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there’s a dead spider outside miles’ window.
he can see him from his bed, sleepless at night; he can see him so clearly, just as clearly as the way his voice had cracked under the weight of his injuries. the way peter parker had told him to go, not to wait for him, he’d be right behind him, only to get his last breath torn from his chest by fisk’s fatal blow.
there’s a dead spider outside miles’ window. it’s a billboard, it’s a graffiti, it’s a memorial, it’s a prayer by millions; it’s the world mourning peter parker. it’s mary jane, her knowing eyes looking at miles himself through the mask; it’s may, sitting inside the secret lab, her hands holding web shooters and spider drones and anything miles can imagine and doesn’t deserve from them.
there’s a dead spider there, miles sees, as he sneaks out the school dorms, fingers fiddling against the hem of the mask. there’s a dead spider only he can see. it’s red and blue, it’s light eyes unseeing, it’s blond hair stained crimson, it’s blue lips and broken flash drives. it’s a promise, destroying the collider; it’s a cough that had landed droplets of blood onto his jacket.
don’t let them see your face , peter had said. and miles hadn’t let anyone who mattered do so. he slides it on top of his face and the world makes a little more sense.
( don’t let them see your face , peter had said. the prowler stood before him, would have killed peter parker if not for fisk. the prowler stood before him, would have killed miles if not for peter. uncle aaron stood before him; he’s dead because of miles. you’re the best of us , he’d said. he would have killed peter parker if not for fisk. he let him paint and listened to him. he would have killed peter parker.)
he wonders, swinging through manhattan, if anyone else has dead spiders. he wonders if any other worlds have martyrs, young dead heroes, or maybe spiders that die of old, that die forgotten. he can’t help but wonder. he has to believe he’s not the only one at fault. he has to believe: maybe there’s other fallen men at someone else’s hands.
he only knows of peni’s father. in some universe, in the far future, peter parker’s robot suit sp//dr has a catastrophic failure and crushes him alive. in the far future, peni treats the machine that killed her father like a partner. in the far future, peni has no choice. in the far future, peni stands up regardless. no man tells her to do it, to save someone, to avenge him; she does those things because she wants to.
in some other universe, there’s a dead spider; tony stark thinks he sees it, right outside the ship’s window, but it’s just slipped through his fingers, turned into stardust, and the iron man can’t help but scream. in some other universe, there’s a dead spider; ben parker dons the mask as he beats a man to death and later visits his kid nephew’s grave. miles doesn’t know of these. they don’t know of his peter’s death either.
but the case is: there’s a dead spider outside miles’ room, and he sees it as he comes back in through the window. it’s tiny, and black, barely the size of his pinky, and yet it lays dead by his windowsill. miles almost doesn’t touch it.
“you need to go home,” he whispers at it.
he picks it up with an old receipt from his jacket’s pocket and places it on the school’s roof.
the heights tend to comfort miles, nowadays. the chilly winter breezes, the noises muffled by distance. he wonders: is it the same for all his people? do all spiders feel soothed by the night and the wind? do all spiders live for the thrill of the fall, barely missing the ground, only to rise again and repeat? did peter feel the same way?
he can only wonder. maybe he’ll ask gwen, someday, or peter b. he sure hopes it comforts this tiny one, wherever it might be now.
he leaves the spider and goes back inside.
but there’s still a dead spider outside miles’ window, and the glow of the neon billboard with his face haunts his sleep.