Thomas Taylor 🕷 Peter Parker (webslingers) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2018-06-12 21:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | thomas taylor |
Who: Thomas Taylor
What: Despite his best efforts, he's too late to save her.
Where: Harlem, NY
When: Monday, June 11th 2018
Warnings: Character death, general blood & gore warning
The whole way there, Thomas felt like he couldn't breathe. At first, he hadn't even been sure of where to look. She could have been anywhere. she could be... Thomas wouldn't let himself even think it. He'd seen the picture. She'd looked badly beaten, but alive. That wasn't much to go on, but it was enough. It had to be. He wouldn't let himself think past that. Kylie was still alive. All he had to do was find her.
He would have searched the entire state of New York if he had to. Assuming she was even still in New York, but Thomas had a feeling that wherever he'd taken her, it wasn't that far. Consumed with panic, the very first thing he did was attempt to track down Alexis. He and Carnage hadn't had the same kind of history as Thomas and his cousin, but if anyone aside from him knew where Kylie might be, Thomas had a feeling that she would. Alexis had made enough trouble for him over the years because he was Spider-Man that he didn't think it was a stretch to assume that if she hadn't been the one to take Kylie, she'd probably know who did, and where Thomas could find them. He couldn't find any sign of his cousin, which struck him as weird since she always made a point to turn up when he was at his worst to kick him while he was down. She'd been the one to throw some poor girl off the roof because she'd had the misfortune to look enough like Kylie, and made sure that Thomas was there to watch.
It was pure gut instinct that led him to the rooftop in Harlem with that passing thought. After swinging all over half of the city and ignoring Ezra's repeated texts and comm messages because he was too busy being worried sick about Kylie, he'd still gotten nowhere. No Alexis. No Kylie. No sign of Carnage. He was just starting to lose hope that he'd ever find her, but something in him told him to start checking places that were meaningful. That's what they did, right? They tried to hit you where it would hurt the most. The place where Thomas proposed was a dead end, and the restaurant where he'd tried to propose weeks before that he and Alexis had made a mess of wasn't anymore helpful. But that image of the dead girl with blonde hair haunted him, until Thomas found himself swinging onto that familiar Harlem rooftop with renewed determination.
He was going to find her. He could still save her. Kylie was still alive.
Thomas held onto those thoughts for the two seconds it took to take in his immediate surroundings. This was where he'd first found out that his own cousin was Venom. The irony was at the time, Thomas had been investigating a series of Carnage themed murders. He'd never actually found out who Carnage was, never found him. Now, it seems he was finally paying for that. The sick feeling in the pit of Thomas's stomach didn't go away, and renewed ten fold when he caught sight of the large amount of blood over in the corner, too much blood, close to where Alexis had been standing when she'd tossed that girl over the edge two years ago. It was Kylie's blood. Thomas didn't have to do any tests to know that the scary pool of blood on the roof a few feet away from him was the blood of his wife, but he tried not to think about that. He went directly for the note.
In the middle of all that blood, there was a sealed bag with a note inside. The only thing written on the note was an address, but that was all he needed. He didn't think twice about going, didn't care if it was a trap. It likely was, but if there was any chance that Kylie was at this address, there was no way he wasn't going, with or without Avengers backup.
When he swung in an open window, the building seemed empty. Thomas relied solely on his spider senses because otherwise, he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings if anyone was looking to try and catch him off guard. He was only looking for Kylie. "Kylie?!"
If anyone else was here and heard him, Thomas didn't care. The minute his eyes found her, he felt like his heart actually stopped. She was at the far end of the room, he would recognize her anywhere. For one split second he thought he'd actually done it, he'd found her in time.... and then he looked closer. She wasn't just sitting, like Thomas had thought she was, she was... she had been posed. The sick feeling in his gut only got more intense as he took a few more steps, and it was only then that he started to notice some other things that were off about her. Her eyes were closed, which seemed normal, but her limbs were all wrong. Like they weren't facing the right way. A few more dreaded steps closer and Thomas caught sight of the puncture wounds all over body, the throne of ice that she'd been arranged in. She was missing her left hand.
"No." His own voice sounded strangled and foreign to him, barely even aware that he'd spoken out loud because he was already running across the floor of what seemed to be a recently vacant warehouse. He ran the fastest he'd ever run, as if he still had some chance at fixing this. Some chance of saving her. He had to save her. I've got to. I've got to! Peter's voice from a distant memory thundered in his ears, mixing in with the general roaring that had started from the second he caught sight of her. I've got to catch her-
But she wasn't falling. She was sitting perfectly still, like a doll, with all of her parts put on backwards. This wasn't something Thomas could fix as Spider-Man. This wasn't something he could fix... He reached her and in his grief, he pulled off his mask and fell on both knees in front of her, not caring who saw him. But there was no one around. It was just him and Kylie, like it'd always been. Just the two of them. "Kylie, oh god..."
She was covered in her own blood, her injuries even more horrific up close, unquestionably fatal. She'd been alive in that photo. She'd been alive. Why hadn't he been able to save her? Why couldn't he get here in time? With a deep sob that vibrated through his entire chest, Thomas briefly stood to gingerly pick her up, gather her in his arms before crumpling back to the floor, cradling Kylie's limp, broken body close to him. It still hadn't felt real a second ago, but now that he was holding her, now that he could see the lack of breath in her lungs, the absence of a heart beat in her chest, there was no question. Kylie was dead. His Kylie. The woman who had always seemed so much larger than life, who Thomas had never worried about taking care of herself because she was so strong, so powerful, so... Why hadn't he seen this coming?
Burying his face in her hair, matted with her blood, Thomas started crying as he held her close, rocking her gently in his arms. "You can't be dead. You can't..." He shut his eyes and for a moment his vision blurred, the confusion of a different head of blonde hair and Peter's own grief resonating through his bones as Thomas shuddered, and held Kylie tighter. He'd never loved anyone the way he loved her. How could she just be gone? "Please don't be dead. I need you. I don't want you to be..."
He didn't know how long he was there for. It could have been hours, it could have been minutes before Ezra found him. It would never be long enough if after this he was going to have to spend the rest of his life without her.