When Spidey Met Oracle

"No," he murmured, looking at the now useless bit of circuitry smoking in his hand. "Don't do this, Barbara..."

*

CONNECTION TERMINATED.

Somehow, the words on the screen, as final as they seemed, weren't enough.

It's time, Barbara thought.

There was a door in her world she'd been meaning to close for a while and everything that had happened today told her she had to do it now. Too many people knew about Oracle. She just couldn't work like that anymore. She'd gotten too big in her tall, sunny tower. Time to step back into the shadows...

"You could talk to him, you know," someone said behind her. "Maybe even see him."

"No, Dinah," Barbara sighed as Black Canary brought her a hot cup of Darjeeling. "I can't."

"It'd kill me if you honestly thought there was anything you couldn't do," she said. "Least of all this..."

"Stop it," Barbara insisted. And that would have been enough for anyone. Anyone but her best friend.

"Babs, I know what he means to you."

"No," Barbara said again, staring down into her teacup. "I'm sorry, Dinah, but you really don't understand who Spider-Man is to me..."

*

Mary Jane Watson hadn't done the Walk of Shame in years...

She considered it one of those signs of maturity she took pride in, and yet here she was, strolling across the Brooklyn Bridge with jism trickling down her thighs. She knew she could take a cab home. Hell, considering the time and the distance, it was dumb for her not to, but it's not like it was the stupidest thing she'd done that night.

Besides, the long shuffle home after random sex with a guy you'd just met was a sacred tradition: a tiny, self-imposed punishment during which she could try to clear her head and promise herself never again.

Somehow, making her wary way through the streets of Brooklyn on wobbly legs, passing strangers who seemed similarly dazed as they wandered by, Mary Jane got the feeling she wasn't alone. There was definitely something in the air and it positively stank of sex and regret.

The shower was just shutting off when she got back to the apartment. "Please tell me you didn't use up all the hot water," she begged.

"You should be fine," Harry told her, stepping out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. "Wait. You were washing up when I left the apartment. I thought you had a business dinner tonight..."

"I did," MJ informed him briskly. "Completely professional."

"Okay, red." Harry had known Mary Jane long enough to tell when something was bothering her. He also knew when it was something she didn't want to talk about, maybe ever, but that didn't always stop him. "So tell me," he grinned when she passed him on her way into the bathroom, "is Superman's pal as dreamy as all the girls say?"

"That depends," Mary Jane countered. "How were the daddy-lessons with Carlie? It looks like somebody bit you..."

"I withdraw my question," Harry blanched, heading off toward the couch he'd been crashing on.

"Good night, Harold," she sang, slamming the door closed.

She heard little Stan crying from the other room. Shit. She'd forgotten all about the baby. Mary Jane had no idea why it was so hard for her to remember that Harry was a father now. It's not like it was a completely brave new endeavor for him, but given his track record it was just so odd to think of him as the responsible daddy now.

Serves him right, she thought bitterly. MJ knew she was kind of being a bitch, though. Harry was doing his best. She didn't want to know what he'd gotten up to tonight. Whatever it was, if he was willing to go so far as to lie about hanging out with Carlie to do it, it must have been tawdry. Not that she was going to judge Harry too harshly for letting off a little steam. Not after the night she'd had.

When she got done with Jimmy, she'd gotten dressed in the hastiest hurry. She realized just how hasty she'd been as she pulled off her inside-out sweater vest and undid the mismatch of fastened blouse buttons. Stripping out of her clothes, Mary Jane knew that she wasn't looking forward to seeing young Mr. Olsen on the set tomorrow. What had she been thinking? First, she just wanted to tease him for even daring to bring up that whole fake photo scandal, but then she'd just gotten into it. Jimmy had just tried so hard not to blow his wad from her footplay. She didn't know why that turned her on so much, but it did. And he played along so well she just got swept up in the game.

She climbed into the shower and scrubbed her skin hard, trying to wash off the shame and faint afterglow of sensation from Jimmy's lingering kisses. And all that jizz. Mary Jane just felt so dirty. It's not like she completely regretted how things had turned out at dinner. Putting aside the professional complications, it had been pretty enjoyable. The sex had been good. Great. She still wasn't ready to compare Jimmy to Peter, but he definitely beat Bobby. Not that she was going to tell Jimmy that when she next saw him.

At the very least, Pete had been the furthest thing from her mind.

The way young James had babbled on about that ex-girlfriend of his while they got dressed, MJ just knew this Chloe Sullivan was a blonde. She'd have to be blonde to be dumb enough to let a guy like him get away.

Red versus gold. The eternal struggle.

Jimmy Olsen was smart, driven, sweet and a hell of a lay. Mary Jane finally got why Peter hated him so much. Jimmy Olsen was the successful version of Pete he could have been if he wasn't so determined to sabotage himself.

Not that any of this was at all about Peter.

Mary Jane drew her soapy luffa across her breasts. Jimmy focused so much of his attention on her tits. All the boys did. She scrubbed down her torso past the belly button where he'd drilled his tongue, down to the pussy he'd so vigorously fucked. The sponge spread her lips as she wiped away the last of him.

She had to be sure.

The luffa fell to the bottom of the tub as she traced her lips with her bare hand now. She felt the slimy wetness on her fingers. That wasn't just water. Mary Jane stuck a finger inside, just to see if his cum was still in her pussy and she groaned. MJ didn't feel any of his semen lingering within her, but she remembered how it felt when his twitching cock flooded her.

Jimmy hadn't stopped when he came. He just kept fucking her. She'd already climaxed a number of times and his determination just pushed her over the edge all over again.

"J-Jimmy," she moaned, surprising herself as her finger started working its way back and forth in her snatch. She wasn't sure when her other hand started squeezing her boob, but the rhythm tugging her tit started to match the one playing her pussy.

The last time she'd done this, it had been out of frustration. Now it was all about desire. She fell against the cool shower tile as she dug into herself deeper. Her thumb found her clit and Mary Jane cried out, making sharp circles on her tight little button.

"Jimmmmy," she whined again. "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy..."

Peter could have the Black Cat and Carlie and his precious Batgirl if she could just have this.

She drove two trembling fingers into her cunt. The water temperature suddenly dropped just as she came, shocking her. The only warmth in the world was pouring out of her now...

Once MJ was clean, she toweled off and put on her PJ's, stepping out to the living room where Harry was rocking his son to sleep.

Back when they were dating, Mary Jane had never really imagined marrying him. Back then, she couldn't see herself getting tied down to anybody. But for one moment in time, she let herself imagine the world where that was her baby and that was her man. It didn't feel quite right, but she was sure there were worse ways her life could turn out.

"You're getting good at that," she remarked, joining him on the couch.

"Carlie really taught me a lot," he said softly.

"Harry, it's me," she said, rolling her eyes. "I don't care what you do. You don't have to try to convince me you spent the night with Miss Cooper."

"I didn't!" he panicked. "I never would!"

Little Stanley started crying again.

*

Oracle had told Huntress to play nice with S.H.I.E.L.D. so she had, answering all of the condescending questions from the uptight chick with the glasses. As far as Helena was concerned, there were two types of bureaucrats: ones that needed to get laid and, worse, ones that actually got off on the tiny bit of power they had in the world.

Somehow, Victoria Hand was both.

The obnoxious little pencil pusher made a point of threatening to detain the Huntress for more questioning. Helena would have loved to see her try it. Eventually, Hand informed her she could leave and after she checked on the Black Cat, Helena did just that. No need to say goodbye to Spider-guy. She's had her fill of him for sure. She didn't blame him for what happened. He obviously hadn't been in his right mind and lord knows she'd said and done things she never would have if not for that fucking machine. That didn't mean she liked the schmuck.

It didn't mean she forgave him, either.

Before she signed off for the night, Gordon had instructed Huntress to make her way to the Metlife Building for extraction. There was a nice little helipad on the roof for Lady Blackhawk to park the Aerie Two so they could get back to Gotham.

Zinda was just landing the chopper when Spider-guy showed up out of the blue, climbing up onto the rooftop in a big hurry.

"Where is she, Huntress?" he asked. "Where's Oracle?"

"You're not going anywhere near her," she said. She felt this chill when she said it.

"Huntress, please," he said. "I... I need to see her, Helena."

She was taken aback by this. Gordon had told this jerk her real name? That wasn't like Barbara at all. What was her deal with this asshole?!

"She... she doesn't need to see you," Huntress said, climbing into the helicopter. "Oracle has to be protected!"

"What about what I need..." she heard him murmur over the sound of chopper blades as they took off for home.

*

Spider-Man could have gone after the helicopter, of course, but he knew that'd just be pointless. The Huntress wasn't talking and it wasn't like he was going to dangle her from a rooftop until she gave up the information. She wasn't some skel from Josie's bar.

Simple as that.

The next day he'd start asking around, but that wouldn't do any good either. It'd turn out that Felicia knew less about Oracle than he did, so he'd try the Fantastic Four and some of the Avengers, surprised by how many of the other capies and cowlheads he knew who had at least heard the rumors about the information broker for the costumed crime-fighting set. Apparently, Oracle tended to work more with the JLA, not that Spidey had a lot of contacts to go to there. It was almost weird how their strange little community seemed so distinctly divided into two camps. Little leaguers and avenging sons and daughters. It was like Westside Story or something.

What wouldn't surprise him was the fact that none of them had mentioned it to him. Nobody kept him on the loop about anything. Yeah, he tended to get a little chatty in the middle of a smackdown, but that didn't make him a gossip!

Daredevil would tell him how he and Iron Fist and some other people Spider-Man knew had actually worked with Oracle when the Secret Society tried to destroy Metropolis. There'd been this massive call to arms. Funny how Spidey hadn't gotten an invitation. It was like Flash Thompson's twelfth birthday all over again...

Peter would even try searching the web for any mention of her, but that would be another dead end.

A few days later, while working with the X-Men to save some kids trapped in the sewers, their computer expert, Cypher, would explain why he hadn't had any luck googling her. "It's insane but any mention of Oracle gets deleted from the net almost the second it's posted. It's just another piece of the legend. Whoever he is, he likes his privacy..."

It would be a big disappointment, but the day wouldn't be all bad. Spider-Man would get the chance to kick Wolverine in the face without any reprisals. That was always fun.

The oddest thing about his little jaunt with the Children of the Atom would be the way Emma Frost kept smiling at him. The White Queen was usually just so disdainful toward him, but when they weren't busy mucking about in god knows what sludge or running from scaly, lizard-ized versions of her teammates, he'd see this sly smirk on her face. It certainly wasn't like she was flirting with him. It wasn't that kind of smile. It was more like the mirthful simper of someone who knows a secret...

Eventually, on the day of Harry Osborn's big going-away party, the wall-crawler would take a long swing to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier to ask the incredibly busy Steve Rogers if he knew who made the call that brought the tech team in to Multivex corporate headquarters. All Cap would tell him was that he couldn't divulge the identities of agency assets anymore than he could tell the world who Spider-Man really was. Peter would try to understand.

Then the world would turn upside down.

It would come quietly in the form of some anonymous agent approaching Steve with a tablet. "Commander, we got a report of a skirmish in Gotham City," he'd hear them say as Spidey was leaving.

"Gotham," Rogers would sigh with derision. "What is it this time?"

"Noah Cutter, A.K.A. The Calculator and a number of H.I.V.E. combatants blew up a helicopter on the docks," the agent would say. "All of our underworld informants are saying they killed a well-known cyber-terrorist."

"What are you telling me, son?"

"Oracle's dead, sir."

And when he'd hear those words, for one long moment, Spider-Man's brief week-long search for her would just fade away and he'd suddenly find himself back on the roof of the former Pan Am Building, staring up after his last tangible link to that beautiful girl with the sharpest blue eyes and tinkling laugh he always had to coax out of her.

He was caught in a web all over again. One made by the strands of fate and bad luck, but most of all, the ridiculous limits of what he knew...

All these years and that whole crazy day later and Barbara had still never told him her last name...

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Sex on Fire

Renee Montoya usually found that the answer to every question came in time.

When she was a beat cop walking the streets of Gotham, it came in the time it took back-up to arrive. After she made detective, it came in the time for forensics to provide lab results or the long hours interrogating the right suspect. Now, in her strange, new, ever-changing life as The Question, she learned that the answers would come in ways she'd never expect, be it the passing of seconds or the changing of seasons. Sometimes they came to her in a flash. Sometimes in her dreams. Whatever the case, Montoya just had to do something she'd never been very good at before:

Renee had to be patient.

Before he died and passed on his mantle, the original Question, Charles Victor Szasz, told her that he had the ability to "walk in two worlds," a meditative trance that allowed him to read the secret language of cities. Of everything Charlie had tried to share with her during the months he spent training Renee, this was certainly the thing she had been worst at because it didn't make any damn sense. It probably didn't help that Professor Aristotle Todor had corrected many of the toxic, hallucinatory effects of the binary gas he had created that she and Charlie used to secure the pseudoderm mask to their faces and change their hair color when they became The Question.

"I never really bought into all that shamanistic nonsense Charlie got into towards the end," Tot told her once. "The poor guy was probably just trippin' balls, dear."

And that was enough for a while.

It wasn't until Montoya had been in New York City long enough that she realized where she might have gone wrong when she tried Charlie's weird trick before. Despite everything he had told her, walking in two worlds wasn't about asking the right question and getting the answer in whispers and brief catches of conversation on the street. It was about shutting up, opening your eyes, and listening for what the universe was trying to tell you all along. So, as the new Question lurked in the shadows of its skyscrapers, the Big Apple confessed its secrets.

"Help me!" her new city screamed in the jittery unrest of its citizens, the cracks in its foundations, and its preponderance of freshly replaced windows. "Save me from my heroes!"

For the longest time, it'd been impossible for Renee to imagine leaving Gotham. When she turned in her badge and gun and left the GCPD after her partner, Crispus Allen, was gunned down by a corrupt crime scene technician who'd walked off scot-free, her friends had encouraged her to move out and move on. They told her to get a fresh start somewhere new. Back then, she'd looked at them like they'd just suggested she fly to Mars and check out the nightlife, but for one fleeting moment she wondered if being a cop wasn't so murky and grey in a place like Metropolis. Or maybe Chicago or Portland. She never considered trying things out in Manhattan.

When she was on the job, just the idea of New York City had always terrified Montoya. Working in Gotham with just the Batman and his sidekicks and associates skulking all over the place had been a nightmare when you were trying to break a case. The legality of the Dark Knight's methods was this constant fly in your ointment. If it came down to apprehending an Arkham escapee, there was nobody better than Batman, but when it came to a fresh crime case, sometimes he did more harm than good. The Caped Crusader might have an excellent track record for solving the mystery and hunting down the guilty, but he didn't always leave you with enough legally obtained evidence to make it stick. Nothing stuck in a cop's craw more than finding the perp only for them to skate on some technicality like a confession coerced by a scary man in a cape who was only marginally deputized and refused to testify in court.

In New York City, you had that times a thousand. Renee had worked with enough ex-NYPD transfers to know just how crazy things got here with all these friggin' superheroes in the same scant thirty-four square-miles.

Besides, Renee had grown up a Gotham girl through and through. It was Charlie who actually got her to leave for the first time, unless you counted that prisoner transfer from Central City she'd been assigned, and she certainly didn't. Charlie took Montoya to the Middle Eastern nation of Kahndaq where they received the Order of the Crescent -- the highest honor the state could bestow upon a non-Kahndaqi -- after preventing a terrorist attack orchestrated by Intergang. From there they journeyed to Nanda Parbat, the Himalayan mountain retreat where she was trained to expand her mind and hone her body as Charlie lay dying from lung cancer.

After he passed away and she decided to pick up the void visage of The Question in his honor, she was as ready to wander the earth as Charlie ever was. Since then, she'd traveled the world in her pursuit of the Bible of Crime. She'd gone to France at the behest of Batman Incorporated. She'd lived in L.A. and North Carolina... But she still never thought she'd live in New York. Sure, she'd spent a week there as a favor once, running down a few leads about Spider-Man and his connection to the Daily Bugle tabloid, but even that had been a waste. If anything had come of it Renee certainly never heard anything back from Oracle...