Disclaimer:

I do not own any character herein depicted, Spider-man and all related characters are property of Marvel/Disney.

This fan-fiction is written by SmoothlyDiF and carries DeviantArt's and/or 's usual Creative Commons license.

This story has a mature rating due to sexual content, use of the naughty swears and peculiar violence unsuitable for minors.

Personal note: this may not be everybody's cup of tea and I apologise in advance if the structure reads confusingly, but it's something I've wanted to write for some time now and hopefully you will get something out of it, feedback as always is greatly appreciated.

SmoothlyDiF

Chapter 5

"Mary-Jane! J-Just p-p-put the knife down, you don't want to do something stupid!" Vulnerable had been an understatement for Peter Parker, cornered in his room, supine on his bed trying to convince his livid girfriend not to use the blade she tightly gripped.

"Never mind the fucking knife, Tiger! I told you not to go play with your stupid spiders! I tooold you not to see that scabby Stacy bitch! Then you come in here like some haggard old drunk and tell me I might do something stupid!?"

Suddenly – and Peter remembered it well – she'd pounced like a blood-thirsty predator, wielding that insanely huge knife as if it were a toy. Peter was never a tough boy, never learnt to fight and always got the brunt of all given punishments, even here he'd failed to make his morbid terror into any meaningful resistance as she'd pinned him down with rage like supernovas burning in her eyes.

"No! Please! Please don't MJ! I love you, MJ! Don't do this!" Not a word got through, not an idea or a shred of humanity had returned.

"You like spiders, huh!? You fucking like SPIDERS?!" She screamed, calling a whimper from him as she'd dug her nails into him with as if trying to tear him apart without even using the gleaming blade. "THEN LET'S MAKE YOU A SPIDER-MAN, EH TIGER!?"

"NO! NO! NOOAAAAAGH!" He'd begged desperately and screamed as he'd felt the cold steel carve into his chest, almost painless as it had seemed to carve through him swiftly and effortlessly, Pete coiling up and wincing even as he thought about it all over again.

It had been hard living it, harder still living with it, but rerunning it with such pure, supernaturally photographic memory was unbearable! This one was sharper than any up to now, more perfectly rendered and frighteningly realistic, he clutching his chest as it felt like it was tearing open all over again, each of those scarred 'legs' she'd cut into him slicing open as if he'd bleed out all over again.

Peter whimpered with every fragment of the memory, coiling into a corner in the shower; it had somehow been easy to forget the way he'd screamed like a pig in an abatoir, to remember the rage and unstoppable terror she represented in his eyes at that moment, but then his memories had never been like this, it'd never been so real since that very night!

"EYAAAAGH! AAAAAAGH!" He screamed beneath the castcade of cold water, trying to make it go away, trying to make it stop, remembering the thrashing and shouting at the door, the sound of his uncle's voice demanding them to open up.

Then pain of his assault went away, but somehow it was even worse knowing what happened next. Back then, he'd seen MJ jump off and make a run for it without realising what happened, feeling and watching it back he knew that the moment that door opened-

"PETER! Peter are you alright!?" Aunt May forced open the door and ran in to him, startling him out of it as she wrapped him in a towel and got the sobbing husk of a young man out of the cold shower.

"Aunt May! Aunt May it's so horrible, I keep having these flashbacks... that night with Mary Jane and... Uncle Ben!" She held him tightly, the one figure he had to hold onto in these rare moments of human weakness, "I could have saved him! I could have- I could have-"

"No, no, Peter! It was an accident! You couldn't have done anything! You know she didn't intend hurt him, they collided by accident and that's not how he died anyway! It. Was. An. Accident! Don't think like that! Ohhh, Peter!" May just embraced him tightly.

Mary-Jane hadn't seen these halls and desks in nearly three whole years, she'd wondered at times if she ever would, but this is where they brought her when she'd admitted it and her sentence was handed down.

These cold, featureless passageways carried memories and words in their pocked surfaces, memories she too found enticing right now as one last trip down destruction avenue:

All she could think to do was run!

She sprinted out of the house, knife tucked away and leapt over the garden fence between the houses; through her desperate tears and panic-sweat she spied her father stood at the end of the path, watching her with ears and eyes pricked.

She charged into her house, racing up the stairs, possessed with nothing but the desperate need to run away as fast as she could. She grabbed a rucksack, stuffed it full of whatever came to hand and darted back out to the stairs.

Nothing crossed her mind, nothing stopped her clumsy descent of the stairs as all sense escaped her, but then, there at the foot of the stairs her flight ended. He'd obviously been and seen for himself, he'd clearly put two and two together and now he wore a demeanour Zeus might offer when handing down rods from god to the unworthy.

"WHWTA THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO THAT BOY!?" He screamed and pushed her violently back against a wall, causing all the supplies she'd grabbed to crash to the ground around her. He grabbed and threw her into the next room where the rest of the family were stood dumbfounded and then descended on her with violence fresh on the mind.

Without a second thought, Mary was grabbed and thrust back against the wall, her fear and adrenaline suddenly focused on self-survival as she realised the danger she now faced. He may have been angry, but she... she was beyond the rubicon now, her mind settled it: she had nothing left but death or glory!

She'd not been on the end of her father's physical might in many years, but when he meant it he sure packed a punch (quite literally.) She jolted from the impact, but that seemed to hurt her parent far more than it hurt her. Yes she was dazed, yes she was even angrier now than ever before, but seeing and feeling himself hit his own daughter seemed to shatter what little was left of Phillip Watson's soul.

"I'm ruined! I can't believe this... I... I didn't mean to hit her! But... but... What she did to the Parker boy... I'm ruined... Ruined!"

MJ quickly boiled her blood until she was ready to free those broken shards of soul from their mortal torment: her fingers wrapped around the hewn blade handle, her knuckles whitened and her teeth ground into the very dust of fury itself.

Screaming "I FUCKING HATE YOUUU!" She launched once more into the frey! "I'LL KILL YOU! FUCKING DIE! DIE! DIEDIEDIE!" came the words she'd hear back days and weeks later in the spacious confines of a courtroom, words she would never deny, words she meant every syllable of.

Phillip never saw it coming, Madeline had never imagined it could happen, Gayle had never witnessed such horror and Mary-Jane had never felt such satisfaction in an action; for once, just once, the whole Watson tribe came together for a special occasion and with blood on their collective hands they would never be the same again.

Peter had got his shit together, he'd sat, spoken and relived that final acts of that night with his Aunt and consoled himself, even still his journey back to his apartment was a highly-strung, artless web-flight with every nerve shot and the rogue elements of his mind still skipping off topic here and there.

Concentration was difficult; maybe that was his sleep-deprivation, but every time he needed to find a web-point, his vision blurred and his heart-skipped a fearful beat, his arms like jelly as he swayed awkwardly through the Manhatten skyline.

With a massive sigh of relief he clung to his apartment window, thinking (though only for a split-second) that his spider-grip had failed him. He hurried inside to collapse on his bed with sweat escaping every anxious pore.

He exhaled heavily and thanked himself for having just the one last memory to get through to complete his torture and get back to his no-frills life. Smashing supervillains would be a doddle after the tricks his mind had been playing this evening.

Still, he knew it was coming and accepted one last time the throbbing, screaming subconscious need for distressing recollection as lethargy finally overcame him at home in his nice, safe bed. His hand rested lightly on the spider emblem on the front of his suit and the perfect tracing it made of the scars beneath.

The dark had been a blessing, the isolation too. To be free from the terror of his incarcerated other half and drugged up enough to ignore the fire arcing out of his chest had been the recuperation he'd needed. He hadn't had to worry about school and the field trip to the University (and their Arachnid research centre) was still 3 days away, he'd hoped he could make that if nothing else.

The one drawback had been knowing that his Uncle Ben was worse than he was, he'd been told not to worry but he did; supposedly he wasn't critical and was recovering, but with everything as it was he couldn't help but-

*dock-dock-dock* A gentle knock at the door, "Peter, it's Aunt May..." He'd heard softly and weakly.

"Mmm, it's OK, come in." Peter then pulled back the covers as the light crept in through the cracking door; the silhouette of his ageing aunt stepped inside and reached for the bedside light. "Nph!" he'd complained as the light blinded his darkness-adapted eyes, eyes that had focused and seen an expression that somehow (though he had no idea how) he only now managed to properly recollect.

He remembered how red-raw his aunt's face looked at that moment, tears had obviously been streaming from them from some time; he remembered his jolt of a reaction that sent agony coursing through his body, agony he'd borne for more important matters.

"Aunt May! What is it...? Don't..." He'd been told it was all alright, that his uncle had been recovering...

"Peter... it's Ben..." She sniffed and dabbed her eyes, "He's... he's gone, Peter. Your Uncle Ben's gone. I'm so sorry!" Devastation and desolation, Peter's mind had mashed itself once too much by then and it all came out as he embraced his Aunt in sorrow. Everything about that moment was unbearable to think about, but somehow even unconsciously dreaming it made Peter feel a little better and stronger for facing it all again.

"It wasn't what happened with her... he said so and the doctors too. He had... problems with his heart and... it was just all too much for him!" Aunt May stressed at the time with bravery Peter would remember. "But even when I last spoke to him he was thinking of you. He said..." She then as he recalled fell into a deep bout of sobbing that made her words indecipherable.

He would later find out the last advice he'd been passed, to look after himself and his Aunt and to... not blame Mary-Jane. That had been difficult, it had taken him so long to understand it... he wanted to blame her and hate her, to believe even when she only received an ABH charge for it that she murdered his Uncle.

Uncomfortable memories, but as they faded away, Peter finally felt at ease as he dozed as if some ghost had been laid to-

*THUM-THUM-THUM!* Peter startled awake to find it pitch black out, realising he must have been out for a good few hours. "Muh?" He asked, *THUM-THUM!* The door rattled again, Peter swinging his legs off the bed, "Harry?" He asked, stumbling off like the walking dead. "That you, Bro?" He asked, the suit seemingly formed into PJs at some stage; Peter realised he must have forgotten plans with his bro (as usual.)

"Har-!?" He opened to door. He froze. He dissolved on the inside. He dissolved on the outside, not sure if his suit had fallen off him or just hidden as he wished he could.

"Found you, Tiger... Guess I just hit the jackpot!"

Le Fin?