Author's Note: I will address Glen and Piper's major slipup in saying his name to him while in costume in a chapter or two, but we've got bigger fish to fry right now. I own nothing.
14. Defining Choices
Piper landed between Kraven and Ava her hands held up.
"This was not part of the plan Tiger. We got him, he's down, lets call for a pickup." Ava shook her head, glaring over Piper's shoulder. Kraven spoke up from where he was laid on the ground behind Spidergirl.
"I was wrong, you are so much more than your father, and you could be more, so much more, if you let go." Piper whirled on him.
"I'm pretty sure I hate you, shut your face." She slapped a web over Kraven's mouth and turned back to her friend.
"What are we doing here Tiger?" Ava took a step forwards and Piper matched her, keeping herself between Ava and their helpless opponent.
"I'm going to finish it, finish him. He took my father from me! Forever! You… you don't know what it's like facing down the man who killed your only family." She made to shove Piper aside, but the brunette held fast.
"I do though. I've been exactly where you are right now. Face to face with the man who took everything from me. And the thing was he didn't do it for a magical amulet, or a grudge match or revenge, he did it for a car. And I was right where you are, I had him pinned against a wall completely helpless. I was ready to rip him to shreds." Ava had frozen, if Piper could see beyond her mask she would have seen shock on her friend's face. Even after fight together for nearly nine months Ava had never seen Piper lose her cool, not really. The closest she'd come was against the Goblin, but even then she'd refused to use deadly force.
"But I realized something as he was begging for his life, if I did that, if I killed him. I would be the same as him. Someone I always cared about used to tell me that we have a choice in this world, that we can choose what kind of person we will be. I chose to walk away, to be better than him. To be Spidergirl." Ava glanced down at the amulet in her hands. "That amulet doesn't define who you are, you do, your choices do. And now's the time to make that choice. You can be like Kraven, a hunter, or you can be like your father, a hero." Ava's claws retracted and she turned away from the downed hunter.
"I guess you know me better than I thought." Piper smiled to herself as she hit the call button for the FBI agents that had been stationed in New York since SHEILD fell. She made sure to string Kraven up in a tree to keep him away from the Tigers and she and Ava leapt their way out of the Zoo. Piper stopped in one of the trees to watch the FBI agents drag Kraven to the car. Ava landed next to her.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Piper sighed pulling off her ruined mask as she did.
"I've never told anyone about the first night I went out as Spidergirl." Ava nodded getting ready to stand, if Piper didn't want to talk about it then she wouldn't push but the brunette didn't stop talking.
"It was a few days after the Mandarin blew up the Malibu house. I was there you know, got stuck in the armory, managed to use one of the suits to dig my way out. But JARVIS wouldn't let me go after dad and Pepper had gone missing, so I did the only thing I could think of, I went back to New York and busted out my costume for the first time. I had been planning it for a few weeks, ever since I got bit." She swiped a hand across her face and sighed.
"You know they found out the name of the guy who killed my Uncle a month after he died. But they still hadn't caught him, two years later. His name is Mathew Hardy, he was a cat burglar. He'd upgraded to jewelry stores by the time I stepped out in spandex for the first time. Of course I didn't know that at the time. But the NYPD they had shown me a picture of him when they figured out who he was, to see if I knew him. I never forgot that face." She ran a hand through her hair.
"So when I saw it after pulling off the mask of a jewelry store thief, I… I went ballistic. I broke a couple of his bones. I had my hand around his throat, that's when he started begging. Saying he had a kid, begging for me not to kill him." She took a shaky breath. Ava placed a hand on her shoulder and Piper didn't move.
"That was when I remembered what Uncle Ben used to say, about choice. It occurred to me that if I killed him I'd be doing to his kid what he did to me. So I tied him up and left him there with the jewelry he'd stolen. Had JARVIS call in a tip and watched from a rooftop across the street. Then I went home and cried myself to sleep." Ava pulled Piper into a hug. She sniffled into her friend's shoulder for a minute. Piper pulled back first, scrubbing at her eyes and pulling her mask back on.
"Let's get the boys and go home." Piper nodded and they leapt off back towards the boathouse.