Chapter Text
Lying against the façade of the tallest building he could find, his hands behind his head and his ankles crossed over the edge of the rooftop, the deafening noise of the city still isn’t loud enough to stop his mind from circling back to MJ’s words. A small part of him wonders whether it might have been better to remain blissfully ignorant, imagining that moment when MJ would see him for the first time and recognize him, and everything would be as though nothing had ever happened. But shame eats him alive from the inside whenever he remembers how stupid and childish he was, walking straight into Jean Grey’s trap when she showed him, to his face, that the fantasy would only ever be exactly that: a fantasy.
Now he cannot even take refuge in it. Now he knows that MJ is not his MJ, that she stopped being his the moment Peter Parker disappeared from her mind. And no matter how hard he tries to rebuild what they once had, it will never be the same, because everything he lived through with her is still there, but the person he lived it with no longer exists. How do you create memories from scratch with someone you had already built half a life beside? Feeling lonely when you are alone cannot begin to compare with the loneliness of knowing you are alone, of knowing that even with MJ right there, he will still be alone.
Even his friendship with Ned feels fake. For a little while, he had hoped that something might remain, some trace of it, something unconscious that would compel Ned to treat him like the friend he had always been. But it only took Peter a few hours to understand that what he wanted to interpret as friendship was nothing more than the parasocial relationship Ned had built with Spider-Man over all those years. Ned was not his friend. He was his fan. And once Peter saw it, he could no longer look at him any other way.
Of course, none of that meant Peter was going to abandon them again. After all, if this was all he could have of the life that had once been his, he was willing to fight for it and settle for whatever he could get. Besides, now that Ned and MJ were connected to him again, it was only a matter of time before they found themselves in danger, and the one thing he would never forgive himself for was letting something happen to them because they had become part of a life they could not even remember.
That did not mean it was easy for Peter, or that there were not moments when despair devoured him from within. On days like that, he would wake wrapped in a cocoon of silk, unable to remember anything from the last several hours. It did not matter how much he had learned to accept this new part of himself. There was something primitive and uncontrollable in the way his body sometimes seemed determined to take over. Sometimes Peter felt so much like an animal that he was afraid he would wake one day to find himself crawling out of his own exoskeleton. A new Peter, shedding the old one.
He knows it is something he has to deal with, this spider that seems to be growing inside him, leaving him confused and numb when it quiets, but filling him with rage when it surges, making him feel powerful and take pleasure in the very thing that later fills him with shame: feeling invincible. He knows he has to watch himself. He would not be the first superhero blinded by the desire for power, by the knowledge that he is stronger, faster, smarter, until he begins to believe himself beyond good and evil.
Maybe there is something of that in every superhero, in fact: the belief that they stand above good and evil or, at the very least, that their moral compass is more correct than everyone else’s. The assumption that good and evil are theirs to define.
For Peter, it is a constant dilemma. It always has been. What is good and what is evil? Who defines them? Which society, which culture, which context? If good and evil are merely social constructs, who or what establishes the limit, the boundary? Who defines the concepts?
Because stealing, for example, is wrong. That seems almost like an undeniable truth.
Loki stole the Tesseract and used it to open a portal over New York and let the Chitauri through. No one would argue that what he did was wrong. Peter certainly would not. But before Loki, the Tesseract had been in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s possession, and they had been studying it to develop weapons because, after Thor, they had decided humanity needed to be prepared. Before that, it had been part of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., where Mar-Vell used it to build an engine capable of traveling at the speed of light. Then Goose swallowed it to keep it safe and eventually threw it up, with impeccable timing, onto Fury’s desk, returning it to the same organization that would later use it to build weapons.
Before any of that, Howard Stark had recovered it from the bottom of the ocean while searching for Steve Rogers. He had not stolen it. He had recovered it. Hydra had not stolen it either, at least not according to any version Peter had heard. Johann Schmidt had found it in a church in Tønsberg, where it had remained for centuries under the protection of men who worshipped the Asgardians. Schmidt took it. Howard recovered it. P.E.G.A.S.U.S. studied it. S.H.I.E.L.D. kept it in custody. Loki was the only one who stole it, curiously enough the only Asgardian among them. More or less.
And of course Loki wanted to use the Tesseract to gain a decisive advantage in a war, but Hydra wanted to win a war too. S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted to prepare for the next one. Mar-Vell wanted to use it against the Kree. They had all had a reason. They had all believed theirs was different, that theirs was the right one.
Perhaps, then, the difference lay in the purpose. Taking something only became theft when you intended to do something evil with it. But then the theft was not in the act itself, but in whatever came afterward. And if intention was what mattered, all you had to do was convince yourself that your intentions were good. Hydra did not believe itself evil. Neither did S.H.I.E.L.D. Loki probably did not either, not entirely. No one sees themselves as the person using the Tesseract for the wrong war.
So what makes one side’s war righteous and another’s not? Who decides when something has been stolen, recovered, confiscated, or placed in custody? The one who wins? The one who writes the report?
Peter has always tried to question himself as much as possible. Maybe before, when he was just a kid, he had been far more impressionable, easily dazzled by the grandeur of the classic superheroes, the ones no one dared question. A word from Captain America or, even more so, from Tony Stark had been enough for Peter to accept, without much further thought, whatever he was told was the right thing to do.
He almost misses those days.
It was much easier to live in the ignorance of believing everything was black or white. The spectrum of grey is too vast, and with every passing day, the boundaries only seem to blur further inside his head.
The spider does not help. The spider does not let him think. It only acts. Every time he feels it seize the current of his blood and cloud his consciousness, Peter knows he will do something he would probably never do in his right mind, but he also knows that, somewhere inside him, there is probably a part that wonders why he should not do it.
“Explosion at the Red Hook container terminal,” E.V.’s robotic voice pulls him from his thoughts, security-camera footage flickering across the lenses of his mask. Rows of shipping containers flash past his eyes, followed by the burning skeleton of a loading crane and three heat signatures trapped inside one of the warehouses facing the water. “Unidentified suspects. Three civilians confirmed in danger.”
Without another thought, Peter is on his way.
Falling back into the old routine of combing through every corner of the city in search of the smallest crime to prevent or solve has been easier than he expected, perhaps because muscle memory makes shooting webs and swinging between buildings feel more natural than dealing with his own thoughts. There is not much room to think while his senses are occupied with deciding which surface to attach the next web to, how much force to use, at what height.
He has to admit that getting used to the organic webbing has taken less effort than he would have imagined, though that does nothing to make it feel any less repulsive, or even vaguely scatological, to have literal strands of sticky silk coming out of his wrists.
It takes him only a few minutes, but night has already settled over Brooklyn by the time he reaches Red Hook. The cold air that followed him across the rooftops disappears as soon as he swings over the terminal fence and into the heat.
Below him, the waterfront has dissolved into noise and fire. Flames crawl along the side of a warehouse near the basin, throwing distorted shadows across the stacked containers. A loading crane hangs motionless above them, one half of its cabin blackened by the blast. Somewhere beneath the alarms, the grinding of machinery and the roar of the fire, Peter can hear three heartbeats hammering far too quickly.
He releases the web and drops.
The heat reaches him before the ground does.
Smoke rolls between the stacks of containers, dense enough to turn the terminal lights into pale smudges behind the lenses of his mask. E.V. clears the image almost immediately, tracing the edges of the warehouse through the haze and marking three pulsing points in red.
Three heartbeats. Two are close together, rapid and uneven, somewhere behind the western wall. The third is lower and farther inside, beating beneath the groan of stressed metal and the mechanical wail of the fire alarm.
Peter lands on the roof of a container hard enough to dent it. Below him, four men stand around a customs-sealed container with its locking bars half torn from the doors. One of them is still holding the industrial cutter responsible for the molten line running down the steel. Another has a compact rifle stamped with the faded remains of a Department of Damage Control inventory mark. Whatever is inside the container gives off a faint blue light. Peter decides immediately that he does not care.
“Good news,” he calls down. “Customs usually takes forever, so you’ve probably saved yourselves a lot of paperwork.”
All four men look up.
The one with the rifle fires.
Peter is already moving. The shot tears through the container roof behind him, showering the yard with sparks as he swings beneath a loading arm and fires a web into the gunman’s chest. A sharp pull sends the rifle spinning away before Peter plants both feet against the man and redirects the momentum, lowering him onto the pavement instead of driving him through the side of the container.
He could have.
Peter lets go and turns the motion into a roll instead.
“Those things are government property,” he says, rising as the rifle lands behind him. “Which means stealing them is wrong unless the government steals them first. Apparently.”
The man with the cutter swings it toward him. Peter ducks beneath the white-hot flame, catches his wrist and webs the tool to the ground.
“Also, terrible workplace safety.”
A second gun appears to his left. Peter fires without looking. The web seals the barrel a fraction of a second before the trigger is pulled. The weapon jerks backward in the smuggler’s hands and knocks him onto his back. The fourth man runs.
Peter hears the trapped workers coughing inside the warehouse. He lets the smuggler go. For now.
The western entrance has collapsed inward, buckled sheet metal and part of a loading platform wedged across the opening. Peter reaches it in two strides and presses one hand against the door.
“Can you hear me?”
A fist strikes the other side.
“Yes!” someone shouts through the metal. “There are two of us in here!”
“I know. Step away from the door.”
Peter grips the edge where the door has folded into its frame and pulls. He expects resistance. Enough to make him brace one foot against the wall, maybe tear the hinges free one at a time. Instead, the entire door comes away in his hands. Metal shrieks. The frame twists outward. Peter staggers back as several hundred pounds of reinforced steel leave the building with almost no warning, carrying part of the surrounding wall with them. For a second, he simply stands there holding it.
The spider is quiet. No heat in his blood. No pressure behind his eyes. No blur swallowing the edges of his thoughts. Just him.
The two workers emerge coughing, one supporting the other beneath the arm. Peter points them toward the clear side of the yard.
“Stay low, keep moving, and don’t touch anything glowing. That last one is generally good advice.”
“The guard,” the older worker says. “He was on the mezzanine when the blast went off.”
“I’ve got him.”
The third heartbeat is weaker now. Peter moves before the man can say anything else. Inside, the warehouse has become a maze of smoke, fallen shelving and burning insulation. E.V. paints a route across his vision, but he barely needs it. He can hear each contraction of the guard’s heart through the fire, can separate it from the two workers retreating outside and from the smugglers regrouping beyond the wall.
The guard is pinned beneath the remains of a steel walkway. Conscious, barely. Blood runs down one side of his face. Peter drops beside him.
“Hey. Don’t try to move.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Perfect. Teamwork.”
He threads webbing beneath the collapsed beam and anchors it to the supports overhead. This time he measures the pull, lifting only enough to drag the guard clear without shifting the rest of the structure.
Outside, boots scrape against concrete. Three smugglers returning. The fourth circling toward the water.
Peter could end it before they reached the door.
One web across the throat of the first. A heel into the second man’s knee. The third has an old fracture in his right wrist, visible in the way he carries the weapon. Break it again and he drops the gun. The last one is running beside the basin. A hard enough strike would put him in the water unconscious. Four movements. Maybe five. Easy.
Peter slides one arm beneath the guard’s shoulders and lifts him instead.
“Can you hold on?”
The guard hooks an arm around his neck. “You’re Spider-Man.”
“That’s what the reviews say.”
The smugglers enter as Peter carries him toward the opening. One raises the cutter. Another has recovered the sealed rifle. Peter shoots a web into a hanging fire hose, tears it loose and whips the stream across the floor. Water slams into their legs and sends all three sprawling. A second web yanks the rifle into the rafters. A third binds the cutter operator’s hands to the chest of the man beside him. Peter steps over them without slowing. The smuggler nearest the door reaches for his ankle.
Peter sees the opening before the hand closes around him. He could bring his heel down on the forearm. Radius, ulna, wrist. One strike would be enough. Instead, he twists free and webs the man’s hand to the floor.
“Personal space, man. Jeez...”
He carries the guard outside and lowers him beside the dockworkers, where the air is marginally clearer. Sirens are approaching now, their lights beginning to pulse beyond the terminal fence. Behind him, the fourth smuggler reaches a small service boat and throws himself at the controls.
Peter sighs.
“E.V., tell me that thing has a remote shutoff.”
“Negative.”
“Of course it doesn’t.”
He fires a web across the basin.
A moment later, the boat swings backward into the dock with its propeller cocooned in silk and its driver hanging upside down from a crane cable, shouting words Peter chooses not to hear. By the time the first emergency vehicles enter the terminal, the four smugglers are webbed to the customs container beneath a handwritten sign Peter has stuck to one of them.
NOT AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL.
He looks once at the faint blue light leaking through the damaged doors.
“E.V., notify the Police Department that some of Damage Control’s missing equipment just tried to become Brooklyn’s problem again.”
“Notification sent.”
Peter nods absently and turns away from the damaged container. Then something catches beneath his ribs.
He stops.
It is not pain. Not exactly. More like the first tightening of his spider-sense, that electric pressure at the base of his skull warning him that something is about to happen. Peter straightens, every muscle locking into place as his eyes sweep across the terminal.
The smugglers are secured. The civilians are clear. The fire is contained well enough for the crews pouring through the gates to handle it. Nothing is falling. No one is aiming a weapon at him. The faint blue light inside the container remains steady.
Still, the sensation lingers.
“E.V.,” he says. “Run another scan.”
“No immediate threats detected within the terminal.”
The pressure does not fade. Peter flexes his fingers. For one uncomfortable second, he wonders whether this is something else. Whether the spider is waking again without the anger, without the heat in his blood, finding some new way to make itself known.
Then E.V. speaks. “Multiple gunshots detected.”
A map unfolds across the inside of his lenses. The location marker is nowhere near Red Hook. It flashes over the South Bronx, on the industrial edge of the Hunts Point peninsula. Peter frowns.
“That’s not exactly local.”
“Estimated distance: eleven point four miles.”
The feed changes before he can ask. Security footage fills his vision, pulled from several cameras inside and around a refrigerated warehouse near Halleck Street. The first image is blurred by movement. A loading bay. An overturned pallet. The rear doors of a box truck hanging open beneath a dead fluorescent light.
The next camera provides a clearer angle. Bodies cover the warehouse floor. Six that Peter can see. Maybe seven. Men in heavy jackets and body armor lying between split crates, discarded weapons and dark pools spreading across the concrete. None of them are moving.
At the center of the room, a masked man carries two enormous plastic-wrapped bundles over one shoulder as if they weigh nothing. White powder spills from a bullet hole in one of them, leaving a thin trail behind him.
“Are those drugs?”
“Visual analysis indicates a high probability of packaged narcotics.”
The man stops. For a moment, Peter thinks maybe he has heard something. Then the red-and-black mask turns directly toward the nearest security camera. The white lenses narrow. Somehow, despite the mask, the smile beneath it is unmistakable. The man shifts both bundles onto one shoulder, raises his free hand toward the camera…
… and gives it the finger.
Peter stares at him. “Seriously?”
E.V. isolates the figure, scanning the suit, weapons and movement profile. A red frame closes around him.
“Suspect identified.” The masked man blows the camera a kiss “Deadpool.”