Earth-617
The Jackal was dead to begin with.
It'd been easy. Kaine had sent Sasha in, Jackal letting her in, asking her if she needed another copy of her husband or maybe some tea with extra rohypnol, and Kaine had crept up behind him and broken his neck.
A little anticlimactic, really.
"And I'd thought you'd gotten soft," Sasha said, checking the kill. She gave a disgusted shudder, having to touch the green fur. "Odious man. Still, who would've thought?"
"He was a clone. Probably."
"So are you."
"Now you're just being immature."
Kaine looked around the lab. A good place. Better than his apartment. A lot more gadgets. He wondered where mad scientists got all the capital for this shit. Did banks just go a lot easier on loan applications when it was for the cause of evil? Professional courtesy or something like that?
"Get on the computer," he told Sasha. "Whatever 'experiments' are in progress, shut them down. I don't want a clone of Mary Jane pregnant with a Reed Richards' clone popping up six months from now and causing trouble."
Sasha obediently went to a read-out. Jackal's password was easy to guess. 'Gwendolyn.' "One hundred clones in progress, none of them yet viable."
"Terminate them."
"Wait... I'm showing three as alive, just not conscious."
Kaine sighed. Killing bad guys was one thingâeven if the Avengers didn't exactly
approve
of the Punisher, no one went after him when there were HYDRA nutjobs to pound on. But clones... Christ, it hadn't been so long ago that he'd been in one of those stews. And he wasn't exactly sure what the morality was of shutting down a cloning in processâmaybe next time he saw Thor, he'd ask what the godly word wasâbut there had to be a difference between stopping some nutrients from congealing and taking something that was
formed,
breathing, feeling, dreamingâand shutting it down. Like they'd tried to do with him.
Still, he wasn't having three Doc Ocks running around. Not with a baby on the way. "What are they?"
"Gwen Stacies," Sasha reported. "Such a waste. The man creates the perfect hunter, but he's still obsessed with bringing back some female. As if there aren't enough of those."
"Perfectâwhat are you on about?" Kaine asked wearily.
"Why, you, of courseâ"
Kaine decided to do what he always did: shut up the nearest asshole. "Wake 'em up."
"But Kaine..."
"Master," Kaine corrected, and Sasha bowed her head.
So fucking gratifying.
***
"Oh, good, you're sleeping," Mary Jane said. Coming home to find the apartment quiet had worried her for a moment; the Black Cat being on the prowl was suddenly a fraught prospect. "Napping. That's good self-care."
She spoke from unvoiced experience, buried emotion trilling in her voice
Felicia adjusted her pillow underneath her head. She was sleeping in the nude. Wasn't as much fun without the possibility of Peter walking in on her. Or at least, with the possibility getting smaller and smaller. "I can't very well binge-drink. And I want to put off eating my feelings for as long as possible. I know I'm gonna lose the 'skintight catsuit' figure. Don't hafta rush into it."
"Felicia, it's your choice," MJ said firmly. "If you don't want to go through with it... we don't even have to tell Peter."
Felicia laughed bitterly, her head partially submerged in the pillow. "You don't think I'd make a good mother."
"That's not itâ"
"No, you're right, I wouldn't be."
With a distant sigh, Mary Jane sat down at the foot of the bed. She regarded Felicia, the sheet absently traipsing over her nude form. For once, the cat burglar had no idea how beautiful she looked.
"You were in love with Peter and you never gave up on him. I think that kind of love is good for anything. Being a wifeâbeing a parentâbeing a friend."
Felicia pulled the sheets in on herself, burritoing her body in them while lying face down on the gushy pillow. "You've taken a very laisse-faire attitude to my attempts to seduce your husband."
Mary Jane reached out, grabbing at a well-defined section of calf through the bedsheet, and gave it a little rubbing shake. "You weren't trying to seduce him. I know you better than that. If anything, you were just trying to drive me crazy."
"Yeah." Felicia grinned. "I was such a
bitch."
"You were!"
Felicia managed to a wispy laugh, Mary Jane smiling more than laughing. Still, it was something they shared.
Felicia twisted her face out of the pillow. "Oh my God, that time I pretended my leg was broken and made Spider carry me..."
"I
almost
admired your game there."
"He put me in a fireman's carry."
"Got to stare at his ass for twenty minutes."
"True."
Giggling a little still, Mary Jane curled up beside Felicia, who was slow to take her hand and settle herself against MJ's arm. The sheet between them was cool and smooth, but slowly warming as Felicia's flesh pressed in more firmly.
"I wanted this," Felicia said. "I just thought Peter would be here for it. I don't know if I can do it on my own."
"You won't have to. I'll be there."
"Even though it's not yours?"
"Feliciaâit
is
mine."
Felicia pulled close than, the sheet tangling between them, Mary Jane swept into a kiss that shocked her with its sudden, violent passion. She felt her sex clench, Felicia's hand gripping her hip like a penetration all in itself, but Felicia wasn't really in the mood. She calmed like the sea after a flurry of wind, lowering her forehead to Mary Jane's clavicle, warm and full of life as Mary Jane took her in her arms. Felicia smiled ruefully as they fit together. She wouldn't have much longer to clasp their bodies into one without there being an obstruction in the way.
"I don't want to hear any more talk about getting rid of it," Felicia said. "I'm freaking out enough without wondering about that."
"I'm sorry, I won't, I should know betterâ"
"And I know... I know you were pregnant once." Felicia pressed a small, affirming kiss to Mary Jane's jaw before daring to continue. "I know you lost itâ"
"Her," Mary Jane interrupted quietly.
Felicia bowed her head againâfar easier to talk to Mary Jane's heart than her face. "Such an idiotânever know what to say. I just wanted to say
something
; I feel like such a monster for freaking out when you had it so much worse..."
"This isn't about me. It's about you. And..." Mary Jane put her hand on Felicia's belly for the first time.