When Spidey Met Oracle

"You're cold?" he wondered, sitting up to wrap her up with the bedding.

"Shush, Parker," she said, shrugging the sheets off. "I'm thinking."

Bits and pieces came back to her. She'd returned to this morning on purpose... With help... And then... Then...

Then you totally freaked over a little cunnilingus between friends and tried to boot me out of your headspace, the White Queen informed her. I see you let the wall-crawler stick around. If you wanted some alone time, all you had to do was ask, dearheart...

I did ask! Barbara recalled.

Well, that wouldn't have been any fun for me, Emma responded. Kudos on maintaining the connection with him in my absence. I'm beginning to think this flashback means as much to you as it seems to mean to him... Maybe more so...

Barbara steeled her mind, knowing better than to rise to Frost's baiting now. Whatever she might have felt about this memory wasn't her business.

Fine, you don't want to share, Emma mentally shrugged. How unbelievably typical... I'm fine, by the way. Tracking you down all over again hasn't completely ruined my day or anything...

Barbara tried to think the words "I'm sorry," but was pretty sure it came out as a weary plea for them to move on. As it so happened, it was next to impossible to telepathically apologize to a psychic when you didn't really mean it...

Just focus on telling Spider-boy whatever you so desperately needed to tell him, Frost sighed, graciously deciding to let it go. Whatever took over his mind hasn't stopped, and I can't hold it back forever. Don't waste all your time on cutesy pillow talk and foreplay...

God. What had Barbara come here to tell him? She knew this wasn't real, and she remembered the White Queen, but there were still gaps... And everything that had brought her back to Peter Parker seemed so long ago and far away...

"The Green Goblin made a machine," Peter murmured softly. "I have to deactivate it before it turns on..."

"It already did," Barbara informed him, now remembering, too. "You couldn't stop it in time and it's active..."

"Just before it hit me I realized how it works," he told her. "The device amplifies resonance in a way that restructures steel into an esoteric mineral with mind-altering properties..."

"Yeah, it's a creepy sex machine, Peter," Barbara said with an impatient roll of her eyes. The more they talked, the more the holes in her mind started to fill. "What are you getting at?"

"It's all based on vibrational frequency," he explained. "If you can broadcast a counter-wavelength over the... the earpiece it might help me stay focused when I get back there... It'd be better if I had two..."

"Take Helena's," Barbara said. "If you tell me what the counter-pulse should be, I can do it."

"Who's Helena?"

"The woman in purple who probably tried to shoot you." Crap. Now it was Barbara spilling the beans on Huntress' identity...

"Oh, right," Peter smiled. "The hot chick."

"All men are pigs," she mumbled.

Don't I know it, darling, Emma mused. Are we just about done here, O?

How do we get back? Barbara asked her.

That's all down to you, Frost explained. You're the one holding all this together. You just have to leave... Barbara looked over toward the guest room door. It hadn't been closed before, had it? Following through with the memory is the easiest way to get yourselves out.

She felt that dread again. Like there was something she was still forgetting... but she couldn't wait to figure it out.

"Oh god, it's almost 11," she said, grabbing the shirt she'd let him borrow and slipping it over her head, just like she had all those years ago. She just knew he was staring at her ass as she got up. "I have to pick up my fath-- um, my friend from the train station at 12:30."

"Can't move," he mumbled. "Too tired... sore..." She wasn't sure if it was still really Peter or just the memory of him. All that vibrancy they had gained was gone now.

"You just rest up then, nerd boy," she laughed, but it didn't feel funny. "You've got half an hour."

She padded toward the door and she didn't look back. She hadn't then. She couldn't now.

She sensed the world fading at the edge of her vision. The dream was dropping away. The farther she got from the bed, the less sure she felt on her feet. As she crept closer, she realized the door was all wrong. She knew it hadn't been closed. And this wasn't the door to the guest room. There was a peephole... and an unfastened chain...

Barbara reached for the doorknob, a hot cup of coffee in one hand while the other closed on the cool metal. She glanced back where Peter had been, expecting a void, but she saw her father instead, sitting back on the living room couch, busily thumbing through one of his scrap books.

She remembered this then, but it was too late. The door was opening now. She turned back and she saw that ghostly, gaunt face. There wasn't much of a smile -- not by his standards, at least -- which made it even more chilling... A purple fedora sat atop his head at a jaunty angle... A gaudy Hawaiian shirt hung off his bony shoulders... That damn camera slung around his neck like a noose... And finally, the gun.

Always the gun.

She didn't hear the shot. She didn't really feel it so much, either. Just the muzzle flare and a flash of heat at the pit of her stomach before her legs went out from under her all over again.

This time she knew they wouldn't come back.

*

Barbara woke with a start. Another rude awakening.

She was vaguely surprised she wasn't in the hospital, but that happened years ago. She had made it back to reality. All that pain and despair was then. This was... now. She was safe in her techno-suite at Kord Tower... and, oh god, Black Canary was messing with her computer.

"Dinah?" Barbara murmured, still a little confused.

"Oracle?" the blonde said, turning. "Are you alright? Is... is it you?"

"Who else would it be?" Barbara groaned, muddling through the last dregs of disorientation. "Wait... What are you doing here? You were in Japan..."

"Just teleported back," Dinah told her. "Bruce called. Said he was worried about you."

"Well, you can tell Mr. Catwoman I'm fine," Barbara said, and she seemed to be. She felt a little flush and her shoulder suddenly hurt for some reason, but she wasn't too worse for wear. Not physically at least. As for mentally or emotionally, it wasn't the first time she'd woken from that Joker nightmare and she seriously doubted it'd be the last. The rest of it, though... The stuff with... with Spider-Man was a different story.

"Dinah, do you think you could bring me some tea?" she asked, wheeling to the computer.

"Uh, sure," the Canary said, but she didn't seem certain. Barbara was sure she had questions, but now wasn't the time... No longer within the psionically enhanced memory of having just had a good night's sleep, she found herself utterly exhausted.

"I'm alright," she assured Dinah, refreshing the system, "but I'll be better once I've had something to drink."

"Are you sure you only want tea?" Dinah asked as Barbara started to work. "I'm pretty sure Zinda's got some bourbon squirreled away somewhere..."

"The tea should be fine," Barbara told her. She almost wondered if she should just ask for the whiskey. Not because she really wanted it -- she felt foggy enough -- but because Dinah might be more inclined to go then. Barbara just needed a moment to herself.

"Okay," Dinah said eventually. "Cup of tea coming right up." She went off toward the kitchen.

"And, um... maybe a fresh pair of pants," Barbara added.

Dinah stopped to give her friend a puzzled look.

"I'll explain later," she blushed. She saw Dinah shrug before setting off once again.

"Damn it," Babs cursed once she was gone. She'd actually started setting up the counter-frequency before she noticed the faint, familiar scent, which only added to her embarrassment. She reached down and felt the dampness between her legs.

Sometime while she was out, during the dream, she'd creamed her pants. She had a pretty good idea when it had happened...

Would it help if I told you I might have used a little psychosomatic persuasion? Barbara heard Frost ask her.

Did you? she wondered, only slightly miffed by this latest mental intrusion.

Maybe, maybe not, Emma teased. Barbara felt one last lusty flutter of titillation as the White Queen slipped from her mind. I'll never tell...

*

One of the great ironies of Scott Summers' life was that he was forced by circumstance to look at the world through rose-tinted, ruby-quartz glasses, yet the view remained bleak. How could it not?

In the last few years, the homo superior race had gone from an unprecedented population boom to the brink of extinction. Cyclops and the X-Men were desperately trying to save an endangered species, and every day they faced another setback. Scott spent his every waking hour trying to protect a world that feared and hated him, and he'd been doing it for so long, he now loathed the phrase "protecting a world that fears and hates mutants" in all of its various forms and tenses.

One of the X-Men had said it once years ago, back when it was just the first five, and it seemed poignant and clever. Thinking about it now, Scott realized it was probably Hank McCoy. Beast always knew how to turn a phrase. Hank said it once, and Jean thought it perfectly summed up Xavier's dream. So then Iceman and Angel started saying it all the time to try to impress her and somehow it became their mantra. Now Cyclops couldn't go a day -- one goddamn day -- without somebody saying some version of those words to him and it drove Scott insane.

It bothered him more than anything else in his life. Sure, Scott had bigger problems to deal with. Obviously. But those were responsibilities he had chosen to take on. He didn't resent the actual challenge of trying to change the world. That wasn't what leaders did. But this never ending litany about hate and fear was just asinine and obnoxious. Even more asinine and obnoxious than the fact that, despite sacrificing damn near everything that mattered to him to keep this team intact, everybody still seemed to consider Wolverine the ultimate X-Man.

Wolverine was an asshole, plain and simple. Scott couldn't think of anyone he'd rather have backing him up in a fight -- believe him, he tried -- but at the end of the day, Wolverine was a dick. Hell, he was a dick at the beginning of the day, too. Yeah, like Logan was a morning person... And Cyclops seriously doubted whatever monstrous torture Wolverine had suffered at the whims of the Weapon X program had anything to do with his unrelenting dickery. Scott was pretty sure young James Howlett had been a surly bastard long before the experimental procedure that pumped boiling adamantium into his body.

Wolverine was an asshole, but everyone Scott cared about in life loved the jerk for it. With one exception.

Scott had been waiting for that one exception to emerge from the Cerebra chamber for about half an hour. There were more important things he could have been doing in that time -- there always were -- but Cyclops had imposed a new rule on himself when the X-Men set up their little island Utopia off the coast of San Francisco: Every day, he was going to do one small, selfish thing that was just for him. So he could keep it together. Today, waiting for Emma to finish this minor service for S.H.I.E.L.D. was it.

The X-Men were trying to make some inroads with the United Nations and Scott figured offering Utopia's resources to their peacekeeping task force was an excellent gesture. While historically, S.H.I.E.L.D. command's handling of mutant relations had been spotty at best, Cyclops had to hope that with Steve Rogers in charge, the team could get some kind of support from the organization. The guy was Captain America, for godsake. He had to have some interest in preventing the genetic cleansing of an entire species...

The mechanized hiss of hydraulics drew his attention as the chamber door finally opened.

"How'd it go?" he asked Emma as she sashayed toward him.

"Scotty? Bedroom. Now," she said, hopping up in his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist. "Or I'm going to take you right here."

"That good, huh?" he smirked just before she kissed him fiercely.

I have an idea I think you're going to absolutely adore, she mentally informed him as he kissed her back.

Scott wasn't a psychic, but he knew what everyone thought. That the White Queen was some depraved sex fiend who got off on fucking the boy scout. That he was completely at her mercy because when it came to her, he could only think with his dick, acting out sordid sexual fantasies born of a lifetime of repression.

Cyclops knew what they thought and he didn't care. Because one of the best things about his life was that everybody was wrong. Despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, Emma Frost loved him as much as he loved her, and until the day this crazy life of theirs blew up in all of their faces, that was enough.

But one of the other great things about Scott Summer's life -- the next best thing, if you wanted the truth of it -- was that sometimes, like now, everybody was totally right.

"Seriously, though, Emma," he said, reluctantly pulling away and trying to ignore the way she was urgently grinding against him. "Did everything turn out all right?"

"It's someone else's problem now, but I think it should be fine," she told him, bored. "Sometimes all you can do is put the right people in the same room and hope for the best."

If that was all she wanted to say, Scott could live with that.

"Now let's stop off at the storage compartment before we begin just the most sinful of antics," she insisted. "We need to borrow one of Charles' chairs..."

CHAPTER TEN: So Much For the Afterglow

Susan Richards wasn't so modest that she'd never googled herself.

The Invisible Woman knew that people thought she was the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four. Hell, Doctor Doom had once said the same thing while possessing her body with his satanic powers.

Sue brushed all that off because she knew it didn't matter. The members of the Fantastic Four didn't care who was supposed be better than whom. Johnny and Ben's joshing had never been about who was the strongest. Those stupid pranks between the Human Torch and the Thing had always been jokes between brothers. Her family knew, bound by blood or not, when it came down to it they'd do everything possible to keep each other safe. So, if one of them had an ability, all of them did. Sue would protect them with her invisible fields just like Johnny would burn bullets out of the air or Ben would clobber whatever came at them and Reed would figure it out.

And despite all she had seen, despite all the times she'd saved all of reality and despite everything she could do, the Invisible Woman was still just Sue Richards, a mother of two married to a man she loved deeply. A man who was constantly distracted by the myriad thoughts in his head -- thoughts no man before him ever dared dream.

That was what would make things so much worse for a woman weaker than Susan: she couldn't even really be mad at Reed Richards for this neglect. Mr. Fantastic could never only belong to her. He had too much to offer the world.

Susan had known who Reed was before they got married. Hell, she'd known who he was before she joined him and his college roommate on that experimental spaceflight with her poor little brother in tow. What happened to them in the cosmos probably should have been the end of their story, but by some marvelous miracle, it was just the beginning...

None of that really mattered to Sue, either. Sure, it was the defining moment in her life, but if anything, the birth of the Fantastic Four had just been another obstacle between her and Reed and the life she imagined for them. Susan understood that Reed would never be the type of man who could put her first. She didn't need him to be. She didn't need a man to complete her, but she wanted one that would constantly challenge her. Sue was up for that and she'd blissfully found that with Reed. Susan knew that Mr. Fantastic was going to fix everything.

Everything.

Before he was done, Reed Richards was going to cure cancer, perfect the unified field theory and on some idle Tuesday probably get around to the common cold. And he was going to do all of this with the same gentle compassion that first drew her to him.

She'd always wanted to be with that kind of person -- not so she could try to relieve his stress or serve as superhero soccer-mom... She wanted to be there to push Reed when he needed to be pushed because Susan was just so goddamn mad that her brain wasn't wired like his. If she couldn't have the biggest brain in the world, she was determined to provide the mind that supported his. The one to bounce off his ideas. The one brave enough to tell the smartest man in the world when he was wrong.

The Invisible Woman was ready to handle all of that responsibility and what it entailed for her, her husband, and their children. Sue wasn't prepared, however, for Reed to suddenly drop all he was doing and carry her up three flights to their bedroom on his stretchy appendages for the type of carnal attention he usually reserved for anniversaries and Valentines Days...

She was pretty sure his feet were still two floors down when he entered her.

All of that certainly came out of nowhere, and after they had their decadent fun, she turned to the love of her life. "What's wrong?" she panted.

"I have no documented proof to confirm this," he said between bated breaths, "but by the limited evidence, I can only assume there's been some kind of pyscho-seismic event..."

"Let's get on that then," Sue said, rolling out of the bed.

"The world can wait," he told her.

She suddenly found rubbery arms wrapping around her sweat-soaked, naked torso and drawing her back toward him.

"Something's wrong, Reed," she said as he placed her over that impossibly long elastic dick. "You know that, right?"

"Most likely, sweetheart," he admitted, pushing into her cunt, "but we can't actually fix everything, can we?"

"Reeeeed," she moaned in response. He was inside her again, using his powers to stretch into that place within her... The place nobody but him could find...

*

People asked Spider-Man about his costume a lot. Why the red and blue? Why spandex? Why not something less goofy?

Fair questions all.

Peter Parker was acutely aware of just how ridiculous he looked in his suit. Uniquely aware. While so many of his peers could just put on their duds, do their thing and go home without ever noticing that their ass was hanging out the whole time, he had spent years pouring over thousands of photos of himself in action from every possible angle. You'd think that gave him the advantage of picking the shots where he looked his best to run in the Bugle, but that had rarely really been in his best interest. Not working for J. Jonah Jameson. He learned early on that the old skinflint would pay a little bit more for the pics where Spider-Man came off his worst. Peter was ashamed to admit it, but in the really lean days when he was desperate for cash, he sometimes went out of his way to look stupid in front of the camera.

He really had been just the shittiest photo-journalist.

As far as the costume itself, though, he got asked about the mask more than anything else. Why cover his whole head? He'd changed his Spidey-suit a few times, but he always tended to stick with the full head mask.