95 Joss's Inner Knot

“Won’t you go over there?” Natasha said, arms folded as she leaned against the wall, watching Joss gesture toward the funeral in the distance with a tilt of his chin.

“No. I’m not very good with this kind of occasion,” Joss said with a slight grimace, declining Natasha’s invitation.

In the distance, Peter and May stood in black mourning clothes, their faces stricken with grief as they watched the staff lower Ben into the ground, after which the priest began his prayer.

Natasha shifted into a slightly more comfortable stance before speaking again. “I heard you were the one who saved those two. They probably want you to come over too, don’t they?”

“Forget it. If I’d gotten there even a little earlier, maybe I could have saved him too. But in the end, I was still too late.”

Seeing Joss like that, Natasha found it hard to say anything more.

Joss’s rise had been like a comet, and in just a few short months his power and fame had nearly surpassed even veterans like her.

What’s more, along his path through life, in battles both known to her and hidden from her, Joss had never suffered a true setback. That much could be confirmed with one look into his eyes alone.

And yet this time, Joss had finally experienced the despair of being unable to save someone. As a superhero, this kind of thing was bound to happen; in the future, too, it was an unavoidable sorrow.

“...Sigh. Then I’ll head over first,” Natasha said with a sigh, turning and walking toward the funeral.

The first time one killed an enemy, the first time one watched a comrade die before one’s eyes, the first time one could not save someone... these were the hurdles every hero had to cross. No one could help him with them, and no one could take them away for him.

“Oh, right. That kid really admires Stark. If you have him recruit him, he should be able to get into the Avengers pretty easily.”

After only a few steps, Natasha heard Joss’s voice behind her. But when she turned back, he was already gone.

“Make sure you get some proper rest yourself...” Natasha shook her head and let out another soft sigh.

...

Back home after teleporting, Joss stared out the window, but the knot in his heart had eased not at all.

Though Natasha had guessed part of it, she did not know that the monster that had attacked Peter Parker and the others had been the symbiote Whip he had let loose.

In other words, Ben’s death could be said to have been, in large part, Joss’s doing.

Although Joss had rushed to Peter Parker’s house as fast as he could after realizing something was wrong, and had effortlessly dealt with the not-particularly-powerful symbiote Whip, none of that could change the fact that Ben had already been murdered by it.

Everything had gone much as Joss had once anticipated: the threat of powerful enemies, the terror of the symbiotes, and between those two forces, Peter Parker would become the true Spider-Man.

And yet all of it was utterly different from the script he had prepared. Even Ben Parker, who had somehow managed to survive at last, had abruptly left this world.

These past few days, Joss had been in terrible shape. The reason, at root, was that he had laid Ben’s death entirely at his own feet.

Everything he had prepared had proved useless. Instead, by a strange twist of fate, that robber had once again killed Ben Parker, as though all of it had simply looped back to the beginning, like a worldline tightening upon itself.

The only difference was that this time, Joss had interfered.

“Still troubled by that matter?” Lilith asked as soon as she heard Joss return, stepping out of her room.

“Lilith... tell me, did I do the right thing, or the wrong thing...” As though grasping at a lifeline, Joss’s face showed a rare fragility.

The people of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers were either too dazzling to look at directly, or else had willingly stepped into darkness in the name of justice. They were excellent comrades, but not the right people to provide comfort.

Little Black had spent the most time with Joss, but as a symbiote, her outlook was not suited to advising others either.

Tornado had only known him for a few days, and having come from the slums, she was hardly the sort to agonize over such matters, nor someone he could talk to about them.

Only Lilith, at this moment, could allow Joss to show his weakness.

Yet after hearing him, she only shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t really understand what you’re saying either. I was raised as a killing machine. I’ve never tried to save anyone.”

“Yeah... I guess so...” Joss gave a bitter tug at the corner of his mouth, and could only sigh.

“Still, even when I was carrying out missions, I always held to one principle: never harm anyone beyond the target... It’s foolish, perhaps, but it helps me keep my own heart at ease.” Lilith sat down across from Joss, speaking of something that seemed entirely unrelated.

“Keep your heart at ease...?”

“Yes. If what you do lets you feel at peace with yourself, isn’t that enough?”

Lilith nodded and continued, “No one can be perfect, and no one can control everything. You think this time it was because you released the symbiote that that man died, but that was never your intention. So why blame yourself for it?”

“If you refuse to act because you’re afraid your actions might hurt someone, isn’t that the most foolish thing of all? It’s like a worker making a screw. One day, that screw might give someone tetanus. Would that worker then decide never to make screws again?”

Perhaps it was a little unreasonable, but Lilith’s words pierced straight into Joss’s mind, finally pulling him out of the tangled net of his own making so he could breathe again.

“You’re right... It was only an accident...” Joss said with a sigh.

There were many things that, though simple enough to say, he could understand rationally, yet still found hard to accept emotionally.

“...”

Lilith cast a sidelong glance at Joss for a long while, then quietly rose and left the living room, retreating back to her room.

Just as Joss thought she had simply decided she couldn’t be bothered with him, Lilith’s door opened once more. Along with two crisp metallic sounds striking the floor, Lilith appeared again before him.

A black, tightly fitted trench coat wrapped her upper body, the close-clinging fabric outlining her flat form. On her legs were two blade-like weapons serving as high heels, making her look rather terrifying.

Yet from the abdomen downward, she was fully exposed to the air, with only a tiny metal plate covering the most sensitive area. The result was so alluring that the fierce menace of the outfit seemed to melt into seductive charm.

“S-So... how is it...?” Lilith blushed deeply, looking at Joss with some hesitation. “I’m not very good at comforting people, but... you said last time you really wanted to see me wear this, didn’t you?”