C H A P T E R   31 :   P A R A D E   O F   E N D I N G S

"To know what it's like to love somebody the way I love you
To know how it feels to kill yourself with bad habits
To know what you want, know you'll never truly have it

New York City, please go easy on me tonight
New York City, please go easy on this heart of mine
'Cause I'm losing my lover to the arms of another
New York City, please go easy on me tonight"

F L A S H B A C K S

"Felicia, stop! What have we agreed on?" Peter asked stealthily, alarmed by how my knuckles hit the man's face repeatedly. It was about a year since he had saved me, and I could feel the demons lurking in the shadows of my mind. The memories were still too vivid. Peter was there for me, surely and stably, but sometimes no one could save us from ourselves.

I had fought and repressed my animalistic instincts for too long and now they were coming out and drowning the human in me. Seeing all these criminals use power and strength over weaker people didn't help lessen my triggers either. I felt like a ticking bomb imprisoned inside a purse.

"No killing." I answered without slowing down. "Well, I changed my mind when we went from thieves to murderers and human smugglers."

"Felicia, please." Peter muttered, knowing only I would hear him. He was still trying to recover his breath from the strangling this bastard had given him. "Stop it. You've done enough damage."

"No." I shook my head, my hands red. "He deserves to die."

"Felicia, stop, you're out of yourself."

"Or maybe this is who I've always been."

"No." Peter shook his head in refusal. How much more damage did I have to make for him to see? "This is not the person I took in."

"That person was desperate for shelter and care. It was barely surviving. This? This is me living."

"Right now you're not doing a very good job at that." He noticed and I snapped, directing my fury at him. I dropped the unconscious man on the floor and approached him, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"Maybe you are, Peter, but I am not afraid of getting my hands dirty. I am not afraid of breaking the law if it means getting things done quicker and easier. These bastards go into prison just to become their kings. They get away with everything by bribing everyone in there. I know because my father was one of the few they couldn't buy and he paid the price multiple times. I know because I saw it with my own eyes."

"Felicia, I understand that, I do, but taking away his life will not bring anyone's back."

"It will bring mine." I retorted harshly, my heart beating like a cheetah on the run. "Maybe it hurts to hear this, but killing makes me feel alive."

Peter tripped backwards, stunned by the violence in my words. I'd be too had I been thinking straight, but right now my thoughts poured on me like acid rain. There was this impending darkness looming over my soul and all I wanted was to surrender. I was exhausted of keeping the beast in.

"I don't believe that. You don't want to say those things."

"You're right, I don't. All I want is to kill." I made my claws come out of my nails and went for the man again, but Peter stood before me, unbendable.

"Get out of my way, Spidey."

"No."

"Get out, or I will—"

"What? Kill me?" I could feel him holding my wild stare beneath the mask, his heart beating as fast as mine. I was a loaded gun, and even if Peter wasn't the target, he was the air in between. My lower lip trembled perilously, my claws retracted, and I fell on his arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

"He tried to kill you." I murmured. "I thought... I thought I was going to lose you and I... I can't..."

"You won't." Peter said, embracing me with his warm body. "I'm still here."

"You shouldn't be." I told him truthfully, tears streaming down my face like a river moving against its source. "I don't deserve you and we both know it. You're too good for me. Everyone can see it. Your aunt, Harry, Mary Jane... everyone knows I'm dragging you to the wrong side while you're constantly trying to pull me back to the right one and I... you know my past. You know everything I touch either turns to powder or bleeds. I don't want to cause your doom just because you keep trying to save me from mine."

"Felicia, please, don't think like that. You know that's not true. Don't believe your dark thoughts, they are lying to you. Please, I... I love you."

"Don't! Don't say that. You know what happens to the people I love."

Peter put his fingers on my chin and lifted my head, and I could see the eyes behind the mask, that ocean of goodness I was bound to pollute.

"You once said I wasn't people. That I was Peter. That it was different."

I looked away, in silence. I didn't know what to say to the guy who was the reason I was alive. I stepped back, letting go of his arms. Sometimes his love scared me. He expected too much of me and I could never be the person he thought I was. The person he needed me to be.

"Felicia, don't push me away because you're terrified I'll leave you. I won't."

But then the bad luck started to happen.

***

"Felicia!" I heard him shout in horror as another part of the building started collapsing. It was the third earthquake in a year. Not counting the landslides and floods out of season, the raging fires, the abnormal accidents and diseases or the wicked crimes. The city was chaotic lately, and there was that feeling inside me, screaming it was me. "Watch out!"

I tried moving, but I was paralyzed. I didn't know if it was the fear or something else. Some people were calling it the end of the world. I was calling it the beginning of me. Peter shoved me to the ground and made us roll several times, pushing me away just in time but getting trapped instead. I watched powerlessly as his legs got stuck under piles of bricks and cement and his face contorted in pain.

"Peter..." I whispered, getting up and running to him as fast as I could. I pulled my claws out and started removing the rubbish that obstructed his legs, but then he reached for my arm with his to stop me.

"Leave me." He asked. "People... there's still people inside. Go save them."

"No." I shook my head, refusing to listen to him. To his stupid heroic tendencies and self-sacrificing heart. "You'll die. I'm not leaving you."

"Felicia, please, I can get out of this. I'll heal. Those people won't."

"No, you don't know that! You don't know if you'll survive. I can do this. I can get you out."

"By the time you do so the building will have collapsed entirely." His tone was desperate like I had never heard it be. This was a person that couldn't stand not being able to help. That already had third degree burns after saving a family out of a house in flames. That had almost drowned to rescue a dog from a tsunami in Rockaway Beach. That had just protected me and was now suffering terribly in my place. "Felicia, please, I'm begging you. Put those people first. I'm just one life."

"No, no, no!" I said, ignoring the electric shocks my claws were sending me as I dug them deeper in the rock. Keeping him safe was the priority. The rest could wait. "You are everything. You're what makes life worth it. I'm not going to leave you here when it's my fault you're stuck in the first place."

His grip on my arm got firmer. "Felicia, listen to me. If you choose me instead of them, I don't think I'll be able to look at you the same."

I stopped abruptly, taken aback, searching for something in his face that told me he was lying. There was nothing. Just this ferocity for doing the right thing, this altruism I didn't comprehend.

"I can live with that as long as you're alive."

Behind us, the rest of the building started falling down. I didn't even hear the scared screams or the cries of the children. All that mattered was the boy in front of me. A boy whose eyes weren't looking at me the same.

"If not for them, for me, Felicia. Do it for me."

I understood the imminent, implicit warning in his tone. If you don't go right now I'll never forgive you. I could live with that. But could I really? Live in a world where the only person I loved hated me? For choosing him above everyone else? This guy made me twist my own morals. Struggle against my primary instincts of survival. My self-preservation wasn't about keeping me alive. It was about keeping him.

"Okay," I said finally and got up to leave him. But by the time I made up my mind, it was too late. There was nothing left to be saved.

***

"I don't know what's happening." Peter said, an expression of bewilderment like I had never seen on his face. We were watching the news, all those bizarre disasters that were plaguing New York. Like a parade of endings. A march of demise. A carpet of goodbyes. There was always someone in black lately. "None of this is normal. Science can't explain it and I... I can't stop it."

"You're trying, Peter. As best as you can."

"But it's not enough!" He cried out, so much guilt in the smooth lines of his face. He hated being powerless, and I hated seeing him suffer. "It's not enough... people have died, Felicia. People are dying. And if I don't figure out a solution fast, people will die. And that will be on me."

"Gosh, Peter, I wish you didn't put all this pressure on your shoulders. You are not responsible for everything that is wrong in the world."

"But I am responsible for this city. For its citizens. And I'm failing them."

Not more than I am, I thought. I could still see the building falling down before my eyes. Hear the exact moment children stopped crying. Feel the second their hearts ceased beating. That was on me. And everything that was on me, Peter put it on him. That's how he protected me.

"Peter, a long time ago you told me that even if we tried, we couldn't always save everyone. And that works for this too. We can't be everywhere, help everyone, we're not gods. You're just human and you're trying and that's the most admirable thing you can possible do."

"Still," he said, "I need to find a way to end this. So no one else will get hurt. And for that, I need to know what is causing it."

"I think..." I stopped, taking a deep breath to control the shakiness of my voice. My heartbeat was raising frantically, but I had to say it. No matter how much it terrified me, I was sick of keeping this daunting suspicion to myself. "I think I might have something to do with it."

"What?" Peter's forehead was frowned in doubt. "How?"

"I don't know, it's just a feeling... that I'm somehow related. That I may be the cause."

Peter shook his head, resolute on not buying it.

"No, that can't be. It doesn't make any sense."

"But it does. You know my mental state has been deteriorating lately. And it matches the time and speed in which these events have taken place. Or at least it feels like it. The darker my thoughts are, the worse it gets. The more people die."

"No, that's a coincidence. It has to be."

"But what if it's not?"

"But how could it be?" Peter argued stubbornly. I admired how he wanted to keep me intact. How he refused to see me in another light. "As far as we know you don't have any kind of mechanism capable of producing such destruction. And maybe your thoughts are getting darker because of what's happening to New York, not the other way around."

"Maybe. Circles don't really have a start or an end, so I don't know. But I'm scared, Peter. Because if it really is me I can't bear it. The thought that all of this might be my fault. Those people in the building... they're dead because of me. Those people I didn't kill when I was captured... they died anyway. What am I? It's like, even though they failed, they still succeeded. Maybe not theirs, but I'm still a killing machine."

"No. You're Felicia Hardy. You're the Black Cat. You save lives, not take them."

"But they say black cats bring bad luck. So if it's true I... I need to make it right." 

Yet it seemed like, anywhere I went, all I did was more wrong.

***

"Felicia, wake up! Please, please, wake up..." I heard his voice first, hazy and blurry as if coming from the other side of a tunnel. Then I felt his hands, compressing my chest again and again until I leaned forward abruptly and coughed water from my nose and mouth, my lungs feeling grilled in ice.

"Thank God." I heard him say in utter relief as I anxiously gasped for air. My nerves were electrocuting me, repelling the water I had gulped. I looked around, my vision dizzy. Peter was in his normal attire and there was this bunch of people around me while we stood by the Hudson's edge.

"What... what happened?" I forced myself to say over the lump in my throat. All my muscles were sore and all I could remember was the fall. Of thinking it never came.

"You fell off the bridge after you lost control of your motorbike, ma'am. Luckily this young lad got to you on time. If I may say so, it's quite the miracle that you're alive." A policeman said, but my eyes were focused on Peter. Something in his petrified expression made me suspect this hadn't been an accident. His arms holding my inert, drained body were shaking.

"Alright, everyone, let's give these two some space." The policeman said after watching us, but the rest of the world was background. There was only him and this dreadful sensation inside me, that I had tried to do something irreparable. Thinking I was just trying to end the devastation that seemed to follow me wherever I went, whatever I did.

"I thought I had lost you, Felicia." Peter said, and my eyes widened when I noticed he was crying. He hadn't let go of me yet, his soaked body shivering more than mine. "I really thought... my God, Felicia, why? Why?"

I shook my head. All my thoughts were thunder stopping me from seeing the sky. From reaching the lightning he was extending me.

"I don't know. My mind, it's... it's like it's not me inside of it anymore. I'm not finding myself, I'm just getting more and more lost. All my feelings are crying. And all the voices are laughing."

"Felicia, hear mine. Please. I love you. Don't... don't do this again. Remember what I said when I met you? The jump is never worth it."

But he failed to understand I was still jumping.

***

"Peter, don't go. Please! Please, don't go, you're just going to get yourself killed." I begged him, grabbing him by one arm to save him from his selflessness. This was not bravery. This was him walking to his certain death. Turning himself in on a bank rigged with explosives to trade his life for the hostages was unfeasible. He'd never make it out of it alive.

"I have to, Felicia, you know I do. I can't just sit by and watch while people die. If I do nothing, every death is on me."

"Even when you do everything you can, it's always on you, right? Because there's always something you could have done differently, or someone you could have saved sooner."

Peter locked his eyes with mine. We both looked at each other in another way now. The love was still there, it was just... tainted. "I thought that made me human."

I felt the oxygen being sucked out of my lungs at the remembrance of the words I had told him when he saved me, so long ago.

"Things change." I replied bitterly, and Peter nodded sadly.

"Yes, they do, Felicia. They do." We did, that's what he meant. I knew I was losing him, day by day, as the cycle of calamities continued to spin out of our control. I was trying to help him, but the more I tried, the worst it got. Something was always my fault. A bad choice. A decision taken too late. A hesitation of seconds and someone died. Someone always died.

Like it was karma punishing me for my crave to kill.

"Let's go, Peter. Come with me, please. Stop trying to be the hero every damn time." I knew I was playing the villain right now, but I didn't care. It was to protect him. Someone had to have his back while he had the world's. I had promised him.

"You go if you want, Felicia, but I am not leaving this people when I know I can save them."

"You don't know that!" I shouted bitterly. "Goddammit, why don't you put yourself first for once? Why don't you think about what's best for you?"

For me?

"Felicia, those people are going to die if I don't do this!"

"I don't care!" I snapped, and amidst my foggy mind I couldn't merge with my feelings. I didn't know anymore if what I said was what I believed in or not. "If you do it, you are going to die. And therefore... I am going to die."

Peter shook his head, the disappointment palpable in his eyes.

"When did you become so selfish?" He inquired, so frustrated. "That you started doing what you need or want instead of doing what is right?"

"Maybe I always was this selfish. You just deluded yourself, thinking you could change me." I held his censoring eyes with my distraught ones. I felt ripped off myself. "If it was me they were asking for, would you let me go?"

"Felicia, don't go that way."

"Yeah, it's easy to speak when it's not you letting who you love enter their own funeral." I declared, my tone venomous. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. I shook my head, suddenly tired of standing in his way. I knew I wouldn't be able to dissuade him. I was not important enough. His moral code would always speak louder, and if that used to be something I admired in him, now I couldn't stand it.

"You know what, Peter, go be you. Do what you always do. Tear yourself apart so the world can stay whole. It kills me to admit it, but the truth is we're too different. Because I always put myself first and you always put yourself last. Because you're willing to die while I'm willing to kill."

"Felicia..." He said, trying to reach for my face. I dodged him and turned my back on him. I knew he didn't deserve this, but I didn't know what to do. He was not just walking with his life on his hands. Mine was there too. I heard him sigh deeply and starting walking away. My shoulders were shuddering profusely; each step he took felt like a knife being buried onto my feet.

I let him march to his death without knowing if he'd ever come back to me. In a way, he never did.

***

The more I lost of him, the more she gained. With her, Peter didn't have to make hard choices or argue over different methods or points of views. I was too difficult to handle and she was too uncomplicated. She showed him the best parts of the world while I reminded him of the worst. Out of the both of us, I was the hardest one to love. That's why he chose her.

It shouldn't have been surprising to me when he did, but it still hurt like a cannonball blowing up on my chest.

"Felicia, I don't... I don't think I can do this anymore." Peter said, this entrenched grief in his eyes, like something between us had croaked too.

"Do what?" I questioned, even though I thought I knew.

"Us. It's just... I think it's best that we take a break. To think about who we are when we're together and who we are becoming when we're apart."

Just like that, he declared war to my mind.

"I... what?" I reached for his face, my heart contracting in fear. "No, I... Peter, we can fix this. I know that I've made a lot of bad calls lately, but I can fix it. I can, I'll make up for my mistakes, I swear. Just, please don't... don't leave me. I am not me without you."

"And lately I haven't been me with you."

"No, Peter..." My head was shaking violently from side to side. All my mind could think was this is not happening. All my heart could feel was that it already had. "You can't leave me! I can't keep doing this without you, I..."

"And I can't keep doing this with you!" He exclaimed, immediate remorse growing in his eyes. Right now he was putting himself first, like I had asked him to. I just never thought it would be against me. "That's the problem, Felicia, you're suffocating me. You, what's happening to the city... it's too much at once and I can't worry about everything at the same time."

I crossed my arms over my chest, fighting the tears that threatened to attack my eyes. The crossfire was this. But the finger on the trigger was his.

"Cause that's all I am to you? A concern?"

"Lately you have been, yes." He said, his eyes regretful but his mouth implacable. I could see this was hurting him, but I was too miffed to care. I was supposed to be the selfish one, not him. "That's not... that's not what I meant. It's just, I don't know what we've been lately. Sometimes it feels like I don't know you anymore."

It was heartbreaking, when it happened. When two lovers became strangers in each other's eyes.

"It's not just me, is it?" I questioned, defeated. Now I longed for a ceasefire, something that would stop us from opening bullet holes in each other's souls. That would wash away the powder in our tarnished words. "It's her as well. She's everything I'll never be and everything that you need. You don't have to juggle your two lives with her. And you don't have to destroy yourself by constantly trying to rescue her from herself."

Peter kept quiet, but I saw his Adam apple moving up and down beneath his skin and that answered for him. He didn't know how to lie. It was one of the things I loved most about him. That's why it was so excruciating now.

"Tell me something," I asked, this infinite sorrow peeling from my voice, "when exactly did I lose you? To her?"

"You didn't lose me to Mary Jane, Felicia."

"But you admit I lost you to something." I noticed. "If not her, what then?"

Peter looked away. I wondered how far his heart was in that moment. I knew I wouldn't be able to catch up to it even if I ran. It always lapped me.

"Felicia, all I'm asking is some time apart. For us to think and discover who we can be without the other."

"That's bullshit!" I shouted, unable to keep the tears from dropping. "We were good. We were really good before... before all these things started to happen. Before you and her started getting closer. You loved me! And I'm the fool for still loving you. So much this is ripping me apart. I'm losing you because someone else is better for you. Because I'm not good enough, because I never was! In my entire life... I always end up being forgotten and left behind. I'm still that little girl in the shadows."

Peter took a step towards me, reaching for my hands, but I stepped back. We were dancing, me and him. This slow, farewell dance. And I was closing myself to the rhythm.

"Felicia, please, I will never forget you. I'm not leaving you behind, I just think it's best for us, for you, if we separate. We're becoming toxic as lovers, but that doesn't mean we can't stay friends."

"Friends?" I laughed bitterly. "Do you think we're going to stay friends? You think I'll stand it? Seeing you drift away to her? I can't stand the thought of you two together, let alone having to stand by and watch you love her. I refuse to let myself be crushed every time that I see you two together, and you're a fool if you think I will ever undergo that pain voluntarily. I'm not masochist enough. Or maybe not selfless enough. It doesn't matter. But if I can't have you as my boyfriend, I rather not have you at all."

Peter's eyes solidified in gloom and I hated knowing I had been the one to paint that permanent frown on his soul. I should never have given him my heart so freely; I knew one day I'd pay the price.

"Felicia, please... you're breaking my heart."

My heart withered in my chest while dimness sprouted in my mind.

"And you're erasing mine."

His mouth fell agape upon the vehemence in my tone. At this point, it was hard telling who was losing who. Maybe we were both just losing a part of ourselves.

"I never wanted for any of this to happen, Felicia." He stated, and the truth in his voice injured like a lie. "I really thought we could work, you and me."

"Clearly we can't. Clearly we're too broken to be fixed. And clearly you have higher standards and maybe I shouldn't blame you. Or hate you."

"But you do." He noticed, his voice a rumor lost in the space between us.

"You're choosing somebody else over me, of course I hate you! Do you have any idea how it feels, to look back and wonder if I was always just a second option? Someone to entertain you while you chased the main goal?"

"Don't say that!" He flipped out, his eyes darkening in a flick of rage. Somehow even his wrath seemed gentle. "I never used you, if that's what you're insinuating. You were never my second option."

"Well, I'm not the right option either, am I?" I wanted him to deny it, but we both knew he wouldn't. Somewhere along the way we had strayed from one another, and while he had arrived at another harbor, I was still adrift. Maybe I was not meant to reach a haven. Maybe no one would let me dock. "I get it, Peter. You gave me a chance and now you want to give her one too. Just don't forget to give one to Harry afterwards. He shouldn't be left out."

He ignored my provocation and moved towards me again, and this time I didn't back away. I was already elsewhere.

"Before anything else, Felicia, you're one of my best friends and I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose everything we have just because a side of it didn't work. But we're so much more than---"

"No." I shook my head vehemently. "No, Peter. We're either everything or nothing. I can't love you halfway and see you reach the end with another."

"What are you saying, then?"

I forced my pride to back off, and my torpor to come in.

"I'm saying goodbye."

I saw the shift in his eyes, the dawning. After everything in us had set.

"So that's it?" He asked, his voice wrapped in desolation. "You're gonna leave? Just like that?"

"You can't ask me to stay. If you want us to break up, say so. But don't make me have false hopes by saying it's just taking a break when we both know love doesn't have intervals."

"I..." Peter shook his head, disoriented. I could see this was not the way he had expected the conversation to go. But when I woke up this morning, I wasn't expecting to leave him and New York either and now all I wanted was to flee. Leave and never come back. "Will you ever forgive me?"

"I have a feeling it's going to be harder to forgive myself. For thinking I could love from up close when I'm meant to love at a distance. For letting you get so close to my heart that you squeezed the life out of it."

Peter nodded slowly, accepting my severity regardless of whether he deserved it or not. Always the martyr. That's why I knew he wouldn't insist that I stayed.

"Where will you go to?"

I shrugged, concealing my emotions as best as I could. There was no way I'd ever let someone that close to me again. Feelings were guns that shot us in the back. Blades that hit us from behind. Cars that ran us over in reverse.

"I'll figure something out."

"Will you let me see you? Again?"

I couldn't answer that. I couldn't talk for my future self. I couldn't bear to even think about the next minute without him, let alone a lifetime.

"You know," I said instead, "when I saw you for the first time, there was this irrational part of me that wished I would never see you for the last time. And now that it's here, I realize I was wrong."

"Felicia, no... this is not the last time, it can't be. I can't live..."

"What? Without me?" I interrupted, a tone of disdain pushing him further away. "You were doing just fine before you met me so I'm sure you can. And don't forget you'll have Mary Jane's shoulder to cry on from now on."

He shot me daggers with his eyes, but I had an armor now. And I'd never take it off. "You're not being reasonable. Or fair."

"Well, being heartless kind of happens when your heart is less. Smaller than before. When someone steals it away and cancels it abruptly."

In an impetus, Peter reached for my hands, and I didn't stop him. Just so I could remember what it was like. Just so I'd never be misled again.

"I never meant to hurt you, Felicia, I---"

"You were my first love, Peter." I cut, ice sliding down my tongue. There was the iceberg, sinking the Titanic. "My only love. And you threw it away! You carelessly threw it away!"

My eyes widened when I felt tears falling on my hands. I looked up, to his kind eyes, from which now rained blues. I started crying instinctively too. I already missed him terribly and I was not even gone. I doubted I'd ever find a man like him. A person that meant as much to me as he did. Someone for whom I'd be both willing to kill and die for.

"Do you even... do you even still love me?" I questioned, my voice just above a bereaved whisper. "Or have you stopped a long time ago?"

"I'll never stop loving you, Felicia, it's just..."

"You don't love me like I love you."

"Or maybe I don't love you like you need me to. Have you ever stopped to think that perhaps it's you who deserves better?" His eyes were desperately searching for mine, and while they were there, I wasn't. "That maybe I'm the one who doesn't know how to give you all that you deserve?"

I didn't have an answer for that. In my mind it was still my fault. I was still the one who had lost him first, the one who was not enough. I let my stare linger on his face for a while, memorizing his features. From now on that's all I'd have of him. My permanent memories and my stupid drawings.

I took my hands from his slowly, like a butterfly leaving its cocoon.

"Don't try to stop me." I whispered and turned my back on him quickly. Only I could protect it now. So no one would stab me again.

"Felicia, please, I don't want to lose you!" His voice was in tears and his heart was express. But my mind was nonstop, and so I didn't turn around.

"You already have."

"When I went away, saw your face in my rear-view
I know that look on your face, that I had lost you

You promised, I promised
I never knew I could be this selfish
Nights downtown, it's a new town
But I keep thinking I see your face in the crowd
But you're not here and you won't be
'Cause you love me enough to let go of me

New York City, please go easy on me tonight
New York City, please go easy on this heart of mine
'Cause I'm losing my lover to the arms of another
New York City, please go easy on me tonight" 

E N D   O F   F L A S H B A C K S  

A/N: Song is "New York City" by The Chainsmokers. When I first heard it I was so astonished because it's so perfect for this specific moment in Felicia's life. Plus it's a really nice song :)

Gif is from Spider-Man PS4 game from 2018.