Ruby Williams

Ruby is the woman Ben Reilly loved and lost, her memory still hangs over the grieving private investigator five years after her death. It was Ruby who told him that with great power comes great responsibility, words that shaped the man he became when he wore the mask of the Spider.

Her death is the wound at the center of Ben's life. In the memory that haunts him, she drowns trapped inside a sinking car, chained behind the wheel as the Spider fights and fails to reach her in time. The loss broke something in him, and it was in the wake of losing her that he hid the mask away and turned from the city that once needed its hero.

Ruby Williams lives on only in the memory Ben Reilly finally puts into words. As he grows closer to Cat Hardy and tries to explain the loss that broke him, he tells the story of the woman he loved, recalled in flashback as he confesses it aloud.

Through his account, the shape of her death comes clear: Ben had put a deadbeat husband away for five years, and the man spent his sentence nursing a single thought, revenge. When he got out, he killed Ruby to make Ben suffer. Ben had been drinking across town that night, and by the time he knew she was in danger, he reached her too late.