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Flighty unpredictability: that was the sum total of the Cloak’s first impression of the arachnid-child humanity named Spider-Man. Not an actual arachnid, of course, though it did take a while for the Cloak to understand that – how could a bipedal mammal share DNA with an eight-legged spider? – and many an attempt at analysing the human behind the mask proved futile. He was... an anomaly. Basking amongst anonymity; saving other, little human beings left, right and centre.
That was how the boy-spider caught its master’s eye. Monday evening, it was when Peter Parker first graced the New York skyline. Stephen’s eyes were alight with clinical fascination, the brain behind the man analysing every possible thing he could regarding Mr. Would Be Hero.
Then, Stephen tucked his face into the fabric of the Cloak, and pointed at the red-and blue specimen and said, “See that? The next time you swat me upside the head for not checking the warnings of the spells, I'm going to trade you in for a set of those webs.”
Affront was the first reaction the Cloak had as Stephen’s words registered, and it straightened and bristled where it clung along his back. Yet, upon deeper analysis, Stephen’s tone was one of mocking yet underlined with affection; an attempt at humour.
Maybe it wasn't the only one seeking companionship after all...
Satisfied with its hypothesis, it swatted him upside the head.
Here was the thing: the Cloak did not like to share. Choosing Stephen Strange was not a decision it undertook lightly, and it was not a meagre feat that endeared it to the recruit with the shaking hands.
Yes, the Cloak took its duty as Stephen Strange’s sworn guardian seriously, thank you very much.
So, when extra-terrestrial beings threatened their world and Stephen valiantly stepped forward in defence of his planet, it protected its master as best it could, freeing him when he was choked into unconsciousness in the name of the stone resting on his neck. But then when Stephen slipped out of its clutches, it was Spider-Man who webbed Stephen’s falling, devastatingly vulnerable body and rescued him, and the Cloak was– well, it was relieved. And irrationally jealous at the same time. Jealousy was not an emotion it would say it was acquainted with, but it had observed how humanity suffered under its sin, how envy poisoned and corrupted, snatched and defiled. The Cloak was not human, that much was true; however, it would appear human traits had somehow been assimilated into its inner fabric. Become part of its repertoire, as it were.
The Cloak was fond of observation, of analysing, of calculating and cataloguing the hints of humanity it had been permitted to see within the New York Sanctum. It loved to mimic and mirror, desiring to understand mankind, of whose form modelled its shape.
It's just that. Look, from a biological standpoint, from an evolutionary standpoint, Spider-Man should not exist. It was little more than an astronomical quirk of nature that he did.
And so for the Cloak to be outdone by Mother Nature’s strangest child, if you'll pardon the superlative, was...
Well, to phrase it in human vernacular: it fucking sucked.
They three stood in a ship destined for what humanity would coin hell.
“Artificial webbing has nothing on a floating cape,” Peter cheerfully declared, seemingly proud of his proposition. Trying to make friends, some part of its sentience supplied rather unhelpfully; it much preferred Spider-Man to be nothing more than a pesky nuisance as opposed to a young human with a penchant for trouble.
Nevertheless, the Cloak swatted him just for deigning to compare him to a cape.
Five years later, Stephen took a knee to the melody of Peter Parker’s vicious apologies to an irradiated corpse. The Cloak followed suit.
Later:
“It was your fault,” Peter decried, eyes red and veiny, face twisted in wretched misery, needing an outlet for the pain carved into his soul. Peter wore pain very well, the Cloak noted with some small degree of concern. “You could have stopped this, you should have stopped it. You should never have given up the time stone in the first place! If you hadn’t, then Tony... then Tony would be...”
Tender, Stephen held the shuddering person in his arms, squashing the spider-human’s head into his chest. His arms came to wrap around his body, and the Cloak copied the movement, draping itself over the heaving human with a gentleness it had not expected.
Peter returned to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Again, and again, and again. Every time, Stephen’s face would lift, lips quirking in a genuine display of happiness.
It was an... interesting development, to say the least.
Peter was a ball of everything Stephen despised: all heart and no logic; all rash impulsivity without the foresight required to warn against it; all instinct and no planning. A perfect storm of a person. Not at all what the Cloak generally went for in a human. See, the Cloak liked consistency, knowledge, stability – all things Stephen embodied.
But, when it came down to it, Peter Parker’s presence was not entirely disliked.
The Cloak was used to ignoring the gasps and grunts its master tried so very hard to muffle into the sheets of his bed – broken, traitorous, and so hauntingly beautiful – and was used to waiting atop the door frame like a dutiful guardian as Stephen busied himself with greeting the day and wiping the reproductive matter from his hands. And when Peter Parker next saw fit to grace their Sanctum with his presence, it pretended it had not heard a single word.
After all, the Cloak knew how Stephen loved him so.
Peter exploited Stephen’s weakness for him, botched Stephen’s spell, webbed them both up in the Mirror Dimension when they were going easy on him, and– and–
“What if everybody forgot who I was?”
The Cloak was an artificial construction bathed in magic; it was not a human invention that came equipped with the innate self-destructiveness that oft became humanity's bane.
Yet it could not deny the human emotion of grief. There, watching Peter Parker come to terms with the end of his existence as the world would see it, the Cloak finally understood it for it knew the magnitude of his sacrifice: because Peter had always come to Stephen as Peter, and not as Spider-Man – the memories would not transfer, they were be lost into the ether, gone and forgotten.
But the Cloak swore it would not forget. It was not human, did not have any body to name for itself, would not register on any universal database as a sentient being.
Yes, the Cloak would remember what the world could not, and one day, Stephen would too. It would see to that.
For their Peter.