Mother and Daughter

I couldn't help but stare at her, lying there in my bed, her baby brother crying just a few feet away. I wanted to cry. My daughter wasn't talking to me at all, hadn't spoken to me at all in the two days since she her father's funeral, and I knew exactly why. I simply stood in the doorway and held her book bag out for her. "C'mon, Charlie, it's time for school," I said, my voice soft. I hoped she heard me.

Lucky me, she did. "Go away, Mom. I don't feel good."

I sighed. "Please, sweetie?"

She covered her head with a pillow. "I said go away. I'm really hung over and I don't wanna talk to you."

I raised my voice. "Charlotte Elaine, get to school!"

She sat up and threw a bottle at me, but it hit the wall behind me instead. "I dropped out of school when you left us, Mom!" She pulled the covers over her and webbed the light off. I just sighed and stepped out of the room.

I walked out into the living room and turned the TV back on. There wasn't much to watch, and I wasn't really paying attention to it anyway. There were news stories talking about Arachnya and her 'amazing change of tune', but I clicked away from those as soon as possible, because I knew better than to believe that my daughter would kill her own father. I eventually found a cooking show on some channel that I wasn't paying any attention to and just picked up my book and went back to reading.

I sat there, pretty much just alone with my thoughts, and asked myself the question that Charlie would likely have asked if she weren't drunk all the time. Why did I leave them? I couldn't come up with any real answer besides stress, and that made me feel like I was just being selfish. How could I have any real stress when Charlie was swinging around fighting bad guys, or her father was chasing down crooks? The answer to that is that I was always worried about the two of them. I didn't want to go any more days thinking about my daughter or husband possibly not coming home.

The sad thing is that my husband will never come home now. Murdered by a worthless bitch who had a grudge against my daughter. I wanted to strangle her, I wanted to throw her into the bay and let a shark swim by and eat her. The woman robbed me of my husband.

The worst thing is that I ruined my daughter. If I hadn't left them, Charlie never would have taken up drinking and wouldn't have dropped out of school. I wondered what her friends thought of her. I wondered if she still had Tim to fall back on if she needed someone.

***

"Hey, Charlie, it's Barry Brindleson, your editor, I'm calling again just to let you know that you have the rest of the week off. Everybody here misses you, and hopes you come as close to recovery as possible."

Anna Adamsen waited for her boss to finish his phone call to her favorite photographer before she jumped at him. "Goddamnit, Barry, will you stop running these schlock pieces about Arachnya!" She threw down the latest edition of the Brigade on his desk, showing a headline of COSTUMED MURDERER STILL WANTED. "I've told you a thousand times since the day of the murder, Arachnya does not kill people!"

He sighed. "And I've told you, there were dozens of cops on the scene that watched her stick the knife in Captain Harkins. I'm sorry, Anna, it's just the way it is. I wish I could tell you that your favorite costume is just as innocent as she used to be, but it just ain't so." He leaned back in his chair. "And, honestly, she sells more papers that way."

Anna folded her arms under her breasts. "I don't wanna hear that. One of our best photographers loses her dad and all you can say is 'it sells more papers'? That's pretty heartless, Barry."

He leaned forward again. "Look, Adamsen, I'm not here to soothe anybody, and I'm not trying to turn the world against the costumes, I'm here to sell papers, that's all. Three Pulitzers, I'd assume you'd know that by now. Now, get the hell out of my office and get to work!"

Anna barely let him finish his sentence before she turned around and slammed the door behind her. Everyone in the news room looked up and gave her a surprised look. She wanted to scream at every one of them, but instead, she simply walked into the photography room and slammed that door shut as well. Timmy looked very surprised.

She sat down in one of the chairs and just let herself steam for a moment, then told herself to calm down. Tim waved a hand in front of her slowly. "You okay, Ms. Adamsen?"

She sighed. "No, Tim, I'm not. A good cop loses his life, and thanks primarily to this paper, everybody thinks that your girlfriend is the one who did it."

His eyes widened. "Um... what?"

She gave him a look. "I know, you know, we both know, okay? Charlie doesn't know I know, but I'm gonna guess she knows you know."

"Well, I kinda didn't tell her, but she figured it out anyway."

"Good, so the point is, we know Arachnya's innocent. I just wish there was some way to prove it to everybody else."

He shrugged. "Maybe if we could get Charlie off the booze again and get her back to webbing people up, she could find that woman." He sat back in his chair a second. "Wait a minute, there might be another way."

"Like what, kid?"

"Charlie answered a phone call from her dad just before that woman webbed us up. His picture showed up on the phone, that's how she put together that Captain Harkins was Arachnya's dad, after Charlie admitted that she was Arachnya."

"So what?"

"I never saw Charlie's phone after that, maybe she hit record, or something. If she did, that woman exposed herself during the conversation, we'd just have to cut it off before the part where Charlie revealed herself." He almost leapt from his seat and grabbed his backpack. "I'm gonna head over there and see her."

Anna stood up. "Wait a second, why can't you just call her?"

He stopped, then rubbed at the back of his neck. "Well... I haven't seen her since... well... y'know..."

She sighed. "I get it, Romeo, go talk to Juliet."

***

Tim felt like he was breaking some sort of law, running through the city as fast as he could. He probably caused more than one driver to stop as suddenly as possible to avoid crashing into something or hitting him. He needed to get to Charlie, as soon as possible.

As he rounded the corner that led to Charlie's mom's apartment, he realized he had stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly, he was yanked upward, causing a yelp, until he landed on the roof of the building. He was quite surprised to see the woman in the Arachnya costume, still wearing the Arachnya costume, as a matter of fact.

"Well, hello, boy toy. Nice to see you again." She held up a phone. "Judging by the contacts on your little girly friend's phone, I'm going to guess your name is... Timmy?" She tossed him the phone. "Go ahead, look for that recording I found on there, I already erased it. Pretty smart of your girlfriend to record me, but pretty stupid of her to leave her phone behind."

Tim stood up. "You gonna kill me, too? Everybody who really knows Charlie knows that she didn't kill her dad."

She laughed, probably smiled under that mask (Tim couldn't tell). "Big whoop, kid, everybody else thinks she did kill that cop. At some point, everybody'll know who that girl is, and they'll string her up for the murder of a hero cop. And I'll just sit back and watch it."

"She didn't do anything to you, why does she deserve this?"

The woman grabbed him with a webline and pulled him to her, grabbing him by the collar. "Shut up, kid! Arachnya ruined my life, and I'm gonna rip hers apart." She threw him onto his back. "But I'm not completely heartless. I'm not gonna take her boy toy away from her, but everybody else around her is open game."

The woman shot a webline out and swung away, leaving Tim alone on the roof. He felt his blood boiling. He had to get to Charlie, now, otherwise that woman would get exactly what she wanted.

***

I was awoken by a knock on the door, and that was the first indication that I'd even fallen asleep. Charlie was standing at the changing table changing Christopher's diaper. "Who's at the door?" I asked, groggily.

She said, "I don't know. Chris's needed three diapers in the past ten minutes, and they just started knocking."

I stood up from the chair and walked past the kitchen counter and opened the door to find Tim Saul standing there, his hair quite messy. "Can I help you?"

He nodded his head rapidly. "I've gotta talk to Charlie. It's about that woman that killed her dad."

I moved out of the way for him to come in and directed him to a chair. Charlie leaned against the wall after she finished changing Christopher's diaper. I pulled another chair from the kitchen table and sat down as well. Charlie was the first to ask, "So, what about her?"

Tim pulled out a cell phone. "You hit record that day? She grabbed your phone and erased the recording."

Charlie rolled her eyes. "Dammit." She sighed. "Well, I guess that would have been too easy."

"How did you get Charlie's phone?" I asked.

He twitched a little. "She grabbed me outside."

Charlie's eyes widened. Probably mine, too. "She knows where I am?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I don't think she knows where you are, I think she was just following me." He leaned forward. "She said she's not done, too."

I saw Charlie's eyes widen even further. "Tim, can I be alone with my mom for a second? Take Chris with you."

Timmy stood up, picked up Christopher, and walked back out into the hallway and shut the door. Charlie knelt down in front of me. "Mom, please leave town."

"What?" I asked.

"Look, I know I've been kind of a bitch since I showed up on your doorstep, but I still love you, and I don't want you hurt. Please, please, leave town. Go somewhere. That witch could have copied my contacts, and might know who you are, and I don't wanna lose my mother after I just lost my father."

I couldn't say anything. This is a girl that I abandoned just two and a half weeks ago, and she still cared about me enough to want me to leave before I was hurt. I leaned forward and said, with determination, "No, sweetie."

"But, Mom - "

"No, Charlie. I'm not going to let this woman win." I leaned in, just in case Tim was listening to us outside. "She left Tim alive for a reason, and that was to leave you a message. She wants to draw you out, and she wants to use your loved ones to do it."

Charlie stood up. "Then she's gonna get what she asked for."

I smiled. "And I know exactly how to do it."

***

I walked into the hair salon and felt incredibly nervous. Something had been nagging me since I left the apartment, and I was pretty sure it was the idea that that woman was following me. Maybe I was developing some sort of latent 'spider-sense' of my own, just like Charlie had, I don't know. Either way, I almost wasn't comfortable in the salon, even though each of the employees and I had been friends since our days in college.

"Hey, Mel," Nancy Gallagan said, motioning me over to my usual seat. "What's the matter?"

I sat down. "You mean besides the fact that my husband died a few days ago?" Nancy made a face like she was about to say something, but I cut her off before she said anything, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. Things have been hectic, Nance, what with Charlie moving in after I left her, and then her slipping off to the bars... I'm just trying to keep a hold of my sanity, is all."

She set to work on my hair. "How is Charlie, anyway?"

I sighed. "She's not doing all that well. She was close to her dad, and then to lose him the way she did..."

Brenda Wallace nodded. "I know. I've been so sick and tired of all the praise those super people get. Then this one that was supposed to be a big time super hero up and kills a cop, and everybody was surprised! Not me!"

Nancy said, "Keep that crap to yourself, Bren. Arachnya saved my son, I know she's on the good side. It couldn't have been her that killed Henry."

"You keep saying that, but according to the papers, there were dozens of witnesses, cops included. Charlie was there, wasn't she?" Brenda asked me. I nodded. "Bet she saw it, too."

I answered, "According to her, that woman was ranting about how Arachnya ruined her life. That doesn't seem to me like something the real Arachnya would say."

Brenda went on. "I don't believe it, she was probably just saying all that to cause confusion. That was Arachnya through and through."

I wanted to slap her. "What's your problem with the Chosen?"

She shrugged. "I just can't stand them. Who gave them the right to police the city the way they do?" She tapped a few keys at the check out computer. "They just showed up one day, and everybody treated them like they were something special."

I suddenly felt more uneasy, because that sounded exactly like what Charlie and Tim said that woman said. Thank God I knew Charlie was following me. "Brenda, have you even met a Chosen?"

"If by met, you mean..." She stopped talking and then something about her seemed to change. "Who am I kidding." She held up her hand webbed Nancy in the face. "Little dumpling told you, huh?" In front of me, Brenda changed size, shape, and facial features until she looked an awful lot like a blonde knockout wearing an Arachnya costume. "I guess it's to be expected, I did warn her little boyfriend about this."

I stood up from the chair and reached into my purse. Thank God Henry was a very paranoid, nervous man. He'd made me buy a gun years ago, and got me a carry and conceal permit around the time Charlie was born. He'd always wanted me to be safe, and because he'd asked me, I'd always carried it, even though I didn't want to.

Now, I wanted to.

I aimed the gun at the woman and thumbed back the hammer, just like Henry had taught me. I'd always done good on the shooting range at the precinct, hopefully, I would be just as good shooting at a living target. "Take another step forward and I'll shoot you," I said, probably no determination in my voice at all.

Luckily, I didn't need to do anything.

"Taaaa-daaaa!" Charlie shouted as she swung down, through the window, and kicked the woman forward. I jumped out of the way, Charlie landed on a chair, and the woman landed face-first into the shampoo cabinet on the back wall. "Sorry, I just couldn't resist!"

"You little..." The woman stood up, then I noticed a very confused look on her face. "Wait a second, are you wearing a different costume?"

Charlie pointed down at her brand new costume, that I made myself. It was pretty much exactly the same as her old one, design-wise, but instead of being yellow and black with red stripes under her arms, it was red and white with yellow stripes under her arms. "You like it? I thought it was time for an image change now that, y'know, there's a major bitch running around, copying my powers, killing hero cops." She hopped off of the chair and onto the ceiling. "Hmm... Y'know what? That major bitch I was talking about looks an awful damn lot like you!"

The woman shot weblines out of both wrists up to the ceiling and pulled down the section of the ceiling that Charlie was sticking to. Charlie jumped away from the ceiling, kicked the woman on the way down, and then used her own web to grab the ceiling and pull it toward the woman. The woman didn't seem all that happy, so she spun around, grabbed a chair with a webline, and then yanked it toward Charlie, who jumped onto it, then the wall, then onto the floor.

"Got anything better than that, lady?" Charlie asked.

The woman didn't answer, she rushed at Charlie and pushed her out the only pane of glass that wasn't broken and out into the street. I ran up to the doorway and watched as Charlie just barely saved the woman from being run over by a bulldozer. For some reason, I was very relieved. I guess it had something to do with knowing that my daughter still wanted to save someone's life, even if it was the bitch that robbed her of her father.

***

Harmony landed on a dumpster after the kid saved her from the bulldozer. She quickly got up, shot out a webline at the girl and felt even angrier when the girl dodged her and webbed up her eyes. How the hell did she do that?! She quickly ripped the webbing off of her face and dodged a flying kick from the girl just in time.

"Aw, am I running you down, Harmony?" the girl asked.

"Shut up, you little cunt!"

The girl wagged her finger. "Now, that's not a particularly nice thing to say! What kind of role model are you?" She jumped at the nearby wall, bounced off, then kicked Harmony in the face, knocking out one of her teeth. "You know kids love you, Arachnya!"

Harmony reached out and grabbed the girl by the neck. "I'm not Arachnya, you are!" She threw the girl out onto the street, where she just barely managed to jump out of the way of an oncoming car. Harmony couldn't help but laugh at the fact that motorists didn't seem to realize there were super powered people fighting on that very street.

***

Timmy held the camcorder and recorded every second of Charlie and Harmony's fight. It was a perfect plan, he had to give Charlie's mom a lot of credit. Let's just hope this works, otherwise, there's gonna be a whole lot more Arachnya haters out there...

***

I was still watching from the salon. I'd gone to check on Nancy, but it seemed she'd passed out from all the excitement. Hopefully, she wouldn't wake up a nervous, psychotic wreck.

Charlie just managed to jump up out of the street and land on the trailer of a semi, then she jumped off and kicked the woman in the face, "So, tell me, if I'm Arachnya," Charlie said, punctuating the sentence with a punch to the woman's jaw, "and you're the one who killed Captain Harkins," another punch, "then that means that I didn't kill him, which means that you framed me!"

The woman kicked Charlie off of her, then to punch her, but Charlie got out of the way. "What's it matter, kid? Who's the news gonna believe, you or a dozen cops that saw 'Arachnya' kill that cop?"

I imagine Charlie was probably smiling beneath her mask when she pointed up at Timmy and said, "How about that?"

The woman looked up and scowled, she looked like she was about to shoot a webline up at Tim, but Charlie tackled her just in time, then webbed her to the sidewalk. I couldn't help myself, I cheered. Sue me, I was happy that my daughter beat the crap out of the woman that killed her father.

It wasn't twenty minutes later before the police arrived, thanking Charlie for what she'd done to expose the truth about the woman. I met up with her afterward, after she'd slipped her clothes on over her costume and taken off her mask and gloves. I gave her the biggest hug I could muster, and felt her tears hit my shoulder as I did. Maybe, just maybe, I'd actually managed to get my daughter back.

***

Holly Montoya looked at Harmony Sprite in the cell and wanted to strangle her. Lucky for her, Knight was standing there, watching Harmony squirm. "I wouldn't mind killing her, y'know?" she said. "She murdered a great man." Knight said nothing, he simply stared at the woman in the cell. "So, what exactly was that concoction you injected her with?"

"Nanocytes."

"Nan... Okay, my niece is a lot better at that stuff than I am."

"Nanocytes are microscopic robots, primed with a genetic inhibitor. As long as they're in her bloodstream - and the only way they can be taken out is if she's given a full-body blood transfusion - she'll never be able to use her vast array of powers. She's a simple human, like your or I."

"Did you use those things on GoldenEye, Port and Necro?"

"Port and Necro, yes. GoldenEye's gift is harmless when he's in a cell."

"Ah," she said, "good."

"How is she?"

Holly raised an eyebrow. "Sprite? She's - "

He cut her off. "Harkins. How is she? If you wanted to kill Ms. Sprite, there's no doubt she did."

She felt her eyebrow raise further, if that was possible. "How'd you know?"

"There's little I don't know about Chosen. I'm also good friends with Angel and Guardian."

Holly sighed. "Hopefully, taking this bitch down has settled her conscience a little. She felt so guilty for her dad's death, and I'm sure having to move back in with her mom didn't help." She looked over at him. "You know the feeling?"

He turned and started walking up the stairs back into the precinct house. Just before he reached the top step, he turned his head and said, "No."

***

Harmony would have killed the bitch that pushed her into the cell with Scott, Jenkins and Wilkins, but thanks to that damn shot that Knight had given her, she just spat at the floor. "Guess what you get to do in twenty-four hours when we let you out for a few minutes? Clean the floors." The bitch smiled, then locked the cell door and retreated up the stairs.

Now Harmony was alone with her former comrades, who all three looked at her with cold, unforgiving eyes. "What?" she asked.

"You're a freak?" Scott asked. He walked up to her and pushed her up against the cell bars. "We trusted you and you're a goddamn freak?!"

She kneed him in the crotch. "Shut up! You don't know what it's like!" She looked at the other two. "None of you do! To have your body taken apart, molecule by molecule, to have to put it back together! I hated them for what they did to me!"

Scott coughed a little, then stood up. "Them?"

She looked down a little, then back up at him. "The one who did it was called Cloak, but there was another man, one I couldn't see all that well. Looked like he was the brains."

***

Knight sat in his Chariot and replayed what he'd just heard. "The one who did it was called Cloak, but there was another man, one I couldn't see all that well. Looked like he was the brains." He tapped at his chin. Cloak, and another man. Monica Montoya had mentioned that GoldenEye had had a mysterious Benefactor... he wondered if this had been the same man that Harmony was talking about.

***

Anna smiled as she read the headline.

"ARACHNYA OFF THE HOOK!"

She dropped the newspaper on her desk and felt like cheering. Thanks to Charlie and Timmy, Arachnya's name - Charlie's name - had been cleared, and that bitch that murdered Captain Harkins was back behind bars, hopefully for good.

Keith sat down at his desk back-to-back with her's and asked, "You back to normal, now?"

She leaned forward. "If by back to normal you mean happy Arachnya's back, you bet your mild-mannered ass I am." She leaned back again. "I wish you could have seen Barry's face when I brought him the story, he looked like he was about to have a coronary."

He laughed. "Funny, I never thought him the J. Jonah Jameson type."

She raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

"Never saw Spider-Man, did you?"

She brushed it off. "Before they showed up in the city streets, I never gave a damn about super heroes." She looked out the window and saw smoke rising from somewhere in the distance. She looked back at Keith's desk, saw him gone, then looked back out the window again. There was Guardian, flying off toward the smoke. "Now, I don't think I could make it a day without thinking about one." She felt another smile coming on.

***

I couldn't help but stare at her, lying there in my bed, her baby brother sleeping in his crib just a few feet away. I smiled, happy to see her finally sleeping, after what had been a hellish week. I went to flip the light switch but then my hand was suddenly stuck to the wall. "Un-uh, Mom." Charlie sat up. "Get over here and sit down, I've got some things to say." I smiled again, pulled the webbing off my hand and then walked over and sat down on the bed. "First of all, I'm sorry for the way I treated you, and I swear I'm not touching another drop of alcohol until after I'm twenty-five. I've done enough drinking in the past few weeks to last a lifetime, and it's not something I wanna go back to until I'm more than old enough."

"Good," I said, "getting a beer bottle hurled at me wasn't all that fun."

She nervously laughed. "It was actually whiskey," she said quickly, "but anyway, like I said, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry that you and I have grown further apart since... well... since I became Arachnya."

I put my arm around her. "That will never be something you have to apologize for, Charlie. It was strange circumstances, leading to something that often happens between mothers and their daughters. I never got along with my mother, once I started growing up. Your grandmother and I haven't spoken since before I married your father."

She looked down, then back up at me. "Well, I'm sorry for everything bad that I ever did. If there's a bright spot to all that drinking, it made me see that I'm a really screwed up girl, who doesn't like to deal with all her problems."

I rubbed at her arm. "If you think that's a trait exclusive to Charlotte Elaine Harkins, you're dead wrong. I was the same at your age, I just didn't figure it out until I was older, and started drinking."

"You drank, too?"

"Of course I did! I was a young girl, my husband a beat officer in the most dangerous city in the country, if I didn't drink it off eight nights a week, I would have gone nuts." I flashed her a smile. "I should have started it up again when you started your crime-fighting routine, then I wouldn't have left you and your father." I looked away from her, feeling the tears start to well up in my eyes. "And then your father would still be here."

Charlie moved a little closer to me. "Mom, that wasn't your fault. That was Harmony Sprite's fault, through and through. She killed Dad."

"She plunged the knife into him, but if I hadn't left in the first place... I'm the one that needs to apologize to you, and more importantly, to your father."

She didn't say anything for a long time, and neither did I. Then, almost like she was making sure she still had a voice, Charlie asked the one question that needed to be asked more than anything: "Mom, why did you leave?"

I dried my eyes and looked directly into hers. I saw her father there, too. Charlie had always had her father's eyes, even when she was a boy. I cleared my throat and tried to find words adequate enough to explain myself to my daughter. "I..." Of course, I couldn't find any right away. "Charlie, back when you started this Arachnya business, your father and I argued time and again. He looked me straight in the eyes and told me that the best thing we could do for you was to induldge you, to let you go out there and fight crime, or web up super villains, or whatever else it was you needed to do to stay sane after this thing happened to you." I sighed. "I didn't want you to do it. I wanted my first born child to stay normal, to go to school, get a part-time job, to go on dates... But your father was adamant, he knew that being Arachnya was the best thing for you."

"But you never believed it?"

I shook my head. "No, I knew he was right. That's the best thing you inherited from your father. Had someone told Henry Harkins that he couldn't be a police officer, he would have punched them and done it anyway. He needed to help people, to be a police officer. He knew that you needed that, too, and it was something that I just couldn't grasp at the time. It was something I couldn't grasp until the day I walked out of the apartment, but by then, I couldn't take back what I'd done."

"Dad and I wanted you to come back every day, we would have understood."

I nodded. "I know you would have, but I couldn't do that. If I had, I would have hurt us all worse. The three of us needed time to heal after I left, and we couldn't do that as a family. I'm sorry, baby, but it's true. I like to believe that your father had done his healing by the time that woman murdered him, and I hope beyond hope that it's true, and I regret not knowing."

"I think... I think I understand. I think I'd finished healing by the time Timmy came in here telling us about Harmony's threat." She looked back up at me. "What about you?"

I didn't say anything for a moment, then I kissed Charlie on the forehead. "I think right now."