Chapter 43: Confessor
Joe Fixit hopped from roof to roof, just trying to cover as much ground as he could, as quickly as possible, while Doom floated beside him. It was freezing up here, and even if the cold couldn't hurt him, it was still awful. People barely looked up from the snowy streets down below, hunched down and trying to keep warm. Aside from a couple of people snapping pictures of them on their camera phones from below, they garnered surprisingly little attention. It almost felt like the pedestrians down there were studiously trying to ignore them. Goddamn New York City. It's why Joe always preferred Vegas. He always felt more at home in the heat of the desert than in the gloomy chill of a New York winter. This city always carried far more bad memories than good for Bruce and his Hulks.
At least in Las Vegas, the people there still knew how to have some goddamn fun. This city was always miserable. And it had only become worse while the three of them were… gone.
"How do you think it's going back at FEAST?" Joe murmured to Doom. The Gray Hulk liked talking to people, and for some reason, Doom seemed to be having an easier time talking to him too, as of late. They were both seemingly hellbent on proving they weren't the dysfunctional one in whatever kind of team the three of them were supposed to be.
"With the likes of Mary Jane Parker? Or rather, Mary Jane Watson? Horribly. She is disastrous. No matter how many years passed, no matter how far back in time we are now, she has always been disastrous," Victor grumbled.
"H-hold on," he stuttered as he slipped on yet another miserable patch of ice and nearly fell off the side of a rooftop. But he barely slowed down regardless after he found his footing again, and neither did Doom. They both knew a fall like that wouldn't even hurt him. "How did you know his wife? Banner was his superhero buddy every now and again and even he barely knew his wife!"
"I had the misfortune of abducting her in the past," Doom said with a shudder.
Of course. He vaguely remembered something like that. "…I forgot you did that," he scowled.
"Fortunately, so did Peter. It was, apparently, not even her most remarkable kidnapping. I don't even remember why I spirited her away either. The Arachnid must have upset me somehow," Doom mused. "Some nonsense at the United Nations. A useless organization."
"It's a bit weird that the two of you don't hold more grudges against each other," he grumbled.
"He has always been the forgiving and merciful sort, in comparison to Richards," the sorcerer said thoughtfully.
"I was referring a bit more to you than— never mind. Was his wife really that bad? She had three kids with the guy. They must've done something right," Joe murmured.
Whose fault was it that Betty and Bruce never had children? They had both wanted them, at one point or another. But somehow, never at the same time.
"Hmph. The woman was incorrigible. She knew that as Doom's hostage, it was contingent upon his honor and reputation to ensure her well-being. Something that Susan or Valeria doubtlessly had briefed her on at some point, because she seemed to be more entertained than unsettled during that debacle. It smacked more of Valeria. Surely, the girl must have thought I was some sort of hapless armored teddy bear by that point. Mrs. Parker certainly presumed to treat Doom as such."
"Are we talking about the good Valeria or the bad Valeria here?" Why were there so many vastly different people running around who managed to have exactly the same name?
"The good one," Doom sighed. "Susan's daughter, Valeria Richards." He couldn't help but say that surname the way normal people said expletives.
"…You seriously named the kid after your ex?" Joe had been meaning to ask him about that for a while now. But now he finally had an excuse, and thus less risk of setting Doom off.
"My former lover whom I murdered, yes," Doom said, with the exact same conversational tone as when he noted Ben Grimm's weakness to poisons earlier. "I presumed the name as a warning to them, at first. And a reminder to myself, as well. I cared for Valeria von Doom deeply. I was not above killing her for daring to turn on me, though."
"You never even tried though," Joe said, with some approval entering in his voice. "She never did either, if I recall. You screwed up a lot of things, hurt a lot of people. You always seemed really nice to her though. And no matter how bad things got with you, she kept sticking up for you."
"Valeria Richards proved a more filial student to me than Valeria von Doom was to my mother. I felt I owed her something, for that sort of loyalty. A… lack of troubles, at a minimum."
"You think she's going to show up too? Like Franklin?" Joe asked through narrow and beady eyes.
"Doom is content to wait for a time and see if she does. Do not misunderstand it for sentimentality, please. Given the sheer impossibility of Franklin's existence in this timeline, Valeria Richards's reappearance would raise some truly fascinating implications regarding the nature of our circumstances, Mr. Fixit. And how we might go about correcting them." Doom grinned from beneath his mask. Cracked and worn as it was, Doom had still managed to make some rudimentary repairs on it in the last few days. Joe couldn't as easily catch a glimpse at the ruined face beneath it anymore, but he could tell. That face was now smiling.
"So, no trying to kill Reed until you know for sure?" he asked hopefully.
"Hopefully not." Doom thought for a moment and clenched his fist. "Unless he tasks me. For now, we'll call it an experiment. I have my hypotheses, and I'll let it run awhile. Then I'll let you both know what I can do with that information."
"Just observing?" the Gray Hulk asked carefully.
"Unless Susan has difficulties. Valeria's birth back then was… complicated," Doom said carefully. "I promise it won't be anything that Valeria Richards would disapprove of."
"She never seemed to disapprove of anything you did though," Fixit grunted. Reed's daughter was always Victor's firmest apologist, even if she herself never dove off the deep end into outright supervillainy.
"That still took work on my end. She was not a simple child, nor naïve. Her thought was simply that if she took my side whenever she possibly could, to act as my devil's advocate, then perhaps I could one day reciprocate her trust and start to change. That I would not harm anyone who had the courage to place so much faith in me. I understood her clumsy manipulations, of course, and I was quite certain I would not be taken in by them. …I failed to account for the fact that she was always smarter than Reed and I put together." Doom's tone was soft and a little sad. He was always a pretty lousy liar, because the man never saw any use or point in trying to lie. That meant he'd always struggle to fake the kind of stone-cold sincerity suffusing his voice.
He really missed her.
"Peter also gives you a lot of trust too, come to think of it…" Joe said contemplatively.
"I know. It is his habit, carried over from his clashes with the likes of Otto Octavius, Martin Li, or Flint Baker. But I shall repay him for it in time," Doom murmured.
The trouble with Victor von Doom was that there was no difference between the weird and funny guy Joe sort of liked, and the guy willing to betray both Joe and Peter if his lunacy and megalomania ever overcame his arbitrary sense of honor. One day, he could go from their best friend to their worst enemy without any warning. Without even changing in the slightest. He was an unreliable and dangerous man. He was always just decent enough to keep on earning second chances, and he never failed to ruin it again with all his baggage.
But then, the Avengers had always felt the same way about the Hulk. Joe supposed that, in the end, he owed Victor as many second chances as the Hulks had gotten. He certainly owed it to Peter, who seemed hellbent on making this thing of theirs somehow work. It was only sporting.
It wasn't as if trying to be a friend to Victor von Doom would ever kill him. He just had to make sure it didn't kill anyone else. Not even Victor, hopefully.
Peter trusted Joe with this too, after all.
"It does feel good to have someone believe in you. It feels damn good," Joe admitted, as he gave the armored man a curious look. "The other thing I wanted to ask though is, if you don't like the web-head's wife, why are you hauling ass with me to help her out with a talent agent that's maybe brainwashing her?" he mused. The answer was either going to be horrible or hilarious. It was usually one or the other with him these days.
"Peter is restraining his symbiote effortlessly, even with all his wounds. Thus, he can surely keep a copy of his wife in check as well, and we both should admit that we would struggle with similar scenarios."
Joe smarted at the implied insult, though it was helped by Doom at least having the good graces to admit he wouldn't fare much better. It was a good point about the symbiote though. They had expected so many problems from the thing, yet they hadn't heard a peep from it. Peter was like a rock, these days. They had both decided it was better to let sleeping dogs lie and let him continue to do whatever he was doing to keep the thing from going feral again.
"More than that, though, she was the Arachnid's good luck charm. Though perhaps Felicia Hardy would…" Doom paused and grumbled, before continuing hastily. "I am speaking metaphorically. Perhaps seeing Peter's wife as his lightning rod would be more appropriate? After a time, he and Richards realized that they barely needed to investigate Doom's doings. They just needed the horrid woman to blunder about places like the Latverian embassy, and she'd inevitably stumble precisely where Doom did not want her to be."
"Wait. How the hell did Mary Jane get into the Latverian embassy?" Even SHIELD couldn't get people in there.
"They let her in!" he suddenly shouted. "Oh, she was never all that famous then as she is now, but they were still mad for her in Latveria! I flew the buffoons back home promptly when I found out, thanked them for their service, and decided it would be more magnanimous of me to give them their pensions over a firing squad. My eventual decision to replace the entire civil service with Doombots was an inspired move on my part, even with the occasional AI revolt that needed putting down! …They admittedly did little to stop Felicia Hardy when she broke in again a few weeks after I made those changes, however."
"Huh." What the hell was Joe even supposed to say to any of that? "Heh," he smiled. It was the only response that seemed sensible. Victor was definitely scowling at him now. It was the eyes, Joe decided. Even if he had the mask on, if you looked at his eyes you could always understand how he was feeling.
Doom ranted. "It wasn't just with me! Everyone who had the misfortune of inadvertently brushing up against Mary Jane Parker would pay for it. She'd bumble into something bigger than her, and soon enough Spider-Man would come haring in to save her and then ruin it all. I'm sure he didn't even need to patrol after they wed, he just needed to play bodyguard for her as she heedlessly wandered into some sort of… supervillain lair, or international drug ring, or… or some sort of cult! Pure chaos!"
Victor was surely exaggerating. The man was always overdramatic.
Then again, Rick Jones and even Betty kept stumbling on to the most ridiculous messes too. Was that what had made Peter's marriage, and his friendships so different to Bruce's, back then? That, no matter how crazy things got, the people he cared about were at least always willing to stick with him? Was that why Peter never gave up on him even after all the rest of the world had enough of Bruce and his Hulks, whatever the color?
"It's a wonder Mrs. Parker didn't get killed. Well, get killed sooner, I mean." Joe said thoughtfully. He felt a little grateful that Peter wasn't around to hear that one. That was an awful line.
But Betty really had died so much sooner than Mary Jane had. Many years before. Then Betty Banner, or maybe she considered herself Betty Ross again by then, came back as her own kind of Hulk. And it wasn't as if her Hulk had fragmented into its own separate personality, the way Bruce Banner's mind broke under the strain of his first death to spawn his various Hulks, Joe included. It really was only ever just her. That winged, fanged and taloned creature really was just Betty. The real Betty, who was now carrying just as much anger and ugliness inside her as Bruce was, manifested as a bloody red harpy. And she seemed to revel in being the kind of monster that Bruce, and all the rest of Bruce, wanted to stop being. The thought of being unkillable had thrilled her just as much as it had always frightened him.
She was better off without him, and that was a blunt statement of fact that all his personalities agreed with. But Joe needed to accept that he was better off without her too. And then somehow talk all the rest of Bruce Banner into the same idea, on top of that, lest any of those jokers got any bright ideas of seeking her out the way Peter couldn't help but do with MJ.
Hobo Pete looked heartbroken, when he saw the redhead. But he looked happy even if he also looked a little miserable. Joe knew he did the right thing with that one. But a reunion with Betty Ross would do the Hulks no good. Peter's girl always brought out the best in the guy. Betty had only ever managed to bring out the worst in Bruce, and vice versa.
Joe grimaced. They'd at least ended it before any children entered the picture. He still had that over Brian Banner.
They finally paused as they saw the high-rise tenement building that the supposedly suspicious talent agent was living out of. At least, Ben Grimm had reckoned her as highly suspicious, which was apparently more than good enough for a nutcase like Doom. Then again, just because Victor was crazy didn't make him a fool. He was still a smart guy, as Joe watched him gesture theatrically at the building ahead of them.
"Somehow, a Celestial rampage that killed ninety-nine-point-nine percent of humanity was the only thing seemingly capable of stopping Mary Jane. But now…" Victor said, with a deep intake of breath as he composed himself, "now Mr. Fixit, she serves the designs of Doom, just as the Arachnid does. The three of us need only wait, and be watchful, until she inevitably ends up entangled in the threads we must unravel. That is what is happening now. Whatever creature this Helen June is, by choosing to meddle in her affairs and manipulate her mind, she has revealed herself to us. Do you think the Arachnid ever had to do something as banal as 'chase leads' after his first ten years or so? No. He merely had to follow that woman's trail of havoc and misadventure, as we do now. This time Doom is the universe's pushback, rather than its victim! We two were compelled here, to punish an interloper who dared to meddle in anarchy."
"Right," Joe said dryly in response to Doom's dramatics as he squared up, simply glad to be getting to business again. "Do we play it cool and try to feel things out with her first? Or do you want to just break down the door on the assumption that we already got our woman?" They could still be wrong, of course. If Peter were here, he'd advise caution and prudence.
But really, the worst that would happen is that they'd scare the bajeezus out of some random civilian. Joe had gotten away with worse and could scrabble together enough to pay her back for any damages. Calling the cops wouldn't do her a lick of good, because they never liked to chase after anyone with powers.
Both he and Victor could get away with a lot of pretty crazy stuff, if they ever had the inclination. Keeping Doom in check would go a long way in holding himself in check, too.
"She is on the fifth floor, in apartment 544 which is… there," Victor said, pointing to a window in the corner of the building. "Since we've taken up the Arachnid's role for a moment, I am rather taken with the thought of simply bursting in through her window and improvising things from there."
Joe simply gave a grin, finding that he rather liked that thought too. He didn't need to keep himself in check all the time, after all. Then, neither did Victor, as Joe squared himself up for a big leap.
---
It didn't matter that he still loved her, Peter thought to himself again for the dozenth time today. He was just acting mindlessly, running through nothing but half-remembered reflexes and lingering memories. It was nothing but phantom limb pain. His heart thought he still had something, even though his mind already knew that it was long gone.
Mary Jane wasn't his wife, this time around. He needed to keep his goddamn hands off the poor woman, who likely had plenty of problems of her own even before she stumbled on to his baggage. He had bigger things to worry about too. Rounder and wider things as well, as he thought back to Fisk with a scowl.
Rallying what few allies he had, trying to make sure that Fisk couldn't lash out… it was nothing but a façade, in the end. Someone would slip. Fisk only had to wait for an opportunity, for the slightest opening, and he would pounce upon it.
'Nemo me impune lacessit. No man attacks me without consequences.' It was practically Wilson Fisk's motto. In the back of every vigilante's mind was always a quiet terror of what Fisk might take from them in retribution, should they ever provoke him. His cruelty was his method of maintaining a psychological edge, both over his enemies and his underlings. His vindictiveness was legendary, especially towards those who had the temerity to spare his life after beating him down. The man was so reliant on fear that he could never forgive anyone who dared to make him look weak.
But they all understood simply killing him would have even worse consequences for everyone. An anonymous vigilante, especially one with superpowers, killing an 'ordinary man' like Fisk would only create more havoc. Other rich and influential parasites would shudder at the sight of their peer's obese corpse and push for all sorts of registration acts, not just for mutants like Logan or mutates like Peter, but ones that indiscriminately targeted anyone who wore a mask, wielded any sort of power they couldn't control, or dared to take the law into their own hands. And men like Nick Fury would oblige them, because SHIELD was always eager to impose their control over everyone, whether they called themselves a hero or a villain. Those were just semantics, as far as SHIELD was concerned, and at the end of the day Spider-Man was just as much of a criminal as Dr. Octopus to them. The shadowy agency's power would only continue to grow.
After all, that was exactly what had happened when Daredevil had murdered the Kingpin, back then.
To really beat Wilson Fisk, and to somehow do it without killing him, Peter had to be even more vicious than he was with Norman Osborn. The problem was that everything he did to Norman had already been plagiarized from Fisk's playbook. He took away the things Osborn valued. He encouraged the other man's feelings of terror and paranoia, pushing him into self-destructing. And, he had gotten Norman's family involved in the matter.
Peter hadn't wanted to kill him, but even he knew that the Green Goblin's current fate was possibly something worse than death. Osborn had been left alone, alienated, and powerless, before being forgotten in an insane asylum. Fisk reveled in inflicting similar fates to the people who managed to cross him.
Peter had counted on it, and had even relied on Fisk himself to finish the job on Norman. However many misgivings he might have felt in destroying the Green Goblin's life, it was all undermined by a quiet satisfaction that his plan had succeeded. The ends had justified his means.
But Peter was doing things the wrong way around now, and he knew it. He was doing the wrong things. He should not have entered into this kind of fight while he thought he had something worth losing. It was only just a couple of weeks ago when he thought he had nothing worth holding on to. That would have been the most ideal time to fight Fisk.
[Are you sure? What if now is better?] the Symbiote challenged. Peter paused and considered for a moment.
If he went too far, if he actually snapped and killed Fisk with all of this, things would only get worse instead of better. Norman broke too many rules with his antics, and the powers that be would have tolerated his death at Peter's hands. The Goblin had willingly reduced himself to the status of just another costumed monster and that had made himself fair game for people like Kraven, or even Peter if he were so inclined. But those same people had ruled that whatever Wilson Fisk had done, however many families he'd butchered as the Kingpin, he was still more a human being than Peter Parker.
Two weeks ago, that realization might have made him angry enough to seriously consider killing the Kingpin. Now he was too busy thinking of how it would affect Annie, if he ever really went that far. He was too busy thinking of Annie, and Mary Jane. It was wrong of him, to still feel so strongly about MJ. She wasn't his wife. He didn't know her.
[Everyone has things they shouldn't ever lose. Even the ones with nothing,] the Symbiote reproached him. It stung, because the Symbiote was simply giving voice what he already knew.
He didn't know why he wasn't able to simply cut his ties with Anna, Mary Jane, and Annie, even though it would keep them further away from Wilson's crosshairs. The old him had managed to make that choice so many times before. Again and again. He'd done it for years. It eventually became effortless to cut himself off from the people who mattered to him, if it meant that he could keep them safe and at least do his job as Spider-Man.
[The people you cared about mattered to you less, every time you put them aside. Every time you put on the mask, there would be less Peter Parker and more Spider-Man. Until…]
Until he had become a husband and a father. At that point, cutting away his family was even more unforgivable than keeping them. He still couldn't let Mary Jane go. She was too ingrained in him now. Her absence felt more unnatural to him than her presence, as if she were some sort of force of habit or an addiction he'd been forced to withdraw from, only to crumble and unceremoniously relapse the second he could have another moment with her. It felt so right, to finally see her again, and he knew that feeling was wrong.
[But…] the Symbiote struggled, but they could not make sense of his feelings. Neither could Peter, at this point.
They needed to focus on Annie, for now, because Peter could at least understand where he stood with Mary Jane's niece. He knew what he was supposed to be for that child. She was too lost and too alone for only her aunt and great-aunt to ever be enough support for her. He knew that because he was the same way. He needed to be her father as desperately as she needed to be his daughter.
He knew he would eventually kill Annie by staying. But he understood now that he'd also kill her by leaving. And he'd kill what was still left of himself along with her, because he was now what passed for her father. There weren't any choices left for him now. He could only have it all, or else die trying to get it. Whether it was because of a burgeoning greed fostered by a few recent wins, or his growing inability to tolerate yet more loss, they were still the only outcomes left that he found acceptable.
It was nothing more than do or die, the way it always was. But for the first time in years, he had very little idea of how he was to go about either the doing or the dying. The best he could do was ask Matthew Murdock for help. Even though there had already been another version of Daredevil that had long since tried and failed to do or die on his own terms. After Elektra's death, after Foggy Nelson's death, the Matt from back then had nothing left but his anger, and he had no reasons left to not surrender to it.
He now understood where Matt had been coming from, back then. Peter could no longer shake away that dark and angry part of himself. The part of him that could not help but wonder why a creature like Wilson Fisk was still allowed to have a family, after destroying so many others. That part of him demanded to know what right Fisk had to his wife and his son, when Peter Parker's family was gone.
Peter wasn't expecting Matt to have the answers he needed, but he hoped that together they could puzzle out some kind of solution. Or at least, that Peter could come to his own kind of conclusion.
He had failed to pull Matt away from taking Wilson Fisk's life, back then. Perhaps, a weak and selfish part of himself had also wanted to see the Kingpin die. Fisk was just as much of a problem for Peter as he was for Matt, and yet he had stood back for far too long and had permitted Matt to shoulder too much that burden alone. Too many times, he had allowed the Kingpin to become Daredevil's burden, even though Matt wasn't nearly as strong as Spider-Man.
He wasn't sure that even Spider-Man was strong enough to handle Wilson Fisk, either. Not without crossing a few lines that even some of the more decent supervillains preferred to avoid.
[We can't do everything alone. Nobody can. Isn't that why we're calling him?] the Symbiote thought back gently.
He wanted to hope that he could do more for Matt. That together, that this time, they could bring down Fisk without needing to destroy themselves.
That Matt wouldn't fail to stop Peter from going too far, the way Peter had failed him.
He dialed the number on Matt's business card, and a woman's voice answered instead.
"Hey. Parker, right? Matt's out right now. This is Jennifer Walters," a pleasant and unfamiliar voice answered.
"I—" Peter began, before halting. He wasn't sure how to respond. If it were She-Hulk on the other line, he'd happily have given her all the ugly details instead. But Jennifer Walters was a stranger to him. She was a civilian, at least in this timeline.
"I'm not sure what to say. I need to talk to Matt Murdock," Peter finally decided.
"Foggy and I usually take his calls when he can't. Don't say anything incriminating over the line, there's always the risk that certain people might be listening in. We know absolutely nothing about yours or Matt's shared hobbies, capiche?" she said, in a wry but firm tone that reminded him of Joe Fixit. "Is this a life-or-death emergency?"
"It isn't yet. But it will be," he added.
"Right. Save the lawyer speak for me," she laughed. "He'll talk to you if you need him, I can give you his personal number as long as you promise to always call the office first if it's not life or death. You have what we call a special client relationship. But uh, he's on break? He's on break, and he takes very few of those."
"Which means he's at church right now," he knew. Peter wasn't religious. He'd met enough beings who claimed godhood that were just as lost and clueless as he was. Even the beings that were supposedly above the gods never had any answers for him. Even they weren't all-knowing.
But if Matt's belief in a higher meaning to the universe gave him some answers, then Peter was more than happy to crib off his notes. Whatever it took, he supposed.
"Oh, so you do know him!" she laughed again, with a nasally snort. Even if she wasn't the She-Hulk in this timeline, that was definitely the She-Hulk's laugh, and Peter found himself feeling reassured. "Right, so you're not just a 'work-friend.' Okay, I'll leave it to your discretion. …He'll be happy to take your call but just keep in mind that he doesn't get that much rest."
Peter memorized the number and didn't save it to the phone's address book. He'd be running resets on the thing and scrubbing away all its data regularly, and Joe Fixit had the same habit, a carryover from his days as both a mobster and a superhero. There was a surprising amount of overlap between the two professions, as both were approximately as illegal, in the end. Matt Murdock, and Wilson Fisk, would both have the same habits.
The phone rang only once on the other line before Matt picked up. "Talk to me," Daredevil said, without hesitation. "I'll step outside. Just whisper."
"Jameson's planning to run for mayor against Cherryh, and he wants Oscorp and Spider-Man behind him," Peter whispered.
"Not a terrible idea," the other vigilante said neutrally, keeping his statements vague just in case he would be overheard. "It makes life harder for the right person. But it'll also ruffle his feathers. One second."
He heard the sound of a wooden door slamming shut. "Okay. Now we can talk."
"…Did you just step inside a confessional booth?" Peter asked incredulously.
"I have an understanding with the rector. It's my secondary office now. Speak freely, my son," he said with cynical humor. "I make sure this spot is swept regularly for bugs. If Nick Fury's listening in, he won't be getting anything from my end. So, like I said, it's not a terrible idea. But not a good one either. Jameson's the least likely to die, because not even the Kingpin can be that blatant with his enemies, especially when they're public figures running for office. But it'll still cost. It always costs. He'll go after Jonah's people, or Harry Osborn, or even FEAST now that you're associated with it. Are you prepared for that risk?"
Peter thought about Anna Watson, and Annie Byrnes. He thought about Mary Jane. "No. I'm not," he whispered. Peter could easily imagine Matt's flinch and frown on the other end of the line.
"Then, don't get involved," Matt advised gently. "If Jameson wants to play with fire, let him, but don't endorse him, whether it's as Spider-Man or as Oscorp. Just stay out of this, and don't let it come back to you."
"I can't. This has to happen. I have to get to Fisk anyways." He couldn't let Jonah die. He couldn't stop being Fisk's enemy. If there was any hope of Felicia getting her life back instead of remaining cloistered away in the Baxter Building, then Fisk had to go. Helping Jonah would help him get to Fisk. He couldn't let that opportunity pass.
"…It seems you're of two minds on the matter." Peter could hear Matt grind his teeth. "You're telling me you have to get to Fisk, at any cost. But only if that cost is zero. That's not possible. That's actually completely insane."
"Right. But I'm going to have to do it anyways." [Or we die trying!] "Or die trying," Peter echoed the Symbiote. "As long as I'm the only one paying that price, I'll pay it. But nobody else." Doom and Joe could handle whatever Wilson Fisk threw at them. So could Peter.
[So can I,] the Symbiote echoed him.
Matt sighed. "Don't do this."
"I can make it happen. I know I can. If I hit Fisk hard enough, in the right ways, he'll zero in on me." As long as Spider-Man, Dr. Doom, and the Hulk were able to do enough damage to Fisk, as long as they seemed to be his biggest problems, and as long as they seemed like problems he could actually solve, he'd focus solely on them. He'd obsess over them, and blind himself to any other targets of opportunity.
The three of them needed to seem too dangerous to ignore, and yet also appear just weak enough for Fisk to actually be able to kill. Three red capes, fluttering in a bullfight.
"Hit him how?" Matt said, through clenched teeth. "I'm not going to ask how you have such a grasp on the Kingpin's psychology. When I gave you my card, I decided I'd let you keep your secrets. But you clearly already know that there are only a few things you can do that would make him that angry. So what is it that you're planning to do?"
He didn't hesitate. He couldn't afford to. "I have two other people I'm working with, and they're both more dangerous than me. One of them understands how the mob works, and how to throw some wrenches into Fisk's machine. The other one is a former supervillain who has no compunctions about hitting Fisk's above-board and legitimate businesses too."
"No. God, no. Are you mental? That's illegal. That's actually illegal, in a way that putting on a costume and breaking a few people's arms can at least be overlooked! Those 'front businesses' of his? They're his lifeboats! They're our only chance of Fisk relinquishing his grip on this city and choosing to walk away from all this, instead of dying on his throne and taking the rest of New York down with him!" Matt was yelling now, clearly too appalled to restrain himself. He clearly had a lot of trust in the confessional's acoustics. More trust than he had in Peter, at any rate.
This version of Matt also trusted the Kingpin a little too much for Peter's liking. There was far too much trust in what passed for the fat man's sanity and decency. Fisk likely had no idea that Matt Murdock was Daredevil yet. Fat Willie had yet to embark on his brutal campaign of systematically destroying Matt Murdock's life. And Daredevil had yet to be forced to sink to the Kingpin's level, just to barely manage to survive. And so, Peter was the one striking first now, before the two of them would ever get the chance to truly ignite their feud.
'[It works for us,]' he thought in time with the Symbiote.
"He's hit a point where his legitimate businesses are more profitable than his illegitimate ones. Safer and lower risk, too. He could walk away today, and he'd never want for anything, ever again. He'd be able to wash his hands of all of this, free and clear, with his wife and his son. You know that Matt," Peter accused.
Matthew Murdock held his silence, and so Peter continued. "It's never been about the money for him. The money is secondary; it's the power that he's obsessed with. All the money in the world won't give him the power to just reach out and take lives the way being Kingpin does. So all those legitimate ventures of his, all those wildly successful forays into real estate, imports and exports, and entrepreneurship, are all just ways for him to launder his blood money and feed more cash into his real empire. They're his excuse. A way for him to sleep at night, and pretend that someday, some far away day that'll never quite come, he'll be able to retire and give all this power up, and ride into the sunset with his wife and his son. It's better if he doesn't have them. We all are."
Peter was no longer sure if he was talking about the Kingpin's fronts or the Kingpin's family. But he knew this would hit home for Matt. He was technically cheating when he made this argument.
Because he was just repeating the exact same words Matt Murdock had said to him once, back then. Just before Daredevil had gone off the deep end and killed the Kingpin himself.
"Spider-Man," Matt began, before clearing his throat. "No, Peter. Listen. If you go that far, you're crossing a line that every other vigilante avoids. You'd be acting as a genuine supervillain. Hitting even his completely legal businesses, fronts or not, shams or not, would have you go from a friendly neighborhood vigilante to a domestic terrorist basically overnight."
"He's free to call the police, then. I'm sure he'd be eager to show all his gangster pals that he's too weak to handle this on his own. I'm sure the police would be just as eager to help him out as well," Peter said viciously.
"Okay, sure, he can't call the police on you without looking vulnerable to his underbosses, and he'd also have to deal with the fact that too many cops not on his payroll would end up taking your side on the matter. But you must know that he has an understanding with Nick Fury, and the moment you cross this kind of line, SHIELD is obliged to step in!" Matt's voice grew harsher. "This is not me talking as a vigilante, this is me talking as your lawyer. Your advocate. Your defender. If you do this, if you give SHIELD that sort of opening, that kind of hold over you, you will either belong to them or you will end up dead."
If it came to a fight between him and Fisk, SHIELD wouldn't care who won, in the end. Both Spider-Man and the Kingpin were problems, in their eyes. Problems that were meant to be controlled and managed.
But Peter knew that SHIELD would be stepping in soon enough, regardless. And if he really wasn't going to hesitate in crossing lines that he would have balked at back then… he could cross one more on top of it. He could sell one more part of himself to see this done, if it meant keeping a hold of what still mattered to him.
The Symbiote fluttered against him, feeling intrigued. Wondering just where their host's mind was going, because Peter was still thinking on the fly for now.
"SHIELD is already going to be knocking at my door soon, Matt. They've probably already got eyes on me now, especially after the Oscorp thing," he said ruefully.
Matt scoffed. "As long as you avoid crossing the line, they won't try to touch you. It'll be more trouble than it's worth. They keep tabs on me, but they don't do anything to stop me. They can, but they won't. None of this is big enough to matter to them."
But that was only because Matt wasn't strong enough to be worth it, in SHIELD's eyes. He was a blind man, whose other enhanced senses were only strong enough to let him approximate a sighted man in daylight and effortlessly bushwack the bad guys in the dark. What truly allowed him to excel was grit, determination, talent, and training. But that also meant Daredevil also wasn't inhuman enough to garner's SHIELD's attention, compared to Spider-Man. Peter couldn't say that though. He wouldn't say it. However blunt the assessment was, it smacked of too much arrogance for his liking, and it would not go over well. Instead, there was also a second reason that left Peter screwed when it came to SHIELD.
"My parents worked for them, before they died. My sister, if she's still alive, is probably also working for them. I'm already in a bit too deep anyways. They already have a claim on me," he admitted. It had certainly provided SHIELD with enough of an excuse to meddle in Peter's life more than once, back then. And this time he had a far more ambiguous history. He'd also done a lot of damage to SHIELD's pretentious notions of maintaining some sort of balance of power in this city, and in a very short span of time.
"They're probably already at the stage where they want to bring me in and try to coopt me, or terminate me," Peter chuckled, though it was strained. "They're just going to do that stupid goddamn thing where if I actually seem too eager to sign on with them then that means I'm really a plant put out by AIM or HYDRA or the Secret Empire, and they'll try to shoot me or something."
Matt grunted. "I'm still inside a church."
"Sorry. They're just going to do that stupid gosh-darn thing," Peter said with a cough.
"Better, thanks," Matt said woodenly. "You've still got rights. Times have changed and these days, they can't just pick up random mutants off the street and press-gang them anymore. You're popular enough right now, and I've got enough contacts with the Bugle that I can make it an utter shitstorm for them if they try to infringe on your rights like that."
It wouldn't be as easy as Matt made it seem, Peter knew. He would have to fight tooth and nail to get SHIELD off Peter's back, and he'd have to threaten to expose a lot of skeletons in the agency's closet. SHIELD was not the only group that liked to quietly accumulate blackmail. But Matt would have to waste a lot of that very precious ammunition to make SHIELD decide to back down on Spider-Man.
[Why would it be wasted?] The Symbiote did not like the way their host kept on acting as if he were beneath or beyond any kind of help. But while that was a problem, Peter admitted to himself, this was a different thing.
For once, his self-destructive tendencies were focused outwards instead of inwards.
"I think I have to sell out, Matt. I think I need to let SHIELD have me," he chuckled.
"That's a terrible joke," Matt warned. "You already seem to know why."
"I know. SHIELD doesn't solve problems. It controls them," he repeated. Captain George Stacy had told Peter just as much when he was just starting out as Spider-Man. The man had ended up being right about far too many things.
"I know that I'm probably crossing a thin line into outright domestic terrorism with this," he continued. "But SHIELD… SHIELD sanctions all kinds of terrorism, both abroad and here. It sanctions Fisk's terrorism just fine. I think I can get them to pick sides. I think I can get them to pick me over Fisk."
"You've somehow hit a terminal point in your career, one that takes most active vigilantes at least a decade to reach… and you've seemingly hit that point in about a week," muttered an appalled Daredevil.
"Do you think I could sell SHIELD on the idea that I'm a friendly neighborhood terrorist?" he asked sardonically.
"We're not continuing this conversation if you're trying to crack jokes over it," Murdock warned.
Peter sighed. "SHIELD is the only authority that Fisk respects. The last authority that he can still respect and can't ever afford to ignore. As long as it's just me that has to pay the price, then I'm willing to pay it. Does it sound at least workable?"
Matt groaned. "Listen. If your only goal here is to neutralize Fisk as quickly as possible, damn the consequences, and if you're fine throwing away your life, your freedom, your autonomy, your self-respect, and all the goodwill you built up with people to have a snowball's chance in hell of somehow doing it, then yeah. You might be able to pull it off. But it won't be worth it, Peter."
Peter conferred with his Symbiote briefly, and they both exchanged the mental equivalents of nods with one another. Do or die. As long as they were the only ones shouldering the cost, then they could live with it.
"I don't see any other way," Peter explained.
"You'd be crippling yourself with this. Clipping your own wings. Any good you do is always going to be on SHIELD's terms after this," Matt warned. He begged. "You'll never make a real difference again."
"Matt… Matt, I never made any difference. You don't know me, but I've done this for a lifetime already. And it was all undone, all at once. I could have given up years ago, and we would've both ended up where we are now." The Symbiote shuddered when they heard him say that. So did Peter. But his pretentions of making a difference with all this just weren't necessary right now. They could both give up on the things they no longer needed, if it at least meant keeping a hold of what they still had left. The people that somehow still mattered, more than anything else right now.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Okay. If this brings you peace, then," Matt said woodenly. Trying not to sound angry. Trying not to sound disappointed. Trying to pretend he didn't care. Failing all the same.
"Then, do I just call SHIELD's help line, or…" Peter grimaced. Usually, a vigilante couldn't get SHIELD out of their hair. He had no real idea of how to actually reach out to them.
"Talk to Jean DeWolff," Matt answered stiffly, before sighing. "The police sometimes liaise with SHIELD. Or at least, they try to."
"Matt… I know I could be wrong. That on, some level, all of this is wrong. I won't expect you to get involved with SHIELD or drag yourself down with me. But I still need your help. I need as much as you can give."
"You clearly do," he said dryly. "What is it?"
"Run damage control for me. Please. I'm going through every connection I've built so far, to keep the people most likely to be hurt because of all this safe. But like you said, I've only been in New York for a week. It isn't enough. You have connections that I don't, Matt. I need to make sure that, whatever the fallout of this is, however badly I screw this up, that I don't destroy anyone else with me. That you and whoever you can get will at least keep an eye on everyone Fisk might try to hurt to get to me," Peter begged. "And to make sure that whatever I do, however far I go, that I don't end up hurting anyone else with this, either."
"Okay. I can at least have people keep eyes on Oscorp, FEAST, and the Bugle. Is there anyone else?" Matt's voice was steely. As much as he doubted Peter's overall plan, he could at least get behind this part of it.
"I need someone to watch over Mary Jane Watson," Peter said quickly.
"The fucki—" Matt coughed, remembering where he was, and sputtered out, "the fudging actress?"
"Yeah. Her aunt and niece both work at FEAST," he said tersely.
"You were around for all of a week. Fine. Okay." Matt took a deep, shuddering breath. "Heroes for Hire has done bodyguard work for celebrities before. You can afford them more easily than I can, and it's better for you to reach out to them yourself. I'm not their boss, I'm their colleague. You'll have to convince them to take that kind of job yourself."
In the old days he never allowed himself to foist MJ's safety on to another vigilante. But things were different now. He wasn't that Peter Parker any longer, and she wasn't that Peter's Mary Jane. He couldn't afford to keep her close, no more than she could afford to have him hovering around.
"I'll talk to the Heroes for Hire after I talk to SHIELD," Peter decided. There was still the matter of Miranda Rand, and K'un-Lun.
"If you survive talking to SHIELD," he spat, and Peter almost thought Matt would hang up then and there, before continuing, just a little more gently. "If you don't die, I'm still going to make sure you weasel out from under Fury's thumb. Count on it." He then hung up, before Peter could respond, or try to argue the point.
Peter smiled, despite himself. It seemed that, in the end, Matt Murdock was still a better friend for Peter Parker than vice versa.
'Let's get going, buddy. We should at least see whether Teresa is still alive.' The Symbiote, despite their own anxieties, could not still their growing curiosity over his sister.
[Peter?] they finally asked, as he started dialing DeWolff's number.
'Yeah buddy?' he thought back.
[Why do you have to rush into this? Why do you keep thinking about the third of December? You put up a wall and I can't see your thoughts about it,] the Symbiote said, sounding uneasy at the thought of Peter suddenly withholding information from them.
'It'll be when Fisk is most vulnerable, mentally and emotionally. He'll have the most blind spots and openings on that day. We may not need to use it, but if we haven't slapped the Kingpin down by then, then we'll be able to do it on the third,' Peter thought quickly. But the Symbiote was not satisfied with such a vague answer.
[What happens on December 3rd, Peter?] the Symbiote demanded. Peter rubbed his brow and shut his eyes. He really hadn't meant to hide it from them. It was yet another line that, years ago, he would never have considered crossing. It was scary to admit that to himself, and therefore also the Symbiote.
But as long as nobody died, as long as only he and Wilson Fisk were the ones paying the price for all this, then he could live with it. He had no choice, he reminded himself. Fisk would never stop, so he couldn't afford to either. He'd have to be relentless, this time.
'If I read the calendar right and remembered the dates… it's going to be Richard Fisk's tenth birthday.'
[Oh,] the Symbiote thought, with sudden worry. That feeling of unease was heavy. Peter knew that feeling. He'd felt it many times before, but that was when he was on his own. Now he was feeling it within the Symbiote. They had learned this from him.
'We're not going to let anyone get hurt,' Peter assured them. Especially not Richard Fisk. When he was an adult, Richard had proven to be a worse crime boss than his deceased father, in a far too literal way. His tenure as the new Kingpin, under the alias of the Rose, had been every bit as cruel as his father's reign, yet only half as competent and twice as bloody. His career was far more short-lived, before he met a violent end.
But right now, Richard was nothing but a nine-year-old boy. He supposed a chance at a better future would be enough of a birthday present.
[No, I know that. Peter, I do know,] they reassured him. [But why this kind of plan, when you already felt so guilty about involving Harry in your feud with Green Goblin?]
'Because if we accept that I'm not that different from Wilson Fisk, at the end of the day… then that also means he's not that different from me. I can use that, even if it's one hell of a cheap shot. I know that he's just as scared of losing his family as I was. Of how I still am. But I promise, we won't be hurting Vanessa or Richard.' But he would certainly be scaring the living daylights out of Wilson with this. Enough, perhaps, that Fisk would be more willing to cut his losses and back down, rather than dare to call Peter's bluff.
[I guess, but… why are we also trying to do things like get close to Nick Fury, when you hate him so much?]
'Fury is going to be useful for other things than just the Kingpin. Right now, Sandman and Firestar are both supervillains at large.' Along with Hydro-Man, and Whirlwind, apparently. He could say he fought two of them, at most, and he'd never wanted to fight Angelica. He still didn't. 'Whatever the four of them have going on, it's something that lasts only for as long as SHIELD permits it to last. If I want to find out where they are, and make some headway with them, Fury is the one who can tell me,' he explained.
But the Symbiote still wasn't satisfied. [You have other ways of finding out. I'm in your head, I know there are other things you can try instead first. Peter, I still don't understand.]
'This isn't just about Nick Fury, or Wilson Fisk, is it?' he asked them. For some reason, the Symbiote's feelings were harder for him to read. A distance was emerging between them. They were diverging, instead of converging.
They both had to get to the bottom of this.
[Why are we pushing Mary Jane away when she makes you happy? Why are we trying to get close to Nick Fury when he makes you miserable? …Why is it that your idea of the 'right choice' or the 'responsible choice' only ever something that hurts you?]
[Why is sadness the only feeling left that still makes sense to you?]
Peter paused and found himself unable to respond. The Symbiote was in his head, and yet they both knew that he had no answers to give. They could both scour every inch of his mind and find no answer.
Neither of them knew, and for the first time the two of them were at a loss, both with themselves and with each other.