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“Iiiiit’s your friendly neighborhood Spider-man!”
She came crashing through the tree, knocking leaves and twigs to the ground, a small blonde girl with a handmade mask covering her face and both hands clinging to the rope she’d tied meticulously to the limb. Her stuffed bunny was wedged securely under one arm, the hapless victim, freshly rescued by the Amazing Spider-Man.
Both girl and bunny tumbled to the ground, the girl getting leaves in her hair, her bare elbows and the knees of her jeans becoming even more streaked with mud than they already were. She didn’t pause for a second, flipping her head up and looking around wildly, alert for more danger.
“My spider-sense is tingling!” she announced, and grabbed the bunny by one ear, looking around sharply and focusing on a hollow under a nearby tree trunk. She placed the animal there, as careful and gentle as she’d been careless with it before, bending down to look solemnly into its glassy black eyes.
“Stay here,” she admonished the toy. “And don’t make any noise. I have to go fight Doctor Octopus! He’s terrorizing New York City!”
And she dashed off again, to continue her neverending fight against crime.
That evening, things were different.
She sat at the dinner table quietly, staring down at her peas, taking care to keep completely silent and move as little as possible. Above her, battle raged. He - Jack, not Daddy, never Daddy - was drunk again. He was drunk, and angry, and was taking it out on everyone around him, the people here who were smaller and less powerful than him. The glass in his hand smashed against the table, splintered, and Cindy (never Mommy) flinched, a harsh, impotent anger flashing in her own eyes.
The girl closed her eyes, small hand gripping her fork tightly, and thought, trying to drown it all out. Peter Parker didn’t have parents either, just like her. He lived with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Uncle Ben and Aunt May were a lot nicer than Jack and Cindy, or Todd and Janelle, or any other of the numerous foster parents who had come before. They cared about Peter, just like they were his real parents.
And other things were different, too. Peter had superpowers, something that the girl would never have. She’d let a spider crawl up her arm once, hoping it would bite her, hoping that maybe - but it hadn’t, and finally the tickling had grown too much to bear and she’d shaken it off again, before it could even reach her elbow.
But superpowers weren’t the only way to get things done. She couldn’t swing from building to building like Peter could, but she could swing down from trees pretty well. And she could do other things, too. She could squeeze herself into tiny spaces, and stay quiet and still, moving through the house and hearing all sorts of things she probably wasn’t supposed to hear. She could open locks, even without a key. She could run and jump and had been practicing lifting heavy things, and while she would never be stronger than Jack, she’d walked rather than limped away from enough fights at school that most of the bigger kids had started leaving her alone.
Maybe someday, if she worked hard enough, she could have something like superpowers, too.
She grew up, a little. She got bigger. She got smarter. She developed other skills, and her lockpicking came into play for more than just sneaking into the rooms her foster parents had strictly designated as off-limits. She learned how to disguise herself, how to go unseen and take things from people without them ever noticing until she was far, far away.
Until she tried to take the watch from the man with silver hair and the long brown coat.
His arm flashed out like a snake striking, grabbing her wrist, and she cried out, startled and afraid. The gold watch was still clutched in her hand, and his eyes moved from it to her and back again, but he didn’t look angry. Instead, a slow smile stretched over his face.
“That was very good,” he murmured, and he looked at her again, the smile broadening. “Very good indeed. Anyone else, and you would have had me.” He crouched down, looking her in the eye. “What’s your name?”
She couldn’t tell him her real name; she was smart enough to know that. She’d never much liked her real name anyway. It seemed to change every other week, almost - the second half, anyway - and even the part that stayed the same never really seemed to fit her, as if it was someone else’s name, one that she was just borrowing.
She looked at the man, as solemn and serious as she ever was around grownups, and she blurted out the first name that came into her head.
“Parker.”
“Parker,” he repeated, and chuckled softly, standing and putting a hand on her shoulder. She craned her neck to watch as he stood, and when he put his hand on her shoulder she didn’t feel threatened at all. “I think we have a lot to learn from each other.”
She smiled.