Marvel – I am Spiderman

His phone buzzed in the web-pouch.

He was on a rooftop in Hell's Kitchen, legs over the edge, finishing a granola bar that had been in the pouch since Tuesday and tasted like it. Below him a couple was having a fight through an open window, the kind where both people kept saying "fine" and neither of them meant it. He'd been listening for about four minutes because the man kept pronouncing "supposedly" as "supposably" and Peter was trying to figure out if it was intentional.

The phone buzzed again. A call, not a text.

He pulled it out. The number wasn't in his contacts but he recognized it. She'd written it on a sticky note and pressed it into his glove on the water tower two weeks ago. For emergencies. Not for flirting. I'll know the difference. She'd never used it.

"Hey."

"My father collapsed." Flat. She'd been crying before she called. "They took him to the prison hospital wing. I can't- I can't get in. I tried. I can't get in."

"Where are you?"

She told him. He was swinging before she finished the address.

The wind was different over water. Colder, wetter, carrying the salt-and-diesel of the East River. He swung east through Manhattan and crossed into Queens over the Queensboro Bridge, web-lines catching the support cables. Queens had its own version of being loud at night.

He found the block. Walk-ups facing the water, fire escapes rusting on the facades. Across the East River, Ryker's Island sat in the dark. Low buildings, security lights flat and white along the perimeter. One wing had more lights on than the rest.

Felicia was on a fire escape on the fourth floor. Sitting with her back against the brick, knees pulled up, binoculars hanging from her neck. Jeans. A hoodie. Her white hair was pulled back and pieces had come loose and stuck to her cheeks.

She'd been crying. The skin under her eyes was swollen and raw and she wiped at it when he landed on the railing but the tears were still coming.

"Don't look at me."

"I'm not looking."

He was looking. He sat down on the fire escape next to her, back against the railing. The scar near her left eyebrow. Her jaw. Blood at the corner of her mouth where she'd been biting the inside of her cheek.

The binoculars were heavy. Military grade, probably stolen.

"How long have you been here?"

"Since four." She picked up the binoculars. Looked through them at the prison. Put them down. Picked them up again. "I can see the hospital wing from here. Third floor. The lights have been on since I got here. Sometimes someone walks past the window. I can't tell if it's a nurse or a guard."

A boat moved on the East River, running lights reflecting on the water in long streaks that broke and reformed. November air. The fire escape was cold through his suit and Felicia's hands were bare and red at the knuckles.

"He might die tonight," she said. "And I can't even hold his hand."

He sat in a plastic chair once, in his first life, while someone's grandmother was behind a hospital curtain. He'd heard the reassuring things people say in those chairs. They hadn't helped. He didn't say any of them.

"I became the Black Cat to save him." She said it to the binoculars. "That's the whole thing. The suit, the training, the Black Fox. I learned to pick locks and fight and swing between buildings because he was in there and nobody else was going to get him out." She turned the binoculars over in her hands. "And I tried. I tried twice and I failed both times and now he's in the hospital wing and I can't even get inside a building I was supposed to break him out of."

Her voice cracked on the last word. A syllable that came out wet. She wiped her face.

"He used to do this thing," she said. Quieter. "When I was little. He'd come home from a job. I didn't know what a job was then. I thought he traveled, like a salesman. And he'd have something. A bracelet. A necklace. Once it was a tiara, an actual tiara. He'd put it on my head and say 'Fit for a queen.' I was seven." She was staring at the binoculars. "I still have the tiara. It's worth eleven thousand dollars. I looked it up."

The apartment below had a window cracked open. TV noise, a late-night host, the audience laughing. The window closed. The laughter cut off.

"I trained for months," Felicia said. "I fought people. I stole things. I put on a catsuit and jumped off buildings. And it wasn't enough. He's dying in a cell and I'm sitting on a fire escape watching a light that might not even be his room."

Peter sat with her. The East River was black and the prison lights were flat and white across the water. Felicia was breathing through her mouth, short measured breaths.

He put his arm around her.

She went rigid. Every muscle locked, shoulders pulling up. He didn't pull back. He left his arm where it was and waited.

She turned her face into his shoulder.

The shaking started. Her face was in his shoulder and she shook and the only sound was the wind and the creak of the fire escape and water lapping at pilings somewhere below.

He held her. The wind pushed at them and the fire escape groaned and the lights across the water stayed on. She shook for a long time. His suit got wet where her face was pressed against it. He didn't move. The man in the apartment in Hell's Kitchen was probably still saying "supposably."

The shaking slowed. She wiped her nose on his shoulder. Under different circumstances he would've had a comment about that.

"I lied," she said.

Hoarse. Wrecked. Into his shoulder.

"On the water tower. When I said it didn't happen."

He kept his arm around her. "I know."

"All of it happened."

"I know."

She pulled back. His arm was still around her and she was still close. She looked at him and her face was wet and her eyes were red and swollen and her nose was running and mascara had streaked down her cheeks in grey lines.

"I don't know what to do with that," she said.

"You don't have to know tonight."

Her eyes moved between his. Her mouth was pressed flat, the corner where the cherry lipstick usually sat bare and chapped.

She exhaled. Long.

"Come back tomorrow," she said.

"I'll be here."

She looked at him. Then she turned back toward the water and picked up the binoculars and raised them toward the hospital wing. The lights were still on. Someone was still moving behind the windows.

Peter stayed. He sat on the fire escape with his arm around her and she looked through the binoculars and he looked at the water. A helicopter crossed over the river heading north. The section of railing nearest his hand had paint peeling off in long curls, orange rust underneath. He pulled a flake off. It was the shape of Rhode Island, roughly.

She lowered the binoculars. Leaned into him. Her shoulder against his ribs.

"Thank you," she said. Quiet enough that the wind almost took it.

"You don't have to-"

"Shut up. Let me thank you."

He shut up. She leaned against him. He held on.

When he left she was still sitting there. Binoculars up. He'd offered to stay and she'd shaken her head. "Go home, Spider. You have school or whatever it is you do."

"I could-"

"Go home."

He swung west. Queens to Manhattan, over the black water, across rooftops. The cold was in his suit and through it and the wet spot on his shoulder was colder than the rest of him.

Ben was asleep when he got home. The light under his door was off. The crossword pen was quiet. Peter climbed in through the window and peeled the suit off. The shoulder was damp. He pressed his thumb against the fabric.

He lay in bed. Liz's text was on his phone, still unanswered. The compass was at three. Cindy sleeping, distant. MJ next door. And Felicia was on a fire escape in Queens watching her father's hospital light through binoculars she'd stolen from someone who didn't need them as badly.

He'd said I'll be here.

His shoulder was cold where the tears had dried. He closed his eyes. He'd go back tomorrow.