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When he’d found three tattered issues of ‘ The Amazing Spider-Man’ tucked carelessly away in a corner of the bunker, he’d taken it as a sign from God.Classic late 1970s editions, nowhere near mint condition. The corners were dog-eared. The once vibrant colours faded. They had been vandalised by a child’s incomprehensible scribbles, the wobbly letters spelling ‘ Jess’ visible over nearly every instance of Black Cat’s face, and were clearly intended to end their lives as kindling in the stove.But that was where it had all begun.Great power, great responsibility. Was that not how he had lived his life, the aphorism by which he had built his Project? Had he not bled by his Father’s hand for learning that very principle?“Look, my love.” Joseph had taken the comic books over to the sleeping Deputy and run his fingers across her forehead gently to wake her, sweeping her baby hairs from her clammy forehead. She’d stirred quietly, and he nuzzled her face with his, their noses softly brushing together. The warmth of her beside him was all that kept his faith rushing through his veins, the last true sign that God had not abandoned him to the stale depths of this airless lead-lined pit.He settled beside her as she sat up, and set the books on her lap.She turned the pages slowly, drinking in the sketches like they were murals upon a cathedral wall, and the superheroes, saints.“I used to read these as a boy. I was punished for it, and our Father burnt the few I had collected, but I never forgot just how much I admired it. All those people he saved, all the hope he inspired. I memorised the stories, and Jacob and John would sit up with me as I retold it to them, or created my own. All night, sometimes, if the day had been hard.”The memory of it cut deep.“Our adventures were quiet, whispered in the darkness, but whole cities heard our victories. Saw us rise from our defeats.”He could still see the mesmerised smile on John’s face.They would swing him between them on the walk to his kindergarten, so he could feel like he was flying through the glass towers. Jacob would pick their baby brother up and hold his hand as he toddled along the tops of walls, clambered up on benches, into trees… anything to feel like he could climb up to the skyline of Manhattan, almost another world.“My Father never understood. My Mother, even less so. She had no perception of responsibility, no notion that she could be the hero we needed. She could have taken us far away, spared us years of separation and suffering. But she and the heroes in these stories share a single weakness.”The Deputy had become fixated on a panel where Spider-Man was staring out at a sunset the colour of tangerines, intersected by the silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge. Gwen Stacy was curled up in his arms.“I always was rather taken with how much he truly loved her. She was his sacrifice. God asks it of all of us, even those we write about. It is what it is to be human, to be chosen. But unlike the world in these pages, my Mother loved my Father too much to sacrifice him for us. And so her humanity, her heart, suffered for it.”Rook’s eyes widened at the vivid palette .“I wonder if the sky still looks like this...” She croaked, tears spilling onto her cheeks.Her voice had long lost its lustre, its life.“I am sure it will, my love. When the earth is salted, and the sinners purged, it will. I promise you. But for now, I see such wonder only in you. You are my Gwen, Rook. My sunset.”He turned her face towards him and moved to kiss the corner of her lips.She did not react.He brushed his thumbs across her cheeks as he pressed his lips to hers again, tasting the sorrow that slipped out of her in every breath.Nothing.Frustrated, he buried his face in her neck, and murmured deeply into her flesh.“Why do you not return my affection? Do you still not see that you and I are here, together, as part of God’s plan? As I am Adam, and you, taken from my rib to be my strength and my weakness, are my Eve. He intended for us to take comfort in each other in the New Eden, as only man and wife can. It is the way of things. It is our responsibility .”The cord he had bound their hands with, on the night he had married himself to her, decorated the end of the bed.An eternal symbol that she belonged to him.One hand held her at the base of her skull, caressing the soft skin of her neck, twisting strands of her neglected hair, skimming along her hairline. He pulled her up onto his lap, and the other hand slowly unbuttoned her pants. It edged beneath her panties, reaching the warmth between her legs.The comics slipped from her lap onto the floor. Several pages came loose, and scattered like leaves from an autumnal tree.“Joseph...” she moaned.His fingers gently caressed her at first, toying with her clit, easing her into it, before pushing their way inside her. He nibbled at her ear. She was soon grinding against his hand, desperate for him to be deeper, faster, to fill her with his sin, until the darkest tortures of Hell came crashing through her senses, and she would be so in ecstasy, she would not care.“It is time for me to be selfish.” He breathed, his fingers already slick with her lust, “I have given… everything… in the name of God’s plan. You are my Gwen Stacy, my weakness… but I will not let them take you. I will not let you take you away from me...”The cut on her forehead, where she had tried to slam her head into the sink, had barely healed, crudely patched up by tender, but unpractised hands.And now, as her face twisted with pleasure, the stitching snapped and blood trickled down her cheeks, like a weeping Madonna.“... Please ….”He could feel his erection pressing into his pants.Oh God , he needed her.“Man would not exist without Adam and Eve’s consummation of their desire. Without Cain and Abel. The cities in those stories... the heroes on these pages... would not exist had they not become one with each other. Nothing would have come to be .”His right hand slid from her neck to her breasts, crawling beneath the dirty lace of her bra to tweak at a nipple.She moaned, barely able to voice her protests.“ Joseph… ”His fingers pumped faster, feeling her pulse with forbidden sin. His tongue ran down her neck now, savouring the salt of her sweat. A visceral, primal groan escaped from her as she bordered on climax, bouncing on his rough hand as it massaged her inner walls.He pulled her breast from where it lay concealed under her blouse and squeezed it in his palm.“ Oh fuck yes…” Her body trembled on top of him, throbbing with every touch. He sucked at her neck now, between low whispering.“If we are to prosper in our New Eden, if our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are to bless the world with stories of heroes and hope and salvation... we must take that first step. You must let me have you. You feel the strength of my devotion to you…”Her nails were digging into his thighs, and he now moved to unbuckle his own pants, needing release, needing to be inside her.“Take my seed, let it fill you, become heavy and round with my love. Carry my son, my daughter, a new life, and with them, the start of our new Eden-”-Rook’s wrist snapped onto his, cutting his motions off with a firm grasp, and she pulled away from his embrace. Her feet slipped on the scattered pages, and she crashed to the floor with a heavy thump, before backing away towards the stairs she so longed to climb.She lay there, panting, her chest rising and falling with the effort of her escape. Ashamed, she pulled her breast back into her shirt.“Rook?”Her glare was as potent as the day he had first brought her down here.“I... am... not yours. ”She breathlessly wiped the blood from her face, her hands tinged scarlet, and she crawled backwards, leaving a trail of faint handprints across the floor.He sighed, disappointed, but did not move from where he sat.“Don’t fucking touch me again…”“Did I hurt you?”She laughed, a high pitched, manic, mad screech.“All that... bullshit ... about being responsible, about giving hope, starting a new world, talking like you’re some kind of saviour, like you just walk in and the world will just fucking be saved because you’re in it. But you’re not, you’re just fucking insane-”“Rook, calm yourself…”“You think I’m going to let you get me pregnant …? DOWN HERE ?”She hadn’t spoken this much in so long.Her throat surely ached, her voice perhaps felt rusted over. The blood running down her face dripped onto her tongue, the tang was clearly bitter, and he knew how she imagined that that was how it was to taste a bullet. Oh, how she had longed to put a pistol in her mouth, and so he had removed the temptation from her reach.“My love, you are tired, you must rest…”She ignored him, gathering up the comic books in her fists, crushing them in her wrath.“No… stay away from me...”A cracked smile across her face.“You know something? All that shit about being Spider-Man with your brothers... you know what always happens to superheroes in the end? They go fucking darkside. Your parents didn’t bother to save you, so you had to do it yourself... but you went too... damn... far... and now you’re just like them .”She was screaming the words at him, the screeching echo ricocheting around their hollow universe.“You didn’t give a shit who got hurt, who had to die so you could play hero, so you could play God over people’s lives, and do you know what? You didn’t have to lose them. Jacob and John and Faith. You used them and let them do whatever the fuck they wanted, because you knew I’d kill them, and that was meant to be the grand finale your fucking origin story . Hate to break it to you Joe, but good people don’t fucking want to lose the ones they love.”“Rook, rest, please. You are unwell-”She hurled the remains of the comics at the wall behind Joseph’s head… all except the page with the bright orange sky splashed across it.“All this, the world going to hell, the bombs, the sky on fire, Earl and Staci and Joey and all of them, the city in ruins, your Project razed to the fucking ground, your brothers and Faith lying dead in a ditch, and you say you’re some kind of hero? This is your own goddamn fault… ”She was hyperventilating, wheezing to desperately suck in the dusty air, and she doubled over, coughing. He left her there for a moment, placidly watching her choke on her own rage, before he finally stood, and went to comfort her.“As it is also yours, lamb, herald of revelation.”He knelt beside her and took her face between his palms. His hands were not clean from their intimacy, and he ran his fingers across her lips, so that she might taste how she truly felt about him.“Do you not see?” He softly reassured her, “I know that I no longer can claim to be the hero in this story. Too much blood has been spilled by my family, too many lives have been destroyed because I could not make them see .”“You took... everything ... from me-” Rook sobbed.“I know-”He brought her eyes up to meet his gaze.“- I have become my Father and my Mother, neglectful of my oath to protect, obsessed with controlling what cannot be controlled. But you are no hero either, no matter what your friends told you. It is you who has done this to me, blinded me with lust and desire, so that I could not save my family.”He wondered if she thought he was finally going to kill her.“But I have also chosen you to be my strength. To be my faith, my shield...”He smiled knowingly.“...my net of spider webs. I have chosen you to help me be the man I am destined to be. Let me become the hero, let me give into my temptations, just once, as Eve ate from the tree of knowledge-”He kissed her once again, pressing their foreheads together.“-And we will not be cast out of the garden, but be free to guide humanity to the world that God showed me all those years ago. Together, with our children beside us, the first children of a glorious new Eden.”“No… no…”Joseph pulled his hand away and retrieved the sunset Rook had so carefully sought to preserve. The very sight of it dragged her from her hysteria, the feverish anger cooling in her eyes, her breathing slowing to a calm, submissive rhythm.“Let me show you the world I saw as my Father beat me, as he burned these very pages.”“No…” She shook her head, her matted hair hiding her face, “...no, I will never…” Despite her refusals, he could hear the torment in her voice, her indecision. Deep down, she knew he was right. She had seen his prophecies come true. Who was she to deny fate, to second guess the prophet of God?“You have a responsibility. A destiny. Would the hero of this story ignore that, put selfish pride before all else?”He moved the comic book into her sightline, below the curtain of her hair.He saw her eyes widen, entranced by it.“We can watch the sunset together, on a bridge we have built. We can sit together, Peter and Gwen, Joseph and Rook. No more sacrifices, no more suffering. That can be our fault too.”“ Our fault …”Rook’s bloodied fingertips could not help but touch what he offered to her. Such simple beauty as colours so rarely seen in darkness, so hypnotic, so full of hope.“Will you love me, as I love you?”The words caught in her throat.“I…”“ Can you love me?”He was met with uncompromising, lonely silence.“Rook?”The flickering light of the bedroom reflected the tangerine sunlight from the page onto her face. Her eyes sparkling, brimming with hopelessness and despair.“You are my sunset, Rook. Sit beside me.”The fragile creature before him leaned gently into his bare chest, resting her head against his scars. Sobs racked her body, and tears soaked his skin. He wrapped his arms around her, taking her into his warmth, into his scent of passion and greed, like a fly with broken wings, surrendering to the venom of a ravenous spider.“I sit beside you.”Joseph kissed the top of her head.“Don’t let me fall.”“Never. You shall be the Mother of all, my love.”And quietly, with a resigned finality...“...I know.”