[for Felicia] he wore black and I wore white

[daretodo]

On those nights I go out in costume, not only am I careful to stick to low traffic areas, but I'm more careful still to make sure I'm not followed. Without my spider-sense to warn me, I can't rely on instinct alone to ensure I don't give myself away, but given that I tend to spend most of my nighttime 'training' high up in the trees, there's not much risk of being spotted until I inevitably have to make my way back to the ground -- intentionally, or otherwise.

Losing my footing on a branch slicked with ice as I head on down, I save myself from a concussion with a well-timed -- if not especially well-aimed -- webline shot up into a neighboring tree, sending me swinging just a few inches above the ground, my feet grazing untouched snow for the few seconds it takes before my webbing snaps, and I land on my back in an extraordinarily cold heap.

With a groan and a few choice muttered curses, I roll over to get up onto my knees, surprised to find an audience, though the glimpse I catch Cat's familiar white-blonde hair reflecting under the low light of the moon sets me at ease enough that I don't immediately make a bolt for it. Other than Mary Jane, there's no one else who knows I've started doing this again, and I'd really like to keep it that way, for her safety more so than my own.

Brushing myself off -- and boy, that's gonna hurt in the morning, I'm telling you now -- I do my best Alec Guiness impersonation by saying, "These so aren't the droids you're looking for."

Comments

[crossyourpath.livejournal.com]

Felicia’s had years to practice this sort of stuff. Before her mutation was activated (and even after it was turned off) she had prided herself on being able to make the hard stuff look easy. Her motivation might not always have been so pure when it to being limber, but right now it was better than being plagued with stiff muscles and joints. This place might be lacking a lot of things that she loved, she isn’t about to give it up so easily.

“Easy,” she says with a wicked grin, hair still hanging in her face as she counts to three before twisting herself around until she is upright once more. “I didn’t break bones. Okay, that’s not true and you know it, but there’s something about women having a higher pain tolerance and...yeah. That. Let’s just go with that.”

[daretodo]

"I was gonna say," I tell her, my expression dubious under my mask, though I'm sure she can hear it, even if she can't see it. I've sat at her bedside more than once, after all, because as skilled as she is, the bad guys we went up against weren't always slouches. There's a difference in watching her play around in the trees than there was watching her go head-to-head with my rogues gallery, an assurance of knowing she'll be alright that wouldn't necessarily be there back home.

"I hadn't broken a bone without my powers since I was a kid before showing up here." I wait a beat, then add, almost defensively, "But my pain tolerance is still perfectly high, thank you very much. It's everyone else telling me it isn't. Only difference from back home is that the pain lasts longer."

[crossyourpath.livejournal.com]

He might be wearing a mask, but Felicia knows exactly which look she's on the receiving end of. There are only so many that Spider has in his arsenal that are relevant at times like these and she's been on the receiving end of them all. But like the saying goes, sticks and stones and all of that. She's a big girl and sure her insurance premiums had been through the roof, she'd survived. The nine lives thing had only been a fortunate coincidence.

"And that, my friend," Felicia pauses for both dramatic effect and to crack her knuckles. "Is the kicker. I've got every faith that your pain threshold is golden, but those lingering aches are where it really sucks. You feel about a hundred years old for weeks."

[daretodo]

"Or most of a year," I admit, huffing out a sigh. Letting my knees do the bulk of the work, I allow myself to fall back so that I'm hanging upside down, then stretch out my arms over -- under? -- my head.

"Strange to think you've been here about that long. Your islandversary's right about... Now, isn't it?"

The exact date escapes me, but in my defense, I had a lot going on at the time, what with Osborn and just getting back together with MJ.

[crossyourpath.livejournal.com]

"Okay, that's just sad."

It doesn't make it any less true, but there is something about thinking of it in terms of a year that makes it just seem bad. She always knew that Spider had this tendency to get his ass whupped with an alarming frequency and still manage to come out on top. Guess it took having powers zapped out of everyone for it to really sink in that he should be living in a wheelchair.

Letting out a low whistle, she grimmaces. "I know, right? I'm supposed to be rolling back in the city right now. Or married with a kid on the way in Portland or something weird like that."

[daretodo]

I almost fall. It's about the last thing I'm expecting to leave her mouth, such a blatant reminder of my first wife, my unborn child. It's hard to think sometimes that I'm not even thirty and already on my second marriage. That I'm not even thirty and already I've lost a baby. I've suffered so many losses in my lifetime, probably more than anyone else I know, but even though I've moved on from them all, pushed through the pain and despair, every last one still hurts when I stop to think of them. Not all wounds are healed by time.

Yet Felicia mentions it so casually that I wonder if she even realizes what she's just gone and said. I'm too winded to ask. And so, caught entirely off guard, I do what I do best -- I make a quick exit. Letting myself drop from the branch, I do a flip in midair, landing in a messy crouch in the snow, and promptly shoot off a webline to get me out of here ASAP.

"Yeah, weird. Look, it's been nice catching up, Cat, but uh, I just remembered something," I say hastily, taking a running jump. "See you around."

[crossyourpath.livejournal.com]

Watching him flee like something has come up and decided to beat him up right then and there, Felicia frowns. This isn't exactly the most unsurprising end of a conversation, especially not between them.

Waving lamely after him, she wracks her brain for what exactly could have set him off. It's a second too late that it clicks how her lame joke could have sounded.

"Well then," she says to herself before jumping to another tree branch. Thankfully she's never been the anniversary celebrating type or this would have wounded her ego.