Adult-FanFiction.org : Comics

When Spidey Met Oracle	By : littleblackduck Category: zMisplaced Stories [ADMIN use only] > Spiderman Views: 37845 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: The Spider-Man universe and characters are owned by Marvel. The Oracle universe and characters are owned by DC. I make no profit from this work. This is a sequel to "When Spidey Met Batgirl." I think you should read that first, but that might just be

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
CHAPTER ONE: Before Sunset
He decided to run the mask through two more rinse cycles than he ran with the rest of the costume. Washing the head-piece was usually the most important part of laundry day. He spent so much time breathing in his own breath through the thing that he really didn't need a three-day-old body-funk included. He knew this from experience. Peter Parker had been cleaning his own Spider-Man costumes since he was fifteen.
It had been absolutely necessary back when he was just a kid living with his aunt in Forest Hills. There was no way May Parker was going to miss a pair of red and blue spandex tights mixed in with all those yellow sweater vests. When he was living with the gorgeous Mary Jane Watson years later, the reasons for washing his own suits were something else entirely. MJ was a "dry clean only" kind of girl. The image of her bent over a clothesbasket with a Spider-Man costume in hand was the height of whimsical fantasy.
There were only two other people who'd ever cleaned his spider-duds. He generally tried not to think about one of them because the reason she had to do so was absolutely mortifying. Of course, the fact that it had led to some fantastic, life-affirming sex shortly thereafter made his night with Batgirl the kind of thing Peter actually ended up thinking about a lot… even all these years later.
His most recent launderer, however, had been the Avengers' butler, Edwin Jarvis. Peter, Mary Jane and Aunt May had briefly lived in Avengers Tower after Peter had joined the Earth's Mightiest Heroes. They hadn't stayed there long, but in the brief time before the insanity of the superhero "Civil War" forced them to flee, Jarvis had absolutely insisted on taking Peter's costumes while he handled the rest of the Avengers' laundry. And Jarvis brought them back so fresh, clean, and downright fluffy that Peter saw little reason to argue. Of course, it was eventually revealed that this particular Jarvis was, in fact, an alien imposter who'd probably used the genetic material scraped from their unclean clothes to help his warrior race of shape-shifting Skrull to duplicate the Avengers' various powers, so Peter had once more embraced his D.I.Y. philosophy of spider-washing.
This is why, Peter found himself locked in the basement laundry room of Avengers Mansion, naked, hating his life. It wasn't cleaning his own clothes that put him in such a funk. Hell, this was a nice, quiet bubble of sanity in a life that got crazier and less certain with each passing day. And while the wall-crawler had long been prone to a substantial amount of self-loathing, this particular Peter Parker pity party happened to occur at a definite low-point in his long career as Spider-Man.
Something like ten years had passed since Peter had been bitten by that radioactive spider, but he swore sometimes it felt closer to fifty. Just an endless blur of goblins and symbiotes and lizards… oh my!
Ever since he'd joined the Avengers, his life had become one mega crap storm after another. That civil war over the Superhuman Registration Act -- which demanded that every masked vigilante step forward to reveal their true identity or face federal prosecution -- had torn his life apart in a way that made the Skrull's secret invasion of Earth almost pleasant by comparison. The decisions he made during that impossible imbroglio had almost cost Aunt May her life… and they seemed to cost Peter the love of his own, as Mary Jane had left him and New York City behind when it was over…
Battling the Skrull months later had been dangerous and more than a little confusing, but that was pretty much business-as-usual for the web-slinger by now. It was the aftermath of the Skrull attack that really blew his mind, as his greatest enemy, Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, was appointed the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- the world's premiere intelligence and covert ops agency. Stormin' Norman rebranded the operation as H.A.M.M.E.R., proclaimed himself the new leader of the Avengers, and spent half a year zipping around the world in a repainted suit of Tony Stark's Iron Man armor, calling himself the Iron Patriot while backed by a handpicked team of unrepentant supervillains. And all Osborn had to do to get away with this was dress them up in old Avengers costumes! Daredevil's old sparring partner Bullseye was the new Hawkeye. Moonstone was the new Ms. Marvel, and Mac Gargan, the former Scorpion and current Venom was the new Spider-Man… the new Spider-Man who was inexplicably more popular than the original. Osborn's public relations team was something else, alright.
Oh. And somehow during all of this, J. Jonah Jameson, the man who'd spent the last decade declaring the web-head a public enemy in 40-point font in the Daily Bugle, was elected mayor of New York City. Mercifully, up until the election, the usual gang of threats and menaces that plagued Peter's life as Spider-Man had been absent. Then, in a flash, they were back and worse than ever. Doctor Octopus took technological control of the city. Electro destroyed the Bugle building. Two different Rhinos fought to the death in the middle of Manhattan in a gruesome street brawl and Spidey hadn't been able to stop it... just like he failed to stop Curt Conners from murdering his own son as the Lizard.
This relentless gauntlet pushed Peter to his breaking point, and that's when Kraven the Hunter -- the man who had once left Spider-Man buried alive before killing himself -- came back from the dead to bring Peter's life to a new level of hell. The wall-crawler had barely wrapped up that nightmare before the Blackest Night descended upon him.
Peter didn't learn most of the details until later, but apparently some dread, cosmic death god named Nekron brought back the dead as Black Lantern zombies bent on the end of all life. Spider-Man still wasn't certain whether or not Kraven's return had been a part of Nekron's design, but there was no question that it was one of the worst nights of his life. He endured the return of damn near everybody who'd ever died under his watch, fighting their cosmic-powered corpses in the streets of New York.
There was Sally Avril from high school... NYPD Captain Jean DeWolff, one of the few cops who would work with him before she was murdered by the Sin-Eater… Even Ben Reilly, the genetic double that had filled-in for Peter as Spider-Man when both of them thought Ben was the original and Peter himself was merely a clone of the one, true web-head.
Despite the abject horror of that dark night, Spider-Man fought his way through them all. Because as soon as he realized the Black Lanterns' strategy -- gorging themselves on the emotions conjured up by the living in face of the dead -- he realized he had to get to Aunt May, because it was only a matter of time before they'd both come face to face with his greatest regret: Black Lantern Ben Parker. He found them at the house in Forest Hills, his poor aunt terrified as she confronted the gentle face of his beloved Uncle Ben, twisted in rage while spouting all of his widow's worst fears while trying to tear out her heart and eat it. Spider-Man did what he had to stop him...
If it had just ended there.
Saving May from his undead uncle was a breeze compared to confronting a space zombie Gwen Stacy. Peter should have expected it, but he tended to remember Ben as the good man who raised him and Gwen as the first girl who loved him wholeheartedly. And honestly, after all these years, he'd been able to put so much of the guilt he'd felt for Uncle Ben's death behind him. Because Ben had died because Peter failed to act -- he'd let the burglar who shot his uncle run right past him. But as Black Lantern Gwen was all too quick to point out as their battle raged across two boroughs, she had died because Peter acted.
"Trust me, Peter, this is a terrible place to die," she said, as the chase brought them atop the George Washington Bridge. Spider-Man hated that goddamn bridge but somehow he seemed to end up there every couple of months, forced to relive some ridiculous rehash of the worst night of his life...
"It's not just the fact that I died because I was Spider-Man's girlfriend that kills me," she had told him. "I can even almost forgive you for never telling me your secret. It's the fact that you snapped my neck with your carelessly casted webs that makes me hate you, Peter."
He'd tried to tune her out. She wasn't saying anything he hadn't heard a million times before, whether it was from the Green Goblin taunting him or in his own guilt-ridden head and shameful heart, but this was different somehow. This was Gwen's voice accusing him. Her bright blue eyes fixed on him in hate as she pinned him down. Conflicted with a broiling mix of fear and love bound by compassion, Spider-Man was almost ripe to sate her hunger. She just needed to push him a little bit further.
"How long did it take you to fuck that slut Mary Jane after you killed me?" that evil thing asked him then. "Were you lusting after her the whole time we were together? Would you have saved me if I put out like she did? Sorry, Peter. I was waiting for a real man…"
That's when the uni-beam tore a hole through her torso and sent her spiraling toward the rough waters of the Hudson River below. Spurred by instinct alone, Spider-Man actually found himself sprinting toward the edge of the suspension tower. He was just about to dive after her before he stopped himself.
"You're just lucky I'm going to need you for this, Spider-Man," the Iron Patriot said, landing beside him. "If the fight I just had with my dead wife is any indication, I'm not going to be able to handle her by myself."
Before the web-head could say anything, Gwen was flying up toward the tower, reforming her gaping chest wound as she tore into them.
As it turned out, Norman Osborn had actually risen to the challenge of leading his evil Avengers in an attempt to take New York back from the Black Lanterns. In the ultimate irony, Spider-Man's greatest enemy, who had his own twisted, gut-wrenching history with Gwen, was just as vulnerable to her attack, but together, they managed to defeat her.
Peter beat Gwen. With the Green Goblin's help. The thought alone still made him gag.
He suspected it was the fight with that depraved cosmic abomination that pushed Norman over the edge, because the next day, after the battle with Nekron was done, the Iron Patriot began his psychotically misguided assault on Asgard. H.A.M.M.E.R. engaged the stronghold of the Norse Gods, floating above Broxton, Oklahoma, as Osborn's last crazy power play. The attack didn't end well for anybody, as Asgard crumbled, but at least Norman was finally revealed for the dangerous whack job Spider-Man had always known him to be.
Osborn's failed siege had done a few more favors for the forces of good and iconic spandex underoos: Norman had finally been thrown back in jail, the Superhuman Registration Act had been repealed and Steve Rogers, the original Captain America -- who everyone thought had died shortly after the end of the Civil War -- was in charge of everything the Iron Patriot had run into the ground. Things were relatively quiet. Unless you counted the Avengers fighting Kang the Conqueror as all of space and time collapsed around them… Or the New Avengers watching Doctor Voodoo, the freshly minted Sorcerer Supreme, sacrifice his life to save our dimension from the all-powerful vengeance of Agamotto… Or that mess Spidey found himself with Doc Ock over Harry Osborn's baby…
Things hadn't been going so well for Peter out of his Spidey duds, either. J. Jonah Jameson had only pursued the mayor's office because he'd been pushed out of his top-spot at the Daily Bugle by some bow-tied billionaire named Dexter Bennet. When Peter realized that working at the new DB wasn't really for him, he finagled a job in the press corps at City Hall. Between that and freelance work with Front Line, the online news source where the vast majority of the Bugle's former staff had found new work, Peter was actually managing to make ends meet for a while. Then Mayor Jameson caught him doctoring a photo -- a pic Peter'd created specifically to save Jonah's political career by clearing JJJ of charges of which he was clearly innocent -- and His Honor exposed Peter's fraud to the world, blackballing him from any future work in news photography. So Peter was dead broke and unable to find employment in the one field in which he'd really made a name for himself.
He knew he deserved it. His time at the Bugle with guys like Joe Robertson and Ben Urich had impressed upon him the importance of journalistic integrity, but journalism had never really been Peter's passion. He loved science. A couple years back, when photographing his fights as Spider-Man hadn't been enough, he'd taken a job at his old high school as a science teacher. It was the closest he'd come so far to professional fulfillment. Too bad even joining the teacher's union hadn't been enough to help him keep that gig. Guess it didn't help that he'd taken so many sick days to recover from tussles with totemic spider-gods and missions with the Avengers.
Peter was slowly starting to worry that the only thing he was actually good for was punching bad guys. And while that was a perfectly valid career choice for some -- Wolverine and Hawkeye totally swore by it -- Spider-Man couldn't even get paid for his time with the Avengers like everyone else. Not if he wanted to keep his secret identity, and he'd learned the hard way that he had to do just that… for the sake of Aunt May or anyone else he cared about.
Besides, Peter had always hoped that there was more in store for him than fist fights and late night patrols. Guys like Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man seemed to make it all work for them. He always thought he'd figure out something like that for himself. Peter Parker: Superhero Scientist. But it looked like his fractious life as Spider-Man would always mean he'd never really get his dream job, and Peter would just have to accept that.
Right now, Peter Parker needed to worry less about his career and more about just finding a job -- any job -- that would help him pay the rent.
He was washing his Spider-Man costume right now because he'd spent the last two nights at Avengers Mansion. After the SHRA had been repealed and everyone was friends again, Luke Cage bought the place off Tony Stark for a buck so that the New Avengers had a base of operations. Cage told Spidey that he was more than welcome to move in if he wanted, but the wall-crawler declined.
Spidey had his reasons. Right now, only a few of the New Avengers knew who he really was, and considering the lengths he'd recently gone through to regain his secret identity, he really couldn't risk it getting out again. Especially since Victoria Hand, who'd served as the deputy Director of H.A.M.M.E.R. during Osborn's administration, was now working as their liaison with S.H.I.E.L.D. There was no telling when she'd be wandering the halls, which is why he tended to stay in full costume while on the premises. He didn't trust her. This was a woman who'd accepted the Gospel According to Norman Osborn, after all. Even if Captain America or Commander Rogers or whatever title Steve was going with now thought Hand was okay, Peter couldn't let that go. Living in Avengers Mansion meant putting his private life in jeopardy. It was as simple as that.
But after that crazy fight with Agamotto, he'd decided to crash in a guest room in the mansion's east wing. He hadn't slept in something like 36 hours -- an unsettlingly typical occurrence in his life -- and found himself collapsing into one of the plushest, most comfortable beds he'd ever been in. Then he did it again the next night.
He would have to go back to his own apartment eventually, but he wasn't in any rush. His roommate, Michele Gonzales, was a bit of a handful most of the time. She had this odd expectation he'd actually pay his half of the rent every month, which was all but impossible now that he was unemployed. Life with Michele was a far cry from the last time he'd lived with a woman, as M.G. hadn't really liked him to begin with, and sleeping with her the night Aunt May married the new mayor's father, J. Jonah Jameson Senior, hadn't eased tension in the least.
It was a mistake. He was drunk. Mary Jane had chosen May's wedding as the perfect opportunity to return to New York after moving out to L.A., and faced with confronting his ex, Peter used it as an excuse to hit the open bar a little more freely than he usually would have to disastrous results.
So here he was, hiding from an angry, 5'8" Latina lawyer in the safety and comfort of the Avengers' laundry room. Victoria Hand was meeting with Steve Rogers over in Avengers Tower, but you never knew who was going to stop by the mansion, which is why he went so far as to web the door closed while he went about the delicate task of rinsing his delicates.
Doing his laundry at the mansion was a total revelation. The Avengers' drier was sophisticated enough to dry his costume without shrinking it… not the kind of equipment Peter used to encounter in his desperate, laundromat days. Hell, he was tempted to risk swinging over to his apartment to grab his civilian clothes. It's not like he was rolling in quarters these days. But that meant leaving the room. That meant going out in the world. That meant confronting whatever new problem the universe had waiting for him. So Peter had plenty of time to sit there and watch his tights tumble while his mind wandered.
He wondered how it all had gone wrong between him and MJ, but then he remembered that she had recently dropped by his place to sit him down and explain exactly where, why and how it went wrong. It had been a good talk. Absolutely. He was glad that they had it. Mary Jane had told him that it was time for him to find someone who was strong enough to be with him. And he thought he was finally ready to do just that.
Almost.
It wasn't like Peter didn't have options. There was Michele, of course, but smoothing things over between them would take a Herculean effort he doubted even his pal Hercules could pull off. It'd been a hell of a campaign just to get to their current state of civility. And it's not like they had a lot in common…
Spider-Man had resumed his relationship with Felicia Hardy, the semi-reformed cat burglar who operated as the Black Cat. Felicia had been very clear, however, that they had a strictly physical, friends with benefits arrangement. And while that was fun -- and who was Peter kidding? It was fantastic! -- when it came right down to it, she didn't want to share her life with him, and he wanted a partner in something other than crime. No matter how carnal. That and the usual trust issues that cropped up between them had cooled things off since that craziness with the Kravinoffs.
Then there was Norah Winters, the spunky young reporter at Front Line who loved to push Peter's buttons, but she was dating one of his friends, Randy Robertson. And even though she tried to make it sound like a casual fling, Peter suspected Norah was just kidding herself. Randy was one of the good ones. Besides, Peter'd been down that road back in college with his best friend, Harry, Norman's son. While Peter doubted trying to wedge his way between Norah and Randy would lead him down the same trail toward betrayal and pumpkins bombs, why tempt fate?
Especially when there was Carlie Cooper, the fetching young crime scene investigator who had actually gone out on a few dates with him already. Peter had known since Harry had introduced them that Carlie was interested, but he had been keeping her at arm's length. This was something Carlie had called him out on more than a few times. Peter liked her. He really did. She was smart, cute, funny, and all-too importantly, fairly forgiving. But he was afraid to push things too far…
There was something he just couldn't get out of that webbed head of his. His life was absolutely insane. As long as he was slinging webs and righting wrongs, it would always be insane. It was so insane he knew in the long run, he'd never survive it. As he pulled them out of the dryer, he knew that some day, he was going to die in those red and blue tights.
And when it really came right down to it, Peter Parker, the less-than-sensational Spider-Man wondered if there was really a woman out there strong enough to put up with him…
*
Barbara Gordon had spent most of her life surrounded by people whose entire world had been changed by a bullet. Being Jim Gordon's daughter as he rose up the ranks to become Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department had certainly seen to that, but it was her decision to don a cape and cowl and fight crime as Batgirl that had absolutely clinched it. But for all the years she stood by her father while he paid his respects to the widows and orphans of fallen officers, or fought alongside Bruce Wayne, who had dedicated his life as Batman to protecting the city where his parents had died in a hail of gunfire, Barbara never thought she'd be one of those people.
It was stupid really.
Her father spent his days trying to clean up one of the most corrupt law enforcement agencies in the country and he certainly had enemies who regularly visited the firing range. She spent her nights punching street hoods and mobsters with a big yellow target emblazoned across her chest. Anyone else would have seen it as all but inevitable. But she had been carefree and hopeful and filled with this faith that things would always go right, like you do when you're young. She thought she would live forever. So would her dad.
Then one night, while visiting her father in that little house in Gotham Heights she'd only just moved out of, she answered a knock at the door and was shot through the spine by the Clown Prince of Crime. Barbara survived, but it was the end of Batgirl. She was paralyzed from the waist down. And just like that, that carefree girl suddenly had cares. She lost hope and she didn't think anything would ever be right again…
But in all the years since it happened, she'd built herself back up out of that place of fear and powerlessness. She learned how to make her way through the world all over again. She found a way to still make a difference. She became Oracle.
Barbara had always been good with computers, but with some focus and determination -- to say nothing of ample free time and some generous funding from the Wayne Foundation -- she became the best. At a time when the world lived or died at the end of a mouse, Oracle was always there, ready to right-click and save everything. It started with a cold case for the Gotham Police Department. Then she started working with the government. When that fell through, she became Batman's primary source for technical support and data retrieval, which was her stepping stone to becoming the premiere information specialist for the superhero set.
More importantly, Barbara had finally made a life for herself that extended beyond the Batcave. She had friends who loved her. People who would die for her just as much as she would for them. It started with Dinah Lance, the Black Canary. After Barbara's covert ops work had dried up, she had anonymously approached Lance as Oracle during a low ebb in the Canary's career and Dinah become her agent in the field... and eventually, her best friend. It was Dinah who'd convince her to bring Helena Bertinelli, Gotham's once-lethal vigilante, the Huntress, into the club. Then it became a bit of a rotating team routine that had included heroes like Big Barda, the new Manhunter and Lady Blackhawk. Barbara wasn't exactly sure when they started calling themselves the Birds of Prey, but it stuck and she liked it better than Oracle and Her Amazing Friends.
And she liked that she had a legacy. Barbara had taken in Cassandra Cain, Bruce's new pick for a replacement Batgirl, and tried to guide the young girl in the role. Given Cassie's arduous upbringing -- she was the daughter of two of the world's most dangerous assassins -- it'd been more than a struggle. Considering the way things had ended between her and Cassie, Barbara couldn't help but feel that she'd failed. She was trying to do better with Stephanie Brown, the new new Batgirl.
A month ago, she'd been using the recently vacated Batcave as her base of operations, but now she had a new home in the recently constructed Kord Tower. Named in honor of the second Blue Beetle, her dearly departed friend Ted Kord, the tower was everything he would have loved -- comfy, private, and jammed to forty stories with bleeding-edge tech. And it was sunny and bright. Just like Ted. During her time as that Dominoed Daredoll, Barbara had spent so much of her time underground, but as Oracle, she liked to sit up in her towers in the sun when she could.
There were still, however, plenty of bats in her belfry…
"I take it Bruce Wayne's done for the day," Barbara said, turning away from her holographic heads-up monitor display as the billionaire philanthropist entered her new command center in full Dark Knight regalia. "Seems a bit early. I didn't think the oh-so elusive Caped Crusader made appearances when there was still daylight."
"It's always dark somewhere in the world," he answered, "and Batman's going to be everywhere now. It's midnight in Tokyo, for example. I'm flying out to scout a potential recruit."
Bruce Wayne had recently announced to the world that he'd been secretly funding Batman's activities in Gotham City since the beginning, and Wayne was now planning to expand this financial support to other crime fighters all over the globe. It was a surprisingly bold move on his part. Batman... Incorporated.
"Are you taking the Batplane?" she asked.
"Corporate jet," he replied. "Why?"
"If you're going as Bruce Wayne, what's up with the costume?"
"I'm taking Selina with me," he told her. "She… likes the cape and cowl."
Jesus Christ, Catwoman, she thought, rolling her eyes and turning back to her work.
"You haven't been sleeping, Barbara," Batman observed. "I don't have to be the world's greatest detective to see it."
"Norman Osborn might be in prison, but that doesn't mean he's been shut down," she said. "I've been trying to minimize his impact on the geo-political landscape, but he had his creepy little fingers in a lot of dangerous pies. Even I'm struggling to keep track of them all."
"I've dealt with Osborn before," Batman said. "I'm pretty sure he used some of WayneTech's technology for his Green Goblin equipment back in the day. If I remember correctly, he wasn't very good at covering his tracks…"
"He got better," Barbara told him. "A lot better."
"He never should have gotten as powerful as he did," Batman said then. "I should have stopped him when I had the chance, but I didn't think he was a Gotham problem."
"You can't be everywhere at once," Barbara said.
"Though some of us certainly try," he replied, nodding toward her expansive computer array. "By my count, you're coordinating eleven different operations on four continents."
"It just looks like a lot," she said. "Most of these missions run themselves. My operatives find Osborn's unofficial projects, make sure they're not still up and running, and keep them secure until S.H.I.E.L.D. or Checkmate's onsite. I'm really just online for strategic support if it's necessary. And it hasn't been because I'm working with good people."
"That's actually why I stopped by to see you," Batman said delicately. "I understand that you've been recruiting outside your usual ranks a little for this special project of yours."
"I suppose you could say that," Barbara smirked, knowing exactly where this was heading. "I mean, Lady Blackhawk's a hell of a pilot and all, but she can't get Huntress and Black Canary everywhere at once. And Hawk and Dove have been recuperating from that craziness with the Penguin. I've had to contact some of the local talent in some places."
"So, hypothetically, if you needed someone to breach a secured facility in, say, downtown Manhattan, you might use the services of a reformed cat burglar," Batman suggested. "Perhaps even one with a flair for the dramatic who employs a bit of a feline theme?"
"I might do something exactly like that," Barbara said with a sly smile.
"Did you absolutely have to use the Black Cat?" Batman sighed, dropping all pretence. "Gotham's really not that far from New York. And you know how Selina feels about her…"
"Yes I do," Barbara replied, positively beaming now.
"Catwoman's taking it personally," he sighed. "It wouldn't kill you two to try to get along."
"I'm sorry, but me and Ms. Kyle have an unpleasant history that long predates this particular on-again period of your relationship," she said. "And I've got to embrace the little joys in life where I find them."
"Don't we all," he said wistfully.
She turned toward him then. "You seem different, Bruce."
"So do you," the Dark Knight said kindly. "Take this blitz on Osborn, for example. I was… otherwise occupied during much of his directorship of this H.A.M.M.E.R. organization." Batman was, of course, putting it mildly. During Osborn's dark reign, the Dark Knight had been clawing his way up the time stream after being thrown back to the Pleistocene Era by Darkseid's Omega Effect. Everyone thought he was dead. Dick Grayson, his first sidekick, had stepped up to fill the cape and cowl while Bruce was gone. "I understand it was a disaster, but I almost get the feeling you have a personal stake in this, Barbara."
"Maybe I do," she admitted.
Batman hesitated then. "Do you want to… talk about it?"
Barbara actually laughed at that. Dick had warned her that Bruce had changed since his ordeal, but she'd never expected that Grayson meant he'd gotten anything close to sentimental. "It's nothing, Bruce," she finally said. "I'm just a little worried that the new man in charge might not be up to the task of dismantling the less savory elements of the Green Goblin's underworld."
"You're doubting Steve Rogers?" he said with a small smile. "I've taught you well."
"Starting with the fall of Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s been through four major administrative upheavals in the last couple of years," Barbara explained. "Things tend to slip through the cracks with that much chaos sustained over a long enough period of time. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't the kind of position that allows for a lot of on-the-job training, and our erstwhile Captain America's been through a tremendous amount of stress, what with his death and all…"
"He didn't die," Batman corrected. "It just looked like he died when in fact he was trapped back in time, only for his trusted former partner to assume his mantle. Happens to lots of guys. You're not worried about me, too, are you, Miss Gordon?"
"I worry about all of us, Bruce," she said, "but it's not like you've gotten up to anything as crazy as taking over S.H.I.E.L.D."
At that the Dark Knight actually grinned. "Batman Incorporated's going to leave S.H.I.E.L.D in the dust," he told her with an optimistic conviction she never would have expected from him. "We're about to privatize the Caped Crusade."
*
The life of Jessica Jones-Cage had taken several sharp turns she'd never expected.
At a mere twenty-six years of life, she found herself married to Luke Cage -- Harlem's Hero For Hire and the leader of the New Avengers, a mother to the most beautiful baby in the world, and living in a mansion on Fifth Avenue. While so much of this had seemed the natural result of a very strange life, there were times when Jessica realized that if you hopped onto Doctor Doom's Time Platform and went back in time to visit her a week before her sixteenth birthday to tell her that this is where she'd find herself in ten years, she would have plotzed. And she definitely wouldn't have anticipated the current all-consuming center of her annoyance.
"He was doing it again," Jessica told her husband as he lulled their daughter, Dani, to sleep. "Last night I went out to take a leak only to find him pacing the halls from the goddamn ceiling! I almost shat myself!"
"You tellin' me you don't hover every once in a while?" Luke asked, swaying their baby in the warmth of his powerful brown arms. "Dude's been through some shit. Give him a break, Jess. And keep it down. She's finally asleep."
"This is supposed to be our house, Luke!" Jessica hissed. "I know I should be all impressed that our starter home is Avengers goddamn Mansion and all, but I swear to god, I'd trade it all for an A-frame in Astoria if it meant we didn't have to deal with Peter fucking Parker pacing our ceiling every night."
"I get what you're saying," Luke sighed as he laid their dozing daughter down in her crib. "I really do, Jess. But you don't know Peter like I do…"
"Excuse me?" she shrilled as they left Dani's nursery to enter the adjoining master bedroom. "I practically grew up with him!"
"Yes, I remember," Luke said with an eye-roll. "You had a big ol' schoolgirl crush on him, too. But you only found out he was Spider-Man a few months back. I've known Spidey for a couple of years now, and the one thing anybody who knows him will tell you is that he never asks for help." Jessica softened then, so Luke continued. "He might ask the Human Torch for a hand with the Sandman, or see if Doc Strange can cast a spell to deal with a crazy ex-girlfriend, sure. But he never asks any of us for a loan or a lead on a job or anything else that'd make his personal life any easier. So when he shows up on your doorstep and tells you that he wants -- no -- that he needs to spend a couple of days in one of the many guestrooms of your palatial estate, you gotta be the biggest dick in the world to tell him no."
"You're just lucky you've got the biggest dick in the world," Jessica sighed, tugging his shorts down. "And believe you me, buddy, if I've got to put up with Mr. Mopey Maguire, you're going to put it to good use…"
Luke pulled off his shirt as she took his cock in her mouth. "Damn, woman," he groaned. "You are insatiable."
"Shut up and get the lube."
*
Peter could rattle off the first 150 digits of pi without even thinking about it. He knew where he could find at least twenty different weak-willed criminal snitches for each of the five boroughs on any idle Tuesday. He could rank the best street meat in Manhattan based on the time of day. And yet, somehow the guy who achieved the highest scholastic average in the history of Midtown High School got lost on his way back from the laundry room. Because for all of his brilliance, Peter was clearly an idiot.
He was heading back to his room in his briefs with his freshly cleaned costume in a basket when he realized he'd come up the wrong basement staircase and ended up in the more frequently used west wing. He thought he'd find his way back to his room fairly quickly, but a half hour later, he stopped to take the time to put his mask back on.
In the three days he'd been in the mansion, this had proved an unnecessary precaution, because the only person he'd run into unexpectedly was Jessica Jones. Jessica already knew he was Peter Parker, but she freaked out every time she saw him. Was it because he was always upside down when it happened? Was it possible he was wall-crawling more than he needed to?
The only way Peter's life as Spider-Man had worked was by compartmentalization. When he wasn't in costume, he was the meek, earthbound Peter Benjamin Parker. When he was wearing that mask, though, he was Spider-Man, causally strolling up the walls or clinging to your ceiling. It both proved that he was the real-deal -- any jerk could wear his costume after all -- and it kept him in the proper mind frame.
But again, seriously, he didn't trust Victoria Hand. He really didn't want her to see his true face. If he had to wander around, lost, half-naked with his mask on to make sure that didn't happen, that was fine for now.
All of this had him feeling on edge just then. One of the other reasons he didn't want to live with the team was that Avengers' Mansion was kind of a target. You never knew when some metahuman asshole with an axe to grind would burst through the wall. Peter had learned in the worst possible way that there was evil in the world that had to be fought or it'd take someone else he loved… like Aunt May.
He was just passing the double doors of what he now recognized as the master bedroom when the pounding started…
Thud! Thud! Thud!
At first he assumed it was construction work. There'd been significant damage to the building since that business with Doctor Voodoo, and the crew from Damage Control, Inc. had been working around the clock to fix the place up as soon as possible, but most of the damage had been on the other side of the mansion...
Was it an attack? No. It couldn't be a fight… His spider-sense would have warned him, wouldn't it? But when that first series of steady thumps started to be punctuated by little feminine grunts afterwards, he had to wonder…
"Stop! -- whoulf -- Don't! -- huhn!" he heard.
It took his brain significantly longer to figure things out before certain parts of his body. He didn't realize he had a hard-on until shortly after he heard that first intelligible utterance.
"DON'T STOP FUCKING ME!" Mrs. Cage roared from their bedroom. "TAKE MY ASS, CHOCOLATE THUNDER!"
"M'okay," Spidey murmured as he sprinted along the ceiling and away, dropping the basket as he scramble into the pants of his costume. "Going back to the east wing... Now."
He'd just barely worked the lower half of his costume up to his waist by the time he finally found his room. It hadn't been the easiest thing to do while running along a wall with gravity working sideways.
"Message received!" chirped a high feminine voice from his cell phone as he donned the top half of his suit from the soundproof safety of his temporary living quarters. It was his special, encrypted Spidey-phone. Once he was completely redressed, he checked the text message waiting for him.
Need your body, it read. For work stuff this time. Meet at the usual place. Before sunset.
Peter sighed. His aunt had once told him that there were two types of relationships that defined your life. The kind that got easier with time and the kind that grew more and more complicated. This particular missive had been sent by someone with whom he shared a completely different kind of relationship entirely, because she always thought it was simple, while he felt it only got more convoluted.
That was the thing about exes…
*
It had been suggested to Felicia Hardy on several occasions by a number of her former lovers that she might want to look into therapy. She didn't really blame any of them. Felicia had made it through enough of college to take a psych course or two… She dropped out after being sexually assaulted toward the end of her freshman year by someone she thought she could trust. Someone she was planning to kill before he got his stupid ass killed in a drunk-driving accident. She became the Black Cat shortly thereafter. Her first job was an elaborate plan to break the father she barely knew out of prison so he could die in his home instead of a cell.
So, yes. Felicia clearly had issues.
But it had always made more sense for her to just own those issues rather than try to talk them away with some stranger who didn't really know her. Because the truth of it was, all those people who'd told her she should get professional help didn't want her to do it for her. They wanted her to do it for them. They thought a little psychology would tame her. Make her the dutiful girlfriend ready for that lifetime commitment they so desperately wanted. But Felicia didn't want to be tamed. She liked who she was. Horrific psychological warts and all. Because the woman she'd become would never be a victim again.
Despite the problems she'd had in her relationship with the Spider, he'd never been one of those guys. Not really. The one stay she had made in a psychiatric hospital had been at Spider-Man's behest, but only because she'd played him. The first time he caught her, she convinced him she'd committed her crimes because she was psychotically obsessed with him. After all, it was easier to break out of a loony bin than an actual prison. But after that, he never told her to get professional help again. Not after she stopped playing mind games with the Spider and let him get to know who she really was. Felicia knew that he'd wanted more from her than she was willing to give, and it had forced them apart all those years back, but he never told her that she needed to go fix herself because of it. Not even when he broke up with her.
Some part of her would always love him for that. Just not the way he wanted her to. Because while Felicia believed in love, she didn't believe in true love or soul mates or any of the other grand, romantic lies her mother told her growing up.
Felicia learned the hard way that the future was unknowable and the past was gone. You can only really count on what you feel in the moment. But if there was a man alive who had any chance of proving her wrong, it was the Spider. For some reason beyond her, despite all the bad stuff that'd come between them, no matter how mean she'd had to be to him at times, and regardless of the times he'd actually managed to hurt her, she could still depend on him if she needed him. This kind of unconditional reliability ran counter to everything she had learned about the way the world worked. There were no charming princes or knights in shining armor out there. But as the years wound on Spider-Man was still willing to stand by her, and she started to suspect there might just be one honest man in the world. Because if she understood one thing about the Spider more than most, it was that he was an improbably relentless force for good in an uncertain universe.
By the time she realized this, she also realized she didn't really deserve him, but it was sure pretty to think she once did...
Which is why, these days, she went out of her way to tease him about his apparent naïveté, even though she was always secretly thrilled to know that she had help if she wanted it. Especially now, when she was pretty sure it was necessary.
The Black Cat had told Oracle that she could handle this job on her own, but she knew now that she'd been wrong. Felicia had definitely bitten off more than she could chew and there was no one she trusted to back her on this kind of major mastication than the Spider.
Especially given who was involved.
This is why the Black Cat currently found herself waiting for sundown on a rooftop in Chelsea.Yes, it was a bit of a cliché, but whenever it'd been a while since they'd seen each other and she needed to meet up with the Spider in secret, they always did so on the roof of the now defunct office of Emil Greco... the scene of their first encounter. Way back when, Felicia had been buying guns off Greco for her father's jailbreak, and Spider-Man had just happened to spot her. The rest, as they say, was history, but she remembered that first fight pretty well. It wasn't just because it had been her first tussle with a costumed crime-fighter… or the thrill of finding that all her years of gymnastics and martial arts training had paid off since she actually got the better of a guy with honest-to-god superpowers... She remembered because the whole time they were going at it, the Spider was sporting an ever-increasing chubby in his tights.
Even from the beginning there'd been that frightful sexual tension. And while at the time she'd thought that their game of cat and mouse had this grim undercurrent of life-or-death, looking back on it now, she realized just how playful it always was. It was schoolyard-crush-style antics on a grand scale. The two of them running across the New York City skyline like two damaged, crazy kids too dumb to realize just how easy it was to get what they both really wanted. She remembered worrying back then that the thrill would always be in the chase, but she couldn't have been more wrong…
The Spider had participated in some of the best sex of her life.
Such a damn shame it couldn't last. Felicia tried. She really did. She gave up the crime to make him happy, and then he told her who he really was and everything changed.
She couldn't remember his real name. Why would she? He was always her Spider more than he was the Man. Hell. That's all she really needed. But that hadn't been enough for him. First, he couldn't get over the fact that she didn't have superpowers like his, so she made a deal with the Kingpin of Crime to get some. All so she could spend her nights at his side, busting baddies, but the Spider was never comfortable with the fact that her moral compass didn't point right to his magnetic north.
She had always wondered if this really had to be the end of what they'd shared. And moreover she worried that it'd been her own failings that made it so. Because after all these years, she'd realized that the Spider had been willing to accept that Felicia Hardy was who she was, but maybe she hadn't been willing to accept him for being the man that he was... How fair was that?
The reason she'd been able to overlook this at the time was the simple fact that she could always tell, even then, that she enjoyed being herself much more that he enjoyed being him. What she hadn't been able to understand back then was that, while crime-fighting wasn't really fun, it was just as important to the Spider that he be that sad sack who weighed his responsibility to the world so heavily.
Recently, they had reconnected in more ways than one, but mostly carnally, and Felicia had started to believe that the day might come when they could both balance their unmet expectations in such a way that meant nothing but spectacular, guilt-free sex and weightless emotional baggage… But they weren't in their early twenties anymore. The Spider wasn't going to change. Neither was she. She was just dabbling in his distracted years before he found some woman who fulfilled more than his most immediate needs. But for a while, that had been enough again. In her soberest moments, she realized they were doomed from the start. Toxic. Which might just be what made it so fun.
If she hadn't been waiting for the Spider on that rooftop, mulling all of this over, the target wouldn't have gotten the drop on her.
She had wanted the Spider there, because nobody knew the man she was dealing with better than him. And her years as a private investigator had taught her to trust the best sources you had access to.
Maybe if Spider-Man had shown up in time, he would have told her just how fast the man could be. But even if he had told her, she doubted she could have imagined the inhuman speed of which the man was capable. At first, she thought it'd been some random stiff breeze that had knocked her to the ground. It wasn't until that wind suddenly had weight to press down upon her that she realized that it was a person…
And not just some random opportunist…
Oh no, the Black Cat realized, once she'd turned enough to take in his face. It was him!
Her gasp of shock brought in the numbing thickness of the fog. "He's gassed me", she whimpered before fading.
*
Barbara had been at this game for quite some time. Years. Hell, she'd invented this game.
You send an operative out and provide them with the technical and tactical support they needed to get the job done. It took a lot of planning, and when all that planning inevitably flew right out the window, it took a lot of improvising. And the most frustrating aspect of all this was when your agent in the field couldn't communicate with you.
This kind of thing happened all the time. Hell, it was happening to her in three different countries right now. Black Canary was in Japan shutting down one of Osborn's collaborations with S.T.A.R. Labs in Kyoto, and she hadn't been able to call in since Elektra Natchios had shown up on the scene. Barbara wasn't concerned about Dinah. She knew she didn't have to be any more than she was sweating over the Huntress in Halifax, shutting down Osborn's newest weapons plant. She knew Helena could handle whatever the world threw at her, too. That's why she loved working with those ladies. Barbara knew them. Time and time again, they'd shown her that they had the stuff to get the job done.
Felicia Hardy was a different story. The fact that Barbara hadn't heard from her in the last thirty-six hours was not okay. Babs didn't really know the Black Cat, but she was pretty sure Felicia was in trouble. It was the only explanation. And there wasn't anything she could really do about it from Gotham City.
The GPS on the communicator she'd sent to the Black Cat when she first recruited her placed Hardy at the Upper East Side apartment of one Ashley Moon, an alias under which the mostly reformed thief worked as a special investigator for the mayor of New York. The trace on her cell phone led her to the same location. Felicia probably had a burner cell she used for her moonlighting gig with that fur-collared catsuit. Maybe if Barbara combed through her credit card history, she could find the number. She was about to do just that when she finally got a response from the comm.
"Uh, hello?" she heard through the audio uplink. It wasn't the Black Cat. "Cat? You here?" Barbara was pretty sure it was a guy, but his voice was distorted somehow… like he was talking through a handkerchief over the phone. "I know I'm not supposed to know about this place, but, well, you know me," the guy said, and there was something familiar about that voice... "I'm a nosy-parker… No! Busybody! I'm a busybody."
The muffled mumbling. The nervous blather. It all came together and the realization nearly knocked her out of her chair.
Shit, shit, shit, Barbara thought. Shit!
She felt this violent urge to hang up. Her finger was actually on the button before she realized she didn't have the luxury. This was her best avenue to regain some control over this mission, which was now SNAFU in ways she never expected.
You never should have used her, Barbara told herself. This is why she needed to stick to Dinah, Helena and Zinda Blake. Every new operative was a total disaster. She'd been kidding herself if she thought she could work with the Black Cat without him becoming involved. But no, she just had to stick it to Catwoman…
Damn it!
"Guess she's not here," he was murmuring to himself as she initiated the communicator's beacon. If he was close enough for it to pick up his voice, then he'd hear the high-volume beep that would lead him to find it. "Yikes!" she heard loud and clear a few moments later. "The hell is this?" She disengaged the locator signal and boosted the volume on the receiver so he could hear him even without the comm in his ear.
She found herself hesitating once more. She really didn't want to do this. Suck it up, Gordon, she internally sighed. Let's find Felicia…
"Spider-Man, this is Oracle," she said, well aware her voice would be deepened by sound filters and rendered unrecognizable. "If you want to see your girlfriend again, I'm afraid we're going to have to work together."
"There goes the friendly neighborhood," the wall-crawler groaned in response.
NEXT: Brightest Brand New Day
- 1
- 2
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

When Spidey Met Oracle