SCARLET, SONJA, SPIRAL, SILVER: Chapter 4

Wanda laid it out slowly, all of them gathered around the kitchen table. As she spoke, she took off her cape and the ornate headdress Peter had never seen her without. Now that it didn’t frame her face, giving her the elegiac appearance of some specter or demi-goddess, Peter realized how young she was. Geez, she’s practically a founding member of the Avengers and she’s younger than I am! 

As Wanda kept going—for what felt like hours—she took up a deck of cards from nowhere and began to shuffle it. Dealing, flipping, weaving them back into her skilled hands. It was all Greek to Peter. Less than Greek; he’d picked up enough of that language from Hercules, but with Wanda he was totally lost. Still, he could recognize the regularity with which certain cards were coming up. Maybe there was something to the cards. Or maybe Wanda literally wasn’t working with a full deck.

Peter could admit that the rigors of the working world had dented his bona fides as nerd supreme, but he still had a mind for arcana. He could explain what a Sith was, recite when spice was first discovered, and moreover, he could keep up with alien rivalries, corporate intrigues, lasers and FTL—most of what went into his normal working day. But he was hard-pressed to keep up when things went all Neil Gaiman. Anytime things rhymed, really. 

Mary Jane seemed to be following along with considerable investment, considering she was listening to someone who had just announced her intent to have congress with her husband. Peter tried not to be uncharitable and chalk it up to some boy-girl thing: Peter man! Peter like hard facts, logic! Mary Jane woman! Like emotion! Destiny! Scented soaps!

Wanda dealt for the final time. The Lovers, naturally. The World. And Death, upside-down. Peter wondered how these cards got upside-down, anyway. Was that a normal shuffling thing? Most Hoyle’s cards didn’t have a right-side up—if they made a Tarot deck like that, would the Fates just have to shake their fists, maybe write an asterisk on each card when there was a caveat attached?

Wanda finished her tale. The Tarot cards disappeared into her hands, then just disappeared. None of them spoke. Mary Jane pushed her chair out and came to her feet. Peter was too stunned to follow her; by the time he thought to, she was back. She’d been getting Wanda a mug of hot chocolate.

The spectacle of Mary Jane extending hospitality to the woman who intended to cuckold her—cuckquean her?—shocked Peter out of his stupor.

“Let me get this straight,” he said firmly, but trying not to be too firm. Me Peter man! Want hard facts! No feelings! Was it too much to ask that a guy didn’t have to sort out Lovecraftian deities and masculinity in the same day? “There’s some kind of mystical ritual that needs to be performed every… ten? Ten years?”

Wanda nodded. Peter felt for her, but with some relief. The way Wanda had explained it, it only counted if the spellcaster was ‘blooded’—sexually mature. So if she’d first done it ten years ago, she would’ve been about nineteen. He couldn’t imagine she’d be short on takers for some good old-fashioned sex magic, but the X-Men had always described her as soft, introverted. She could’ve been a virgin when first called upon to do it.

“And because you’re…” How to describe it? Wanda’s history with Magneto and the High Evolutionary and Chthon (whoever that was) made Mary Jane’s soap opera turns look as simple as calculus. “Affiliated with Chthon and the Mount Wundagore bunch, you have to sleep with a married man to cast this spell.”

“Yes,” Wanda said. “It’s sympathetic magic. To prevent the chaos gods from transgressing the border between our realm and theirs, we must perform a transgression of our own. A mirror to block their way. You can’t push past your own reflection.”

Why not? Harry Potter does it all the time, Peter thought, but didn’t say. Perfectly nice evening with the wife and now the Scarlet Witch had turned it into Indecent Proposal. “And—because of the parameters of the spell—it has to be me.”

“Not you, specifically, but a totem, a weaver of the Web of Life and Destiny, and someone with a soul-bond to someone with whom he regularly… merges.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Mary Jane said, making Peter half-wince, half-laugh. If he wasn’t allowed to make jokes…

But Wanda seemed to lighten at the jibe. Mary Jane’s gift for reading the room put Wanda at ease instead of causing her to further tense up. “Spiritually, I mean. Sex is a very mystical experience. Your auras, your focus, your desire… well, if you’re doing it right, anyway.”

Mary Jane smiled back at her. If I had known she was this cool with people trying to sleep with me, I would’ve introduced her to Felicia a lot sooner, Peter thought.

“And if we say no?” Peter asked bluntly, trying to rail them back on track.

“The barriers protecting our world collapse. Everything and everyone you’ve ever known is ripped apart at the level of their conception,” Wanda said.

“Weren’t you listening?” Mary Jane asked.

“And it has to be me?” Peter persisted.

“If you don’t know of any other spider-totems who are great warriors, happily married, and…” Wanda waved her hand frivolously. “Born to the left of the equinox.” 

Peter never thought he would miss having clones. “I’m not much into franchising,” he said. He knew there were two Spider-Women, but as far as he knew, neither of them were lucky in love. And even if they were, did Wanda swing that way? Did they? He doubted these things worked unless… well… they worked. “Left of the equinox… I don’t even know what a spider-totem is!”

“Don’t worry about it right now. You will.”

Peter took a deep breath. “If you don’t mind me asking, who was it last time?”

Wanda looked at him squarely. “That’s private.” Oh, THAT’S private. “But since what you really want to know is why you and I didn’t have to do this the last time…”

“Peter!” Mary Jane said chidingly. 

“It’s perfectly alright, MJ. It settles Peter to have all the details fit together as best they can. And it helps me to explain it firmly. Last time, my partner didn’t need to fit your qualifications. The laws of magic aren’t like the laws of physics. They flow and change. As an animal isn’t a robot, magic isn’t science.”

“So then you needed—I don’t know, a left-handed circus clown who played guitar—but now you need me?”

“Yes. Why?” Wanda asked straight-faced. “Has some left-handed circus clown who plays guitar been talking about me?”

Mary Jane burst out laughing. It had a slight tinge of hysteria to it. Peter could see it all at once: the mask, what was underneath, and the cracks growing in between them.

“Could you excuse us a moment?” he asked Wanda. 

She nodded and picked up her mug. “Thank you for the hot cocoa,” she said, briefly resting her hand on Mary Jane’s shoulder, then left the room.

Silence hung between them. Peter felt a distance he hoped was in his imagination, but he felt it all the same. Like wherever he’d been comfortably secured in Mary Jane’s heart, he’d been abruptly relocated. Maybe not kicked out, but there was a definite shift. And it was giving him motion sickness.

“So, what do you think?”

Mary Jane opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. Then: “I think I need a drink.”

Peter wondered if maybe he should’ve gone first. He wasn’t a drinker, but he thought he knew exactly how Mary Jane felt.

She came back from the refrigerator with a bottle of Miller Lite, wrenched it open with her thumb, and knocked back a draught. Peter hoped it helped. His life as Spider-Man had demanded so much of her. Her time with him, her peace of mind—now it was asking for his faithfulness, the one thing he’d always thought he would be able to guarantee her.

“You’re attracted to her,” Mary Jane said, and it was so out of nowhere that Peter felt like he’d been sneak-attacked by Venom. No spider-sense.

“MJ, c’mon…”

“You c’mon. Look at her!”

“I don’t want to sleep with every attractive woman I see.”

“Yes you do. So do I!” Mary Jane blinked and looked at her beer, as if it were hitting her harder than expected. Peter wondered if alcohol could work like that. Deliver a knock-out blow when you were already rocking on your heels. “You know what I mean. If I act with Tom Cruise, I want to sleep with him. I don’t do it, I would never do it, but I want to.”

Peter nodded. “Okay, yeah, sure. In that sense, I’m attracted to her.”

“Good.” Mary Jane took another pull from her bottle. “So that will make this easy.”

“Don’t be like that,” Peter insisted.

“Be like what? Accepting?”

“A martyr.”

Mary Jane slammed her bottle down. “Oh, I am no martyr. I am way too fucked up to be a martyr. But…” She let out another shrill laugh. “Okay, it’s getting depressing that I’m the only one drinking. Wanda!” she called. “You want a drink!”

Wanda, wherever she was, didn’t answer.

“I think she might be out on the balcony,” Peter suggested.

“In this weather?”

“She does have magic.”

“In those clothes?”

“She could tell people she’s sunbathing.”

Mary Jane smiled and it seemed to have more good humor than when she’d laughed. “Honestly, Peter… this is going to sound crazy… I’m glad this has come up.”

Peter blinked. “Oh God…”

“I said sound crazy,” Mary Jane insisted. “I’m not crazy.”

“Is this some kind of… everyone leaves me, so might as well get it over with…”

“Peter, your bad guys are the ones motivated by dime-store psychology, not me,” Mary Jane stated. “And honestly,” she continued lightly, “I’ve pretty much given up on getting rid of you. You are really stuck on me.”

Peter almost involuntarily sighed in relief. Not so much from what MJ was saying, but by how she sounded like herself again. “Okay, so what is it?”

Mary Jane reached out to take his hand. “For a while now—in the bedroom—I’ve wanted to do—more.”

“More?” Peter repeated dumbly. He felt numbness radiating from his skull, like every hole in his head was stuffed with cotton.

Mary Jane shook his arm, almost playfully considering the circumstances. “Come on, Peter. We’ve never shied away from a bit of kink. I was just thinking of taking it a step further, but I thought you wouldn’t be comfortable with it, so I didn’t want to upset you…”

“How much further?”

“I don’t know,” Mary Jane said, somewhat dishonestly, as she immediately followed that up with: “A threesome. Wife-swapping. Maybe a key party…”

“Wow,” Peter said, feeling like his IQ was now hovering at a single digit. 

“It’s not because I’m not satisfied,” Mary Jane emphasized. “That isn’t it at all. In fact, I almost feel like I’m… hogging you. Keeping you all to myself.”

“It’s a marriage, honey. That’s kinda how it works.”

“Says who? Thor, the God of Thunder, who you know?”

Peter almost guffawed, but ended up letting out something more like a hiccup. “Okay, I always knew you weren’t the shy, retiring type…”

“It’s not that,” Mary Jane insisted. “It’s you. You’re a hero. You’re a good husband, you’re a great husband, so of course you should enjoy all the benefits of a happy marriage. I know I do. But then you save a bus full of kids or stop a building from blowing up and you bleed and you get slammed in the press and… and I can’t help but think you deserve more.”

“I don’t want more,” Peter stressed.

“The same way I don’t want to sleep with Tom Cruise,” she said laconically. 

“I had no idea you felt so strongly about Tom Cruise.”

Mary Jane wagged her finger negatively. “We’re talking about you. What you deserve. But if you do want to talk about me…”

“Frequently,” Peter grinned. It felt like a floodgate had opened, relief pouring in. He’d actually doubted his place in Mary Jane’s heart? She was more devoted to him than he’d ever dreamed.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind too badly if you did it with someone… cute… and naughty… and maybe a little loud.” Mary Jane smiled. “Not the shy, retiring type, remember?”

“Yeah. Jesus. I had no idea…”

“Like I said. Our marriage can be hard enough. I didn’t want you to have a nervous breakdown over Black Cat giving you head.”

“You want Felicia to give me a blowjob?”

Mary Jane shrugged. “As long as we’re in an open relationship, you might as well give her what she wants. I’m not cruel enough to make her watch from the sidelines as you, well…”

Peter drummed his fingers on the table. “Let’s table that discussion for now.”

“Yes,” Mary Jane agreed. “No need to go mad with power, tiger. But as long as an Avenger is bringing up the topic—that is how I feel.”

“I’ll try not to have a nervous breakdown.”

“Don’t,” MJ asserted. “If any girl’s fucking makes you a basket case, I want it to be mine.”

Peter felt like he’d taken a whiff of pure oxygen. He was heady, giddy, with the sheer release of tension. “So I’ll tell Wanda that… we’re cool, basically.”

“Yes.” Mary Jane leaned her head forward, her gaze striking Peter’s. “And ask her if it’s okay for me to watch.”

“Mary Jane!” Peter gasped, following it up with a slight guffaw at how scandalized he was. And here I thought I was young. And a guy. 

“You are my husband,” she said nonchalantly—the only woman Peter would’ve bought such casualness from under the circumstances. “Whenever you fuck, I should get some fun out of it.”

Peter closed his eyes. So much for not having a nervous breakdown.