Work Text:
Peter’s first memory is of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben taking him to a Mets game. He remembers the thrum of crowd surrounding them. He remembers catching a stray ball in his half finished bag of popcorn, entirely by accident, and Ben taking him out for ice cream afterwards.
But then he emerges from a metal containment piece and he realizes that is his not just his first memory, but his only memory and everything else is wrong wrong wrong.
That perfect memory belongs to one man and one man only, and the clone wants what he cannot have.
He is not Peter Parker; he is the broken thing that a despot made from his hatred of the boy cursed (blessed?) by the bite of a spider.
His father names him Kaine.
The other clone names himself Ben Reilly, after their—no, not their—PARKER’S uncle and aunt.
Kaine wonders why Warren never named him Abel.
Louise grins at her. She is corners and edges, but Kaine is willing to let himself get cut.
She cocks her pistol and prepares to release the trigger, and Kaine sees red.
He grabs her arm, gun firing into the air, while Ben and Janine make their escape.
Kaine runs.
Sometimes, he thinks that's all he knows how to do.
That, and hurt hurt hurt PREY--
He’s in Houston, trying to fight the primal instincts battling for control under his skin.
Cliche as it might sound, he is not a hero.
Clearly, Aracely, his not-daughter, and Wally and Donald and Annabelle... did not get the memo.
Really, he isn't entirely surprised when it all goes to shit.
Vance smiles at him, and sometimes Kaine can let himself pretend that this—whatever they have going on between them—will end well.
Aracely keeps egging him on, and ignores all his attempts to push her away.
Peter calls him sometimes, and Kaine is more than happy to hear from him, although he will never admit it. Mary Jane and his brother template are happy together, no thanks to him.
He hasn’t spoken to Ben in a long, long time.