Webs of Phantoms

The first time I saw him, he was swinging through a wall of my own making.

I'd thrown up a psi-barrier across 42nd Street, a shimmering curtain of telekinetic force meant to slow the Hulk down long enough for the rest of the team to figure out what the hell to do with him. Banner had been having a bad day. The kind of bad day that levels three city blocks before breakfast.

And then this idiot in red and blue came sailing through my barrier like it was made of tissue paper.

He hit the pavement wrong, rolled twice, and came up firing webs at the Hulk's face. The Hulk swatted him into a hot dog cart. The cart exploded in a cloud of mustard and pretzels. I heard him laugh. Actually laugh.

"Little help here, Red?"

I didn't know who he was. I'd been with the X-Men for three years by then, and I'd never seen a costume like his. No logos I recognized. No government insignia. Just a guy in spandex with terrible aim and a death wish.

I dropped the barrier and caught the Hulk in a full psychic press. Not my favorite move. It feels like shoving your hand into a blender full of rage. But it worked. The Hulk went down, clutching his head, and the web-slinger dropped onto his chest with both feet.

"Stay down, big guy. You're making the tourists nervous."

The Hulk growled. I held the press. My nose started bleeding.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Spider-Man." He said it like I should know. Like the name meant something. "You're Jean Grey. I'm a fan."

I wiped the blood off my lip with the back of my hand. "You just jumped through a psi-barrier."

"Felt like static. Kinda tickled."

That shouldn't have been possible. I'd trained with Xavier himself. My barriers could hold back Magneto for thirty seconds on a good day. This guy in the pajamas just walked through one like it was a curtain of beads.

"You're a mutant," I said.

"Something like that."

He didn't elaborate. He didn't stick around to explain. The Hulk was already stirring again, and the rest of the Avengers were descending on 42nd Street like angels of vengeance. Iron Man. Thor. A woman in black leather I didn't recognize.

Spider-Man looked at me one last time. "You're good, Red. Really good. But your barriers have a frequency. You're broadcasting on a wavelength I can ride."

Then he was gone. A blur of red and blue, disappearing into the canyon of buildings.

I stood there with blood drying on my face and a strange heat in my chest. Not anger. Something else.

---

I didn't see him again for six months.

The X-Men had our hands full. Sentinels. The Brotherhood. The usual apocalypse-of-the-week nonsense that comes with being a mutant in a world that hates you. I pushed Spider-Man out of my mind. Mostly.

But I started paying attention to the news. Watching for him. And he was everywhere.

Bank robbers webbed to lampposts. Carjackers hanging upside down from fire escapes. A little old lady's cat rescued from a burning building. The Daily Bugle called him a menace. The people of New York called him something else. They called him hope.

I didn't get it. I'd seen what he could do. He was fast, sure. Stronger than he looked. That weird sixth sense that let him dodge punches before they were thrown. But he wasn't a god. He wasn't a weapon. He was just a guy in a costume who kept showing up.

That's what I couldn't understand. The showing up. Day after day. Night after night. No backup. No team. No mansion full of Cerebro and danger rooms and backup plans. Just him and his webs and that stupid laugh.

I started dreaming about him.

Not the dreams you're thinking of. Not yet. Strange dreams. Fragments. I'd be in the middle of a psychic training session with the Professor, and suddenly I'd catch a flicker. A flash of red and blue swinging through my subconscious.

Xavier noticed.

"You're distracted, Jean."

"No, sir."

"You've been carrying a secondary frequency for weeks. A persistent echo. Who is it?"

I lied. I told him it was nothing. A stray thought from a civilian. Random noise in the psychic spectrum.

He didn't believe me. But he let it go.

---

The second time we met, I was the one who found him.

He was bleeding out in an alley behind a bodega in Hell's Kitchen. Somebody had put a bullet through his side. Not a normal bullet. Something with teeth. The wound was black around the edges, smoking faintly.

I landed softly. Heard him gasp. His mask was off. I saw his face for the first time.

He was young. Younger than me, maybe. Brown hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Big brown eyes that went wide when he saw me.

"Red. Fancy meeting you here."

"You're dying."

"Tuesday." He coughed. Blood on his lips. "Tuesdays are my dying days. You should see me on Wednesdays. I'm invincible."

I knelt beside him. Put my hand on his wound. He flinched.

"Don't."

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"I know what you can do. Get in my head. See my secrets." His voice was hard now. No jokes. "I don't let anyone in."

"You're going to bleed out in an alley."

"Been worse."

I looked at him. Really looked. The black veins spreading from the wound. The tremor in his hands. The way he kept looking at the mouth of the alley, not at me. He was waiting for something. Someone. Backup that wasn't coming.

"You don't have a team," I said.

"I have me."

"That's not enough."

"It has to be."

I didn't understand him. I still don't. But I understood the wound. It was necrotic. Magical, maybe. Or alien. Something that was eating him from the inside out. He had maybe an hour before it reached his heart.

I made a decision.

"I'm going to help you. But I need you to lower your shields. Just for a second. Let me see the wound the way I need to see it."

He stared at me. I saw him weighing the choice. Trust the woman who could turn his brain inside out, or die alone in a pile of garbage bags.

"One second," he said.

His shields dropped.

And I was inside him.

---

It wasn't like other minds. The Professor's mind is a library. Logan's is a cage full of snarling animals. Scott's is a chessboard, every piece in its place.

Spider-Man's mind was a web. A living, breathing network of connections. Every thought linked to ten others. Every memory tied to a feeling, a smell, a sound. I saw his childhood. His uncle. The words he'd never forget. I saw the bite. The first time he put on the mask. The first time he failed.

I saw Gwen.

I pulled out fast. My hand was shaking.

He was watching me. His eyes were tired. Old. The eyes of someone who'd been carrying the world on his back since he was a teenager.

"Now you know," he said.

"I know you're an idiot."

He laughed. Actually laughed. Blood bubbled out of his mouth and he didn't care.

"Yeah. That too."

I put my hand back on his wound. Healed it. I don't know how. I'd never healed anything before. But I was inside him, and I could feel the shape of the damage, and I pushed. Phoenix fire, maybe. Something that lived in me and didn't have a name.

The wound closed. The black veins receded. His skin went from gray to pink.

He sat up slowly. Touched his side. Looked at me.

"That's new."

"You're welcome."

"No, I mean. That's really new. You can heal?"

"I can do a lot of things I don't understand."

He stood up. Wobbled. Steadyed himself against the wall. He was tall. I hadn't noticed that before. Taller than me. Lean. Built like a runner.

"I owe you one, Red."

"You owe me more than one."

"Probably." He pulled his mask back on. The fabric stretched over his face, and he became Spider-Man again. The joke machine. The friendly neighborhood menace. "But I'm a slow payer. You'll have to keep showing up."

He shot a web. Swung up into the dark.

I stood in the alley for a long time. The smell of garbage and blood. The echo of his laughter.

I wanted to hit him.

I wanted to kiss him.

I didn't know the difference anymore.