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It’s not like Peter liked weaving. It was tedious, time consuming, and made his hands ache. It wasn’t difficult though, and it kept his body and his mind exhausted. He was too alone to not want exhaustion. It’s his punishment, he thinks. If he couldn’t save May, the least he can do is spend the rest of his life remembering.
Up, down, up, down, pull. Up, down, up, down, pull.
--*--*--
“Watch this!” Peter does a front roll, nearly bumping into the center table and sending a rattle to the lamp next to the couch. May looks at the clock. The clock nearly struck eleven p.m. and yet her seven year old nephew refused to go to bed.
“Peter Benjamin.” He pauses.
“What?”
“You need to go to bed.” Peter lets out a long whine, jumping on the couch. May glares at him.
“Why,” He says, dragging out the end. “There’s no school tomorrow.”
“Peter, do you remember the last time you went to bed late?” He stops, thinking for a moment.
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“But-”
“No.”
“But-” He finally notices the death glare, the one Ben lovingly nicknames the “evil step-mom”.
“Can I have a bedtime story?” If there’s one thing May has had to get used to, it’s Peter’s constant need for stories. Peter’s mind is constantly moving, observing, the sort of thing her pretentious sister would call calculating, something that would be concerningly harsh if Peter wasn’t being raised by May. The only way to get him to be still, to focus, is to make a story. To make a time-line, a thought process, behind every action. Thus, the only way to get him to sleep is to do the impossible: make a story so boring, that even Peter doesn’t want to follow the timeline.
“May?” Peter looks at her, pleading eyes and pouty lips, and oh, how can May say no to that?
“Ok.” She sighs, “Go brush your teeth and, I don’t know, poop or whatever you need to do.”
Peter giggles. “Poop.”
By the time Peter brushes, does his business, and nearly causes May a heart attack as he waves out the window to the neighborhood cat gang, the energy he had half an hour ago had not dissipated. She figures he gets it from Mary. She was always causing her mother a heart attack. She was always climbing up trees, over windows, never losing that reckless streak her whole life.
One time, when May was 7 and Mary was 12 she had found her perched on the fourth story of the fire escape in their apartment building dangling off the edge of the railing.
“What are you doing?” May had asked. Mary did a double take, settling into an annoyed stare.
“What do you think I’m doing?” She swung a leg over to the edge of the escape, the palms of her hand red with blisters, muscles clearly burning from her climbing, and pretty blue eyes blazing with adrenaline and passion.
“Why?”
“Because I,” Mary had said. “Am Arachne.”
--*--*--
Peter thinks his achilles heel was hubris. Of course, time has only corroded that. Every one he has ever loved is gone now. There’s no room for confidence. Hell, there’s barely room for overconfidence.
He remembers telling Tony that he was ready for more. Now, Peter doesn’t want to be more anymore. Peter wants to be sixteen again. There is nothing more he craves than nights at the lab, movies with May, there is nothing he wouldn’t give to look at MJ and Ned’s eyes and see anything but the sheer lack of recognition.
But he's Adam's hand outstretched, already high on the Sistine Chapel but he just can’t go higher. . He can never achieve diving perfection. He will always, always fall short. There is nothing he can change, and even if he could, he would ruin everything.
Peter turns his attention back to the loom. It’s tight. Too tight. There’s no room for mistakes.
Peter is snuggled into his blanket. May would never say this, but he’s always reminded her of a bunny. When he was born, he looked like a rat. He had large curious eyes and teeny tiny hands. May had only disclosed one of these observations to Mary. Right now, those large eyes are staring into May’s soul.
“Jesus Christ, Petey, you ever blink?” Peter snaps out of his anticipatory stupor and shakes his head.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She pats Peter’s blanket down. “You know, if you were ever replaced by an alien, I would ask two questions.”
Peter giggles and choruses with her. “Have you watched Star Wars? Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”
Their ritual. May has so far delayed explaining capitalism to the little ball of sunshine only because of his love of Ironman. They both dissolve into laughs and May tickles him, relishing in the sound of his pure glee.
“Ay, keep it down there, you nasty little snots!” Unfortunately the Boston-Irish accent of Ma-Margret, their downstairs neighbor, does little to quell their cackling. She’s too old anyways and spends most nights crashing to sleep with rock music. She’s always been a little odd.
Then May remembers she’s supposed to be putting him to sleep.
“So… What sort of story do you want to hear?
Peter pauses for a moment, little hands fiddling with the edge of the blanket.
“I want to hear a story about mom.” May freezes.
“What-What…sort of story?” She chuckles, the laugh sounding forced in her own ears.
“I… I want to know a story she liked?”
“Oh.” May takes a moment. “Yea.”
“Yea?” Peter brightens up.
“Yea, kiddo.”
Peter snuggles deep into his blanket. “I want to hear a story about a spider.”
--*--*--
Peter knows he is Spiderman. He chose it for a reason after all. It was his turn at playing god, no? His own hand in faith. He liked to think he was better than the hands of fate, if they existed. What motivation could they have in ruining others' lives? Taking their money, taking their blood, taking every inch of their life? He wasn’t going to let that happen. He was going to save someone, save everyone. Make the world a better place using the one gift he was given. He wanted to weave faith, make art from the sins of New York City.
But faith exists for a reason doesn’t it? And whoever tempts fate’s wraith will have it. Thus, his loom is too tight. Peter tries to weave the thread through it. It won’t go. Why won’t it go? Why can’t he finish this?
--*--*--
“Once upon a time, there was a woman named Arachne. Arachne was a poor girl from the city of Colophon, and she was the daughter of a dyer. Unfortunately, the dyers were very poor.”
“We’re very poor,” Peter adds sternly, with a childish air about him. May bit back a fond, sarcastic comment.
“Yes, we are. Anyways, Arachne needed to learn something to become rich. So she learned to weave.”
“What’s weaving?”
“It’s like when you make something out of threads.”
“Just threads?” Peter asks curiously. “But that’s nothing. You can’t make anything out of threads unless you make something else.”
“But you need cloth to sew, Pete. You have to make something before you add anything.”
“Oh. Ok.” He looks down at his shirt. “Was this woven?”
“Yea.”
“Something out of nothing.”
“Everything is made out of nothing. Everything but fate. Fate is not in our hands.” Peter nods solemnly. May knows he didn’t know what fate meant but she’ll wait for him to ask. He doesn’t.
“Arachne became very good at weaving. The best weaver in all of Greece, which to them, meant the whole world. Unfortunately, she grew arrogant. She began to brag that she was better than Athena, the goddess of weaving.”
--*--*--
Peter’s on a bridge. New York looks beautiful at dawn. The Hudson River is sparkling like diamonds and Peter thinks they look like how May’s eyes looked when she saw Ben. Of course, it had been several years since Peter had seen her eyes look that way. He had only seen her look like that once when he looked at Ben. It didn’t matter. He’ll meet her soon enough.
He stood. He jumped. But at the last moment, his web-shooter struck.
--*--*--
“So, Athena challenged her to a battle of the weaving.” Peter gasped.
“Like Ironman and War Machine?”
“No, Peter, the Iron Patriot,” she gives Peter a gentle glare, “and Ironman are friends.”
War shouldn’t be in the mouth of such a little boy.
“Yeah, but Ironman’s cooler.” Peter grumbled.
“So they began to weave. Unfortunately, Arachne was a bit cheeky, wasn’t she?”
“She was?”
“Yes. She began making fun of her dad. But to be fair, her dad sucked.”
“Really? Why?”
“...Don’t worry about it.”
“So she weaved and weaved and weaved. And she made the most beautiful tapestry she had ever made, even if it was a bit mean and a little silly. Unfortunately, Athena was mad. She was mad that someone was even better than her at weaving. And thus, she punished her for it.”
“But why? You can learn from someone better than you.”
May shrugged. “Some people are just like that, Pete. They only see competition. They never see love.”
“What did she do?”
“She ripped up her tapestry and hit her on the head.” Peter looked at May with horror.
“But that’s so,” he stuttered, struggling for words, “That’s so mean!”
“I know.”
“But gods are supposed to be good, right?”
“Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. They do what they believe is best.”
“How can best hurt so many people?”
“Because sometimes it’s what’s best for them.”
--*--*--
Peter has always done something for someone else. Friendly, neighborhood, spiderman right? Always there, always aiding, taking bullets, stabs, and punches for the next guy over. Just so someone else can live. Just so someone else can breathe.
But he wants to breathe too. He wants to take a breath, he wants to gasp for air.
--*--*--
“Athena felt bad though.”
“Good,” Peter said with utter conviction. “She should’ve.”
May clicked her tongue, half playfully. “Don’t tempt the gods, babe.”
Peter only grumbled in response.
“She made her into a spider.”
“A spider?” Peter wrinkled his nose. “Why a spider?”
“A spider can weave. And more importantly, now she could choose to do what she wanted. A spider weaves their own fate.”
“I want to weave my own fate. I want to be better than those gods.”
May looks at him. He’s gone through so much, her Peter. More than any child should. And yet, he persists.
“I’m sure you will, Peter. Goodnight, baby” She gets up, blowing kisses, and shuts the door. She lingers at the weight of his confession.
“I’m sure you will.”
--*--*--
Peter climbs up the side of the bridge. His cheeks are red and he’s crying. Sobbing, really, and the wind of the cold New York winter caresses his cheeks fondly.
He’s going to weave his own fate.