WARNING for slight graphic(ish) torture and threats of child harm.

Is this de'javu?

It feels like de'javu. He has distinct memories of being strapped down like this, and he's been tortured so many times that it's easy to recognize the jerk in his gut that tells him that something is very, very wrong. It's kind of sad actually that he's not immediately panicked, a true sign that maybe this has been done one too many times. A saner person might consider a change in career, because job safety hazards like this kept cropping up and his health insurance didn't cover coming back from death.

He could become a telemarketer - whatever the hell that is. Or get a nice desk job, with little succulent plants and pictures of his wifey and two kids. Have a white-picket-fence home with a dog and a cat, and an armchair he can kick his feet up in.

He's cracked the American code.

Bad guys didn't torture people who had the nuclear family dream. That's not a thing that happened - they were safe by design. He could settle down and live the most typical American dream a Canadian like him could.

But that's not his point, he was going somewhere with this. The real point is, Wade is certain he's been in a situation like this before, but he can't place the room or who was doing the slashy-slash and bangy-bang. He thinks it was a laboratory, or a dark warehouse, not this cement box. A basement, he thinks.

Not-Peter is back. He always comes back. Can't keep him away, Wade supposes. It's his addicting animal magnetism.

The copy-cat is carrying a loaded gun, and Wade's brain catches on it like a loose thread to a nail, unraveling his thoughts fiber by fiber. He studies the strings carefully, finding each anomaly and plucking it out with precision. He doesn't like seeing that gun in Peter's hand. Even if it's not real Peter, it's still Peter's face and his body, and those hands didn't hold weapons like that. It's wrong and gross, and it paints Peter's picture with ugly strokes that don't match his color scheme.

Besides, it makes Wade want to kick something really hard.

Everything about Not-Peter is wrong. He may look like Peter, from the scruffy hair, down to the run-down soles of his shoes, but there's a difference to him.

His mannerisms are close enough, and they got the inflection of his voice down pat. It's a really good copy, and under normal circumstances, Wade would be impressed. But this happens to be his Peter they're talking about, and he didn't take it kindly when someone took the people Wade enjoyed having around and twisted them into something unrecognizable.

The illusion is completely broken when Not-Peter starts speaking words, and making threats, and shoving that gun in Wade's face.

He hears copy-cat enter the room before he sees him. It's a faint shuffling of feet from somewhere beyond the door, then the doorknob creaks as it's opened, and it ends with feet scraping against concrete. The lightbulb directly above Wade flash's on, and being the only thing he can see looking straight ahead, it burns his eyes and makes him turn his head to avoid the blinding pain. It doesn't do much to alleviate his discomfort, but it helps him adjust quickly enough that he can squint through the light, searching for the person stalking the shadows beyond.

"And what's on the agenda today?" Wade chirped, finding the shadow among the shadows, his position given away by the subtle glint of the gun catching the light.

"Oh, same ol, same ol'' comes Peter's voice, and Wade takes the soft yearning that invades his heart and shoves it into a little, tiny box and dumps it into a vast ocean. This wasn't a Peter he wanted to hear, and yearning for Peter's real voice wasn't going to get him out of this. "Thought about switching things up a bit today," Not-Peter continued, "Shooting you in the head is getting boring."

"Yeah, guess you didn't think of that, huh? Typical. It's like you're not even trying. Out of all the maniacs who've ever tortured me, you're severely lacking. A bit of personal feedback if you're up to it, as someone who's been on both ends of this shtick, I think the face you're choosing to wear breaks the entire atmosphere you're trying to create. I mean, do you even know the guy? He's allergic to guns and starts sneezing justice whenever they get close.

Not-Peter hummed and drew closer into the light, a yellow glow creeping along his face and making the shadows around his eyes look darker. He's playing with the gun in his hand, running slender deft fingers over the pointed edge, and Wade realizes it's not actually a gun, it's a knife. A kitchen knife, the same brand he and Peter have in their apartment.

"I think you're right," he agreed, "There's a lot more I can do with a knife." He ran the razor edge over his finger, just shy of breaking the skin.

"Is this supposed to be torture or a porn fantasy? Because I'm pretty sure I've had fantasies that start out like this. Run your tongue over it next and tell me I've been a bad boy."

Not-Peter takes it a step farther and straddles Wade's chest, tucking his knees just under his arms and settling on his stomach. He looks down at Wade, literally and metaphorically, and Wade can't help but be caught off guard by that messy bed hair, those brown eyes, and his familiar figure. It's Peter staring down at him, but it's dark and overshadowed by the light illuminating him from behind. Under different circumstances, this situation could be incredibly arousing. But this wasn't Peter, it was someone using his body, and it made Wade's stomach gnash and twist. He wanted to throw him off.

"You've been a bad boy," Not-Peter drawled, and stabbed him in the chest.

Wade screamed as metal tore through flesh, muscle, and bone, puncturing his lungs. He broke off with a wet, heaving grunt, chest heaving and driving the knife further into his body. No matter how many times he's gotten stabbed, shot, or blown up, the pain never went away. Every nerve sent those frustratingly painful signals to his brain, telling him he was in agony, and he didn't appreciate the memo.

Not-Peter slowly pulled the knife out of his chest, and red seeped from the wound, soaking into Wade's suit on one end and filling his lungs on the other. Choking on blood was never a fun way to die, and frankly, of all the ways to die, it took so damn long. Like drowning, but slower.

Not-Peter hummed again, quirking his lips in the way Peter did when he was thinking really hard, and leaned forward, pressing the edge of the knife to Wade's throat. He slid it over his skin slowly, opening Wade's throat like he was dragging a zipper down his neck, and blood gushed out, falling in rivers down his skin as it reached one side of his neck to the other. He leaned back to admire his handiwork. Wade gurgled and gasped, choking on the blood filling his airways. He coughed violently and a spurt of it shot from his mouth and leaked from the corner of his lips.

Intrigued, Not-Peter cocked his head as the skin slowly knit back together, tissue by tissue. When the wound was sealed, he traced his finger across the scarred skin, enraptured. "Amazing."

Chameleon was going into this hard. His craft was assuming identities and posing as people, and Wade could see how he managed to wiggle his way into their lives without them noticing. He was good. Damn good. His mannerisms almost matched Peter's to a fault. Wade could almost believe that this was Peter, if he'd decided to go off the deep end. It was disgusting.

Leftover blood welled in his throat, and Wade coughed again. It needed somewhere to go, after all, and it's not like it was going to drain back into his veins. He had no sympathy or regret when splatters of it landed on Not-Peter's face and he leaned back. Screw him, he deserved to be uncomfortable and gross.

Only, Not-Peter didn't look uncomfortable, and Wade immediately wished he could take it back. All it did was capture the picture of Peter staring down at him with blood-flecked across his face, not bothered at all, and that was incredibly unnerving. It was wrong. All wrong. Some twilight zone, glitch-in-the-matrix shit that Wade didn't care for in the slightest.

"You-" he coughed again, voice thick, "You know I can't die, right? There's literally no point to any of this. At all. Your plan is stupid and flawed, and if you think I'm not going to get out of this, then you're really really, really dumb."

"'Oh, I know I can't kill you," Not-Peter murmured, tracing the knife across Wade's temple and forehead as if contemplating cutting his thoughts open and spreading them out in sheets, "But so many shots to the head, so much brain trauma, I wonder how many bullets I'll need to pump into that skull of yours before you start forgetting."

Wade's heart petered to a stop.

"I know you, Wade. Bad memory, can't remember most of your life. It's all too splotchy and," he waved a hand around, "messed up. All those years taking bullets to the head, getting your skull smashed in - how long do I need to keep this up until it finally resets again and you forget all about me?"

Wade swallowed hard, shaking his head, "If you think I'm gonna forget an ass as fine as Spider-Man's, or a smile as stupid as Petey's, then you've got another thing coming."

Not-Peter hummed a thoughtful noise, scratching his head with the tip of the knife, leaving small trails of blood on his skin. "Maybe not," he admitted, "There's always a chance you'll remember my face. But will you remember what I was like? Or," he traced a scar on Wade's cheek with the knife, "will you remember this? Me tying you down and shooting you in the face, over and over again. Will you remember how much you love me, or how painful it was as I cut your body to pieces and fed you to yourself?" Not-Peter's smile was wicked and dark, and seeing it sent massive amounts of wrongness shooting into Wade's brain. "Who knows, maybe one day you'll wake up, and realize you hate me. You're going to want to kill me, slowly. Piece by piece. You're going to want to hunt me down and make me endure every painful second that you had to endure." Not-Peter leaned forward, "And to really push you over the edge, maybe I'll even visit your little girl one night while she's sleeping. Tear her to pieces too, see if she has a healing factor like her daddy. And if not, send her back to you in little zip-lock baggies."

Wade roared, surging towards Chameleon, but all it did was drive the stakes in his body deeper into his flesh. "You dog kicking, child threatening fuck, you lay one finger on her, Chameleon, and I'll-"

Not-Peter tsked, wagging a chastising finger at him, "Chameleon won't do a thing. It'll all be me, Peter Parker." Not-Peter sat up straighter, as if thinking, "You know, maybe after you hunt me down, Chameleon will send you a little gift. A memorial of our time together. All the dates we went on, the patrol dinners, and declarations of love. A confession that maybe, just maybe, you got the wrong guy. That you killed the wrong Peter Parker. And then you can live the rest of your life knowing that you killed the only person who was willing to give you a second chance."

"No," Wade said, "Fucking liar ass. You wouldn't hurt Peter. Why would you go through all this trouble just to kill him in the end."

"Because," Not-Peter leaned down, so close to Wade's face that he blocked the light above, and his outline glowed like an angel cast to the fires of hell. Peter's voice dropped and it no longer sounded like him. It sounds like someone else talking through him, revealing the devil hiding underneath the surface, "If I can't have him, I don't want you to have him."

With that, Not-Peter reached inside his hoodie and pulled the gun out. He clicked the safety off, cocked it, and gently pressed the tip to Wade's head. Whatever bit of Chameleon was showing through was gone now and replaced with Peter's smiling face. The smile he had whenever Wade walked through the door, like he was happy to see him.

"Don't forget about me, Wade," he said and pulled the trigger.

Hey guys, so we've caught up to the chapters that I have written out, and the last 5-6 are nothing but summaries in my hard-drive. Because of this, the next chapters will be coming out in 2 weeks instead of 1 week. It's the best option I have that won't rush me and burn me out.

Thank you to those who are reading the story, you guys are the light of my life and I love you all.

Thanks for reading! Please drop a comment below 3 Every comment is fuel in my writing fire.