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The city looks different in daylight.
Trinity crouches on the edge of a five-story parking structure overlooking a stretch of highway where traffic moves in steady ribbons of steel and glass. The sky above Pittsburgh is pale blue, thin clouds dragging slowly across it like stretched cotton. It’s quieter up here than it ever is at night—less mystery, fewer shadows.
Daytime vigilantism, she has learned, is mostly boredom punctuated by bursts of chaos.
She rolls her shoulders, the dark navy suit stretching easily across her back. Dennis had been right about the flexibility. The material moves when she moves, breathes with her, the yellow webbing stitched along the arms catching sunlight when she shifts.
It still feels strange. A good strange, though.
Below her, a horn blares. Then another.
The sound is sharp enough that Trinity turns instinctively toward the highway ramp.
Something metallic screams. A violent crunch of steel echoes across the overpass. Then the world erupts into noise.
Brakes. Shattering glass. The hollow boom of one vehicle slamming into another. A chain reaction ripples down the traffic lane until a dozen cars grind to a halt in a jagged, smoking line.
For a second there is stunned silence that’s somehow louder than everything that came before it. It takes only another second for people to start screaming.
Trinity’s body is already moving.
She fires a webline to the lamppost across the street and launches forward into a free fall. The wind tears past her mask as she swings down toward the wreckage, her heart thrumming in her chest as she plots a quick plan of attack.
The pileup sprawls across four lanes of traffic, twisted metal, broken windows and windshields, and cracked plastic scattered across the concrete. Trinity counts at least five cars involved. One black coupe is flipped onto its side, the roof pressed against the center median like it skidded to a stop there. A white lifted pickup truck is crumpled into the rear of an oversized SUV, hood folded like paper, while another SUV sits wedged halfway on its bed. Then there’s the green minivan that looks like it was hit from behind, spun, and then t-boned as it sits perpendicular to the stopped traffic.
Some drivers, including those involved and those who bore witness, stumble from their cars in shock. Others remain trapped.
Gasoline fumes hang in the air. The morning sun shines down on the rush hour traffic now at a standstill of violence and tragedy. More than one person is shouting and even more are crying.
Trinity lands in the middle of it all.
She knows there’s more. She could hear more cars scraping against one another, more brakes screeching, more people yelling as she swung into the fray. But she has to start somewhere, and this is where she landed.
“Okay,” she mutters under her breath. Her brain flips into ED mode, re-oriented into something half-Trinity and half-Spider-Woman. She needs to think scene safety. She needs to remember ABCs. Airway. Breathing. Circulation.
She moves quickly through the stalled but intact vehicles, climbing over some and sidestepping between others.
“You!” she calls to a man standing dazed beside his obnoxiously red convertible. “Call 911. Tell them there’s been a multi-vehicle collision, northbound ramp. Multiple injuries.”
He nods frantically, jumping to the task he’s been given.
Trinity sprints to the overturned coupe first, leaping to the upturned side and peering through the passenger side window. Inside, a woman groans weakly, blood running down the side of her forehead.
“Hey,” Trinity says gently.
The woman blinks up at the glowing yellow lenses. “Am I dreaming?” she asks, her eyes not quite focused on anything in particular. She brings her hand to her temple, pressing four fingers into the warm and sticky crimson there, but it clearly doesn’t register when she pulls them away and sees red. “Am I… dreaming?” she repeats.
“Maybe,” Trinity says. “But let’s get you out of here first.”
She webs the undercarriage of the car to the concrete barrier to stabilize it before bracing one hand against the doorframe. She pulls, relying on whatever spider ability it is that lets her cling to walls and ceilings. Slowly, eventually, the metal bends just enough for her to pry the door open with her fingers.
The woman stares. “I don’t think that’s… is that normal?”
“Adrenaline,” Trinity replies automatically, not that it makes any sense in the context of using her hand like a suction cup (but she also doesn’t have time to explain being bitten by a genetically modified spider and the woman is likely severely concussed anyways).
She dangles into the car from above, reaching for the woman and holding tight as she unbuckles the seatbelt. It’s a little trickier to lift the woman free from the wreckage without jostling her more than Trinity would like, but her options are limited. She carries her across the lanes to the shoulder, setting her down as carefully as she can.
“Stay here,” she instructs, though she doubts the woman could wander off even if she wanted to.
Across the pileup, someone screams, “My leg! I can’t move!”
Trinity turns to see a man pinned halfway inside the white truck, his leg trapped beneath the crushed steering column. The front of the vehicle is twisted into a jagged cage of steel where it collided with the back of the SUV.
Before she rushes to the next victim, she calls out to another driver nearby, who’s already trying to help others. “Hey! If they can walk, send them that way— back towards the stopped traffic. Away from the crash.”
She points to the woman she just freed from the black coupe. “If they can’t walk, get them over to the shoulder by her. Don’t leave anyone in the lanes.”
“Uh. Right! Sure!” he says, hurrying to relay the instructions and recruit others to the cause.
Trinity turns her attention back to the guy in the truck, rushing towards him. The truck is lifted high enough that she can assess the damage without having to kneel. “Can you feel your toes?” she asks him.
“I.. yeah,” he groans. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Good,” she says, nodding.
She has to take him at his word because she can’t see for shit under the wreckage that remains of the front of the truck. Her eyes scan the steering column pressing downwards onto his leg and what is left of its hood.
She jumps onto the roof, bracing one foot there and the other on a stable sliver of the cowl near the side driver side mirror. Reaching into the car, she grips the steering wheel, shifting her weight while trying to lift the column. Steel groans as she pulls; it hasn’t budged an inch.
Trinity tries to readjust her footing, still trying to wrench the column upwards enough to free the guy. Her foot slips and something sharp slices across her thigh. Pain flares, and she bites back a harsh, “Fuck!”
There’s nothing to do about it, right now. This guy needs her help, and so do dozens of others still. She shoves the pain aside, far into the corner of her mind labeled ‘maybe deal with later’.
“Okay,” she says through her teeth. She finds her footing again, and with another yank, she drags the column upward enough for the man to stumble sideways out of the cab, his leg mangled but finally free. Another bystander catches him before he can topple to the ground and both of them stare at her with wide, shocked eyes.
“Holy—” the truck’s driver stutters.
“Go sit over there,” she interrupts, pointing to the shoulder of the road where even more victims sit bleeding or worryingly lay prone.
She jogs over to the makeshift triage, taking in the walking injured who have made it over here.
People clutching bleeding arms. A man with a clearly broken wrist. Another sitting with a dazed look, blood matting his hair. Nearby, a woman lies supine. Her breathing is wrong, and a bystander has both hands to a wound that won’t stop soaking through the balled up jacket pressed there.
Unfortunately, Trinity knows this isn’t even the worst of it; those people are still in their vehicles, trapped, pinned, or too hurt to crawl out.
Sirens sound in the distance, and a sense of relief washes over Trinity. Help is coming. The wails of the ambulances grow louder and closer until they stop and it’s definitely nowhere close to here.
Trinity drags herself to the top of a semi-truck, hopping onto the trailer to look over the sprawling mess of the pileup. The highway stretches out in a solid line of trapped cars, bumper-to-bumper with no gaps, no shoulder wide enough to slip through. Even still, half a mile back, she can see the flash of lights —ambulances, fire engines— parked in a cluster with nowhere to go.
“Great,” she mutters.
She takes a steadying breath before sprinting towards the tail end of the trailer, firing a webline that anchors somewhere ahead. She doesn’t even look, just yanks herself across the gap between multiple cars. She lands on the back of another pickup truck and keeps going.
“Stay on the shoulder!” she shouts as she passes, pointing without slowing. “If you can walk, keep moving back away from the crash!”
A woman reaches for her as she goes by. “My wife—” She gestures towards the woman sitting in the driver’s seat with a bleeding cut just above her left eye.
“Put pressure on it,” Trinity fires back, already moving. “Don’t let up. Help is coming.”
She hits the side of a semi, fingers catching the edge of the trailer. One quick pull and she’s on top, rushing the length of it like before. From up here she can see the line of red stretching ahead, the flashing lights still too far.
Trinity leaps. A webline shoots forward, latching onto the frame of an overhead sign gantry. It’s a solid anchor point and she uses it, swinging not for distance but for speed, accelerating even faster. She releases early to drop onto the roof of an SUV several car lengths ahead, closer still.
She keeps moving. Car to car, truck to truck, weblines snapping out in short bursts, propelling her forward, never stopping until the gridlock starts to thin.
Ahead, the shoulder starts to open up. Firefighters in turnout gear are already pushing in on foot, hauling bags, and dragging a stretcher between them.
Trinity lands hard on the highway asphalt and doesn’t break stride as she runs toward them. They slow when they see her, but they don’t stop moving.
“Multiple walking wounded moving back,” she says, walking alongside them. “At least three critical, maybe more. Possible head injuries, major bleeds. A dozen or more still trapped in their vehicles that need extrication.”
“You’re doing triage?” one of them asks.
“Somebody had to start,” she huffs.
“How far in?” asks another.
“Half a mile.”
They nod and pick up their pace again. Trinity takes a moment to breathe and feels the deep ache in her thigh, though she refuses to look at the laceration just yet. There’s still so much work to do.
She jogs to the closest ambulance where two paramedics are already jumping out of the rig with their gear bags to treat the injured that have slowly made their way here from the crash site.
“Uh, hi… Spiderman,” one of them says, awkward and clearly confused.
“Spider-Woman but still workshopping the name,” she tells him. She scoots past him, hopping into the back of the ambulance to grab a handful of hemostatic bandages from the rig. She also reaches for the backboard. “Borrowing these!” she says, sprinting back towards the worst of it, even as she hears, Did Spider-Woman just steal supplies? And our backboard?
Once back at the makeshift triage zone, she beelines towards the unconscious women and the bystander still desperately attempting to staunch the bleeding. She still looks terrible but no worse than when Trinity saw her five minutes earlier.
She swaps out the blood-soaked jacket for the bandages she swiped and works stabilize the woman’s neck while another holds the backboard steady.
“On three,” Trinity orders. “One. Two. Three.”
They slide the woman carefully onto the board.
“You two,” she points at her helpful good samaritans. “Think you can carry her on the shoulder until the paramedics reach you?”
“Yes, sir. Er, ma’am. Spiderman —Woman.”
“Keep her as flat as possible. Move fast but not stupid,” she tells them, ignoring the guy’s word blunder. She doesn’t watch them go, her attention pulled by a woman screeching.
“Help! Somebody! My son!”
Trinity follows her desperate cries to the green minivan she saw initially. The smell of smoke and spilled fuel hits her first, sharp and acrid. The entire right side of the vehicle is caved in, crumpled metal jutting dangerously where it was struck. Glass and shrapnel litter the roadside.
As soon as the woman sees her, she stumbles over, hands gripping tightly at Trinity’s biceps as she clings to her. “Please. You have to help my son,” she pleads.
As calm as she can, she asks, “Where is he?”
They circle to the other side of the van where the rear sliding door is open. A small body slumps against the captain’s seat in the middle row, his chest barely rising and his lips pale. Blood seeps from a deep laceration to his forehead and a faint gurgle comes from the airway.
“Shit,” she swears under her breath. “What’s his name?” She’s already moving, unbuckling him and lifting him from the chair.
“Oliver. He’s six.”
The mother reaches for him, but Trinity just hugs him closer, cradling him against her chest with his head resting safely against her shoulder. There’s no time for triage. No waiting for stretchers or an ambulance.
“I’m taking him to PTMC,” she says, immediately firing a webline towards the closest off-ramp signage, pulling herself to speed and momentum.
-
Swinging with a child is harder than swinging alone; every pull requires exacting precision. Trinity keeps one arm wrapped tightly around the child while the other fires web after web toward buildings ahead.
The city blurs past.
“Almost there, kid,” she murmurs, comforting more herself than Oliver.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center rises ahead of them. Trinity lands lightly outside the ambulance bay, ignoring everybody who stops and stares as she strides through the automatic doors.
And suddenly she’s standing inside the emergency department. Her emergency department. For half a second, she forgets.
Her instinct is to shout: “Incoming trauma!”
Instead, she announces, “Six year old boy from the pileup on the Crosstown. Minivan was rear-ended and t-boned. Passenger side crush. Head laceration bleeding heavily, airway partially compromised, shallow respirations, altered consciousness.”
At the hub, Dana shouts, “Trauma two!”
Everybody jumps into action. Trinity at least has the mind to follow the others to the trauma room rather than lead the way. She lays Oliver onto the table and steps aside, even as her hands itch to jump into lifesaving measures. Instead, she forces herself to retreat from the room, returning to the hub.
No longer in the thick of it, the adrenaline finally begins to wane. Dennis picks this time to back out of Central 7, chart in hand that he drops upon seeing Spider-Woman in front of him.
Trinity catches the tablet before it hits the ground, Spidey reflexes kicking in. She hands it back to him, and she hopes he can feel her judging him so hard from behind the mask.
“… hi?” he says, and it comes out more like a question than an actual greeting because Huckleberry is such a damn Huckleberry.
Trinity clears her throat. “Hello.”
In her mind, she’s just waiting for him to say something that exposes all of this. Before he can say anything, however, another familiar voice speaks from behind her.
“You’re bleeding.”
Trinity turns. Dr. Abbott stands near the nurses’ station, coffee in hand. His eyes drop briefly to her thigh.
The fabric of the suit is dark enough to hide most of the blood but not all of it. Nor can it hide the way she’s clearly favoring her right leg.
“Just a scratch,” she says.
Abbott arches an eyebrow. “Uh huh,” he deadpans.
Dennis suddenly moves back into her line of sight, stepping into the space between his attending —who should’ve gone home two hours ago— and his superhero best friend. “I’ll take care of it,” he says eagerly.
Abbott glances at him. “You sure?”
Dennis nods quickly. “Yeah. Totally.”
Abbott studies both of them for a moment before he gestures toward an empty exam room. “Let’s take a look.”
Both Trinity and Dennis shrink. Apparently doing sutures without an attending to supervise was too much of an ask for the universe today. Nonetheless, they follow him into Central 9.
Dennis closes the door behind them, pulling the curtain to dissuade any gawkers. “Have a seat,” he tells Trinity— Spider-Woman— gesturing to the gurney. His hands shake slightly as he sets up a suture tray, grabbing all the things he thinks he needs.
Abbott watches, just nodding approvingly with every step he takes.
Dennis takes a seat on the rolling stool, pulling up next to the bed. “Okay,” he whispers, hoping Abbott doesn’t overhear. “Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking,” Trinity mutters.
“You’re literally bleeding through the suit.”
“It’s fine.”
Abbott leans against the wall watching them. “Everything okay?” he asks, startling them both.
“Yep.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dennis leans slightly over Trinity to get a better look at the laceration. With a pair of trauma shears, he carefully cuts along a seam of the suit, slicing through the stitching exactly where he planned for emergency access. The under layer and the protective layer part cleanly.
Abbott notices. “Convenient design.”
Dennis freezes for half a second. “… yeah.”
The wound is deeper than Trinity expected. Blood runs down her thigh as she flexes under Dennis’ touch.
Abbott pushes off the wall. “All right,” he says calmly. “Let’s clean it.”
Dennis nods, reaching for the saline. “Got it,” he murmurs.
He irrigates the gash while Trinity clenches her jaw, finally acknowledging that yeah, it really fucking hurts. She doesn’t know how much her facial expressions show through the mask, but she’s grateful neither of the men can see her screwing her eyes closed behind the yellow lenses.
Abbott watches her carefully. “You did good out there,” he says quietly.
Spiderwoman gives him a shrug. “Someone had to.”
Abbott nods slowly. His eyes flick briefly over the cut seams and then back to the wound. “You ever thought about stronger materials?” he asks casually.
Dennis perks up. “Like what?”
Abbott glances at him. “Military composites. Kevlar weave. Flexible armor.”
Fucking Huckleberry nearly blurts something before catching himself. “That would be… interesting.”
Abbott smiles faintly. “Thought so.”
Dennis finishes irrigating the wound and the room falls quiet for a brief moment until the door opens. Yolanda Garcia steps in and freezes, her eyes sweeping over the masked figure sitting on the bed.
She looks to Dennis, then to Abbott, and finally back to the costumed crusader.
“… what the hell did I miss?”
“Somebody must’ve paged surgery,” Abbott mutters.
“Clearly,” Garcia snarks, stopping just inside the threshold.
Central 9 is small. Just a standard ED exam room— but suddenly it feels crowded. Abbott stands near the counter, arms crossed and expression unreadable in that way that means he’s thinking too many things at once. Dennis hovers near the foot of the bed, still holding the gauze he planned to use to blot the lac.
And sitting on the gurney— Spiderwoman.
Mask. Suit. Boots still streaked with road grime, smelling of oil and gasoline and who knows what else.
Garcia blinks. Then blinks again. “Okay,” she says slowly. “So I definitely should’ve grabbed coffee before this.”
Dennis lets out a weak laugh. Abbott doesn’t laugh at all.
Spiderwoman sits up straighter, one gloved hand braced beside her thigh. The laceration Dennis exposed is ugly —six centimeters at least, maybe more if you stretch it. A jagged slice through the outer thigh where twisted metal snagged her.
Garcia steps farther in, shutting the door behind her with her hip.
“Tell me,” she says, folding her arms. “That this is a hallucination brought on by the fact that I’m pulling a double and I haven’t eaten since two.”
“No hallucination,” Abbott says simply.
Garcia looks at Spiderwoman then back to Abbott. “Right. Of course not.”
She exhales through her nose and moves closer, instinct kicking in. She leans slightly to examine the wound Dennis has irrigated.
“Not bad, Farm Boy,” she praises, though not without a little sarcasm. “That’s actually a pretty decent washout.”
He perks up a little. “Thanks.”
Garcia glances at him. “You practicing on action figures or something?”
His expression of minute pride falls into a scowl in a split second.
Spiderwoman shifts slightly on the bed. “I don’t think Spiderman action figures have hips like these,” she jokes.
Abbott laughs but quickly clears his throat. “We’re suturing,” he says.
Garcia nods immediately, shifting work mode. “Good. Wouldn’t want it to gape, would we?” She grabs a pair of sterile gloves from the counter and pulls them on.
Spiderwoman tilts her head slightly toward Abbott. “You guys always treat masked strangers?”
Abbott meets her gaze. “Not usually.” He pauses before tilting his head to the side, observing. “But we make exceptions for people who bring us critically injured patients.”
Spiderwoman lets out a sharp laugh under the mask. “Yeah, well, hopefully this is the only time I need to do that.”
Dennis finishes blotting the wound, while Garcia reaches for the suture kit.
Abbott lifts up the needle and syringe in his hand. “Local,” he announces.
Spiderwoman lifts a brow beneath the mask. “I’ve had worse.”
Garcia snorts. “That wasn’t a question.”
Abbott injects lidocaine around the wound edges with efficient, practiced movements. Spiderwoman doesn’t even react, not even the slightest flinch.
Garcia notices. Of course she does. She studies the masked woman a moment longer. “Impressive pain tolerance,” she murmurs.
Dennis glances at her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
Trinity can already see she’s filing the observation away. She wonders, briefly, what other tidbits Garcia has collected —about Spiderwoman or her. Nevermind they’re one and the same.
Garcia picks up the driver and forceps and begins placing sutures, simple interrupted, precise with even spacing.
Spiderwoman watches her work. “You’re pretty good,” she says. She always loves watching Garcia work, though maybe not on Trinity’s own leg.
Garcia doesn’t look up. “I do this a lot.”
“Usually on people wearing spandex?” she snarks. Dennis coughs suddenly, trying not to laugh.
“No,” Garcia says simply.
Abbott leans against the counter. “You planning to keep doing this?” he asks.
Spiderwoman tilts her head. “Doing what?”
“Running into traffic accidents.”
“Maybe. Somebody has to. Today it was me.”
Garcia finishes tying the last knot. “You triaged them,” she points out. “Ahmad heard it on the scanner.”
Spiderwoman shrugs. “Basic stuff.”
Abbott gives her a disbelieving look. “Not basic for civilians.”
Spiderwoman doesn’t respond to that.
He continues, very evenly, “You knew which patient needed transport immediately.”
Garcia looks up now. “You prioritized airway compromise and internal bleeding.”
Spiderwoman’s head tilts again. There’s a weighted pause before Spiderwoman finally says lightly, “Lucky guess.”
Dennis suddenly becomes extremely interested in a roll of gauze and busies himself with cleaning up after the surgeon.
Abbott just shrugs at her nonchalance. “Maybe.” He steps closer to inspect the line of sutures. “Clean work,” he murmurs, though Garcia shoots him a look like, What the fuck else do you expect?
Garcia dresses the wound before Spiderwoman swings her legs slightly off the gurney. She kicks them in the air like a small child. “You guys do house calls too?”
Garcia huffs a laugh. “Only if the patient promises not to steal medical equipment. Heard about the backboard on the scanner, too.”
Spiderwoman grumbles, “I returned it. With a patient to transport, even.”
Garcia finishes taping the bandage in place. “Keep it dry for twenty-four hours,” she orders.
Trinity grins behind the mask. “Yes, doctor.”
There’s a pause. The room hums faintly with fluorescent lights. The sounds of the ED beyond the small exam room are muffled but audible without any of their chatter to drown it out.
Garcia studies her again, exhales slowly. “You realize this city is going to lose its mind over you after hearing about you playing first responder.”
Spiderwoman swings off the bed, landing with enough weight on her injured leg to grimace. Thankfully, it’s hidden by the mask, though Trinity is pretty sure Huckleberry noticed. “Pretty sure it already has,” she says, cocky and so sure of herself.
(She’s not. She’s not sure of herself at all out there.)
She takes a few steps toward the door, opening the room to the full volume of the Pitt.
“Hey,” Garcia calls after her. Spiderwoman pauses in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. “Nice work out there.”
A moment passes as Trinity lets those words wash over her. Then Spiderwoman gives a small nod and she’s gone. The door swings shut behind her and silence hangs in the room once more.
Garcia slowly turns toward Abbott. “So…”
Dennis stares at the floor. Abbott begins disposing of the sharps.
She just points at the door. “That was Spiderwoman.”
“Yes.”
“She walked into our ER.”
“Yes.”
“I sutured her leg.”
“Yes.”
Garcia exhales loudly.
Dennis finally looks up. “… that was pretty cool though, right?”
Garcia bursts out laughing. Abbott doesn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth twitches.
And somewhere down the hallway— Spiderwoman slips out the ambulance bay doors and disappears into the city. The Crosstown isn’t far.