by Neil Kleid
Peter resisted the urge, rooting himself to the spot—at Betty’s side, there for whatever she might need—and replayed the events of the last twenty-four hours in his mind. He was stunned to find himself attending the funeral of a reporter with whom he’d been on assignment only days before. A man he’d come to know over the last year as a friend, a confidant. And yet a man he’d discovered he barely knew at all.
Yesterday, Peter thought, Ned Leeds came home… well, at least his body did. Standing on the tarmac at JFK Airport, surrounded by a loose collection of friends and family, Peter had watched strangers unload his friend’s body as if the man were nothing more than lost luggage. Ned had been carted across the Atlantic alongside battered suitcases, weathered valises, and caged pets. Hardly dignified, Peter had thought at the time.
But then, death with dignity might just be the ultimate joke. There was never dignity, simply death. Peter had seen enough of it in his lifetime to understand that. So he stood in the falling rain beside friends, coworkers, and family, horrified to know that Ned Leeds was dead, and it was Peter Parker’s fault.
As a photographer, Peter found himself condensing the events of Ned’s death to a series of vivid, mental snapshots.
Click. Shot of J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of The Daily Bugle, sending Pete and Ned to Berlin on assignment to investigate the whereabouts of a Cold War-era spy.
Click. Shot of Peter as Spider-Man, finding the spy, putting his life in jeopardy to protect her.
Click. Shot of Peter returning to the hotel room, finding Ned bound to a chair, throat slit from ear to ear.
Click. Shot of Betty Brant Leeds, sobbing on the tarmac, Peter waiting nearby in a cloud of guilt, unable to cope with the fallout of his most recent failure.
But it was Ned who couldn’t cope, Peter thought. He couldn’t cope with the men who had undoubtedly been looking for Spider-Man and instead found Ned. They used him to send a message. Why else would Ned have been murdered? And why hadn’t Peter been there instead of out playing hero?
He could barely look at Betty. How could he? How could he face any of his friends, knowing that another person in his life was dead because he’d been cursed with Spider-Man’s powers and abilities? Gwen Stacy, Peter’s former girlfriend, murdered by Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin. Norman himself, killed in battle. The Goblin had taken both lives—but only thanks to Spider-Man’s presence.
And then there was Pete’s Uncle Ben. His surrogate father, dead at the hands of a burglar whom Spider-Man had refused to stop with his newfound powers, too full of himself and self-important to step in and lend a hand. Ben’s death weighed on Peter’s soul, instilling within him a sworn purpose to use his abilities to save lives and make the world a better place.
Yesterday, Ned came home, Peter thought. Today, we’re putting him under the earth. Just like all the others I’ve killed…all the others whose lives have been lost due to their connection to Spider-Man.
Hoping the guilt hadn’t reached his eyes, Peter turned around and scanned the faces in the crowd. Standing at the back, her cheeks marked with tears, Mary Jane Watson caught his gaze. She touched a hand to her heart and mouthed the words “I love you.” He held back a smile, knowing that this was hardly the time. He wanted to go to MJ and take her in his arms, but there would be time enough later. Right now Peter needed to focus his attention on the bereaved widow at his side.
He turned to face Betty, offering an arm in support. Two men lowered Ned’s coffin, now strewn with flowers, down into the grave. Betty remained calm—almost unnaturally so—and Peter wondered how she might feel knowing that Spider-Man, the man responsible for her husband’s death, was standing by her side. She’d probably scream, he decided. I should know. I’m Spider-Man, and I want to scream.
The mourners drifted back, allowing the men to finish lowering Ned into the grave and giving them room to cover the coffin with dirt. Peter bent his head, whispering to Betty.
“Are you okay?”
She held two fingers to her lips, closing her eyes once more. “Shhh. I’m listening,” she replied.
Peter cocked an eyebrow. “For what?”
Betty smiled—thin, blissful, and cold. “For Ned. I want to make sure there’s no sound of movement or breathing from the coffin. I’ve read stories about people buried alive; everyone thought that they were dead. Ned wouldn’t want to be buried alive.”
Peter felt his chest hitch, and he held a breath as he watched Betty open her eyes—her peaceful, calm, sky-blue eyes. She stepped away, moving toward the gravediggers, holding out a hand to get their attention.
“Excuse me, sir?” she asked. The diggers looked up from their shovels. “Excuse me, but would you mind opening the coffin, just to make sure he’s really dead?”
Horrified and heartbroken, Peter stepped toward Betty and took her arm. “Betty, let’s go. Please, we should go…”
Smiling, she stepped into his arms and gave him a comforting hug as her sister moved to join them. “Oh, Pete,” she said, a sigh contorting the single syllable of his name, “Pete, you know when Ned and I go dancing…” She wiped a tear from her eyes, and Peter realized that Betty wasn’t crying—she was laughing.
“…when Ned and I go dancing…Ned Leeds.” She stifled a giggle. “Hee hee hee…he Leeds, get it?”
Speechless, Peter allowed Betty’s sister to steer her away from the grave, out to the parking lot where a waiting limousine whisked her away from friends and family. Peter watched it go, standing in suit and tie amid the saddened mourners, with fists clenched at his sides. He wished he had someone to hit, knowing that no one deserved to be hit more than Peter himself.
Two men stepped up behind Peter, joining him as he moved toward the parking lot. Sorrowful and calmer than Peter had seen him in years, J. Jonah Jameson turned to the second man, Bugle Editor in Chief Joseph “Robbie” Robertson, and quietly shook his head. “Oh, my Lord,” Jonah said, voice catching as he repeated it once again. “Oh, my Lord.”
Robbie clasped the other man’s shoulder. “You blame yourself, don’t you?”
Peter forced himself to stare at the departing limo, to stand and listen and not react. After a moment, he realized that Robbie’s remark had been directed to Jonah, and not to him.
Jonah harrumphed deep inside his chest. “Of course I blame myself, Joe. I’m the publisher. The buck stops here, and I’m responsible for that poor boy losing his life.”
Jonah gestured out toward the parking lot, where Betty’s car had disappeared into the rain. “I’m responsible for turning poor Betty, who’s worked for me for years, into a widow. I’ve lost good men before…but this has to be the worst.”
Peter turned around at that, facing his publisher as the older man slumped his shoulders in defeat. “I’ve destroyed a family,” Jonah continued, plain-faced and dejected, tears glistening beneath his eyes.
They stood there, the three of them, silently supporting one another and mourning a friend in the gently falling rain. After a moment, Jonah wiped his face and started to walk. Robbie fell into step beside him, patting Peter’s shoulder as they passed. Their voices carried back.
“You know,” Jonah said, “it’s a shame. I’ve been able to blame so many things on that rotten wall-crawler in the past, both in print and in public…but this time I can’t place the blame anywhere except on my shoulders.”
Peter barely heard the gruff publisher’s final thoughts as the newspapermen reached the parking lot. “After all,” Jonah finished, “the web-slinger wasn’t within a thousand miles of Ned Leeds at the time of the man’s death. For once, Spider-Man’s hands are clean.”
Rooted to the spot, wracked with guilt and surrounded by tombstones both actual and metaphysical, Peter Parker—the spectacular Spider-Man—stood by the grave of his dead friend and let tears course down his cheeks, mingling with the operatic chorus of pattering, weeping raindrops.
TWO
TWO nights later, Mary Jane Watson sat at a table in the back of a Midt
own coffeehouse, distractedly stirring a latte and waiting for Peter Parker to arrive. He’d called earlier, explaining that he’d need to stop by his apartment to change before joining her. She kept checking the door, prepared to spend the night discussing Ned and Betty, and ultimately drowning in their collective grief.
MJ was dressed in black—her mourning clothes. She rarely wore black, gravitating toward trendier, hipper colors set against her long auburn hair. But everything about this week—the funeral, the weather, her frame of mind—felt dark and moody. Huddled in the corner over a rapidly cooling latte, MJ hoped her dress might help her blend into the shadows so she could be left alone with her thoughts. Some of those thoughts were of Ned’s death and subsequent funeral, but most of them had to do with the bombshell Peter had dropped in her lap a few days before.
Though she and Peter were dating, Mary Jane had attended Ned’s service alone, allowing him to focus on Betty’s needs. Pete and MJ’s history stretched back awhile—on again, off again, and now back on for good, she hoped—but Peter had known Betty even longer, and Mary Jane understood his need to be there for her in her hour of grief. There would be plenty of time for their relationship after. And truth be told, Mary Jane needed time alone to process the events of the preceding week.
Specifically, she needed time to process the fact that Peter Parker—perennial wallflower, a grown man who ate (and enjoyed!) his elderly aunt’s wheatcakes, a man who barely had two cents to rub together and had been coached through more fashion emergencies than MJ cared to recount, this wonderful man whom she loved without question—was an honest-to-god, red-black-and-true-blue hero.
Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
The night Peter had returned from Berlin, devastated by Ned’s death, he’d knocked on her door and crumbled into her arms—weary, weeping, unable to string two words together. Mary Jane had talked him down, consoled him as best she could. During the course of a long night of confession, Peter had tentatively revealed his secret: Years ago, during a high-school field trip, he’d been bitten by a radioactive spider; the bite had granted him the speed, agility, and proportional strength of a spider, as well as the ability to stick to walls—and, apparently, a string of relationships that came and went, due to Peter’s inability to put them before his new, noble lifestyle.
The webbing was Pete’s own invention, as was his masked persona—a necessity, he explained, to protect those he loved. Unfortunately, that hadn’t always gone as planned: Friendships had been abandoned, relationships ruined, careers and goals cast aside for the constant call of a city in danger, always in need of a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Like a man with nothing to lose, Peter had confessed over a decade’s worth of secrets, burdens he’d carried since Ben Parker’s death. He’d allowed Mary Jane in, sharing his life as he had with no one else and finally answering every question she’d ever had about Peter Parker. She realized what the confession meant to Peter, and what it meant about them, and now she needed time to grapple with its magnitude and truly understand the implications.
“Peter Parker is Spider-Man.” She whispered it to herself, biting back a giggle, wondering whether anyone had overheard. MJ looked around at the other patrons, but her fellow coffee-goers were far too involved in personal dramas of their own. She toyed with her drink, smiling despite the butterflies in her stomach. MJ was secretly pleased to be the only person in New York (and perhaps the world) to know that her boyfriend—a polite, quiet, unhip science major with whom she’d been matched on an awkward blind date by their respective, well-meaning aunts—was in fact the coolest, hippest, most glamorous person that Mary Jane Watson knew. But what drew her to him, what made him the man she loved, was the fact that he was the most upstanding, moral, responsible man she knew, as well. And more often than not, that meant he was constantly thinking about how his life affected those around him.
Ned’s death had obviously opened Peter’s eyes to his own mortality while serving as another example that no one close to him was ever truly safe. Perhaps Peter’s confession was his way of safeguarding Mary Jane, arming her with the knowledge needed to protect herself from Peter’s life—or from Peter himself? Maybe he realized how vulnerable she was to the danger all around him? They’d rekindled their relationship just as the spectre of Spider-Man touched someone within their circle of friends. Could Ned’s death have Peter picturing MJ tossed over a bridge like poor Gwen?
No. She shook her head, refusing to believe it. Pete’s confession hadn’t felt like he wanted to close a door, or use his secret as an excuse for ending things. If that had been the case, if he’d really wanted to bring their relationship to a halt, he’d have used his oldest trick: disengaging in a cloud of mystery and walking away from all the good things in his life, a frustrating maneuver MJ once dubbed the “Parker Shuffle.” Instead, Peter had opened up—truly opened up to her, for the first time in his life—and that, to Mary Jane, felt like he hoped to embrace what they shared, to arm her with the information she needed to handle being Spider-Man’s girlfriend.
The only question was, could she handle it?
That’s why Mary Jane had arrived early, to give herself time to process it all and figure out what she planned to say. The coffee had gone cold, and she set it aside while craning to see the door. Peter Parker is Spider-Man, she said to herself once more. How strange. How wonderful. How perfect.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Peter was suddenly there, distractedly pushing his way through the crowd and stumbling toward the table. At a glance, MJ could tell that something was wrong—his face was white, his clothes disheveled. He dropped into the opposite chair and wiped a hand across his face.
“Pete? You okay?”
Peter looked up with red, defeated eyes and let both palms fall to the table, jostling the coffee and startling nearby patrons. Mary Jane took his hands in her own, gently caressing them.
She flipped back her hair, lowered her voice, and searched his eyes. “Peter, tell me what’s happened.”
Peter started to speak, but his voice cracked. Then he cleared his throat and whispered across the table. “Ned—”
“What about Ned?”
“He…” Peter closed his eyes, as if the words pained him. He grabbed her mug, took a drink, grimaced at the taste, and set it aside. “I found out last night. It...”
Peter looked up and met her eyes. “Ned Leeds was the Hobgoblin.”
Mary Jane’s heart went cold. She stood up, barely letting a moment lapse, and pulled Peter back to his feet. “Come on,” she said. “Not here.”
Twenty minutes later, huddled together on MJ’s bed, Peter related the events of the past few days. He’d learned through informants that Ned, like Peter, had been living a double life: donning a costume he’d bought and altered—one that had previously belonged to the Green Goblin. Spider-Man, like many heroes fighting crime around the world, boasted a fairly extensive rogues’ gallery. Though Mary Jane hadn’t always paid attention to the detailed histories of Spider-Man’s enemies, she’d lived in New York long enough to familiarize herself with colors and costumes, garish or otherwise. Electro, he of the ridiculous lightning-bolt headgear. Doctor Octopus, the eight-armed dweeb with a bowl cut. The Rhino. The Lizard.
And recently, terrorizing New York with exploding pumpkin bombs, instigating a deadly gang war and citywide bloodbath behind a yellow fright mask and Halloween-orange cape, the deadly fiend known as the Hobgoblin. Or, as she now knew, stalwart Bugle reporter and recently deceased husband to one of her closest friends, the late Ned Leeds.
“To think,” Peter said, head gripped between his hands, “to think how guilty I felt that Ned was killed because I was Spider-Man, because we happened to be sharing a room. Because we happened to be working together, and he happened to marry my best friend. I mean, that was bad enough.”
He turned to Mary Jane, tears sliding down his cheeks, coming to rest in a soft growth of two-day stubble. “But this? Ned wore the mask of my greatest enem
y. He dedicated his life to ending mine and nearly killed me at least three times this year. Maybe because he knew who I was, maybe because I was simply in his way. I…I…I just…”
MJ rubbed Pete’s back, rested a hand on his arm and tried to calm his nerves. “Relax. Just let it out.”
Peter exhaled, deep breath rattling in his chest. “I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’m relieved to know that I’m not responsible for Ned’s death, not in any way that Betty or anyone might think, and I want to hunt down and bring to justice those men that are. But…”
“But you feel like Ned’s connection to Spider-Man, how intertwined he was in your life, as your friend and enemy…”
“…it’s like Spider-Man had a hand in his death, anyway.”
Peter’s bare-faced statement silenced their conversation for a while, words hanging between them like a death sentence. Mary Jane flashed back to moments spent on double dates with Betty and Ned, drinks and dinners, parties and laughs. Not once could she have imagined a vicious killer was hiding behind Ned’s eyes, sometimes cold but often kindly. Nothing about the man—a standup guy, an ace reporter—had indicated he might be hiding a secret so huge and awful that it could explode within their midst like a deadly pumpkin bomb. Nothing made her think that he was hiding a monster in his closet.
But then, before this week, nothing about Peter Parker had made her think he might be hiding a hero beneath his rumpled shirt and biting wit.
She remembered Betty’s face at the cemetery, solemn and drawn in the rain, holding back whatever secrets she possessed beneath her quiet, mournful demeanor. The memory of Betty’s grief gave MJ pause, made her wonder how much the poor woman knew—how much Ned had forced Betty to deal with before finding himself at the wrong end of a murder weapon. And if Betty didn’t know, if Ned hadn’t shared his secret with her as Peter had with Mary Jane, what would the truth do to that fragile façade when it finally came out?
