You’ve always hated spiders.

Not in a fun, cartoonish way like squealing and jumping on a chair with a newspaper in hand. No, your hatred is deeper, colder. It coils in your stomach like an instinct. Webs in the corner of a ceiling make your skin crawl. The quick, skittering movement of eight legs sends something sharp across your spine. You’ve tried to rationalize it—arachnophobia, maybe, or just childhood trauma—but the truth is simpler.

You don’t trust anything that walks silently and bites.

Which makes your friendship with Cindy Moon… complicated.

You’re sitting on the rooftop of an old apartment building you just saved. It's past midnight. The city is hushed under a velvet curtain of clouds, only the occasional screech of tires or buzz of neon reminding you that it never truly sleeps. You’re both perched on the ledge, legs dangling over a four-story drop, the wind lifting strands of your hair and pulling at the hem of your jacket.

Cindy sits beside you with the easy grace of someone who could hang upside down for hours and still not mess up her eyeliner.

She’s got those spider-movements —like she could leap off the roof or vanish into the shadows at any second. You know she’s holding back. She always holds back around you.

You wish she wouldn’t.

"You know," she says, voice soft but amused, "you flinched earlier. In the store."

You don’t answer immediately. You remember. You were chasing a guy with a stolen Stark-tech briefcase, cornered him, then spun around and there it was: a big, glossy brown spider just inches from your face, suspended in its web like a smug little demon. You lost your footing. You actually yelped.

Cindy had caught you before your knees hit the pavement.