Superman/Spider-Man: Play Date (Patreon)

“Superheroes shouldn’t have kids!” Annie yelled. “In fact, superheroes shouldn’t even get married! You just see us as dumb little civilians you have to keep saving! It’s so chauvinistic and condescending and… ugh! You suck!” she concluded before stomping off.

And before Peter got in a word edgewise, his daughter had gone into seclusion in her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Go to your room,” he said laconically, before he heard another door shut. Turning around, he saw Mary Jane locking the front door. Peter went to scoop up her carry-all and duffel bag before she could pick them up off the floor. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Oh, just a little more than Jersey heard,” MJ replied, getting in a quick kiss as Peter picked up her bags. She grinned, slightly sadistic, at him. “How was the solo parenting?”

“Never die,” Peter told her sincerely. “I’d make a horrible widower. In fact, do you have to do any more South African location shoots for Dinoshark? I know it’s cheap to film there, but can’t they recast?”

“Oh no. If Rita Reason suddenly has someone else’s face, it will completely destroy the fans’ suspension of disbelief.” She followed with Peter as he took her luggage directly to the laundry room. “So, how did World War 3 get started anyway?”

“She was angry she could only nominate me for Father of the Year once.”

“Ah.”

In the laundry room, Mary Jane hopped up on the dryer while Peter fed her dirty clothes into the washing machine.

“You know how we gave Annie permission to get into costume and go all Spiderling if she’s right there when there’s an emergency?” Peter asked rhetorically, angrily balling up MJ’s unmentionables and thrusting them into the machine.

“Something about how with great power comes… I forget,” Mary Jane said sardonically.

“Yeah, well, the bus got into a fender bender because of a Bizarro on the loose, so Annie went into action. Only she wasn’t the only one on the scene. Some—hero club called Young Supers or something were there too. They all worked together, blah blah blah, they asked her if she wanted to join up.”

“I assume, since she has the Parker DNA, that she told them to stuff it and demanded they pay her, that sort of thing?”

Peter gave her a look. “Why do I tell you about my sordid history? You just use it against me.”

“I think you figured that after proposing to me with a Crackerjack box, nothing could phase me. Plus, I married you for the conversation.”

Peter tossed another blouse in the wash. “Well, she gets her sociability from you—“

“Thank God,” MJ interrupted.

“So she’s all for it.”

“And daddy said no?”

“Daddy said no,” Peter confirmed.

“That’s weird, usually tweens love that.”

“Can we can the sarcasm? My daughter is very nearly in a sidekick support group. Plus, she thinks I suck.”

“At least she didn’t say she hates you.”

“Oh, the feeling was there.”

“Yeah, but the avoidance of hyperbole—we could have an English major in the family.”

Peter closed up the washing machine and went to her, hanging his head until she took him in her arms and stroked his back. “I’ll take English major over… Young Justice.”

“What’s so bad about them, sweetie? You know I love juicy superhero gossip.”

“I don’t know…” Peter hefted MJ with one hand, turning around and carrying her out of the laundry room. “I don’t know any of the kids and I don’t know any of their parents or mentors or whatever. I don’t want her hanging out with a bunch of weirdos. Or at least, I want her hanging out with weirdos we know.”

“And how did you explain this to her? Did you make a diagram?”

“MJ, please, that was one time…”

“Did you put your foot down? Did you?”

Going into the kitchen, Peter set her down on the counter. “Bring me any food from Africa?”

“I don’t think it would keep,” Mary Jane replied. “Hey, if you’re getting lunch, I want some of your bachelor chow leftovers. I know you only did pizza and Chinese food while I was gone.”

“We had some meal kits,” Peter assured her. “Free trial period. Good stuff.”

“Nuke some for me in the microwave.”

“Ah, I thought you had forgotten how to serve food a la Parker.”

Mary Jane giggled to herself as he took out dinner plates for both of them. “Seriously, though… I know it kinda sucks, tiger, but Annie’s not a little girl anymore. She won’t do what we tell her just because we’re saying it.”

“Did she do that once?” Peter asked. “Did I sleep in and miss it?”

“More or less,” MJ conceded. “And we can’t put her in time-out for talking back either. I know we’re the adults, but we can at least clue her in on why we’re doing what we’re doing. That’s all she really wants. Didn’t you, when you were her age?”

“Yeah, but I was an idiot,” Peter countered, carrying two full plates to the microwave. “And I’ve heard enough stories from you to know you weren’t in danger of discovering Pym Particles either.”

“We both had our issues. Annie’s got her own issues. And one of them, for better or worse, is that she can leap tall buildings with a single bound. We trust her to have people’s lives in her hands—we can’t take that trust away when it’s convenient for us.”

“I trust her! I just don’t…” Peter bit his lip and turned his head, long years of fatherhood suppressing the desire to curse. “I don’t trust the rest of the world. If there were six point five billion Annie May Parkers on Earth, then I’d let her do whatever.”

“It’d make dating hard,” Mary Jane quipped.

“I can live with that,” Peter was quick to put in. “Remember when all there was to parenting was not letting her stay up late to watch Hotel For Dogs?”

“Oh yeah. And if I had to watch that stupid movie one more time, my head would’ve exploded, so let’s give the passage of time a few points, okay?”

“Right.” Peter turned on a TV in the kitchen nook. “Dinner and a show. Let’s see what New York’s got for us tonight.”

He wasn’t disappointed. The moment the TV was on, the screen slammed into an image of a man flying above the skyline—hovering above the Chrysler Building—the gray metal of the aerial seeming particularly dull next to the red and blue that defied it from up above. The newscaster was speaking, but Peter tuned it out—recalling his own encounter with the man, years before.

“He’s flying,” Peter caught himself saying.

“Flying man?” Mary Jane asked, coming down off the counter to look at the TV herself. “Isn’t that a little… commonplace?”

“Not like this,” Peter said.

There on the TV screen was Superman’s return.

***

There wasn’t much debate. Mary Jane had never really met Superman and was willing to hang back until Peter got the lay of the land, so he heard her “be safe” and told her to do the same and then he was hurtling down Lexington Avenue, building up the momentum that would carry him a good distance up the Chrysler when his swing took him there.

His mind was a swirl of confusion. It’d been like a miracle, how many heroes came out of the Regent’s power bank still alive, but so many of them had their powers screwed up or just needed time. There were a few who’d taken the path Peter had been on, laying low until the Regent was dealt with, and there were some who were taking up mantles now that he was gone, but they were few and far between. Peter knew he and his family was really about it when it came to protecting New York. He took that responsibility seriously. Taking care of his family and taking care of his city had blended together for him. He couldn’t do one without the other.

Which left Superman. As far as Peter could figure, he’d done what Peter had done, hiding out through the reign, so Peter couldn’t begrudge him that. If the Regent had gotten Superman’s power, he would’ve been unstoppable. But at the same time, part of him wondered what Superman could’ve done during all those long, fearful years. Could he have made a difference? Stopped the Regent sooner? Saved so many lost lives and spared so many people so much suffering?

Could Peter have?

How could he stay mad at Superman? Well, he was going to find out. His last web-swing pendulumed him up much of the Chrysler’s height. He hit its façade at a run, carrying himself up the rest of the way to the observation deck in record time, where he lunged, snagging an eagle with a webline and orbiting around it a few times before coming in for a soft landing on top of an Art Deco perch. He looked up at Superman, who came hovering down to him. Of course, the man had a smile for him.

“Spider-Man. Good to see you back.”

“Likewise,” Peter replied. “Even if you are here to warn me about an alien invasion…?”

“Not at the moment. Mind if I sit?”

Peter was flabbergasted. “You’re Superman.”

“It’s your city,” Superman reasoned.

Peter gestured acquiescingly and Superman sat down on the eagle beside him. “My city,” Peter muttered dubiously. “How can you tell a guy’s been hanging out with Batman… so, what can I do ya for, Supes? Just drop by for a chat?”

“In a matter of speaking,” Superman said agreeably. “First, I wanted to apologize.”

Peter knew what for. He felt a blast of anger—he’d always had a temper, and a bitter streak, but at least it faded fast. Mostly. “Yeah,” he nodded.

“I know you would’ve wanted me in that fight. I wanted to be there too. It was the hardest thing in the world for me to stay back and do nothing. But I was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I tried to intervene, it wouldn’t have worked. I would only have been defeated and made the Regent more powerful. Unstoppably powerful.”

“And now it’s all worked out,” Peter said, not quite able to hold back his bitterness. He tried to cover for snapping at Superman by rushing on to his next question. “Who told you that?”

“Someone I trust. Someone who knows. I’m told that you have dealings with a woman named Madame Web. That she knows things about the future. If she told you a prophecy, that the best thing you can do is to wait, even if it kills you… would you have listened?”

Peter dropped down onto his backside, dangling his leg off the eagle. “I suppose I would’ve. But I wasn’t lucky enough to get some assurance that the world would be better off if I stayed out of it.”

Superman nodded. “I suppose I don’t have much right to ask, but if you want to talk about it… I’d never, in a million years, gainsay anything about the way you handled yourself.”

Peter barked a laugh. One good thing about being a parent and a superhero: there was never any shortage of craziness to take your mind off the past. But even after so many years with MJ and Annie, so many years to justify how worth it it had been to trade Venom’s life for theirs… that memory of death still sprung up in his head, fully formed, at Superman’s gentle insistence. And Peter felt sick, unclean, to have that thought in his head around the Man of Steel.

“Yeah. Even J. Jonah Jameson can’t give me too much crap about overthrowing a dictator… I don’t know. I missed that first night, when he took down the Avengers. Someone was threatening my wife and I had to deal with that and. He’s dead now. The man who tried to hurt my family. I was… so unready to deal with that. And the Regent was taking over… I felt like maybe I was supposed to die with the Avengers. That I’d cheated, somehow. And then it became clear how the Regent wasn’t like the others. I thought it was a choice between throwing my life away, just being one more tally-mark on his list, and taking care of my family. And I loved taking care of them. I loved… love… being a father. And I hated myself for loving it. But at least I was keeping my family safe. It wasn’t for me, it was for them.”

Superman reached over to him, a big hand coming down on Peter’s slender back. “It was the same way for me. After the last time we worked together, I got married. Then she got pregnant. When the Regent came to power, my little boy was two years old. I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself, staying out of the fight, if I didn’t know that my wife and child needed me as much as they did.”

Peter let out a disbelieving guffaw. “Damn. Damn. You’re the best person I know and you stayed in hiding because of your family. God. I thought having people—a wife, a child—thought it was supposed to make you a better man. And here we are, using it to justify being cowards.”

Superman’s breath caught in his throat and for a moment, Peter hated himself for including Superman in his indictment of himself. The guy was Superman; he didn’t deserve to be counted into that.

“I don’t think it’s cowardly for a man to put his family ahead of himself. Especially ahead of selfish desires.”

“Selfish?” Peter demanded.

“Yes. You said it yourself—throwing your life away, trying to take down the Regent, so you didn’t have to live with the guilt of surviving. But maybe that’s how they make us better. They make us see whether what we’re doing is really making the world a better place—for them and us and everyone else—or if we’re just trying to make ourselves feel better. Because I’ve known people, good people even, who’ve done some pretty terrible things to make themselves feel better. My wife, she is as wonderful as ever. And my son, he is perfect. Just perfect. I’d die for them in a heartbeat. But the thing is: making the world a better place? It wouldn’t be a better place for them without us in it.”

Peter felt like he’d been rocked on his heels, even sitting down. “Damn,” he breathed, and then his cheeks flushed. For a moment, he was back to being a kid again. Embarrassed to swear in front of Superman. Even if it wasn’t much of a swear, he was still all… Superman.

“That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Superman continued.

“You mean there’s more than just a group therapy session?” Peter quipped weakly.

“My son—his name’s Jon, and he’s inherited a bit more from me than a jawline.”

Peter looked at him. “You’re telling me there’s a Superkid running… flying around? Geez. Talk about a better world…”

Superman grinned. “To me, at least. Hopefully for a lot more people too, soon. But as you can imagine, it’s pretty hard to find kids his age who are going through what he’s going through. And I’ve seen in the news how you and Spinneret and Spiderling are protecting New York now. I assume they’re your family?”

“Yeah, yeah—” Peter held up a hand. “Wait a minute… hold on… are you telling me you came to New York because you were hoping your superpowered kid and my superpowered kid could have a… superpowered play-date?”

“Well, yes. He’s already friends with Robin, but as you said, you can tell when a guy’s been hanging out with Batman. Or his son.”

“Robin is Batman’s son now? What, is Batgirl his daughter?” Peter sputtered in surprise.

“Adopted,” Superman said.

“Batman has kids?I am getting old.”

“It beats the alternative,” Superman assured him.