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You wanted to be cremated so we cremated you
and you wanted an adventure
so I ran
and I knew you wouldn’t catch me.
You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening
at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.- Richard Siken, “Straw House, Straw Dog”
Jefferson Davis dies, and Miles’ life falls apart.
He can’t eat, can’t sleep; the days following the funeral are murky and faded around the edges, and he’s half certain that none of this is even real. When he finally is able to sleep, he wakes up feeling dazed and disoriented because his dad should’ve woken him up, what time was it—and a pit will open in his chest and everything will hurt ten times over.
The rest feels like it happens slowly, but maybe it happens all at once.
Miles flunks out of Visions Academy. It’s not for a lack of trying—well, actually, it’s more that he doesn’t try at all. There’s nothing that can keep him in the halls of that school, not when it was his dad that wanted him there more than anything, and his time is better spent with his Uncle, anyways. He loses the scholarship, and when his mom seeks him out and demands to know why he’s doing this, why he’s throwing away everything they worked for, Miles will shut down.
“I can’t, mami. I just can’t do it.”
“But why, Miles? Your father and I—”
“I just. Can’t.”
His mother softens, then, her eyes taking on a sad quality that seems to linger with her most days, and Miles hates it. He lets her hold him, lets himself sink into his own grief for a brief moment, and is afraid that the guilt might swallow him whole. She whispers reassurances to him like they come for free, and Miles is back at his old school by the end of the week. It’s easier to skirt by his classes there, and his mom is less concerned with his grades and more so with ensuring they have a roof over their heads.
When it gets to be too much, when the extra hours aren’t lining their pockets with enough to pay the bills, Miles starts to see Uncle Aaron around a lot more. It makes him happy, in some weird, detached sense, that these two sides of his family are colliding—but it’s hard for it to feel like a family reunion when he knows the reason behind it (and when there’s a gaping hole where his father should be).
Finding his mom stifling her tears, shoulders shaking as she’s hunched over a pile of paperwork in the dead of night—that’s what sends Miles over the edge. He goes to Uncle Aaron with determination etched into his features, asking him if he knows any way that he could make some money to help out his mom, because nobody seems to want to hire a fourteen year old.
His Uncle hesitates, keeping his eyes trained away from Miles, deliberating on something for a long stretch of time.
“I got a gig you could try out.”
When Miles first kills, it goes a little something like this:
Wilson Fisk gives him a name, a place, and the promise of a generous sum of cash. He doesn’t give him a reason, and Miles thinks he’s a little glad that he doesn’t know the level of innocence this man may or may not have (if he knows Fisk, he must be bad, right? Right?).
Uncle Aaron goes with him. Dons his old suit, shadows him as he slinks his way through a crime-riddled New York, and his usual calming presence does nothing to slow Miles’ rapidly beating heart. There’s a ringing in his ears as he eases open the window of a dimly lit apartment, the low murmuring of a TV barely registering as it drifts through from another room. His steps feel too loud and his breath is coming too fast, but he creeps his way to the source of the sound anyways, halting at the sight of his target’s lit up frame reclining on the couch.
Miles unclenches his fist, and the mechanical hiss of the gauntlet draws the man’s eyes from the screen. They widen, his mouth opening to say something in fear, and Miles moves before he can think.
Miles towers over the man as he begs for his life, stringing together useless words around the hand squeezing his throat—Miles’ hand—and Miles is sick. It’s him or me, he thinks, It’s him or me, or rent this week, or food on the table.
He retracts his hand, and the man stutters for a moment before starting to choke out, “Thank you, thank you, man—”
The words falter into a gurgle, claws tearing into the soft tissue of his neck, and a spray of blood splatters against Miles’ visor. The guy reaches his hands up to the gash, clutching at the torn skin in stilted movements, and there’s red pouring from his fingers, his mouth, and Miles can’t tear his eyes away.
It’s seconds—minutes, maybe years before the ugly, wet noises fade, until his hands drop and his body slumps, and Miles is planets away. Vaguely, he can sense his own (shaking, sticky) hand reaching up to release his mask, and as the air hits his face he’s abruptly brought back down to earth. His vision suddenly narrows on the scene laid out in front of him, and, absurdly, he thinks about how hard this’ll be to clean up before leaning over and vomiting on the floor.
Saliva dribbles from his heaving mouth, mixing with the blood and bile collecting on the carpet, and Miles doesn’t think he can ever learn to forgive himself. The drip of hot, red liquid from his hand reverberates in his mind like a relentless metronome, and his eyes can’t see anything but the stern, disappointed frown of Jefferson Davis, and God, he thinks he might throw up again—
“Miles. You’re alright, man. Let’s get you home.”
And, right. Uncle Aaron is here, Uncle Aaron will take care of this, he’s done this before, he’s killed before (he always wanted to be more like his uncle), he taught him how to do this.
“Sorry, Uncle Aaron—”
“Hey, none of that. Everybody’s first goes a little something like this, ain’t nothing to be ashamed of. Lemme just clean up, get everything sorted, and we can bounce.”
The buzzing in his head hasn’t let up, only seems to get louder as the world blurs around him, and Miles loses track of time. The stack of cash Fisk slams into his palm some odd hours later is heavy and burdened, and his uncle will clap him on the back while he tries for an empty smile.
When he brings home a check from his ‘part-time job’, his mom will kiss him on the cheek and say, “Gracias, Miles. I’m so proud of you,” and Miles will feel some of his resentment ease, while a voice in his head screams she wouldn’t be proud if she knew what you had to do for it, you monster.
Miles asks his uncle if he’s got any more work lined up.
“Does it get easier?”
“Yeah, man, of course it does.”
“... How can you justify that, though? I keep tellin’ myself, he deserved it, he deserved it, but I can’t—my dad would—”
“Miles. Hey. Don’t start thinkin’ like that. My brother woulda been proud of you for helping out your mom, bottom line. This is a hard life, man, and you do what you gotta do.”
“He never wanted this for me.”
“... No, he didn’t.”
“... I miss him.”
“Me too, Miles. Me too.”
Life goes on. The world turns crueler—or maybe it always was this cruel and Miles just never saw it as it was. It doesn’t matter. The world is cruel, and so, in turn, is Miles.
It seems as though his life is defined by four simple truths: Miles loves his mom, loves his uncle, misses his dad, and is impassive towards his work. He’s good at what he does—doesn’t even hate doing it, anymore (doesn’t feel much of anything towards it, really)—and it gets them by, so. Nothing else is of importance to him. School is a joke, his life outside of the Prowler is practically non-existent; it’s no way to live, but at least he’s living.
His fifteenth birthday comes and goes, he tries to make time for his art (less than he should), he paints a mural for his dad, visits his grave and leaves with an I love you, you don’t have to say it back.
Sometimes, Miles thinks that it wasn’t supposed to be like this; that, at some point in the past, his life drifted off course and veered towards something vicious—turned him into something he was never meant to be. But maybe he’s wrong, and maybe this is just who he is, at his core. He doesn’t have the liberty, the privilege, to seek whatever moral righteousness he thought he once had.
Man, he really fucking misses his dad.
The first thing he thinks when he sees this—this poser, is: I would never have that stupid-ass hair. The second thing he thinks, as he’s perched up in the rafters and watching this… other him wake up, is: That is not me. This guy isn’t anything like me. The kid’s got a different accent, and he’s stumbling around his words, and everything about him is wrong. (Too much like he was, maybe, but it’s getting harder to remember that.)
Uncle Aaron is letting the kid talk, making a show of it, but Miles gets stuck on something he thought he heard—something about this kid’s dad, and that buzzing in his ears he hasn’t heard in a while starts to crescendo.
It’s all he can think about when he steps up to face this weird, fake Miles, who speaks too loud and wears every emotion plainly on his face, and he has to ask: “Your dad is still alive?”
“What?”
“Your father,” he sneers, “You said he’s still alive.”
Miles sees something like apprehension cross the kid’s face, but a quick, “Yeah,” comes out anyways, and there’s something pulled tight around Miles’ chest. It’s strange, to think that his dad is out there somewhere—somewhere feasible, if this Miles is any indication—and it feels like the scar tissue from that particular wound was just torn open again.
When this Other Miles sees his face, hears his name, a range of tumultuous expressions flicker across his face, his brows furrowing upward in what must be horror. And, worst of all, the kid’s scared. Of himself. Miles feels like there’s a metaphor there somewhere, before realizing that, yeah, this kid should be fucking scared.
He has the nerve to go on anyways, “If I don’t get home, our dad is gonna die.”
The knife is twisted further into Miles’ stomach, and this kid’s a fucking idiot. He’s already dead. “Your dad.”
Other Miles closes his eyes briefly, naked pain and desperation leaking from every fiber of his being, and he practically whispers, “Please. You have to let me go.”
Miles feels the icy-hot tendrils of jealousy and rage flare in his mind, because how dare this kid—and he thinks, with probably too much bitterness, why should he get what I don’t have?
Every ounce of his sympathy has been bled dry—has been for a while now—and as he stares into this fucked up mirror, his voice doesn’t shake.
“Why would I do that?”