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Silk had learned a lot from her time undercover as a bad guy. For instance, when you’re being hunted by someone that knows your name, never go back to your own house. Don’t use a phone that isn’t going to be immediately discarded. Don’t take off your mask. Most importantly, only go to people that are on the same side of the law as you and are not looking to get out of a life of crime.
Good news: Silk knew the perfect person to lay low with.
Bad news: She was fairly sure that Black Cat would turn her in regardless.
Possibly even worse news: She had no idea who else to go to.
It was a testament to how badly she was injured that when she landed in front of Black Cat’s door, her leg buckled and she had to catch herself on the door itself to keep from falling over. Sure, Ironheart or Ironthreat or Iron Man or whatever that particular variation had called itself ultimately hadn’t been a match for her, but they’d come pretty close.
She knocked, praying that Cat was in a talkative mood and wouldn’t just slam the door in her face.
The door opened; she threw an arm out to stabilise herself on the doorframe, missed, and fell clean over the threshold into Black Cat’s penthouse.
“Jeez!” Felicia shouted, jumping out of the way. “What–oh my god.”
The way that her voice went from irritated to concerned gave Silk some fleeting hope. Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t immediately turn Silk over to the authorities hunting her. Black Cat probably still hated her, but maybe not enough to give her up to SHIELD. She tried to get up–and only managed to push her head and chest off the ground.
“Hey, Cat,” she struggled out, alongside a very, very weak laugh. “Been a while…”
“What happened to you?” Felicia asked, kneeling over her. Worry was lining her face.
Where would she even start? With the fact that the Avengers were fighting again and dragging everyone into it? With the fact that she was now persona non grata at SHIELD? The fact that she’d been ambushed and nearly shot out of the sky by SHIELD agents and someone in an Iron Man suit? “...a lot.”
“I can see that,” Cat muttered. She was wearing an all-black outfit, to no one’s surprise; tight black jeans and a plain black t-shirt. “Don’t move.”
One arm slid under Silk’s leg; another slid under her back. Being in Black Cat’s arms felt safer than it probably should’ve, considering this was the woman that had beat her bloody just months ago; Silk missed the feeling the moment that Cat set her down on the couch and turned back to close the door. Consciously, she knew that she was just loopy from the searing pain radiating from every single spot in her body, but subconsciously, she wanted to stay like that forever, safe in her arms.
When Felicia returned, she was holding a plastic medical kit, which she set down on the glass coffee table beside her and cracked open.
“Never thought I’d use this on you , of all people,” she muttered. Her words were loaded; not like a cargo truck heavy with boxes, but more like a gun with a full magazine.
The air was already tense, but now it was nearly suffocating; so many questions, so many apologies, so many unspoken and vitally important words lingered in the air, mixing with the scent of freshly-cooked steak wafting in from the kitchen.
How do you even start a conversation when the air’s made of gasoline and every word could be a spark?
Felicia wet a gauze pad with antibacterial spray and pressed it to Silk’s temple. It stung.
“Sorry about…” About betraying you, about lying to you, about needing to lie, about screwing up my chances with you, about everything. “...dropping in like this.”
Felicia’s hands paused. Her face was an impassive mask–not a good sign, given how animated she usually was.
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Could’ve gone home,” Felicia murmured. Silk shook her head.
“No. Not–” she winced as Felicia started cleaning a different wound on her face, “--not today. I don’t know why but SHIELD is after me, and they–ow–know where I live.”
Felicia didn’t reply, didn’t say anything, didn’t even react. She just tilted Silk’s head slightly to get a better angle at the cuts on her right temple.
“So…”
“So Silk is on the run from the law,” Felicia smirked. It was odd; she should’ve had venom in her smile, her voice. Enough venom to kill a rhino. There was still that little bit of venom, but it was mixed, diluted. Not enough to kill a spider.
“Yeah.” Silk swallowed, hard. Her jaw clenched and unclenched as a wave of pain made its way through her. “Do you… mind if I stay here? For a little bit?”
Judging from the momentary look of confusion that broke through Felicia’s mask of impassivity, that was not a question expected. “Why?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Avengers are fighting each other again.” Silk tried to shrug and winced as it aggravated her broken ribs. “And with SHIELD after me, I need somewhere to lie low.”
“Why’s SHIELD after you, of all people?” There was an unspoken accusation in there, but it was coupled with confusion; you betrayed me for them. Why’d they betray you?
Black Cat had no qualms with schadenfreude–especially when it was laced with hints of karma–but she wasn’t stupid. For SHIELD to turn on Silk, something must’ve gone seriously wrong.
“Couldn’t tell you.” Silk winced slightly as Felicia pressed a bandage to the cuts on her temple; she was fairly sure she’d also gotten a bruise there. The antibacterials on the padding hurt like fire pressed to bare skin.
“I always forget how much that spray stings.” The instant Silk spoke those words, she wanted to claw them back, rephrase them–
“You’d know a thing or two about that,” Felicia muttered. Silk bit back a curse directed at her own stupidity. Damn it, Silk.
“Cat, for… for what it’s worth. I’m sorry.”
“Save it. I don’t want to hear it.”
There was aggression in her tone, completely at odds with how gentle her hands were.
Neither of them spoke for a long, long moment.
When Felicia finally broke the silence, it was just a little bit too charged, too hasty, like she’d been waiting to ask for months. “Can I ask you something?”
Silk nodded.
“Why?”
There was nothing Silk wanted to do more than to dodge that specific question. She’d been dodging it for months, avoiding it just like she avoided the Black Cat.
She couldn’t dodge it now. Should she lie? Make up a nicer story?
Yeah, that’s a good idea, Cindy. Do exactly what got you into this mess. What a genius you are.
“...I wanted to find my parents,” she answered, slowly, deliberately, truthfully. “SHIELD said they had information that could help. If I wanted them to tell me, I needed to go undercover and join your gang.”
“So they extorted you,” Felicia replied, voice rising. “They extorted you into lying to me.”
There was anger tinging her voice, but it wasn’t directed at Silk. It was more like… like general rage at the world, frustration and resentment that had built up over decades from being screwed by circumstance again and again.
“Of course they did. Of course they did,” Felicia growled, voice laced with more venom than Scorpion’s stinging tail. “Why can’t it be simple for once? Why couldn’t you just be a two-faced bitch instead? Why does it have to be so fucking complicated?”
Silk felt more hurt by that than she probably should’ve, but Felicia wasn’t done.
“If it was just your job, then I could hate you and not feel guilty over it, but no. No, you had to be forced into it. Of course you did. You’re not cruel enough to play with me like that without being forced into it.” Felicia’s voice fell from near-shouting to near-whispering, just loud enough that it wasn’t breathy. “Black cat luck, yet-a-fucking-gain.”
Silk stayed silent, trying to process Felicia’s outburst bit-by-bit.
“Tell me it was at least worth it,” Felicia begged, looking right into Silk’s eyes–right into Cindy’s soul. “Tell me SHIELD found them for you.”
Silk shook her head. “I found them, but not because of SHIELD,” she answered. Felicia cursed.
“I should’ve known. SHIELD can’t do anything right.”
“They try,” Cindy protested.
“They fail,” Felicia shot back. “They’re useless goddamn failures and their only redeeming factor is that they brought you into my life.” She kept staring into Silk’s eyes. Her face wasn’t a mask anymore–now every emotion in her was laid bare and the result was so complex that Silk couldn’t tell them apart. “Was any of it real? Or was all of it just a lie for the sake of keeping your cover?”
Silk shook her head. “No, I… I only lied about becoming a bad guy. Everything else was real.”
Felicia nodded. She was hauling her emotions back under control, slowly but surely.
After a pause that felt like it took an eternity and a half to pass, the master thief sighed. “You can stay here until… whatever’s going on… blows over. After that… we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.”
She kept wiping away blood. A bandage wrapper crinkled as she prepared to press it to the cuts on Silk’s forehead.
“Thank you,” Silk murmured, and she didn’t just mean for the hospitality.
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it,” Felicia huffed. “All of this is against my better judgement.”
“So why do it?” Silk wondered aloud, wincing as Felicia pressed another bandage to another cut.
Felicia didn’t answer at first. Emotion danced across her face, twirling in her storm-filled eyes.
“Because…”
She sighed, and there was energy in it–anxiety and frustration mixed with a little bit of adrenaline.
Her hands ran down Silk’s sides, pressing gently. Her touch was tender. Rationally, Silk knew Felicia was just checking for broken bones–which she found when Felicia pressed just above her left side’s floating rib and she gasped in pain–but part of her, most of her, wanted it to be more than just that.
Felicia’s hands ran lower; Cindy groaned in pain as they graced over her shattered leg.
“I spent… months, trying to convince myself that you were just another traitor to excise, Silk,” Felicia finally said. “Months, trying to forget about you and move on, trying to ignore everything that happened between us and to us. Want to know the end result?” She nodded to the door. “The end result was I buried everything as deep as I could, pretended like it never happened, and lied to myself until I was convinced that you hated me.”
“I never hated you, Fel.”
“I know,” Felicia sighed. “That’s why I’m letting you stay here. I just… I’m sorry, okay? You deserved better than for me to, to… fuck you over and then pretend like I wasn’t the selfish bitch.”
A silence settled over the two; not like the charged, painful silence before, but now the sort of silence that came after a successful heist or a tough fight. A satisfied silence that said I needed to say that more than I realised.
“If it helps,” Cindy offered, “I have a therapist specifically for stuff like this, and it took me months to work through all of my feelings about betraying you, and I’m not even the one that got… you know… betrayed.”
“I could use a therapist, honestly,” Felicia muttered. “Except all of the ones I’ve looked into have been one-way tickets to being arrested because they’ll all snitch on me.”
“I’m, like, ninety percent sure that’s illegal.”
“Law doesn’t count for much when you’re on the wrong side of it.” Felicia got a dark look in her eyes. “Last time I tried to argue therapist confidentiality in court, SHIELD argued that because I’m on the supervillain registry, I don’t get those protections. They won.”
“That’s stupid.”
“And you wonder why I don’t like SHIELD.”
“Well,” Silk hummed, “I don’t wonder anymore.”
“You’ve taken your first step towards supervillainy,” Felicia smirked. “Look at you.”
“Don’t get too excited, Cat,” Silk fake-glared, but she was grinning under her mask. “I’m still firmly on the stopping-you side of the street.”
“You’re in no shape to stop anyone, Silky-smooth,” Felicia countered. Her face grew serious again. “Broken ribs, broken leg… which SHIELD agent specifically did this to you?”
“I don’t know their name,” Silk admitted. “Just that they looked like Iron Man.”
“I’ll gladly punch Tony Stark for you.”
“I don’t think it was actually Stark. They didn’t fight like him.”
“Then I’ll punch whoever stole his armour,” Felicia swore. “Nobody gets to hurt you this badly and get away scot-free.”
Silk shook her head. “Oh, they didn’t. Whoever it was came away from it looking worse than I did.”
“I’ll still punch them,” Felicia promised. “They deserve it, even if it got you to come to my door.”
Silk was grinning; Felicia could see the little self-assured smirk through her mask. “Felicia Hardy, are you flirting with me?”
She wanted to make a biting remark and she failed. Her voice dropped. She looked away.
“You deserve better than me,” she mumbled, voice barely an octave above a whisper.
Silk’s face went from self-assured teasing to concerned in the span of a microsecond. “...what?”
“You deserve better than me,” Felicia repeated. “You’re a good person, Silk. You deserve better than a bitch that convinced herself you were a two-faced liar that hated her just so she wouldn’t have to feel bad about beating you half to death because she was too damn selfish to consider that maybe she was the selfish bitch instead of you.”
Felicia wasn’t looking at her; maybe she wasn’t able to.
“Fel… it’s okay.”
“No.” Felicia looked back. “No, it isn’t. Instead of asking why or doing anything reasonable when you betrayed me I convinced myself you were a liar and tried to kill you, Silk. You deserve someone better than that.”
Silk fell silent.
“Fel…”
She paused, considered her next words.
“Come here.”
Felicia drew closer to Silk’s head as the spider-woman propped herself up.
“You took in an injured woman that betrayed you and nearly ruined your life and started treating her wounds. That’s not something a bad person does.” Silk cupped one hand around Felicia’s cheek. “You could’ve turned me away, handed me over to SHIELD, even killed me. Instead you carried me inside and started cleaning me up and dressing my cuts.”
Felicia didn’t protest. She looked like she wanted to, but she didn’t; even as guilt-riddled as she was, Felicia wasn’t stupid. Silk kept talking.
“You’re not a bad person, Fel. I wouldn’t have come here if I thought you were.” She paused, like she was considering her next words, before she added, “Even if I deserve a better person, I don’t want them. I didn’t fall in love with some… mysterious other person that’s you but with a code against killing. I fell in love with you.”
“...you love me?” Felicia whispered.
“Was it not obvious?” Silk murmured back. She leaned forwards. “Kiss me.”
Felicia hesitated. Her fingers pinched at the fabric of Silk’s mask. Cindy gave the barest nod.
The way they kissed was rough, messy, and tentative. It started chaste, shallow–and very quickly changed as Cindy’s tongue flicked across Felicia’s teeth and activated some hidden impulse in her brain that made her lean into the kiss and start duelling. A low growl in the back of Felicia’s throat made Cindy’s hair stand on end in the best possible way as she was pushed down until her back was flat against the couch, Felicia’s chest pressing against hers, hands wrapping around her back, grabbing at her shoulderblades to press them as close as humanly possible.
When they broke apart they were both out of breath. For a while they just stared at each other, smiling dopily, eyes heavy-lidded.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for that,” Silk murmured.
Felicia leaned forwards and kissed her again.