Wedding of the Century update

In the dream, Peter was back in Felicia’s apartment but Felicia wasn’t there. Mary Jane was. And she wore the same thing Felicia hadn’t.

She lay on a brass bed, her crimson hair splayed out on the white pillow case. Her breath—tiny, musical—tingled in Peter’s ears as she rubbed her long, golden legs.

“Take the picture, tiger,” she said, her voice an onslaught in a whisper—mischievous and seductive and girlish and womanly and a dozen other things.

Peter raised his camera, but when he looked through the viewfinder, it was Gwen. She was in the Quinjet. The projectile was where it was, the last place it’d ever be…

He didn’t want to watch. He wanted to lower the camera and look at MJ, be with MJ. But he owed it to Gwen to see. She shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.

He looked through the viewfinder at Gwen and she was so beautiful, even then. Frightened and about to die.

Peter—the young Peter, who could always save everyone—worked at the projectile. The barbs at the tip of it were embedded in Gwen’s skin; she winced every time he jostled the projectile and made it cut her more. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the payload inside that would detonate in fifty seconds.

“Jesus, leave her alone, you’re hurting her,” Frank said, “we’re twenty minutes away from base, the medics—”

“She doesn’t have twenty minutes,” Peter said. “It’s one of Ock’s. Mobile bomb. Hits the target, then starts a countdown.”

“Can you defuse it?” Frank asked.

Peter remembered how it’d been an effort to keep his eye on the wires he was cutting, because he had so wanted to shoot a glare at Frank.

He hadn’t had time for that. He needed to keep cutting, keep shorting out the squealer wires and hoping he reached the primary.

He had thirty-five seconds.

Gwen had thirty-five seconds

And Frank had to ask a question like that…

“We should clear this compartment, get everyone onto the flight deck—” Gwen said, because of what Frank had said, because even now she was thinking of others.

“It won’t make a difference,” Peter assured her. He’d seen the craters these things left. If it went off, everyone in the Quinjet was dead. That was what they were built for.

“Can you defuse it?” Gwen asked.

Peter chanced a look at her. At blue eyes full of trust. If he told her, she’d believe him.

“I’m going to,” he said.

He had twenty-five seconds.

Peter lowered the camera. He didn’t want to look. Not at Gwen, at Mary Jane, at anything. He’d want to be blind, but then the only thing he’d be able to see was that day.

The inside of the bomb was a rat’s nest. Any one of the wires could be the primary. He’d only clipped ten. There were another thirty. He had twenty seconds.

It’ll be the next one, he told himself. It has to be the next one.

He stripped away the insulation. Touched his signaler to the bare wire. Faint current. If interrupted, it would set off the bomb. The primary would have no current, because a surge might trigger the bomb prematurely. We wouldn’t want that, would we, Ock?

He moved to the next wire. Stripped away the insulation. Don’t clip the wire, Parker, just do the insulation.

“I love you,” Gwen said. Because what else could she say with fifteen seconds left?

“I’ll find it,” Peter promised her, He touched the signaler to the wire he’d just exposed. Faint current. He could’ve howled.

Ten seconds. He had time for one more. It had to be this one, it had to be this one.

It wasn’t. Peter wanted to break the signaler in half, like it’d failed him. He wanted to tear the whole Quinjet apart. But he didn’t have time. All he had time for was one more wire. No current check. He would just have to cut it. If it was the right one, she’d live. If it was the wrong one, they’d die.

His team. People who trusted him. People who were his responsibility, in the eyes of God, country. People with families, friends, lovers, whole lives waiting for them.

All he had was Gwen.

Five seconds.

“It’s okay,” Gwen said. He heard, in her voice, that she knew. She’d known all along. Fifty seconds was just enough time… not to make peace with it, God, who could? But to keep up a façade.

Peter couldn’t imagine being that brave for an instant. She did it for a lifetime.

“I’m sorry.”

He’d spent fifty seconds not thinking about why he kept the side-door open, why he tried to defuse the bomb right next to it. And he’d not thought about it and he’d not thought about it. After he’d done it, he’d realized.

Three seconds later, the blast. The shockwave. The roar of the explosion and the howl of the alarms as the pilot tried to keep a shrieking, uncooperative Quinjet in the air.

And Peter screaming. Because he’d had fifty seconds to say goodbye to Gwen and he couldn’t even bring himself to tell her he loved her. Not when he was killing her.

Peter woke up. He wasn’t screaming, not some melodramatic thing out of a bad movie, anymore than he had a five o’clock shadow and a whiskey habit because he was just so sad—but the sweat that covered his body was a kind of scream.

The heat was like a fever that would never go away. It soaked his sheets; he got out of bed. Wondered how long it would take for them to dry. Then, in a fit of rage, he ripped the sheets out, the bedding away, sent the mattress across the room. Gwen dead. Octavius alive. No, no, no.

The intercom buzzed. It took Peter a moment to hear it. Had it been only a moment? Maybe it’d been going for hours. He popped his fist against the button. “Yeah?”

“Peter? It’s me.” Mary Jane. “Okay if I come up?”