was reassuring that Ben and MJ were safe, that meant the Goblin was going after someone else and I didn't know who it was. I didn't know that many people and most of the people who meant anything to me were already dead.

Uncle Ben.

Aunt May.

A gust of wind caused me to shiver, teeth rattling in my mouth, and it hit me like a train. Every bone in my muscle in my body tensed and I could feel my heart stop.

I don't know how I forgot.

I wasn't thinking.

Gwen.

xXx

Her house was close and I pushed myself to move faster. I couldn't, though, and it pained me to no end to know that I was unable to do anything. The cold air and fatigue slowed me down more than ever and the jump between the buildings, even though they were houses by this point, was becoming more and more difficult, but I spied that top of Gwen's house just over the lip of the next house and I managed to move faster across the snow-dusted roofs. I stopped along the edge of the last house and studied Gwen's house from across the street. The house was intact, the lights to Gwen's room still on. Two cops were posted up against the house on either side of the front door. There were no signs of the Goblin.

My lungs began to work again…until I looked closer. The police officers were lifeless, fake looking. Something was off. When no one was looking, I dove across the street and landed on the sidewalk in front of Gwen's house.

The two officers were dead, blood running down their bodies, eyes wide-open, mouths agape. Each of them had one of the Goblin's bombs lodged into their throats, but these bombs had two metal prongs sticking out of opposite ends.

"No…no, no, no." My mouth barely worked and I could feel my knees physically shaking.

I charged through the front door and found more death. One cop had been hoisted over the railing on the stairs, his head backwards. Another cop thrown through the far wall, legs dangling by the hip. I ignored them and sprinted up the steps, my hands pushing against everything in sight in some sort of futile attempt to make myself move faster. Gwen's door was shut, light shining out from the cracks around it and onto the hallway rug. I bared myself for some sort of gruesome image akin to that of her father's.

Gwen's dead body flashed across my mind.

I shuttered and bit my lip before kicking down her door.

It was empty. A cold wind blew through the room by way of the open window. The curtains shifted. My heart sank. A small jack-o-lantern, big enough to fit in the palm of my hand pinned down a piece of paper on the floor. Slowly, I dragged my feet to the note and the pumpkin, picking up the pumpkin with my right hand and the note with my left. The pumpkin was hollow, real, not a threat. The note was rectangular, multiple straight lines covering the left, an address on the left. The back was lamented. I recognized the card instantly; a postcard.

With one shaky twist of my wrist, I flipped the card around.

My arms were shaking, my head was light, and I felt as if I was going to pass out.

A picture of the George Washington Bridge, the words 'Wish You Were Here' digitally added on the top of the card.

I dove out the open window in an instant.

xXx

The police had already arrived, red-n-blue sirens drowning out the brown and silver of nearby buildings. I counted eight cars and more than three times that many officers. A mass of people had formed behind the police divider, camera flashes going off at random intervals. My eyes moved up the street, following the yellow divider and straight up the two columns to the top of the first divider, the water rippling in the background. He stood there firmly, his purple rags whipping in the wind.

A thin figure with blonde hair in his arms.

Gwen.

I took a deep breath and leapt off the edge of the skyscraper, torpedoing down towards the street. I shot out a web-line directly in front of me and swung right between buildings. I let go of my webbing at the top of my arch and shot straight across to the docks, my body continuing over them and to the water. Before my body crashed into the foaming river, I snagged a web-line onto the outer wall of the divider and reeled myself in with the same hand. I stopped myself at the wall, my hands and feet stuck to the stone wall.

I began to think of Gwen up above and whatever terrible things the Goblin had already done to her. My fingers began to slip and the world started to go dark. I regained my composure and caught myself before I fainted.

"No…no…not now." I mumbled, rubbing my head. "Gotta move…gotta…do something…"

I continued up the wall and pulled my eyes over the top. The Goblin's eyes were staring back, the red pupils burning bright in the night sky. The air from his breath steaming up and into the air. I could feel myself slipping again and so I pulled myself up to my feet, slowly, making sure to take my time and think things over. The two of us stood there face-to-face, our chests rising and falling.

My heart was beating like a drum.

His smile grew brighter.

"Good Evening, Mr. Parker. Ms. Stacy and I have been waiting for you."

And he laughed and he laughed.