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clonerightsenthusiast · 2 years ago

Text

The Transitive Property

[Spider-Man comics, 5.2k words, Gen]

Kaine was already annoyed before he got to Peter's apartment. He didn't want to be here; he wanted to be halfway across the country, in his own damn apartment, dealing with the problems in his own damn city. But apparently Peter couldn't be bothered to answer the damn phone, and he'd made a promise to Wally, so here he was: scaling the outside of his brother's building so he could leave a note somewhere obvious and call his job done.

He half expected Peter to be there, just for the universe to rub it in, so he wasn't surprised when he heard footsteps in the other room as he climbed in the window. He pulled his mask off as he walked over that way so Peter could get the full effect of his annoyed glare.

Except the person he almost collided with walking out of Peter's bedroom wasn't Peter at all; it was some woman he'd never seen before in his life. Her eyes flew open wide as she caught sight of him, and Kaine was just starting to think that maybe tipping Peter off wasn't worth trying to explain himself to what's probably his girlfriend when she pulled a gun on him.

Well then. Kaine slowly raised both hands, palms out, silently cursing Peter's name. "Look –" he started, but was cut off as the woman gasped in recognition.

"You…" she said in dawning horror. "You're Kaine."

[read on ao3]

Any hopes he had that she knew him through Pete were dashed as her expression hardened. She adjusted her grip on the gun and shifted her weight in clear preparation for a fight.

Kaine's eye twitched. He really did not need this right now. "I'm leaving," he said, taking a step backwards.

The woman took a step after him. Kaine sighed internally. Things could never just be easy, could they? "Look," he said, making an effort to sound nonthreatening, "I'm not here to hurt anyone. So I'm just gonna go, and nobody has to do anything dumb."

"Oh, no," she said. "Nuh uh. You're wanted for multiple homicides. So what's actually gonna happen is you're gonna stand there with your hands up while I call the cops, and then you're gonna explain what the hell you're doing in this apartment." She paused, her eyes sweeping over him from head to toe. "And why you're dressed like that."

Kaine's eye twitched again. "You don't want to do that," he ground out. He took another step back, tensing to just make a run for the window and hope she had a slow trigger finger. The woman's eyes darted from him to the window, and she took several quick steps sideways, cutting off his angle.

"And why not?" she demanded.

"I don't want to go through you," he said, casting around the room for a different exit. "But I can and will."

He also desperately didn't want to have to. He was a big fan of the cops not having any leads on him. He really didn't want to have to move again. Peter would probably also be annoyed if he webbed his girlfriend to a wall.

His gaze lit on the front door to the apartment, which was unlatched and slightly ajar. His eyes widened slightly, and his head whipped back around to look at the woman. Wait. He'd assumed she was Peter's girlfriend, or at least a friend, but if she'd broken in here –

Protective instinct roared to life in his chest and he dropped his hands. "What do you want with Peter Parker?" he growled.

The tip of the gun slipped as the woman blinked, clearly caught off guard by the change in his attitude. She quickly recovered and cleared her throat. "I'm trying to find him," she said. "What do you want with him?" she demanded. Her eyes darted from his face to the spider on his chest.

"Who are you working for?" Kaine pressed. If one of Peter's enemies had found out his identity, he could be in real trouble. Suddenly, his lack of communication took on a more sinister cast. Hell. He really didn't want to get caught up in this.

"Nobody," the woman snapped. She gestured with the gun. "Your turn, Kaine." She spat the name like a curse. "What do you want with Peter Parker?"

He didn't think she was lying, but damn, this was one time he actually wished he had a real, functioning spider-sense. He glanced down at the gun, then back up to the woman's face. She kept looking between his face and the spider. Fuck. Peter definitely didn't want more ties to spiders than he already had.

"I'm Spider-Man," he said, and instantly regretted it.

Not only was it a bad lie, it felt wrong – almost blasphemous – to say. If there was one central truth to Kaine's life, it was that he was not Spider-Man.

"No, you're not," the woman scoffed. "Try again."

Oh, thank god. He wasn't going to argue. Besides, if it got out that Spider-Man was in fact wanted for murder, Peter might actually kill him.

Kaine sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not," he admitted. "I'm the Scarlet Spider. I'm trying to contact Spider-Man through Parker."

The gun slipped a little further. "Why use Peter?" she asked. She had a pretty good poker face, but Kaine could tell she was putting some kind of conclusion together.

"Because he's not answering his damn phone," Kaine grumbled.

The woman lowered the gun completely, but remained tense. "I know who Spider-Man is," she said. It was a non sequitur, but Kaine heard the test behind it.

"Oh, thank god," he said, running a hand through his hair. He gave her an appraising look. Not that who Peter told his identity to was any of his business, but… "Who the hell are you, anyways?" he asked.

She pursed her lips. "Teresa Parker," she said. "I'm his sister… sort of."

Kaine stared at her for a beat. Then he threw his head back and laughed, a short, barking laugh. Oh, now that was just about the most Peter Parker thing he'd ever heard.

Teresa furrowed her brow. "What's so funny?"

He snorted and shook his head, the corner of his mouth curling up into a wry smile. "Kaine Parker," he said. "I'm his brother. Sort of."

Teresa stared at him. Kaine stared back.

She finally broke the silence with a breathless, "Fuck, Pete."

Kaine snorted again. Yeah. That about covered it.

–

"So you're a clone," Teresa said a couple minutes later, after Kaine had acquiesced to her demands for an explanation as briefly as possible.

Kaine nodded from where he stood leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest.

"And Pete has another clone, too," she added. She was liable to wear a hole in the floor with all the pacing she'd been doing since he started talking. At least she'd put her gun away. "And he never told me."

"He probably forgot," Kaine said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be out of your life and you're welcome to forget you ever met me."

Teresa rounded on him with a bulldog expression that definitely lent credence to her claim on the Parker name. "Wait," she said. "You said you came here to get in touch with Pete."

Kaine shrugged one shoulder. "I have a tip for him. So give me a pen and some paper and I'll write him a note and go."

"No, hold on," Teresa said. Kaine groaned inwardly. He wasn't still gonna have to fight his way out here, was he? "The Scarlet Spider isn't active in New York City. You had to travel to get here, so whatever you had to tell Pete must be important. What is it?"

Ugh. Fine. Kaine blew out a harsh breath and gestured sharply with one hand. "I've been tracking this arms smuggler. As a favor for a… friend," he said. Julian Marsh was his name, and he was into some nasty shit. Nasty, experimental shit that really shouldn't make it to the streets. Normally, he wouldn't have bothered following someone across state lines, but… well, when he'd gotten a call from an anxious Wally, what else was he supposed to do? He wasn't in a position to refuse him any favors. Might never be again.

He banished the thought with a shake of his head. "The trail led to New York. That's Spider-Man's territory. So I called him, but he wouldn't answer his damn phone."

Teresa blew out her breath through her nose and stuck a hand in her pocket. "Yeah," she said. "I have a pretty good suspicion why." She pulled out a mangled, broken phone. "This was by his bed."

Kaine rolled his eyes. "Great. Well, I'm just gonna leave that note –"

He started toward the coffee table where he could spy a pen sitting, but Teresa stepped into his path and cut him off.

He glowered at her, and she just lifted her chin and glowered right back. "What now," he growled.

"I also came by with a tip for Peter," she said, drumming her fingers on her crossed arms. "I heard word about an arms deal going down later tonight. It could be the same guy."

Kaine grunted. "That's nice. Pete can handle it." He tried to step around her, but Teresa copied him and stayed staunchly in his way.

"Hold up," she said. "You know what's going to happen. You know that people will probably get hurt because of it. And you've got that spider on your chest –" she jabbed a finger into the center of the emblem on his suit. "So presumably you have the power to do something about it." She cocked an eyebrow. "Don't you think you have a responsibility, here?"

Fucking Parkers. Kaine closed his eyes and took a deep breath in and out. He opened them and stared up at the ceiling and then, when no god took pity on him and smote him, scowled down at Teresa again. "Fine," he ground out. "Where's it happening?"

Teresa's eyes flashed dangerously. "Let's find out."

–

New York wasn't Kaine's home turf. He was at a disadvantage here without Peter's intimate knowledge of all the rats and weasels that made up the city's underground. But Teresa knew enough to get them a place to start – somebody who might know somebody who knew something. And Kaine could work up from there.

Her lead was a bar known to be frequented by Maggia goons. Kaine landed them on the roof of the building across the street and perched on the parapet.

"I'll go inside and see what I can overhear," Teresa said, stepping away from him. "If anyone's talking about the deal, we can follow them when they leave and get some answers."

"That'll take too long," Kaine said. "Just point him out. I'll get our answers."

Teresa raised an eyebrow. "Okay, tough guy," she said. "What, you want me to text you?"

Kaine didn't answer right away. He took a moment to extend his senses, feeling for those tiny pinpricks of awareness. He focused in on the bar and – there. Sure enough, in the corner of the bar, a spider was spinning its web. He released a breath and came back to himself. "Just – I don't know, look at them. Walk past them and touch the back of their chair. Whatever."

He looked back over his shoulder at Teresa, who looked dubiously back at him. "Go," he snapped.

She gave him one last discerning look, then held up a hand in surrender and turned away. With one hand on the fire escape, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. "Kaine," she said in a low, warning tone. "I don't care how you usually operate – working with me on this, filling in for Peter? We're not killing anybody."

The cement under Kaine's fingers cracked. He grit his teeth and kept his eyes focused on the bar.

"Go."

She went.

–

Communicating with spiders was a… strange experience. It wasn't talking, like Aracely took great joy in claiming. Spiders didn't talk. But they could sense, and translating those senses into something comprehensible took some getting used to. But it was useful – so like many uncomfortable things in his life, Kaine had gotten used to it.

At his direction, the spider in the bar scurried its way across the floor to climb up and cling to the underside of the table Teresa had settled herself at. It descended down a long string of silk to hang near the floor. It stayed there, suspended, for several long minutes, until finally a shift in the air alerted Kaine through the spider that Teresa was moving.

The spider dropped itself neatly onto her shoe and Kaine used the vibrations to count steps as she walked. She stopped with abrupt, jerky motions, and stayed in place for a moment – a stumble. Kaine stopped his count. He kept his focus on the spider just long enough after she continued moving again to make sure of her trajectory and then came back to himself.

Ten steps in a straight line from the empty table. He could work with that. He stood up from his crouch and fired off a webline.

Kaine crashed through the door of the bar on a hard swing. The second he let go he was shooting, taking advantage of the bar patrons' shock to web hands to tables and counters and keep them off of weapons. A quick scan of the room showed Teresa with a hand on the bathroom door, half-turned to stare at him. With the same unconscious instinct that let him websling without a spider-sense, he traced back her trajectory and was moving even as the thought hit him: There.

He landed on the table hard enough to crack the wood and caught the two men sitting on either side by their shirt collars, dragging them up out of their seats and towards him.

"The weapons deal," he growled. "Where?"

One of the men's eyes darted over to the other. That was all the evidence he needed. Kaine tossed him aside, webbing him to the seat without a second glance, and turned his attention on the other man.

"I – I dunno what you're talking about," he stammered.

Kaine slammed him hard against the booth, hand around his throat. "Julian Marsh," he snarled. "You've heard about it. Where is it happening?"

The man's eyes widened in recognition, but he stubbornly shook his head. "L-Look, Spider-Man, I don't have the information you want, so why don't you just leave me to my d-drinks, huh?" He was babbling, and Kaine's bullshit-sense pinged in time for him to catch the inching of the man's hand towards his waistband.

He grabbed the offending arm and with a sickening snap broke his wrist.

The man howled. Kaine hefted him a little higher and held up his free hand.

"Tell me what you know," he said, as his hand began to ooze with venom. He lunged forward and the man squawked as his palm passed narrowly by his face and landed on the booth seat beside him. The wood hissed and sizzled as his venom ate into it, leaving its familiar mark behind. Kaine didn't look at it. He kept his gaze focused on his terrified victim. "Or that will be your face, next," he finished, holding his palm dangerously close.

"The Carusos!" the man squealed. His eyes were blown wide with fear as he pressed himself back against the seat to get away from Kaine. "I – I don't know when the deal is going down, all right? All I know is some of the Caruso guys were talking about it. That's it, I swear!"

Kaine leaned in a little closer. The man honest to god whimpered. "Where can I find them?"

"A – a restaurant," he stammered. "Vitale's. On Grand. It's a Caruso front."

Kaine stared him down for another long moment. The man's eyes kept darting between him and his hand, still inches from his face. He seemed honestly terrified – scared enough to tell the truth, hopefully. Satisfied, Kaine webbed him to the booth and hopped off the table, shaking out his hand as subtly as he could. Damn, he didn't like using his venom. It always made him twitchy.

This is your fault, Pete, he thought mulishly to himself as he hopped over tables and restrained gangsters without a second look. He shouldered roughly through the door and stopped on the curb to wait for Teresa.

She emerged moments later. Kaine didn't look at her, but he could feel her gaze boring into the side of his head. Well. If she'd had any doubts about who he was, he'd gone and dispelled them for her.

"Let's go," he said, before she could say anything. He held out an arm, and after a moment her hand gripped it.

"Yeah," she said, with an edge to her voice. "We're on a deadline."

–

They were on a deadline, but Kaine could work fast. He may not have known these people like Peter did, but scum was scum – and he knew how to get answers out of them. He shook them down with brutal efficiency and moved onto the next, all the while ignoring the way Teresa looked at him. It didn't matter what she thought; what mattered was getting the information they needed so they could shut down the arms deal and he could get the hell out of New York.

It took hours, and more than one loose end, but they finally reached the end of the road: a Maggia lieutenant who by all accounts had been let in on the secret. Teresa had heard him bragging to half a bar about it, and Kaine had taken it from there.

That arrogance still hadn't left him, dangling out over open air a hundred feet up the side of a building with Kaine's hand around his throat.

"I'm not tellin' you nuthin'," he spat, jerking his head. "And I ain't scared o' you, neither." He bared his teeth in an ugly grin.

"You should be," Kaine growled. "Or you'll have plenty of time to change your mind on the way down."

The man laughed in his face. His breath smelled like beer. Kaine's lip curled under his mask.

"Yer all talk, Spider-Man," the man scoffed. "Ev'rybody knows you like to act tough, but you won't really kill nobody. It's all hot air. Yer soft."

Kaine pulled him in close, until he could feel his hot, sour breath fanning across his face. "Unfortunately for you…" he said, low and menacing. He raised his other hand and out slid his stinger with a visceral, wet sound. The tip of it dug just barely into the man's skin, releasing a slight trickle of blood down his cheek. "I'm not Spider-Man."

He waited long enough to see the man fully grasp his situation and the fear to finally set in. And then he let go.

Teresa was waiting at the mouth of the alley when the screaming stopped and he emerged with the address. She gave him an edgelong look.

"Did you kill him?" she asked bluntly.

Kaine grunted. The question didn't surprise him; how much it felt like a punch to the chest did. "No."

"But you've killed people before."

"Yes," he said, even though it wasn't a question. His hand twitched. When she didn't say anything the first time, he'd really thought they might be able to get through this nightmare without the topic coming up again. He should've known he'd never be that lucky.

Teresa was facing him head-on, now, putting the considerable force of his attention squarely on him. She was looking at him like a puzzle she was trying to put together. Kaine decidedly didn't care for it.

"For good reason?" she asked, like she was testing a theory.

Acrid bile rose in the back of Kaine's throat. What the fuck kind of question was that? What answer was she expecting? He hadn't killed indiscriminately. He'd killed people because he thought they deserved it. He'd killed people because he thought he was protecting his family. He'd killed people because he wanted to. He'd killed people because he'd been so full of pain and rage he didn't know what else to do.

Louise rose in his mind like an accusing ghost. She was a traitor. She'd hurt people; killed people. She'd given him hope, for one brief, shining period, that he could be more than he was; and then she'd cruelly ripped it away. So he'd killed her.

Good reason. He felt sick.

"No," he said shortly. "Now let's get this over with."

He grabbed her arm and shot off a web. Teresa didn't ask any more questions.

–

This was definitely the place. Crouched shoulder-to-shoulder with Teresa on the roof of the warehouse, Kaine watched as Julian Marsh stepped into view through the skylight. He matched the picture Wally had sent him exactly, down to the slicked back bleached hair and ugly grin. Teresa muttered the names of the Maggia bosses opposite him under her breath; Kaine didn't care. He wasn't here for them. He tuned once again into the prickling awareness at the edge of his senses.

"I count twelve men," Teresa said.

Kaine grunted. "Sixteen."

She furrowed her brow. "Where?"

"Behind that door," he said, nodding towards the edge of a door just visible through the skylight. "There are four more."

Teresa gave him an incredulous look out of the corner of her eyes. "How can you tell?"

"The spiders told me," he said, standing up. "Can you fight?"

"The what?" Teresa demanded in a hushed voice. "I mean – yes. What?"

"Go left," Kaine said, then leaped up and crashed down through the skylight.

The sound of shattering glass turned to shouts turned to gunshots by the time he hit the ground. He landed in a low crouch, bullets whizzing over his head, and came up swinging.

It was easy to lose himself in the rhythm of violence. It was second nature to lunge for the closest enforcer, crumple the barrel of his gun in one hand like a cardboard tube, and hurl him bodily across the room into the four men that sure enough were running into the room from the corner door.

Across the room, he could see Teresa had made her way down after him and was embroiled in her own brawl. She was fighting using some kind of mechanical wing contraption strapped to her back. Kaine had no idea where it had come from, and he couldn't be bothered to care. He was too busy dodging wild gunfire and cracking goons' skulls.

Between the two of them, the fight didn't last long. Kaine rose from the unconscious body of the last goon and rounded on Marsh, the last man standing. Across the warehouse, Teresa was taking out her last assailant with a hard punch to the jaw.

Marsh leveled his gun at Kaine's chest. Undeterred, Kaine marched towards him, shoulders hunched and glowering.

A brief look of panic crossed over Marsh's face, but was quickly replaced with a wide-eyed mania. He fumbled with his free hand in his pocket and pulled out a small device with a button on top, holding it up for him to see. "Spider-Man, stop!" he said, waving his hand. "I have this warehouse rigged to explode. Protection, against an ambush. So you and your friend leave now, or we'll all go up."

Kaine grit his teeth. It was times like this he missed his spider-sense.

"I mean it, Spider-Man," Marsh warned him, closing his hand around the detonator. His thumb hovered over the button. His face stretched into a too-wide grin. "You know the sorts of things I like to dabble in, yeah? They're not just bombs. They're rigged with gas – wretched stuff, between you and me. Even if you survive the explosion, it'll eat away at you 'til your own mother wouldn't recognize the corpse."

Kaine's hand twitched. Marsh held his free hand out in front of him, fingers splayed wide. He raised the detonator high behind him.

"Don't think I won't do it," he said. "One more step and you're dead, you hear me?" His thumb twitched by the button.

No spider-sense. No time to think. Kaine lunged forward. Marsh hit the ground hard and stayed there.

Teresa came up beside him and they both looked down at his unconscious body. His thumb was pressed down on the button.

"You knew he was bluffing?" she asked breathlessly, kicking the gun out of his hand.

Kaine grunted. "I guessed."

"You guessed?" Teresa rounded on him, aghast.

He shrugged. "The spiders didn't warn me about any explosives."

Teresa stared at him for a long beat, then covered her eyes with her hand. "Oy. You're worse than Spidey."

"Yeah," he said dryly. "I know."

–

Kaine made himself scarce while Teresa called the cops. He perched in the shadows beside the broken skylight long enough to take a picture of Marsh being put in handcuffs and sent it to Wally without comment.

Almost immediately, the three dots signifying he's typing appeared. He watched them appear and disappear a few times, and then finally a single text popped up.

Thank you.

Kaine tapped his finger against the side of his phone and swallowed hard. After a long moment, he breathed out sharply through his nose and put his phone away without responding.

Through the skylight, he saw Teresa break away from the cops and head for the back door of the warehouse. As she passed by underneath, her eyes darted up towards where he was hidden.

Caught out, Kaine slipped away from the skylight and crawled down the back wall of the warehouse to meet her.

Out this way, away from the sparse streetlights, Kaine was nearly impossible to see; he was visible only by the moonlight glinting off his red lenses. Teresa didn't so much as jump as she closed the door and turned to see them a bare foot away.

"Turns out your buddy in there's on a few lists himself," she said, crossing her arms and leaning a shoulder against the door. "They've got him."

"Good." Kaine stared at her, waiting. His hand tensed where it was stuck to the wall.

Teresa coughed and looked back over her shoulder. "Don't worry. I didn't tell them you were here."

Kaine grunted.

Teresa looked back at him. The shadows on her face made her expression hard to make out, but he thought he saw a considering look.

"I don't know what your deal is," she said. "But I don't think you're a murderer. At the very least, I don't think Pete would let you run around looking like that if you were."

It was his turn to look away. Kaine didn't offer up any explanations; it felt too close to making excuses. They hung there for a moment in silence, Teresa looking at him and Kaine letting her look. Finally, she cleared her throat.

"Well," she said, "I guess that's it. Good working with you, I guess."

She stuck a hand out. Kaine looked at it for a second, then dropped from the wall and took it. She shook once, stiff and formal, then dropped it.

"See you around."

"Maybe," Kaine said. He didn't believe it. He doubted he would ever see Teresa again.

Teresa cocked her head and gave him one last long look, then turned and walked back around the corner of the warehouse towards the flashing police lights. Kaine took off a couple steps the other way before shooting a web to sling himself away into the darkness.

It was an overwhelming relief to have the whole mess over with. He couldn't wait to leave New York. Every time came back he got sucked into Peter's bullshit: Kraven. Queen. And now, his secret agent sister.

Well. At least a secret agent could be a useful contact for this sort of thing.

A few blocks over, Kaine landed on a roof and pulled out his phone again. He scrolled past a wall of texts from Aracely and sent her a simple back soon, then pulled up Peter's contact. He drummed his fingers against the phone, staring at his own frustrated texts about Marsh from the past few days.

He finally tapped out a short text and sent it before he could think twice.

handled it. whats Teresas #.

Shoving his phone back in his pocket and rolling his shoulders, he hopped back up onto his toes and took off at a run across the rooftop, leaping out into the darkness and leaving the whole misadventure behind him.

–

He finally heard back from Peter a few days later, while pretending to watch a movie with Aracely. He took the persistent buzzing of his phone as a welcome distraction from the brightly colored talking animals on screen and ignored Aracely's disapproving glower to check it.

Peter had sent a long, harried series of messages detailing some misadventure that started with breaking his phone and segued into being sucked into a dimensional vortex with the Fantastic Four. From the tone, Kaine got the distinct impression he was not the only one receiving overly apologetic texts that night. It was a strange feeling, being included on the Peter Parker Apology Tour; Peter rarely apologized to him for anything. It made him a little twitchy.

But even that novelty didn't make him actually care about whatever the fuck Pete had gotten up to with his superhero friends, so he scrolled past the long explanation to the last text, which had a contact attached to it.

Anyways, thanks for handling that. Sorry to leave you in the lurch. Here's Teresa's contact.

It took Kaine a minute to puzzle out how to save the number to his phone. By the time he had, he had a few new texts from Peter.

Wait

You know Teresa?? HOW do you know Teresa???

He couldn't deny the satisfaction in replying with a short, ask her.

Kaine!!!!

Kaine snorted, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards into a smirk.

Aracely wormed her way under his arm to stick her face between him and his phone and scowl. "Pay attention," she said imperiously.

Kaine flicked her nose, tucking his phone away without answering. "You pay attention."

Aracely huffed and squirmed around, insinuating herself under his arm and curled up against his side. He lifted his arm up to rest on the back of the couch to give her more room. After a moment, she turned her head again, propping her chin up on his shoulder to look up at him with wide, earnest eyes.

"I think it's cool that you have a sister," she said. "Family is good."

Kaine planted a hand firmly on her head and turned it around to face the tv, then plucked the bowl of popcorn from her grip and settled it in his own lap. "Get out of my head and watch the damn movie," he growled.

Aracely huffed, but she had a sly, satisfied grin as she settled back down and used her hoodie as a bowl to dump a handful of popcorn into. Kaine watched her instead of the movie, smothering a smile at the open delight on her face.

Family, he thought, turning the concept over in his mind. A bad movie and apologetic texts and a new contact in his phone.

What a funny thing.

#kaine parker #teresa parker #teresa durand #spider-man #marvel comics #my fic #i finally finished this thing bless #anyways marvel. where are they.

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