Peter Parker

"And that's how you get the answer for that," I explained as I tapped the eraser end of my pencil against the sheet of paper in Carmilla's notebook.

"Thank you," Carmilla said graciously. "I'm usually good in math, but for some reason, matrices always been my Achilles' heel no matter what I do."

It was the day after I was awakened from my coma. I didn't have much in the way of anything to do for the day. I wasn't going to work or school for obvious reasons. All I had scheduled was a checkup with Cecilia, right after Carmilla's – Cecilia wanted to make sure I was still okay.

Side note, I realized I needed to thank that healer the next time I see him.

Anyway, there wasn't much in the way for me to do. I wanted to explore the facility, but even if I wasn't familiar with SHIELD and how they did things, I knew better than to test my luck with a government agency by stepping into places I'm not allowed to be in – especially since I knew I they were did a lot for me while I was off my feet. While I was given a living quarters, all I had was a desk, chair, and a bed. I guess Carmilla knew me well enough to expect me to go stir crazy, so she got me to hang out with her.

We started off our time by going through some hand to hand training. We went through some martial arts drills, with Carmilla making sure that my technique was still up to par. In turn, I helped in her training with her new tail. She had a special cover for her stinger in case of an accidental hit. I couldn't help but laugh. I told her it looked like she was wearing Rudolph's nose.

I stopped laughing when she slammed the end of her tail into my stomach.

Tough crowd, am I right?

After that, we grabbed lunch. I had to say, the food was very good. Carmilla told me that the staff in charge of food came from high end restaurants and hotels. Of course, they had to go through a very tough background check, but SHIELD made sure the pay and benefits were worth it.

After we ate, Carmilla took me to her room. While we there, we spent some time binge watching shows on Netflix. I wanted to watch Carole & Tuesday, but Carmilla vetoed that. According to her, she was watching the series with Craig and she didn't even want to touch another episode until he was back.

I understood.

After binge watching Beastars, we grabbed dinner before we decided to do some studying for the SATs. That's what we've been doing for the last few hours as we both sat on her bed.

"Want to end things for the night?" I offered.

"No arguments from me," Carmilla said as she set her notebook and SAT study book off to the side. "If I see another matrix tonight, or even hear Keanu Reeves' name, I might lose it." I chuckled. "What about you, Little Arachnid? Is there anything in math that trips you up?"

I shook my head. "Not nowadays, no." I tilted my head briefly. "But I used to hate integrals with a passion until I got help from a professor. Even then, it's not favorite thing."

"…I don't even want to know what those are." After that, Carmilla laid herself out on her bed with a huff of her breath. "You know, back in Albuquerque, I'd probably be hitting up the food trucks with my friends right about now."

I looked at her. "What was high school like for you?" I asked.

"It was fun for me," Carmilla replied. I turned my body until my left knee was on the bed so I could face her better. "I guess I was popular. Like, I wasn't the captain of the cheerleading team or anything like that. I didn't even play a sport of any kind, though one of my friends wanted me to give soccer a go. But, people knew who I was around school. I got invited to parties and hang outs. That's actually how I ended up getting the attention of my then boyfriend."

"…What was he like?" I was reluctant to ask that question. I didn't know if she wanted to relive those memories considering how their relationship ended through no fault of either of them.

"My boyfriend… Roger… was a sweetheart. He was a football player – coincidentally he played safety like Craig did. So, when I met him, I thought he'd be rather… jock-ish. He wasn't like that. He was polite. After our initial conversation, we eventually became friends, then more." Carmilla smiled a bit. "He'd leave little gifts in my locker. Sometimes it'd be candy or chips. Other times, it'd be little mementos of different dates and hangouts we'd go on. He loved doting on me, but he knew to give me distance whenever I needed it. He never got jealous whenever I was around another guy. Whenever I had issues I wanted to air out, he'd listen. I wouldn't say things were perfect across the board. We got into arguments, and there were times when he closed himself off about things he was going through instead of talking to me about them. But we always talked out our issues eventually. Hell, when we started to have… 'urges'… for each other, he never pushed me to even go past second base." She smiled. "I liked him a lot. And I was ready to give it up to him after the Homecoming dance was over.

"But… we all know how that went. I accidentally killed him while on the dancefloor. Not knowing what else to do, I made a run for it. I took the keys out of his pocket, ran out, drove his car straight home and saw who I thought were my parents being stretchered out while a whole bunch of black SUVs were on my lawn. They explained to me that my parents weren't my parents, but agents of AIM and Hydra. They took me in and had me going to a therapist. After a long while, when I was deemed mentally fit, they offered to find me a foster. I turned that down. I didn't trust anyone outside of SHIELD. So they started to train me. And the rest was history."

I frowned. "I'm sorry."

Carmilla shrugged. "Don't be. It's in the past. Of course, if I had it my way, my superhero origin story – if you want to call it that – would be a lot less traumatic. But it is what it is." She nodded towards me. "What about you, Peter? What made you become a superhero? I know you're not a mutant, but I don't exactly know much else beyond that."

"It's a long story." I paused for a moment. "…I told you I was bitten by a radioactive spider, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did." She smirked. "I have to say, you lucked out."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why? Because I didn't die from the bite?"

Carmilla nodded slowly. "Well, that too. But could you imagine if they were experimenting on a different animal? Like, what would you call yourself if you were bitten by like dung beetle?"

I thought about it for a moment. "…I mean… Dung Beetles are proportionally stronger than spiders, so I'd still have super strength."

"They also roll around balls of elephant shit. I can see the headlines now." She brought her right hand up and moved it through the air from left to right. "'Crime rate decreased in New York due to The Friendly Neighborhood Shit-Slinger'!"

I glared at her halfheartedly as she laughed for some seconds. "Oh, ha-ha." Eventually, her laughing died. "Are you done?"

"Yes, I am." Carmilla took in a breath. "Please, continue."

"As I was saying, I got bit by a radioactive spider. I got sick for a while. Then, when I got better, everything changed. I got my powers. I didn't become a hero right away, though. I was just trying to make money."

Carmilla gave me a look. She then sat up slowly. "…Were you doing illegal activity?"

"I was, but I wasn't robbing banks or anything like that." I looked off to the side. "I was fighting in underground fight clubs. I wasn't exactly the best fighter as far as technique goes, but with my powers, it didn't matter. I thought I was going to be able to get away with it without telling my uncle and aunt. I got cocky, though, and somebody did land a punch and I got a black eye. While I heal faster than normal, I didn't heal fast enough for Uncle Ben and Aunt May not to notice the color around my eye. My uncle tried to talk to me about it. It went on like that for days until I lashed out at him and just left the house. I went straight to the fight club to get a fight in to blow some steam. I ended up winning my fight, as per usual. But the guy heading the whole thing stiffed me on the pay. So, when he ended up getting robbed a few minutes later, I didn't even bother intervening. I figured he had it coming. Unfortunately, it was karma that hit me.

"See, the same robber I didn't stop? He ended up robbing a store a little later on in the week and he shot and killed my uncle while doing so. I didn't know it was the same guy until I tracked him down. I chased him until he ran into an abandoned warehouse. He thought he had the drop on me. Little did he know that I could see him in lurking in the shadows. I don't know if believed in a higher power, but I definitely put the fear of God in him. I beat him down with my bare hands until he begged for his life. I almost killed him before I took his ski mask off. I stood there in shock. He tried to shoot me, but I webbed his hand up. I was about to try and finish him off permanently. But, when I did, all I could see was my uncle's face. Deep down, I knew that wouldn't want me to kill him – it wouldn't be right. So, instead, I knocked him out and left him slumped in the corner for the police to find. Ever since then, I couldn't really stop myself from intervening when crimes were happening. I started to realize that if I was going to do this, I was going to need a suit and a secret identity. After making a suit and working on gadgets, I became Spider-Man."

"…Damn," Carmilla commented. "…Now I want to apologize."

I almost chuckled. "Don't. As you say, it is what it is." I tried to smile. I couldn't quite get myself to do so. Carmilla shook her head.

"Look at us," Carmilla said. "We're two peas in a pod, two people with bad homecoming experiences. Maybe we should start a little club. I even got the perfect name for it – The Society of Bad Homecoming Dates."

This time, I did chuckle and smile.

The morning after, I figured it was going to be more of the same of what we did the day before. And it seemed that way at first. But while we were eating breakfast, Carmilla was checking her phone. I didn't think anything of it at first. I just continued to eat. But then she placed her hand on my shoulder. I turned my head towards her as she leaned towards me and spoke into my ear.

"Let's swing by my room when we're done," she whispered.

After we were done eating, we were back in Carmilla's room. As the door closed behind us, I turned and faced her.

"What's going on?" I asked.

In response, Carmilla held her phone in front of my face, showing the screen. I looked at the screen. I saw a series of lines and dashes, along with some numbers. It looked weird to me, but it also looked familiar. After a few moments, a certain day popped into my head. It was the day that Craig told me about me about when his mutant powers first became active. Before I went to talk to Craig on the roof, Scott showed me a text as he and Kitty explained why Craig was so upset that day. Of course, the text turned out to be from Carmilla, as they suspected. That's when it clicked for me.

"…Is that the custom code you guys use?" I asked.

"It is," Carmilla confirmed as she pulled the phone back. She then raised an eyebrow. "Wait, no one taught you that code yet?" I shook my head. Carmilla rolled her eyes. "We really need to change that. But, for now, just know that this translates into some numbers."

"Could it be from Scott or Kitty?"

She shook her head. "I doubt it."

"…" I tilted my head. "Is it from Craig?"

"That is a possibility. He's the only other person that has my work number. But I have to make a few phone calls first."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Well, because we need to think carefully about we're going to deal with this. Codes can be broken, Craig's been MIA for a while, and I have no idea what happened to him. So, we have to be prepared for the possibility that this may be a trap and that he's been… compromised." The tone in which she said that last part, along with a certain look in her eyes, led me to believe that she was speaking euphemistically.

"...Are you saying that Craig could be –?"

"Yes. Yes I am." Carmilla shook her head. "I'm not saying that it's a foregone conclusion, because Craig has gotten himself out of many a bad situation that would've broken even some of the more experienced SHIELD agents, but he's far from invincible."

I frowned. I didn't want to even want to accept the possibility that Craig was dead. Over the last several months, the two of us went through a lot, both out in the field and in our civilian lives. I didn't know him as long as I knew Michelle, Ned, and Betty. But he – along with the aforementioned, Kitty, and Scott – was a huge reason I wasn't walking down a dark path after The Spell, I was sure.

"…He has to be okay," I whispered.

"He better be," Carmilla said quietly. "Because if he's not, then I'm no longer an X-Man. And if that happens, people will die."

At those words, I was reminded of that alternate universe Doctor Strange told me about – the one where Craig's death made Carmilla go nuts and terrorize the Bronx for nights on end. It was scary to think about. I had a bit of sense of what she was capable of. There was no doubt in my mind that, if Craig died, she would leave a trail of bodies in her wake just to get to Beck. And honestly, I wasn't so sure I'd try to stop her.

I wasn't even sure I wouldn't help her.

Carmilla took in a breath. "Okay, just stay here," she ordered. "I'm going to call up Kitty and Scott and tell them about this text and to see if they received it. Depending on how that conversation goes, we're going to have to get you suited up."

My eyes went a little wide. "…Suited up?"

"Yes, because depending on how that phone call goes, I'm going to try and see if I can get clearance for us to 'stretch our legs' a bit."

I nodded. "Okay."

Carmilla gave me a small smile before she turned and walked out of the room. I took a seat on Carmilla's bed. I sat in silence for some seconds. I then sighed.

"Never a dull moment," I muttered to myself.