Chapter Text
Lyra sat on the ledge, fingers holding on to the thick concrete as she stared off into the city skyline. She hadn't been up this high in almost a year. After her father died, now in the dead of night, she came here to think. Her hands stuck to the cold concrete as if they had been glued to it, her short hair gracefully danced around her face as the wind glided all around her. Lyra took in a low breath, slowly let go of the ledge, and put her hands in her lap.
She flexed her fingers, staring at them as if they were foreign objects. She hadn't used her spider powers in over a year. After she failed to keep her father alive, she quit the mighty job of Spiderwoman and crawled back to the nothingness she was before she had become this world's hero. She knew she couldn't save him; every Spider-Man or Spider-Woman lost someone close to them, it was intertwined into their destiny, but she never got over the thought that she could have saved him.
After Miguel failed at keeping Miles from going back to his home, Lyra abandoned her post at the spider council-whatever-it 's-called, and went home to be with her dad. He was all she had, after all. But now, sitting on this rooftop above the entire city, she realized just how much of a disappointment she was. She gave up after one thing happened; she quit being this world's hero, and now it was falling apart.
Lyra flexed her fingers once again, then stood up on the ledge and jumped
She was still in her school uniform, a pair of khaki pants and a basic T-shirt, but that didn't matter, what mattered was that she had given up on everything she loved and she was not going to let anything else fall apart. She was going to grab her honor by the throat and punch it in the face if she had to, but she was going to help people again and nothing was going to stop her.
As Lyra soared through the air she used her webs to stay up, swinging from one building to the next. But for a moment, she felt the hesitation of her muscles as she remembered how her father died, how she couldn't save him, and she began to fall. She couldn't focus, her limbs wouldn't respond. Her brunet-blond hair cloaked her face, she began to panic.
“I can do this, I am not alone” She whispered to herself as she twisted around to face the ground. She was only about 40 feet from the ever approaching ground. In an instant she twisted once again, facing the stars and slung her webs at the nearest building to stop her rapid descent. She pulled up on the webs to pull herself higher, and landed on the top of the building, which she made out to be the NGTV News building.
She smiled happily, she had just successfully (kind of)made her first jump in far too long. She celebrated her biggest victories and her smallest the same, she never knew what accomplishment would be her last.
Afterward, Lyra headed home through the not-so-quiet city, grabbing her school bag and her jacket from behind some taco truck; she'd rather not have them stolen. Crime rates had risen far too high over the last 12 months, the city had no-one to protect them except for their god-awful police department.
Walking through Hollow, the name of the city Lyra lived in, at this hour was dangerous. Thugs and gangs liked to jump people for anything they had, and she did not feel like dying on some random street at three in the morning.
Once Lyra arrived at the raggedy old home on Sailor street she called home, covered in vines with a leaking roof that drips into her old hard-hat. She opened the front door as quietly as possible, so as to not wake her annoying neighbors. Lyra placed down her backpack and unlipped the large pocket, grabbing her phone, computer, and charger before closing the zipper. Lyra did a few more things afterwards to get ready for school tomorrow, but I’ll save you the trouble of reading all of that.
As she lay in her bed, she could hear the crickets in the backyard and the slow drip…drip…drip of water seeping through the roof and falling into her old Hard-hat. Lyra once helped her father on the jobsite when she was young, and he gave her a hard hat to remember the experience. It serves no purpose now, but she likes to hold on to it in remembrance of her dad.
Lyra’s dad wasn't the best man, he was in a gang when he was young and ended up doing 8 years for killing a man, but he really did try. He went into construction after his eight years in prison to try and, as he said, “rebuild the place I destroyed”. And to be fair, it helped him find friends and start a life. He was only 46 when he died, falling off a roof after Miguel pushed him. She had saved him only moments before from drowning in a river. Miguel showed up seconds later and told Lyra not to disrupt destiny.
Lyra hated Miguel for that, but she knew it had to happen. She didn't want to forgive Miguel, but she had to. Lyra rolled over onto her side and faced her nightstand, her room was almost completely empty aside from her water-stained nightstand and two 12-year-old beds. But on her nightstand lay a watch, the exact one Miguel had given her all those years ago. Okay, fine, it wasn't that long ago, but Lyra tried to make it seem that way so it was easier to forgive Miguel.
She reached over and grabbed the watch, its screen glowing a faint blue onto her face. She sighed and rolled onto her back, putting her hands above her while still holding onto the watch. She stared at it, wondering what to do with it. She threw her original one into a lake along with her suit after Miguel killed her dad, it was the only thing that felt right in the moment. She made a vow right then and there to never hold the name Spiderwoman, Arachne. She had broken that promise today, and she didn't intend to make another.