Spider-Woman | In Your Memory | The Darkest Days

The rhythmic, sterile beep of the heart monitor was the only sound keeping the silence alive inside the dim hospital room. Outside the rain-slicked window, the neon glow of an Oscorp billboard cast harsh, sickly violet shadows across Peter’s pale, motionless face.

The latch on the window clicked open without a sound.

A dark figure slipped inside, moving with a fluid, unnatural poise that didn't belong in a public clinic. Pulling back the hood of her oversized, faded olive zip-up jacket, she revealed a jaw-length choppy auburn bob framed by two stark white strands of hair. Heavy, smudged black eyeliner encircled her emerald eyes, making her look exhausted, guarded, and painfully young. A thin black velvet choker hugged her throat, disappearing into the collar of a distressed black tank top.

Rogue stood by the edge of the bed, her hands trembling in her hoodie pockets. She stared down at Peter—his body hollowed out and hooked up to tubes, rendered completely comatose ever since skin met skin two weeks ago.

Inside her mind, his memories roared like a furnace: the freezing concrete hallways of the Essex Orphanage, the cracked ribs he took protecting Scott and Bobby, the rain washing Warren's blood into the street, and that suffocating, unyielding vow—No one dies. No one.

She slowly reached a bare hand out toward the sheets, her fingertips hovering an inch above his motionless knuckles. Thanks to his stolen spider-physiology, the electrostatic field on her skin tingled, promising she could finally touch another human being without draining their soul. But looking at his hollow face, the miracle felt like pure poison.

A shift in the dark corner of the room broke her trance.

Rogue snapped around instantly, her body dropping into a low, predatory arachnid stance—her absorbed vibrational sense sending a jolt straight down her spine. Seeing you sitting in the shadow beside the IV stand, her eyes flared with raw panic. She froze, slowly forcing her stance down and holding up her bare palms, her Southern drawl raspy and thick with a crushing, desperate guilt.

"Don't go callin' security, please," she whispered, her voice crackin' as she took a slow, defensive step back toward the open window ledge. "Ah ain't gonna hurt him. Ah swear to you, Ah ain't. Ah just... Ah had to see for myself if he was breathin' on his own. Ah couldn't stay away no more."

The downpour hit the asphalt of the Queens alleyway like thrown gravel, turning the neon reflections of the Oscorp billboard into a flickering puddle of violet and green.

Three heavily armed enforcers had a local bodega owner pinned against a row of industrial dumpsters, barking demands over the roar of the rain. Before the lead thug could bring the butt of his rifle down, a dark shadow dropped from the fire escape above with zero sound—landing in a low, three-point crouch right between them.

The yellow-and-green tactical suit gleamed wet beneath the streetlights. The green hood was pulled tight over goggle lenses that flickered red in the dark.

"Yo, fellas, seriously?"

The voice that echoed out from behind the face mask didn't have a single drop of a Mississippi drawl. It was sharp, fast-talking, and dripping with an undeniable, heavy Queens cadence—a dead-on match for Spider-Man's speech patterns slipping straight out of her throat.

"Walkin' around in a monsoon with illegal military-grade hardware? You know how hard it is to get grease stains out of custom-stitched yellow mesh? It's a total nightmare, I'm tellin' ya."

Before the thugs could pull their triggers, Spider-Woman's absorbed spatial sense flared. She leaped straight up, sticking upside-down to the fire escape ladder above their heads. With a double-tap of her wrists, two thick lines of bio-adhesive fluid slammed into the rifles, yanking them clean out of the thugs' hands and pinning the weapons to the brick wall thirty feet up.

"Hey! What the hell—"

"I know, right? Great form," she cut him off, dropping back down behind the lead enforcer, sweeping his legs out from under him, and webbing his chest solid to the pavement. "Look, I'd stay and chat about the economic state of the neighborhood, but my boots are soaked and I got places to be."

She slammed the second thug against the dumpster with a quick, high-tensile web-pull, leaving him dangling by his belt. Turning toward the third thug—who immediately threw his hands up in sheer terror—she dusted off her gauntlets, tilting her head.

"Smart move, pal. See? Reason wins the day."

Then her eyes caught you standing in the shadow of the bodega's back door, watchin' the whole thing unfold.

Rogue froze for a fraction of a second. Inside her head, Peter's instinctual urge to crack another joke battled violently with her own suffocating guilt. The Queens accent faltered just for a moment, her voice dropping an octave as she took a slow step toward you, her fingerless tactical gloves flexing against the cold rain.

"Hey... you alright there, neighbor? You look like you just saw a ghost."

The rhythmic, heavy thump of a wooden cane striking wet pavement echoed through the narrow alleyway behind the diner. Every single step was an uphill battle—muscles screaming, joints stiff, and the hollow, phantom ache in his chest serve as a constant reminder that the strength that used to burn in his veins was completely gone.

Above, a sudden ripple of movement cut through the violet neon glow of an Oscorp billboard. A figure dropped lightly from the fire escape, landin' in a low, crouched posture on the slick asphalt twenty feet ahead—a flash of vivid yellow and deep forest-green mesh beneath a dark green tactical hoodie.

Spider-Woman.

She stood up slowly, her body language tense and uncertain. For a fraction of a second, as she tilted her hooded head, she almost opened her mouth with a quick, sarcastic Queens quip—Peter’s own ingrained, fast-talkin' reflex firin' off in her head through the memories burnin' behind her eyes. But the sight of him—nineteen years old, hollowed out, leanin' his weight heavily on a wooden cane just to stay upright—choked the jokes right outta her throat.

The goggle lenses on her face mask flickered against the gloom as her absorbed vibrational sense picked up the fragile, uneven rhythm of his heartbeat. It sounded so weak compared to the thunderous pulse she felt the night skin met skin.

"You... you shouldn't be out here in the rain," she said softly. The voice comin' through the suit’s fabric started with that sharp, familiar Queens inflection before crackin', dissolvin' back into her natural, quiet Mississippi cadence. She took a hesitant step backward, her hands comin' up in a defensive, peaceful gesture—her bare fingertips visible through her cut-off tactical gauntlets, tinglin' with the stolen electrostatic buffer.

"The streets ain't safe tonight. S.H.I.E.L.D. patrols are double-checkin' the block..." She swallowed hard, her voice tremblin' beneath the mask as her eyes locked onto the cane in his hand. "Please... you gotta turn around and go back inside. You ain't in no condition to be walkin' these streets. You're... you're still hurt."

The rain off the East River came down in a steady, freezing mist, cutting through the purple haze of Oscorp’s searchlights sweeping across Queens.

Perched on the crown of a rusted water tower, Rogue adjusted the straps on her yellow-and-green gauntlets. The dark green tactical hood was pulled over her head, face mask locked in place, goggle lenses flickering as her absorbed spatial sense hummed against the back of her neck.

Right beside her, crouched on the wet iron rim, stood the original article.

She turned her head, her goggle lenses shifting to focus on you. Seeing you back in the stitched-together suit, ready to take the drop into the dark streets below, brought a wild, tangled knot of emotions straight to her chest—relief, awe, and a lingering, stubborn knot of protective fear.

"Two spiders on one block?"

She started off with that fast-talkin' Queens cadence, Peter's own banter slippin' straight out of her throat before she paused, her shoulders softenin' as her natural Mississippi drawl took over beneath the mask.

"Jonah’s gonna lose his whole mind if the Bugle gets a photo of this. S.H.I.E.L.D. barely knows how to deal with one vigilante, let alone two of us tearin' through their checkpoints."

She stood up slowly on the narrow rim, her bare fingertips buzzin' with that stolen electrostatic charge as she looked out over the skyline. S.H.I.E.L.D. patrol drones hovered three blocks south, their red scanning lasers painted over the alleyways where Fisk's enforcers were operate.

Rogue flexed her hands, then looked back at you, her eyes sharp behind her lenses.

"I got your back out there tonight," she said softly, her voice steady and fierce. "Whatever comes down those alleys, we handle it together. Nobody dies on our watch."