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Dark spots dance around the edges of Natalie’s vision as she catches herself against a wall, the same one she was just thrown into by the impact of that blow. She doesn’t know what horrible technology they used to make that blaster gun, or how those robbers even got their hands on it, but she knows she fucking hates it and that it has probably given her another concussion.
Two in a month, she laughs drily to herself. New record.
She screws her eyes shut and forces herself to stand without leaning on the wall. If she can stand, she can walk. If she can walk, she can fight. If she can fight, she has to.
That’s what makes this matter, after all; that’s why she has this power in the first place. The number of people who care about Natalie Goodman might be small enough to count on one hand, but Spiderwoman? The town counts on its hero.
And maybe her motivations aren’t entirely selfless—she can’t deny that it’s deeply gratifying to feel seen for once in her life, even if it is through a mask—but Natalie does want to help people. She wants to be there for people when they have no one else there for them.
So Natalie stands and turns on her heel, pushing herself through a shaky step. Her vision is swimming and her knees are shaking, but she can do this. She can—
“Don’t you dare.” Her ears are ringing but the voice that rings out in her head is frighteningly clear as it breaks on the last word. The brokenness keeps him from sounding any semblance of intimidating.
Natalie freezes all the same. “Who are you?” she bites out, whipping around to find the source of the voice despite something in her gut telling her she’ll find nothing. She doesn’t see him. She can’t.
But she knows him on some level. She knows how he must look now—dark eyes creased in worry, hair windswept and plastered to his brow by sweat. Mom's eyes, Dad's hair, and an attentiveness that belongs to neither.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says after a long moment. “You can’t go back there. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I have to,” she snaps. “If I don’t, who will?”
He counters, “If you die, who could?” She swallows, dropping her gaze to the rubble-marked floor, counting the cracks in the ground as he continues, “You can’t fight like this, Nat. I can’t save you if you try.”
“I don’t need to be saved,” she insists, even though the thought that he would try makes her stomach twist. He does try, she knows. He’s one of the only people who ever has—that is, if he counts as a person at all.
He might have, once. Once upon a time, he was just a boy, the same way she was just a girl. But then he died, and she got bitten by a radioactive spider. Maybe there’s a world where it turned out differently, but they don’t live in that one. Instead, they’re here, where Natalie’s struggling not to buckle beneath her own weight, and he’s eternally weightless. It’s not fair, but it is.
“You don’t need to be saved,” he agrees, “but you want someone to look out for you. You want someone to tell you that it won’t make you less of a hero to know when to walk away with your life, so that’s what I’m doing.”
She can’t see him, but she can feel it when pressure ghosts over her shoulder, steady like a kind hand. “You don’t have to die for this,” he whispers.
“What, don’t want me to join you?”
“Not like this,” he says. He huffs a small laugh. “Being the tragic dead kid is my thing. You can’t have it.”
She bites her lip. “I can’t just walk away, though,” she says. “I have to stop those guys. I’m Spiderwoman. This is what I do.”
“And you will,” he says, “but not tonight. You’ve got a paper due, and a presentation to write, and a song to learn, and—and a boyfriend to go on dates with and be sappy with in front of your weird dead brother while he tries not to watch.”
“That’s really weird,” she says, although she can’t help the small laugh that escapes her at the sheer absurdity of the statement.
He huffs, “Tell me about it.” Still, she can hear the soft expression on his face in his voice when he adds, “Come on. Natalie Goodman needs to go home. You have to let her.”
Natalie lets out a slow exhale, the fists she hadn’t realized she’d balled up unfurling at her sides.
“One night,” she says.
“A week,” he insists immediately. “You’re already shaking.”
Natalie makes a dismissive noise. “Enhanced healing,” she says.
“Enhanced concussion,” he shoots back; then, before she can call him out on that making no sense, he says, “You’re not going to be better in one day—we both know that. Give it ‘til after your calc test at least.”
Three days, her brain autofills.
Stubbornness runs rampant on her mother’s side of the family, right alongside the bipolar and blond hair. It’s just her luck that her brother inherited neither of the latter, but also has the former in spades.
“Fine,” she relents, “but I’m tracking them down the minute after school ends.”
He laughs. “And I’ll be right there to help you, you know that.”
On some level, she thinks she’s known that since the first time she donned the mask and escaped what should have been an inevitable hit without a scrape—but there’s something different hearing him say it so casually that sends a pang through her chest. There’s something different about hearing him.
She doesn’t want to tell him, but there’s something a little addicting about it, about knowing that in her lowest moments, he’s there.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I do.”
He’s everything she’s spent her life hating, dreading, but when it comes down to it, she’s not sure where she’d be now without him. She’s not sure she’d still be around at all. It doesn’t mean she forgives him. It doesn’t mean she’d like him half as much if he weren’t around to save her life. But it does mean she trusts him, and maybe that’s enough for now.
Natalie takes a slow breath, and the ringing in her ears subsides slightly. “Let’s go home,” she says softly. Then, not waiting for a response, she tosses out a web and launches herself in the air.
It’s fine, she knows. He’ll keep up.