Chapter Text
Gwen Stacy's latest venture into Earth-616 had gone sideways about as soon as she'd tried to prevent a murder.
It turned out that in this universe, Kraven the Hunter was younger. And bigger. Maybe taller? She couldn't tell if he was taller.
She was trapped. His weight rested on her lower back, his thighs felt like they could snap her spine, his hands held her forearms and felt like he could twist them from their sockets.
She knew she was stronger than that. She should have been stronger than that. But every instinct was fear because a large man had her pinned to cold cement and she couldn't move and every girl knows in her bones what happens when she lets that happen. Her spider-sense was a wail of feedback in her head that made him a wall of noise, and she couldn't get out of the loop.
"Can we talk about this?" she asked, trying to contain her panic, still trying to pull her arms free. Her knees pressed against the ground, trying to rise enough to knock him off her. Her heart was pounding a furious rhythm against her ribs and the sound of it was trying to escape through her throat.
"The time for that is over," he said. "Any coward can negotiate after defeat." He adjusted his hold to free one hand, and when she struggled more his thighs and his grip both tightened. Her senses screamed like they were out of tune. He grabbed her hood, balling it in his hand to pull on it and bring her to attention. He didn't touch her mask. "How old?"
"What?" She heard but she didn't, his question did nothing to lessen her fear.
"You are a Spider. It is a question I have learned I must ask of Spiders, who play at being bigger than they are. How old are you?"
"Fifteen," she lied, in the vague hope this might help her.
"Liar," he said, letting her hood go and putting his hand on the back of her mask. She struggled, but the span of his fingers was big enough to grip her skull. That wail was getting louder, her lungs were cymbals. She felt like she was going to panic. "Be honest."
"Nineteen," she admitted, and her voice broke. "Please don't be asking that because of why I think you're asking that." She wasn't going to cry, but she might cry.
"You are a fool," he said. "Kraven the Hunter does not kill teenagers. But you have challenged Kraven, and this cannot go unpunished." She started to protest, her knees pressed into concrete again. The volume of her spider-sense was less but it was still loud like a fall from the sky. "I will break your hands."
"What!"
"You are a Spider. They will heal."
"That doesn't make it okay!"
"It should not be. It is a lesson. Next time, you will ask questions first."
Her stomach churned. She couldn't get home with broken hands. She couldn't do anything with broken hands. "What about my legs? My arms? An arm and a leg? My nose? Not my hands."
"It will be an effective lesson."
"I'm a musician," she blurted, which was true but wasn't but losing her hands was a stereotype of a nightmare and it didn't matter how fast they healed if they healed wrong somehow and her fingers didn't work and she couldn't even hold a stick—
"Oh?" He let her head go, and she nearly faceplanted. She pressed her forehead to the ground and tried to breathe. Her sense of danger had dropped a decibel but the tempo hadn't slowed, her heart still thrashing. "What kind?"
She wasn't in the mood for jokes about drummers. "I'm in a band." Kind of, sort of, sometimes. "It's super cool. You've probably never heard of it."
"Sing something." He was mocking her. She didn't know if it mattered that he was mocking her. She just wanted him to let her go. She just wanted to run.
"I don't—"
His hands were on her wrists. Her web shooters. Her watch. Her way home.
"Like what?" Jump, you say? But how high?
"One of your songs," he suggested. "Sing."
It was working, was the thing, music soothes the savage beast or maybe less savage soothes the music. "I—uh—there's no use crying over pinpricks—"
Her foot was drumming as a reflex. She wasn't a singer. The vocals weren't meant to stand on their own. She sang anyway.
He laughed. "You sing about tigers, and cracking skulls?"
Well, shit. That would have been clever if she'd done it on purpose. "I guess we're both really into that kind of imagery?" she suggested.
Oh, god. She was not-so-different-you-and-I-ing. This was a nightmare. He laughed again, but it was too late to go back, so she tried to roll with it.
"Look, I—I'm not from here. This universe. I know that sounds nuts but I have spider powers, so, like, bear with me here." She tried to look behind herself, but actually seeing the enormous man on top of her did not help even a little.
"Makes sense."
She couldn't tell if he was fucking with her. She faltered. "There's a Kraven in my universe. Right? Except he's not like you. He's old, and crazy."
"Hmm."
"So, obviously, there was a misunderstanding. I shouldn't have assumed you were dangerous!" He was dangerous. He was so, so dangerous. Also probably insane. "I've learned an important lesson about assuming that bad guys are always bad guys, and that murder is bad. What an important lesson, that I have learned, and cannot learn any more than I already have. Top marks on Rate My Professor, chili pepper negotiable." She tried to relax, go limp, something to make him let his guard down and loosen his hold on her. If she could just get loose, even just a little bit...
His weight shifted, and immediately her legs moved to kick him. Except that he'd shifted to catch her by the throat, and when she tried to recoil his grip on her arms tightened and her shoulders twisted. Her spine curved backward to bring her head higher, pulled up by the neck, and when she struggled he cut off her airway until she stopped. His legs caught hers, heels of his shoes pressed into the backs of her knees.
Was this Kraven a pro wrestler? Was that what this was? This felt like there should be someone to come in and tap her out and tell her she'd lost so he'd have to let her go. Her spider-sense hadn't gotten any louder but every other instinct told her she'd fucked up.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
"What?"
"The world is ending? There is a hole in the sky?" They were questions or suggestions or both. "What brought you here?"
"I..." She swallowed the taste of fear and bile. The hand around her neck tightened again, a whammy pedal in her skull. "I came here," she blurted, and he let her breathe again. "I'm dead." He said nothing as she panted for air. "In this universe," she clarified. "In most universes. I'm dead. That's what I do, apparently! I die. Not in the universe I came from, though. In that one, he—your Spider-Man. He died, instead. That's why I'm a spider."
That's why she kept getting manhandled by grown old men who called her a monster because they were scared of girls. That's why she was pinned in some kind of fucked up chokehold by someone threatening to break her hands.
"And it sucks!" she spat. "It sucks and I hate it and sometimes I just! Want to see how he's doing! In a universe where I did what I was supposed to and just died. Because it makes me feel better, and maybe I thought I could actually do something useful while I was here. Which is working out great for me! This is awesome. Way better than the Bodega Bandit, real glad I took that guy for granted, go me."
He let her go, and she curled downward toward the cement, letting her hood fall back over her again. She rolled her shoulders and splayed her gloved hands on the ground, but didn't bother trying to twist around to hit him. Maybe she would have done differently if he'd made any move to hit her, instead of just keeping her held down with his legs.
Her spider-sense was nothing but the faint thrum it had been since the first time he'd entered her range, none of that high alert. He was just a speaker that never turned off. She associated that constant hum with men like Murdock, or Castle. She knew this sound, this lack of sound, this concert-in-waiting. She knew exactly what kind of man he was.
"That's pathetic," he said.
"Wow, thanks for the insight! Big help. Do you take feedback? Here's mine: go to hell."
"I've been." He untangled his legs from hers as he stood, and automatically she pulled herself into a crouch. "Go home, dead girl."
"What?"
"Go. Home." His hands were on his hips, above the sharp pieces of bone and horn that decorated his belt. She still hadn't stood, preferring to stay low, keep open the option of taking out his legs. "Back to the world where you did not die. It will not end well for you, coming here like this."
She was so sick of men telling her what to do. Like she didn't know. Like this had ever been anything but a bad idea. Like she couldn't decide for herself what was worth the risk.
She was sick to death of men who acted like they were doing her a favor.
He took half a step closer, and she did an immediate flip backward to her feet, an instinctive retreat. She set her gateway watch to return to her origin point, felt herself turn to nothing like the air in her lungs expanding to fill the rest of her.
She went home.
"I thought I told you to go home, dead girl."
"Dude, I have literally only met you twice and both times you've been murdering people. That is not a good track record."
Kraven the Hunter, or Kraven-616, or Kraven the Younger. It was the same victim as last time, from the look of him. Still breathing, at least for now. There was blood on Kraven's knife. Machete? Knife.
"Did you buy that knife just so you could make fun of people for their inferior knives?" she wondered, shooting webbing from both hands to try and hit either his feet or his knife-hand. She managed neither when he did a gratuitous sideways flip from a standing position, which should not have been allowed from a person who didn't have spider-powers.
"I am Kraven the Hunter," he said, as if she weren't well the fuck aware. "If you were expecting second chances for a Spider, you have come to the wrong place."
"You know, they say man is the most dangerous game, but have you ever met a bear? Maybe you could hunt those." He was a speaker next to a hot mic again, endless feedback she was desperate not to get caught in. She was keeping her distance, out of range of hands on her neck or legs tangled with hers.
He tossed his knife at her, and she dodged it with ease, then tried to jump backward to avoid getting too close. "Ew! Clean knives only, please."
"I am the greatest hunter who has ever lived," he said, pouncing toward her, and she was halfway up a wall and leaping for another as he pulled his knife from the bricks.
He'd embedded the knife in bricks. That was reassuring.
"Yeah, no, I get the schtick."
Her hope was to lead him away from the man he'd been trying to kill, and maybe someone who'd heard the commotion would be able to get help. Maybe, hopefully—where were Spider-Men when she needed them? Or Spider-Women. Or Spider-Hams. Or any of the other heroes that were supposed to live in 616 New York, anyone at all.
"There is only one kind of prey that is worthy of my skills," he said, continuing to monologue. He was disturbingly nimble when it came to climbing buildings to chase her.
"Is it just that one guy? Him, specifically? And also teenage girls?"
He pounced again, threw his knife in the other direction, her spider-sense went off in two places at once and the easiest solution was to jump into an already-broken window. The small amount of moonlight streaming inside was soon blocked by the silhouette of him, prowling in after her.
"Hunters," he said, and broken glass crunched beneath his feet.
"What, it's cool because he's the guy who shot Bambi's mom?" These had been apartments, once, now abandoned and graffitied and covered in dust. The graffiti in this world wasn't as bright as it was at home. Just another wrong thing in all the wrong things this world was made of. They must have looked ridiculous, both quietly creeping through empty rooms in the dark as he tried to find her and she tried to evade finding. She risked the gambit of passing a doorway, turning and climbing up the wall with her fingertips. The ceiling was just high enough that maybe, maybe he'd go past her and she could go out another window. Failing that, she might get the drop on him.
"He is a hunter of girls," he said, and she froze.
"What?"
"Should I tell you of his trophies?" His voice sounded further away, a different room.
"No!" She moved on her fingers and toes along the ceiling, sticking to shadows. "Didn't anyone ever tell you two wrongs don't make a right? Turn him in to the police."
"They protect their own."
A chill spread through her. "You're lying."
He moved into the room, eyes sweeping sideways but not up. "What reason would I have to lie to the dead?"
"I'm not dead!" She dropped down, hoping to land a solid kick to his head. He made no move to dodge, her spider-sense screamed, she tried to pull her legs in and shoot a web to alter her trajectory. All these things came too late, he was moving toward her on a collision course, everything was a tumbling mess that ended with her slammed face-first into a wall.
Her face was sturdier than the wall, but that didn't make it pleasant.
Her nose hurt. He had a knife pressed against the side of her throat. His hand was on the back of her head again.
"You will be," he said.
"That thing makes you look like you're overcompensating, just so you know."
"Then you were not paying attention in our last encounter."
Legs and hands and weight and panic, the welcome distraction of the threat of death. She hadn't wanted to think about the possibility that he—had he been?—
"Gross!" Her horror was genuine, trying immediately to shove his hands away or trip his legs with hers. Neither worked. He hit her in the shoulder with the handle of the knife, though at first she thought it was the blade, pain firing through her with a scream. Her right arm went numb, and wouldn't move. "What the fuck!"
His forearm pressed against the back of her neck, his knees pressed into her thighs, and he caught her left hand with his. "I did not break your hands, before," he said.
"Fucking don't," she said, yanking it out of his hold, pushing away from the wall with her legs, panic and adrenaline overpowering him. It made her fall sideways, and her acrobatics were foiled by the arm that wasn't working, that she'd forgotten to account for. She shot a blob of webbing at his face as she moved upright, but he blocked it with his arm. With nothing to attach him to, it didn't slow him down.
He stabbed his knife into the wall where he'd had her pinned, and left it there.
Why was it more terrifying that he didn't want to use the knife?
Maybe because of the way he bared his teeth, a grin all perfect and white and predatory. He was toying with her. And she was stronger than he was, she was sure that she was, but it wasn't a matter of strength. It was knowing how to strike, knowing where, and all she had were self-defense lessons and the things she'd learned from other Spiders. Whereas he used Spiders for practice.
... she assumed. From the sound of things, and the way he talked about Spiders.
"I think that I would prefer to prolong my enjoyment of this," he said, and she made a sound of disgust.
"Fight me," she almost screamed, wound up with pain and frustration, startled by her own intensity. "Just fight me the way you fight Spider-Man!"
Kraven's stance shifted to something slightly less aggressive, a thoughtful furrow to his eyebrows. "This is what we are doing."
"Really? Really?" She wanted to hit him with a web, but she'd gone for her right hand out of instinct, and so instead her limp arm flopped accusatorily in his direction. "You talk about how you wanna prolong your enjoyment and you—you mount him and say you'll teach him a lesson?"
"... yes?" Kraven scratched at his beard. "Many times."
She blinked. "You have?"
He stood upright, no longer ready to lunge, one hand on his hip. "I have also drugged him, stolen his clothing, and put him in shackles."
Her stomach turned. "Did you hurt him?"
"Physically? Yes. Psychologically? Also yes. I have destroyed him in many ways, though arguably he has destroyed me in equal measure, as Ahab was destroyed by the whale."
"Do you ever stop and listen to yourself when you're monologuing?" She rubbed reflexively at her shoulder, the point of pain where her arm turned to static. "What is even your deal? Because I'm not buying whatever edgy anti-hero bull you're trying to sell, with your hunting hunters thing. You don't get to act like you're the misunderstood good guy because you save your stabs for jerks."
"I know what I am," he said, and her spider-sense wailed, made her jump back up to the ceiling just in time to miss the leap he took towards her.
But her right arm was still limp, and he grabbed her hand where gravity had already pulled it downward. She shrieked like an amp for the sirens in her head, let the ceiling go to try and pull her useless hand away from him, dropped her legs to kick him in the stomach. He took the blow and rolled with it, let her fall hard on her back and reached for her throat.
"Let us see what you are," he said, and he pulled the mask from her face.
"No!"
One of his knees was jammed into the crook of her good elbow to trap it against the floor, the other was on her stomach. He was about to crush her windpipe. He could see her face.
They stared at each other.
His fingertips pressed into her jaw, he narrowed his eyes.
"I know this face," he said. "Why are you familiar?"
"Just one of those faces," she suggested, pushing her feet against the floor to unbalance them both and get him off of her.
They faced each other, crouched low to the floor.
"I knew this girl," he said, the way he might say he knew a word, something he knew but didn't. Searching for whatever feature of her face would explain it to him, as if she had any goddamn idea. Her spider-sense was a hum.
"She was pretty popular." She pulled her hood low, let her hair fall in the way. "Give the mask back."
"You are dead here," he reminded her, like she ever needed reminding. "Your identity is of no consequence." He looked at the mask in his hand, shut his eyes and brought it to his face and breathed deep.
"Come on, dude, seriously? You're not even—"
"The Savage Land," he said, his eyes snapping open.
"I don't know what that is but it sounds racist."
"Gog—the alien I had adopted as my son."
"The what that you what?"
"He found a girl, and brought her to me. He had not seen a human woman before. He liked her, and for this, Spider-Man killed him." His grip on the mask tightened to a fist, his jaw clenched. "I had forgotten her, in all that followed."
This had taken a sharp left turn into an insane villainous diatribe. "Spider-Man doesn't kill."
His eyes, lost in the past, returned to the present to focus on her. She didn't know how to interpret his expression. "Doesn't he?"
Her heart was off-beat. "It was an accident," she said. "He's not like you."
"Yes," he agreed. "When I kill, it is deliberate."
He tucked her mask into his belt.
"Give it back." She lunged at him, and once again they were rolling on the floor, everything a blur of limbs and confusion. Her knee in his stomach, his hands on her legs, her limp right arm twisted behind her, trying to get her mask. A sharp piece of horn on the back of his belt tore her costume, scratched her skin.
He managed to get his arm wrapped around her neck, cutting off her air. When she tried to pull it away, he caught her hand, laced his fingers with hers in a parody of intimacy. "You should have been more careful, dead girl." His hold on her loosened, but her head swam.
"Did you drug me?" she asked.
"You drugged yourself," he corrected.
"That's not how this works! That's not how anything works!" Her legs felt shaky, and she couldn't get them to move where she wanted.
"Breathe," he said.
"Let me go," she said, shaking, trying to tear her hand away from him. He squeezed, and she imagined the crack of her bones breaking, and she stopped. The edges of her vision felt dark.
"Focus on your breathing if you do not want to hyperventilate."
She wasn't—
She was hyperventilating.
She gasped for air, took a long deep breath into her lungs. She felt less like she was about to pass out. She still felt like someone had hit her with an 18-wheeler. Her right arm was recovering, but that just meant it was all pins and needles. Her spider-sense had gone haywire and it droned like a bass, signifying nothing. She was trying to assess the situation but it was all a muddle, lightheaded, trying to keep breathing, neither of them moving.
That. That was the weird part, that was what was unsettling her. He wasn't monologuing, he wasn't taking the advantage to knock her out. It didn't seem like she was going to pass out on her own, not now that she could breathe.
She could feel him breathing.
Was he smelling her hair?
She tried to get away and elbow him in the ribs, but her arm just flopped and her neck pressed against his arm. "Can you be less creepy for five seconds?"
"Why are you here?" he asked, and this time she shuddered because he asked it low and his voice was right in her ear.
"We've been over this."
"Right here, right now," he added. He squeezed her hand. "This is how you get home, yes?" Her heart spasmed as she realized he was indicating the watch, she tried to pull her hand from his grip but her muscles were all in active rebellion. "I have not broken it," he said, which did not reassure her. "Do you plan to turn me in to the authorities? To save the man I would see dead?"
"You drugged me and you have me in a chokehold," she reminded him, in case he'd forgotten.
"You attacked me," he said, "and I responded in kind."
"This is not how self-defense works!"
"You could have gone home at any time," he said, "and yet you chose to fight Kraven."
"I didn't—you were trying to kill someone."
"You still believe him worth saving?"
"Everyone's worth saving," she said, and the words came out of her automatically, unthinking, the thing she knew was supposed to be true.
"You believe this?" he asked, and she tried not to think about men who hunted girls and everyone who'd ever hurt her.
"I want to," she said, which she knew was not the same but it was the best that she could manage.
He did not respond. She focused on the drone of her spider-sense, meditative in its unyielding monotone, fixating on it as a singular point that made her other senses go void.
"Spider," he said, and it startled her back into her body; she blinked as her brain resumed processing input from her eyes. "Surrender."
"Fuck you."
She struggled again at the feel of him against her hair, his mouth too close to her skin. Her chin was digging into his elbow. "You are not a coward. A quitter. Da? I understand this. Kraven the Hunter stops for nothing less than death. But there is honor in accepting the surrender of an opponent. Do you see?"
He was giving her an out. She wanted to be furious and settled for indignation. She didn't need his pity, she didn't need to be patronized by him.
Did she? One arm useless and her spider-sense disabled and her whole body halfway to numb. He could break her fingers. He could break her neck. He was offering her an out.
Bad guys, villains, was this what she did? Existed so pitifully she wasn't even worth beating, they'd rather offer her olive branches instead?
She was so tired.
"What... what happens? If I..."
"We are done," he explained, it might have been gentle or she might have just felt muffled all over. "You go home in defeat. I go home in triumph. You live to fight another day."
"Can't we just be done?" This felt unnecessarily ritualistic.
"No," he said without hesitation. "I stop when my enemy is defeated, or I am dead. Not before."
Was that an apology? She didn't know what that was. Everything was so fuzzy around the edges. So much of the mask was rituals, things done for the sake of doing them. Not knowing when to stop, how to stop. Ending on a high note was easier said than done.
"You win," she managed, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. "I surrender. I lose, good day sir." She was trying to be funny and it wasn't working, coming out all sideways and broken. He released her hand, his grip on her loosening slowly enough that she could catch herself. Her right arm worked just well enough now that she could rub at her eyes and pretend it was because he'd choked her.
He took her chin in his hand, and she wanted to deck him.
"You are a girl who wants to believe that everyone is worth saving," he said. "This is how you save the world."
She was too fucking high for this.
He let her go, rocking back on his heels where he was crouched. "Fighting is not your strength," he said. "Train, if you like, or find something better. A different strength." He tapped at his chest. "Trying to fight like this will kill you." He pointed at her wrist again. "This can take you somewhere safe?"
She nodded.
"Good. Go there. Drink lots of water, and sleep. Water will help get it out of your system."
"Don't," she said. Something about this was so much worse than if he'd just beaten her. What did it say about her, that she'd rather be spitting blood?
"You are young," he said. "Learn to live with wounded pride, if live you will."
"Can I have my mask back?" she asked, because she might as well.
"When you can kill me," he said. "Not before."