Chapter Text
“I’m sorry, Pavitr. It was a canon event.”
Miguel’s words ring hollowly in Pavitr’s skull. He barely hears them, can barely make out anything through the echoey sand in his eyes and the ants in his palms and the tears in his ears.
No, wait. That isn’t quite right.
Is it?
Pavitr doesn’t know anymore. It doesn’t matter. He draws in a shuddering breath, his eyes trained unseeingly on the dirt.
The dirt that’s scuffed grimy and stinging on his knees, blood soaked in red flowers against the blue of his dhoti. Pavitr can feel the taste of it on his tongue. The coppery crimson tang of desperation, of begging and sobbing and choking on disbelieving horror. The devastation that ripped through twisted vocal cords in a scream that’s left him voiceless and hoarse. The tasteless bitter mouthful of ash that shares the dull gutter-stained grey and brown caked on his knees and feet.
Dirt scraped freely into his knees, down to his bones, like a souvenir from where he’d knelt holding her on the sharp-stoned road, heart in his mouth only to be chewed up and swallowed back down, blood pooling and mingling in the naala water around him.
Dirt and mud and soil and it’s all stained red, like a can of paint someone’s spilled, like a kumkum stain on a white sari that won’t quite wash off.
“Fuck d’you mean ‘canon event’?” Hobie bristles in front of him, for him, loud and brash and furious. Channelling the rage Pav can’t even seem to string together in two words. Demanding. Daring.
“That shite’s poppycock anyway, we already proved that. And even if it wasn’t, this isn’t s’posed to be it. It’s not supposed to be her.”
Hobie’s voice washes over him like alcohol over an open wound. Stinging, burning, cleansing, like vindication.
Pavitr lets his hair fall in his face, blocking it all out in a curtain of black, the curls tumbling free and unbound and he swallows down dry bile as he feels the loss of the strip of cloth no longer there to hold it back.
“Hobart –” the stern voice that means nothing sighs.
“Don’t Hobart them.” Gwen shouts hotly, her frustration palpable and sharp enough to peel teeth, “You’re not pulling this shit again, Miguel, don’t canon event us and find a fucking solution, we have to fix this –”
“Gwen,” Peter tries gently, and she recoils from his placating hands.
“Don’t.”
“Okay, sorry, sorry. But you gotta understand, Gwen, Hobie, Pav – Pavitr, come on, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, kid, this shouldn’t have happened. She should be – I’m sorry, fuck, it’s not fair. Miguel isn’t trying to excuse it either. But you know, right? You know there’s no fixing this.”
Does he? Does Pavitr know it? Does Pavitr know anything, anymore?
Had he ever known anything that mattered at all?
He thought he knew it all. Pav always thought so fucking highly of himself, he thought he knew everything, had seen everything, could do everything, like the idiot that he was. But that was all bullshit, wasn’t it? All hollow fantasies sketched out with chalk, and now that’s all swept into the dirt on his knees and the blood on his hands, and he’s left choking on the crumbled dust.
It’s all crushed to nothing in one fell swoop, and he’s left hollow. Not hollow like wood, not clean and cold. Hollow like a body that’s had all its organs scooped out roughly with hungry hands, bloody and raw and burning.
What knowledge is even left in him, in his hollowness, for him to know?
All Pav knows is the pain radiating through his body like a sun, like his heart is burning up inside him and scorching everything in its wake. All he knows is the loss, white hot and searing, the blood still staining his hands, the blood that had drenched Maya Aunty’s silver hair crimson as he held her as she – as she –
A crumb of rubble falls from his curtain of hair as he ruffles it with a harsh, heaving breath.
He just barely registers the next words being spoken around him, like he’s not even in the room. He might as well not be. He feels too there already, raw and pulsing like an exposed nerve, and yet a world away.
“Even if it is a canon event – and it’s not, okay, Miguel, it’s fucking not – but let’s just say for argument’s sake it is. What then?” Miles grits out through his teeth, the calmest of all of them, and Pav can feel the way he shifts to stand next to Pav like he wants to shield him or lend him his strength or something, “What then? Come on, there has to be something we can do. We have to be able to do something, this isn’t fair.”
“It never is.” Miguel sounds genuinely sad remorseful, resigned, when he says it. Pav can’t find it in himself to give a shit. “It never is, not with who we are, with what we do. People get hurt, even those we love. Especially those we love. We can’t save everyone. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do.”
Nothing.
So that’s it then.
Pav feels the cold finality slam into place like prison bars, and there’s a moment where it’s hard to breathe around the cold metal, but it’s gone just as quickly.
So that’s it then. Nothing. There’s nothing they can do.
He wants to cry.
“Please, Spider-Man, mere bhateeje ko – my baby, tell him –”
He wants to die.
“Mere Pavitr ko batana, that I love him, I love him so much. Please…”
I’m right here, the words on the tip of his tongue, ripped out of his throat, Maya Aunty, it’s me, it’s Pavitr, please, please mat jao, main aapke bina kya karunga, I love you, I need you, Maya Aunty please –
But she was gone before he could even try.
Because apparently there was nothing they could fucking do.
He’s vaguely aware that the conversation’s resuming around him, howling like waves he could drown in, Miguel’s regretful monotone and Gwen’s indignation and Miles grasping hopelessly at straws, but it doesn’t –
None of it –
None of it means anything.
It’s a language Pav couldn’t decipher if he tried. It doesn’t matter.
Everyone is slinging explanations, sorrow, fury, frustration, denial, everything, around him, none of them directed at him, and Pavitr wonders sort of distantly if they’re waiting for him to say something, to do something for them to bounce reactions off of. Maybe comfort him if he cries, maybe hold his shaking shoulders if he screams. He should say something, shouldn’t he? This is all about him. The eye of the hurricane, still and quiet. It’s his tragedy. His loss.
Pav, who can’t even bring himself to look through his hair at them.
He tries to swallow. It doesn’t work. He doesn’t think there’s anything left in his body to swallow with.
He should say something, but Pavitr finds he can’t be bothered to care anymore. What words are even left to say?
Words mean nothing.
The storm rages around him.
Pavitr gets up and leaves.
His hands shake a lot more when there’s no one to watch.
The air is thinner, easier to breathe in out here, and he gasps it into his lungs like it’s tar.
Pav had only made it a few steps out of Miguel’s lair, into the hallway, before it all caught up with him.
Maya Aunty is dead.
It doesn’t feel real.
It makes him want to vomit.
His body tries. It retches of its own accord, but there’ nothing to vomit up. He hacks a strangled cough, echoing through the empty hall, and heaves a dry sob instead.
“Rajma chawal chalega for lunch?” Maya Aunty called through the house, rummaging around for her purse and keys, empty grocery bag full of more empty grocery bags hanging from her shoulder.
“Chalega nahi, daudega.” Pav had called back, looking up from his textbooks and unhunching his posture for the first time in hours, or possibly days, to smile brightly at her. “You make the best rajma chawal in the world, how can I say no, Aunty?”
“Haan haan, pata nahi kya mujhe? Tu toh mujhse kahan, rajma chawal se pyaar karta hai.” She rolled her eyes fondly, “Chalo, I’ll be back in an hour or two, theeke, beta? Bye!”
“Arre are ruko na! Wait!” Pavitr vaulted over the table, almost knocking the water pot over, and leaped over to her.
“Bol jaldi, mujhe aake khana banana bhi hai, and then I promised Shashi I would help her prepare for tomorrow’s keertan, and I need to tie the pomegranates on the tree before the birds get them this year too, and – arre!”
Maya Aunty’s list tapered off into a laugh as Pavitr threw his arms around her in a crushing hug, kissing her on the cheek, mindful of her left shoulder that had been aching for the past few weeks even with his massaging.
“Uff, Pavi.” She laughed, allowing his affection for a full minute, hugging him back, before shaking him off like a dog, “Kya, buddhu, you’re like a leech. Did I tell you about the leeches when I lived in Shimla? Just like them, all clingy and huggy-huggy.”
“You’re the best, Maya Aunty, that’s why.” Pavitr grinned, happiness coursing through him the way it always did when she let him hug her for longer each time. Maya Aunty had always been a bit strict and traditional, reserved with physical affection, but five years living with her and now she finally accepted and even returned his hugs.
“Haan haan, that’s what you always say.” She sniffed, patting him on the cheek with a soft smile regardless.
“Because it’s always true.”
“Chal, nalayak, go and study. I’ll be back, and you can help me grate the carrots for halwa, and I can tell you all about Rashmi’s new daamaat’s gossip, okay?” there was a twinkle in her eye that promised an afternoon anything but boring, and Pavitr saluted and took a more sedate route back to his books, scattered on the dining table because his own room couldn’t contain the sheer amount of them anymore.
“Bye bye, Maya Aunty! Khayal rakhna!”
Khayal rakhna.
Take care.
Those had been his last words to her, and they club him over the head and leave him dizzy, nauseous.
How, how had that only been this morning?
How is she gone, but he’s still here, still breathing?
What if he hadn’t looked, what then? Hadn’t turned to peer over his shoulder at the last moment, distracted by his Spidey-sense going completely ballistic in the middle of a fight with Doc Ock, and seen a heartstoppingly familiar grocery bag peeking out from under a car. Hadn’t abandoned the villain to his friends and scrambled to turn over the car instead, hadn’t fallen to his knees in the pooling gutter water, mud caking Maya Aunty’s regal face and red dupatta and the red that was dripping out of a gash on her head and spattered across her body, darker than the scarlet of her salwar kameez. Hadn’t been there to hold her, his brain and heart and everything all stopping at once.
Her eyes had been unfocused when she’d looked at him, but they softened as she traced out the patterns of his mask, and a rat made off with a cabbage spilled out of her grocery bags in his periphery.
Pavitr felt sickness settle like rot in his gut as she blinked dazedly and rasped out hoarse words.
“Spider-Man…”
Something, something, he’d tried to say something, but everything was frozen and he couldn’t find the words the only time they would have mattered.
“Spider-Man, tu jug jug jeena, beta. Ye teri galti nahi hai.”
What? He’d wanted to ask, what are you talking about? You’re going to be fine, this is a dream, a nightmare, this can’t be real, stop talking like that, please –
“Pavitr.” He could see the moment the thought struck her, the sluggishness dispelled from her eyes into something sharp and aware. Pain settled like a shroud over Maya Aunty’s face, set in her wrinkles, and tears fell and mingled pink with blood when she choked out, “My nephew, my baby, oh bhagwan…”
I’m here.
He was lightheaded and everything seems too slow, his body refusing to move and do anything, but he’s here, why does she sound so lost, I’m here.
“Mera Pavitr,” Her thin chest heaved with a sob, more crimson staining her clothes as Pavitr cradled her head, tried to make sense of it all, why couldn’t he say anything, “I don’t want to go, I’m all he has, uski main hi hoon, please, please, tu toh uski raksha karna Spider-Man…”
No, no no, this can’t be happening, this can’t –
Pav’s head snapped up, and he wanted to scream, to call for help, to do something to fix this because he couldn’t let it happen. But his body refused point blank.
Refused, like it knew what was happening, had already accepted it, like it wanted him to sit in it next to her. At least be there. At least hold her.
A hand, slick with something warm and sticky and oh god so red, wrapped itself weakly around his, the pulse fluttering madly like a guttering candle. He looked down, his desperation only heightened at the familiar hazel of her eyes glazed and distant, the firm set of her lip wobbly and weak, softer than it should ever be, nothing like his sharp, severe Maya Aunty.
“Please, Spider-Man, mere bhateeje ko – my baby, tell him –”
No. No, no, no, no no no, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, why isn’t anyone doing anything, this ISN’T HAPPENING –
She doesn’t know.
It hit him then, fuck, his mask was still on too, she didn’t know it was him, it was him, Pavitr, next to her, it’s him, don’t go, please –
He tried to speak, tied to say something, but all that came out was the barest wordless croak, and Maya Aunty grunted in pain as she held his hand tighter, fiercer,
“Mere Pavitr ko batana, that I love him, I love him so much. Please…”
Her fingers gripped his hand bloodlessly tight, and he squeezed back like he could hold her on to life through it, please, please, I’m right here, I’m right here, Maya Aunty, it’s me, it’s Pavitr, please, please mat jao, main aapke bina kya karunga, I love you, I need you, Maya Aunty please –
The hand went slack and those eyes went dull.
And Pavitr blinked dazedly for a few seconds, time slowing to a halt before it sped up and he realized how short it had all been, barely even a minute, and the roaring of his pulse crashed in his ears.
And then he clutched her to his chest and bled out and screamed.
His mouth opens now in a silent scream, and he scrabbles at the wall like a lifeline, and it’s smooth and unyielding and he doubles over, hand tight around his mouth in an attempt to stop a sound from escaping that doesn’t even exist anymore. The pristine floor is soiled with the dirt that his bare feet h ad tracked behind him, and his knees bear it too, and he stares like a broken record at the red-stained dirt and tries to breathe.
What if he hadn’t looked?
Would he have just waltzed home, then, unknowing and uncaring, and waited and waited and waited into afternoon and evening and night before realizing something was wrong, realizing Maya Aunty was never coming back?
Would he have died there too, Doc Ock’s tentacles just barely missing a fatal blow, scraping his head and snapping his blue headband off instead? Pavitr had just gone fully numb as he curled around Maya Aunty’s unmoving body and forgetting how to move, until Hobie landed next to him and heaved them both up and swung them straight through a portal.
Is it bad that he almost wishes he had?
Pavitr’s fingers find themselves tangled in his hair, somewhere between pulling and raking, and he grips at it to tether him.
“Pav, sunshine,” a hand skims Pav’s shoulder gently, familiar touch that must be imprinted into his bones, and he leans into it instinctively. Hobie surges forward immediately like the permission unbound them, their hands steady on Pav’s shoulders, arms wrapped around his ribs and holding his fragile body together, chin tucking Pavitr’s head into their chest and he crumples into it. “I’ve got you, love, Pavitr, I’ve got you.”
Their voice is warm and soft and it rumbles against Pav’s skin, and he soaks it in, trembling noiselessly with tears that won’t come. Hobie is kind and solid and they hold him like they know they’re all that’s keeping him from falling apart.
It’s a small eternity where Pav burns and Hobie lets him scorch them, their heartbeat against his ear the only thing keeping him in one piece while the fire ravages his insides. It’s a small eternity when Pav finally pulls away, arms coiled tight around himself, his eyes dry and red and still burning, curls of dusty black pooling in his vision like a starless sky.
“Th – thanks.”
It’s his first word in what feels like hours – it’s not even been one hour – and his voice is small, like a lost kid looking for his parents in a crowded sabzi mandi, when he says them.
“Don’ say that.” Hobie says softly, their hands coming to rest on Pav’s folded arms like they don’t want to let him go, “I’m here, Pavi. Always.”
You’re not her.
The words are cruel and he would have regretted them and Pav swallows them down harshly.
“Yeah.” He nods instead. He’s glad Hobie’s here to anchor him. Really.
It’s not enough. Not against the tidal wave of rage and pain and the sorrow that isn’t quite here yet.
“Sunshine,” Hobie’s hand is so warm, so gentle, when he cups Pavitr’s cheek, and he lets his eyes squeeze shut as he presses into it, “You don’ have to”
“What?” he blinks at Hobie, and finds their eyes sincere and brows creased, pained, looking at him, and closes his eyes against it again before it burrows too deep into his chest.
“You don’t have to hold it together,” they reel him in closer, secure, and Pavitr would feel claustrophobic maybe if he could find it in himself to feel anything at all except fire right now, “Please. You can cry, love, or scream, or break something or scratch or – whatever you need, Pavitr. You don’ have to hold back. Least of all now.”
Oh. Right.
Yeah, Pav’s brain connects the dots like fractured train tracks, right, he’s heard this before. Hobie always does this. Gives him the space to cry when he’s sad, to be mad when he’s mad. Always seems to have a sixth sense for when Pav’s hiding upset behind smiles, too worried about hurting someone or being petty to let himself feel it. Holds him through that, too, bears his tears and his yelling and his rambles and play-fights him when he can’t get the blood rushing any way else.
Hobie’s trying to do that now, too. Trying to give him the space to vent out his grief, his upset, to scream instead of the silence choking him in that room, in the – since. Since.
Pavitr doesn’t know how to explain that he doesn’t have anything to vent. No words that could hold it all within their confines, all the rage and the hollowness and the ache of it. No tears to wash out the fire licking up his ribs till they scorch the hair in his eyes to bits.
He shrugs instead.
“I don’t…” he tries. It falls flat. He curls inward, and his eyes fall to the dirt on his knees. Grimy and sharp and red.
“Iss mitti ko maathe se chumke, maine zindagi mein har ladai sachchai aur samman se ladi hai.” He says quietly, just above a breath, “Lekin meri zindagi ki ashtiyon ko issi mitti mein milne se, na sachchai ne roka, na samman ne.”
Pav can feel the confusion in the twitch of Hobie’s fingers. He doesn’t know how to explain it to them.
Maybe even he doesn’t quite know what he means. Maybe the words surprise even him. Maybe they don’t.
After all, what does Pavitr know?
No, that’s a lie. Somewhere, some part of him knows exactly what he means.
“’Kay,” Hobie’s hands leave his shoulders, and for a split second Pavitr’s heart almost stops, the loss of it leaving him cold, please don’t go.
Hobie doesn’t. They just search through their pockets, until they find what they’re looking for.
“I found this for you, by the way. Thought you’d want it.”
The strip of blue is bright against their palm as they hold it out to Pavitr. He almost doesn’t register what it is at first. When he does, the urge to cry (and the goddamned inability to do so) are renewed.
“It’s… special, innit?” Hobie smiles sadly.
You don’t even know. Pav wants to say.
“Thank you so much.” He chokes out.
The material is soft and fuzzy and familiar in his hands when he takes it, his bright blue headband that he’s kept and worn every single day all these years, all five years since he was thirteen and Maya Aunty got it for him. He’d been new in her and Bhim Uncle’s household then, their wide-eyed, traumatized nephew turned out of his home for being a boy when he was supposed to be a girl and turning up at their doorstep with nothing but a few books to his name. It had taken her longer to come around to accepting him for who he was than it had taken Bhim Uncle, but the blue headband, simple and plain and the elastic not even that high quality, had been the first thing she bought for him that she wasn’t obligated to out of a caretaker’s duty. The first gift between him and Maya Aunty, with their years of love and being the only family out there for each other, and he’d worn it faithfully every day.
He thought he’d lost it forever, today. Doc Ock had ripped it right off in lieu of his head while he knelt next to Maya Aunty. There hadn’t been any time to go back, it’s impossible that it’s here now, in his hands, and it’s hard to breathe with how choked up he is but he’s holding it, this piece of hers, of theirs. But of course, Hobie takes ‘impossible’ as more an encouragement than anything else.
Pavitr runs the cloth everently through his fingers, it’s really, there, the same as ever, until –
His fingers falter as they trace an end. An end that shouldn’t be there in what’s supposed to be a closed loop.
“It snapped, though. ‘m sorry.”
The headband snapped. Ripped down the seam so it’s more a ribbon than anything now, but.
But it’s there.
A lump rises in Pavitr’s throat, too hot, too big to breathe around, let alone speak.
He crashes unceremoniously into Hobie’s arms instead. Hobie holds him.
Pavitr doesn’t cry. All he can do is burn, and soil everything he touches with the dirt and the blood he carries with him.
The guilt eats him whole and spits him back out, and he says a hasty goodbye and runs when it’s through with him.
They didn’t leave her there, on that sewer-burst, destroyed battlefield of a road. That’s the most he can ask for, isn’t it?
Pavitr heaves himself into the chair next to the table where Maya Aunty is lying, no cloth to cover her lifeless face or unseeing gaze. He gently closes her eyes, and her skin is so cold it almost thaws his fire. The smell of dried sewage and blood has mixed with the growing smell of decay, but Pavitr doesn’t care.
It’s one of the many small, nondescript rooms in HQ, where Pavitr had laid her down before he’d been swept up in Hobie and Gwen and Miles’ flow to go yell at Miguel, too numb to even insist on holding on and staying with her properly.
They’re all still there, probably, laying into him as if it will change anything.
He’s the most pathetic out of all of them, isn’t he, just taking it and accepting that there’s nothing to do to fix this? It’s bad, isn’t it, that for all his hollowness, all his burning, he can’t direct it to actually do something, do anything but go with it?
There’s a fury building in his stomach, festering like an infection, and maybe that is all he has to say for himself. It’s better than meaningless words, anyway.
Pavitr tucks the blue headband into his red-spattered dhoti, before reaching out to touch Maya Aunty’s hand. It’s cold and stiff with rigor mortis, but it’s shaped to curl around his fingers nonetheless. The ache stabs through him sharply as he remembers why her hand is moulded to hold his.
“Main hoon idhar, Maya Aunty.” He whispers shakily, “I love you so much. I didn’t say it enough, ever, but thank you, thank you for loving me.”
There’s dried blood and dirt on both their hands, and he squeezes her hand tighter, even though he knows, he knows she won’t squeeze back.
A spot of wetness forms on their entwined fingers. Pav blinks at it, and two more drops fall, little circles of dampness.
His vision is blurry and hot and he finally realizes the salt in his mouth isn’t imagined.
Pavitr bows his head over Maya Aunty, clutching desperately at her cold hand, her shoulders shaking as he sobs; loud, full-body sobs, torn raw out of his chest, uncontrollable and hot and ugly.
“Aap waapis nahi aa sakte. I know you can’t come back.” He chokes out, “I know. Par main aapke saath aa sakta hoon. I can come with you, Maya Aunty, hum saath chalenge. Please, aapke bina main kya karunga, take me with you, please…”
Silence answers him, cold and unfeeling. A wounded noise claws its way out of his chest, swallowed by the echoing silence too.
“Please, akele mujhe chhodke mat jao. Main aapke saath chalunga, I’m so sorry, ye sab meri galti hai, mujhe chhodke mat jao, mai kya karunga aapke bina Maya Aunty? Please akele mat jao, main saath chalunga, ye sab meri – meri galti – hao, ple – please I’m so – I’m so, so sorry – I’m sorry –”
Words are too hard to form, easier sobbed out in a riot of heated salt and cold, cold blood.
“I’m sorry – sor – sorry -, please, I’m so – so fucking sorry –”
Words mean nothing, anyway. They won’t bring her back. They won’t change what he’s done.
First Bhim Uncle, and now Maya Aunty.
No one left for him anymore, nothing left but the dirt. No one, no pure, beautiful thing is safe from him. Everything he touches is ruined, his love like a rot, burning it all to ashes and dust mixed into the soil on his knees.
The filthy water on her waist isn’t completely dried yet, but it is cold against Pav’s forehead as he drops it on the table, too weak to hold his heavy head up as he cries, heartbroken sounds screamed into his muddied, bloodied forearms. He cries and chokes on it until he can’t anymore, until he burns himself out on it and trembles with softer sobs, the bone-wracking ache like a physical fever. His hair spills softly over her kameez, the black stark against the red, and his hands ache like they’re clutching ice instead of someone he’s loved for as long as he can remember.
Pavitr’s eyes droop shut without this permission, and he rests his head on Maya Aunty’s lap and cries himself to sleep one last time, a small boy of thirteen, rankling from soiled knees scraped in a particularly nasty fall in the verandah.