Fragile
A fanfic of @personostient's OC Dr.Arachne in their recent comic
I said I desperately wanted to read more about him and they said "then write it yourself, scrub" (more or less) so here's this. I have now a multiple chapter story in my head for this but at least here's a very small (as of yet unnamed) Arachne trying to understand complex ideas like sympathy and compassion when he's only big enough to fit 2 brain cells in him and one is fully occupied with having OCD.
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In retrospect, gnawing on the already weak supports of a load bearing cross beam was a bad idea vis-a-vis the structural integrity of the floor above but, in its defense, its grasp of architecture was somewhat lacking.
Also, it had only done so to get at the termites within, who'd already done some pretty extensive damage to the whole area.
Really, it had been inevitable.
Only a matter of time before someone or something fell straight through to the dark and dusty basement.
Into the spider’s web.
Well, straight through its web, tearing up hours of work and crushing a very delicious looking moth that the spider had been saving for later and sending the spider frantically scrambling away, dodging bits of debris.
It wasn't exactly a spider, but it wasn't exactly not a spider, either. Something closer to “the elements of spiders that instill fear”. All fangs, legs, eyes, and jittery movement.
Not that it was instilling much fear at this size, though the exact nature of the size was nebulous at best. Somewhere between a rat, a golf ball, and a human heart, the shifting mass of jet black limbs and glowing red eyes would lose in a fight with the average house cat or particularly determined mouse.
So a dead, fully grown human, delivered to its metaphorical doorstep, was a fortuitous turn of events, indeed.
It could put so much of that mass to use, finally having enough to form some more complex systems, maybe even to venture out beyond the basement!
The spider scurried out from its hiding place in the dark, excited but still cautious, and onto the chest of the human. The smell of blood was thick in the air.
The spider had been trying to determine the best way of beginning to consume such a feast when some of its eyes made unexpected contact with another pair.
The human blinked and the spider froze.
Oh fuck. That rising and falling of the chest was breathing! That thing vertebrates did when they were alive!
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
For a long moment, the two just stared at each other.
Then, the human raised a hand, reaching towards it, and the spider braced to be crushed. It squeezed all its eyes closed, but the pain didn't come.
The hand instead ran two fingers softly over its body in a gentle, repetitive motion.
“Hey…little buddy…” the human wheezed. “It's okay…I'm not--” the human paused to cough, specks of blood dotting his lips. “--not gonna hurt you. ‘M a doctor…Do…’do no harm’...”
The human’s eyes were glassy and its breathing seemed labored.
The spider didn't know a whole lot about human anatomy, but it was pretty sure they needed their blood to stay almost entirely inside of them or it was detrimental to their health. The amount that surrounded the human and was currently leaking from a gash across his side was probably more than was supposed to be outside of him at any given time.
The various pieces of wood and glass embedded in his flesh were probably also probably bad.
The spider stayed frozen in terror, tiny body trembling as the hand that was nearly as big as it was continued to run along its carapace.
“Shhh…” the human hushed, though the spider had made no sound. “ ‘s okay. Okay to be scared. I'm…heh…I'm a little scared myself…”
The spider’s venom was laughably weak at this size, barely enough to put a human under for a few minutes, but that would likely be all it took for his injuries to finish him off.
It would be easy enough to strike out and bite him as he continued his odd pattern of stroking his hand across its body but, strangely…the spider found it didn't really want the motions to stop.
It felt…nice.
Centimeter by centimeter, the spider's body relaxed, leaning into the touch, eventually pressing back into the human’s fingers.
The human let out a wet sounding chuckle.
“You’re a weird little thing, huh? I think…I think I may have lost a bit too much blood…”
His hand went still, settling against his chest and his eyes closed. His breathing continued, but it was growing weaker by the moment.
Well, that problem solved itself, it seemed. Now the only problem the spider faced was again trying to find a way to best consume a creature so much larger than itself.
Perhaps…perhaps it should wait until he was dead before trying to eat him. After all, he had not killed it, though it was easily within his power. Perhaps it was only fair that it not kill him, in return.
Though, technically it was sort of its fault for gnawing through the support beams, which would mean it had killed him. No more so than the termites had, though, certainly!
Fine. It would eat him then finish eating the termites as recompense and all would be good and balanced and correct.
The spider let out a frustrated chittering noise, pacing tiny circles around the human’s chest.
It was not all good and balanced and correct! It was bad and wobbly and wrong like rotten, termite eaten wood and it felt Bad! But why?
The human was full of holes now, too. The spider had gnawed holes in the wood. Maybe it could close these holes in the human and it would not be Bad anymore. Yes, then it would be balanced. Then this feeling of Wrong would settle.
And…maybe the human would continue his gentle repetitive touches again.
The spider crawled up to the human's face, where a small gash weeped blood. Trying to get the blood to go back inside seemed like it was likely a lost cause. Liquids hated going where they were supposed to and the spider hated it about them. The human would just have to find new blood on his own, once his stopped leaking.
Long appendages tipped with spinnerets extended up from the spider's mass, stretching fine silken stands between them.
Pressing against the human's skin, it tethered a strand above and below the very end of cut, then crossed the limbs, pulling the stands taut before anchoring the strands to the skin again, a fraction of a centimeter down the length of the cut, forming a tiny ‘x’.
It repeated the motion. The silk’s adhesive held strong. It repeated the motion. Then repeated it again.
And again and again and again.
Bit by bit, the skin pulled together over the wound in a surprisingly satisfying way and the spider’s limbs became a blur of movement, crossing over each other a dozen times a second.
The repetitive nature of the movement scratched some itch in it's mind oh so nicely. All balanced and mirrored and equal and Good.
It was almost disappointed when the wound was fully closed, the seam of tiny, gossamer stitches nearly invisible, as if the wound had never been.
Luckily, there were many more holes left to close.
It moved to another on his collar, stitching it up in only a few seconds, then pulled a shard of glass from his shoulder and sealed the wound there just as quickly.
Before the spider could move on to the next wound, the thrumming in the human’s chest, his heart’s pulsing movement, stuttered. It's rhythm grew ever weaker.
The spider didn't know all that much about how creatures of flesh and blood worked, but it knew that, when that pulse stopped, they did too, and that they needed blood to keep it going.
The gash across the human's side was leaking a lot of blood. It had to be closed soon or the human would almost certainly die.
The spider moved to the wound and started the same pattern of criss-crossed silk that it had closed the other's with. It got an inch or so down the length of the gash when the silk's glue gave way, the wound splitting back open.
The spider chittered, pensively.
The wound was too big and the blood flow from it too strong for the silk to stick to the skin tightly enough. It needed something more substantial.
Holding up a leg, it stretched the tip out to a nearly hair-thin strand.
It could spare just enough of its own body to hold the wound closed enough for the silk to seal it. It wouldn't take much.
But…sealing a wound held together by a piece of itself would mean sealing a piece of its body in the human's. What effect might that have on such a creature?
After all, its body didn't have to exist in one single piece. So what was really the difference between making a part of its body a part of the human's and making the human's body a part of its own?
But, without action, the human would die either way.
…
Surely, such a tiny piece of itself would do no harm…
The spider used another limb to pull the thin, jet black strand taut. Using the sharp tip of the strand, it pierced the flesh on one side of the wound, then the other, weaving itself back and forth through the human's skin, pulling the torn edges back together.
Once the gap was closed, the spider sealed it with silk, the same as the others.
Good and Balanced and Correct.