Trains are Scary
The elf hesitates for a second. A policewoman grabs his arm, and Peter’s heart sinks. Then the elf smiles. In one movement, he kicks the woman away, raises his bow, seizes an arrow, and fires. He shoots the woman in the arm, then a second policeman, then a third, then a fourth. Each one is injured enough that they can’t move, but not so much that they die. Even though Peter is one false move away from a life of imprisonment, he can’t help but admire the elf’s skill. Even Hawkeye, one of the OG Avengers, seems virtually useless compared to the elf (although, Hawkeye does always seem virtually useless compared to most people).
Peter leaps out of the car. A man points his gun at him. Peter shoots a web, which sticks around the gun. He tugs it back, and yanks the gun out of his hand.
‘Be quick,’ the elf calls, ‘I don’t have unlimited arrows, you know.’ He smiles at himself for some reason.
Peter dives towards him. A bullet flies towards Peter’s head, and he ducks. He runs down the steps, through the squeaky passageway, into the open subway station. He squints, as his eyes adjust to the dim fluorescent lights. Huddles of people are screaming at them and scattering into a coffee shop. ‘Sorry,’ Peter yelps, ‘I promise I’m not going to eat you or anything!’ A woman glares at him, and hurries her son away. Oops. Maybe they really did think he might eat children. Who knows what people think about him anymore? Footsteps clatter behind them, and the banging of gunshots echoes around the staircase. The train tracks to his right are vibrating. Peter breathes a sigh of relief. Finally, something was going his way. A train whizzes out of a tunnel, and screeches to a stop.
The elf aims his bow at it. ‘What is this foul serpent?’
It takes Peter a second to realise he’s talking about the train. Peter looks behind him. Eight – no, ten – policeman are rushing down the steps, along the passageway. ‘Our ride out of here.’ The train doors gasp, and roll open. Peter jumps into the rocking carriage. The elf narrows his eyes at Peter, then steps onto the train. Peter turns round. A dozen commuters are staring at him, eyes wide open with fear.
Police are pouring across the platform. ‘Stop the train,’ shouts a police officer, pointing her gun at Peter, ‘stop the train! There are two terrorists on board.’
New Yorkers squeal, and push past each other to get into the next carriage along.
‘Start the train,’ Peter shouts, ‘start the train!’ He slams against all the buttons by the door, hoping that one of them shuts the door. It doesn’t. ‘Start the train!’ he cries.
One of the passengers raises his hand. ‘Actually, most trains on the New York subway have been automatically operated since 2006 using a CBTC system.’
Peter spins round. ‘Could you shut up, please?’ He punches all the buttons again.
The police officer is sprinting towards the train. The doors start sliding shut. She swipes towards the buttons, and-
The doors slam shut. The train glides away from the platform, accelerating until the policewoman disappears behind the darkness of the tunnel.
They did it. It’s just Peter, the elf, and the empty carriage. (Oh, and that one passenger who seems to be paying far more attention to an obnoxiously thick book on bats than he is to the terrorist and extra-terrestrial being sitting next to him.)
So, Peter does the only natural thing. He yanks off his Spider-Man mask, and lets his hair spring back up. His face feels so exposed to the cold air. Then he collapses onto the seat behind him, and cries.
He doesn’t know whether it’s from the relief of making it onto the safety of the train, or the panic at what to do next, or the shock of the Mysterio video, or the certainty that whatever happens next, his life has changed even more than it did when he was bitten by a radioactive spider in the first place. But whatever the reason, the hot tears keep streaming down his face at the speed of a shower.
He realises that his hand has slid into his pocket, and is clinging onto his lifeless phone. He can’t even call his aunt or Ned or MJ to tell them that’s he’s alive. Should he be ringing his aunt? Would that put her, or him, in danger? Definitely in spy movies they don’t ring people for this reason. Peter chokes back a laugh. How has everything got to the point that he, Peter Parker, a sixteen-year-old, is James frickin Bond?
He remembers the disgust in the eyes of the policeman, and the way that the commuters scattered when they saw him enter the train station, like antelope when a lion charges into the herd. At least, that’s what they look like on TV. Peter hasn’t met many lions. And having seen how terrified they were of him, Peter doesn’t ever want to meet a monster like that. Superheroes were supposed to bring hope, not make people even more scared than they were in the first place.
‘You’re rather young for a hero, are you not?’
Peter looks up. He’d almost forgotten that the elf was here. Now that he’s only in a state of partial terror (compared to the state of constant terror he was in before), he can look at the elf properly. The elf is sitting opposite him. His bow is rested on the seat next to him, as if it too were a person. Every time the carriage shakes, his limbs stiffen (the elf, not the bow. The bow doesn’t have thoughts. At least, Peter hopes it doesn’t). Even on a worn-down seat in a filthy train on the subway, he somehow looks otherworldly – he’s almost ten whole centimetres taller than Peter. Peter is sure that he himself looks a mess – like, his face must be glistening with tears, his hair probably looks as messy as the inside of a Flake, dark patches of blood are seeping through the legs of the suit from when he smashed through that window. But the elf’s hair still looks like a sheet of platinum, his limbs aren’t quivering at all from running so far, and his face is still as graceful as if it were carved from marble. Maybe it’s stupid for Peter to be feeling jealousy now, when his entire way of life is ruined. But he can’t help wishing that he could be as untouched by the world around him as Legolas is.
‘How old are you?’ the elf repeats. He clearly does not like being ignored.
Peter clears his throat, and deepens his voice. ‘Uh, twenty-one?’
‘You don’t sound very certain,’ the elf notes, ‘are you sure you are capable of recalling your own age?’
‘Well, I was born twenty-one years ago,’ Peter admits, ‘but, like, a purple alien snapped his fingers with some magic rocks, so I spend five of those years as dust.’
Is it just Peter, or is the elf wrinkling his nose? ‘So, you are sixteen? Not even a man?’
‘No. I mean, yes. I mean, no. I’m not a man.’
The elf sighs. ‘Are all heroes in your world this young and scrawny?’
Peter is suddenly very aware of how much the elf can see the outline of his whole body in this Spider-Man suit. ‘Oh my god, absolutely not. I’m just a particularly scrawny-looking one. Most of the others are like, 40 now, and have like six packs or eight packs or twenty packs or…’ Peter’s got to admit, he does wish that there were other Avengers his age, who actually understood what it was like to be a teenager and wake up one day with superpowers. It would be nice to not be the only Avenger who doesn’t really know what a Walkman is and is too scared to ask. ‘Hey, how old are you?’
‘Eight days, three weeks, five months, and 2931 years,’ he replies.
Peter starts laughing, but the seriousness in the elf’s eyes suggests he isn’t joking. ‘Oh.’ He stops. ‘So… do you have, like, immortal labrodors, or are dogs like hamsters to you? Does not dying ever get boring? How do you think of something new to do for your birthday each year? I mean, I’ve been bowling way too many times, and I’ve had 2915 less birthdays than you. Do you ever…?’
‘Are all heroes in your world this… quippy?’
Peter shuffles further back into the seat. Does the elf hate him already? Normally it takes about two hours before people have had enough of him. But the elf isn’t frowning at him, or rolling his eyes. If anything, he’s smiling a little. Peter relaxes his shoulders. ‘Yeah, pretty much. Even the tree talks almost as much as me.’ The elf is definitely smiling now. His eyes are twinkling at Peter in the same way that Mr Stark’s used too. Peter holds out his hand. ‘I’m Peter, by the way.’
The elf bows his head, and shakes Peter’s hand. ‘I am Legolas Greenleaf, son of King Thranduil of the elves of Northern Mirkwood, prince of the Woodland realm, member of the Fellowship of the Ring, brother-in-arms of Gimli, son of Glóin, and Aragorn, King of the Reunited Kingdom.’
Peter blinks. ‘Oh, we’re using our made-up names?’ He sits up straight, and clears his throat. ‘I’m Spider-Man, then.’
Legolas furrows his eyebrows. Somehow, he looks dainty even when he’s confused. Peter wishes he could look like that. ‘You are… two people?’
He laughs. ‘Yeah, pretty much.’ Legolas raises his eyebrows, as if he was waiting for him to carry on. Peter reaches for his Spider-Man, and rubs the edge between his fingers. If Legolas wants a whole explanation of his life – being Peter, becoming Spider-Man, and failing miserably at it – he’ll have to sit here for a whole lot more time than Peter has. He may have got away from the police for now, but not forever. Peter grabs his dead phone, and jumps to his feet. ‘I’m guessing you don’t have a portable charger, so I’m gonna need to find someone who does.’ He turns toward the carriage door.
Legolas grabs Peter’s wrist. ‘No, you are not.’ Peter shakes his arm, but Legolas grips tighter. ‘I may not know what a ‘portable charger’ is, or a ‘gonna’, but I do know that you are not leaving. You swore an oath, did you not? That in exchange for my aid, you would do anything that I asked. You made the eternal vow, ‘yeah, anything! Anything at all!’
Peter gulps. ‘I wouldn’t call that an eternal vow…. More like an instinctual wish to not be beaten up to a pulp?
‘Spider-Man, Peter Parker, whoever you are, this is what I ask of you. Strange creatures, with bodies half of reptilian flesh and half of metal have appeared in Middle Earth, as if from out of thin air. Some are the size of men, and some are vaster than wales, and swim through the sky like snakes.’
‘Chitauri,’ Peter breathes.
Legolas arches his eyebrows. ‘You are acquainted with these monsters?’
‘If ‘acquainted’ means ‘nearly being killed,’ then yeah.’ Images flash before Peter’s eyes, of the Avengers facility shrouded in purple darkness, of Thanos leading his armies of Chitauri, of Mr Stark soaring above the haze and smoke of the battlefield, and blasting the Chitauri into oblivion. Peter shudders. He can’t think about that day now.
‘These… Chitauri are ravaging the Shire, plundering villages, burning fields, slaughtering innocents. No hobbit, dwarf, man or elf understands what they are, or how they came to be here, or what they are searching for. I was following my companion lady Tauriel to the Shire, in order to plan how to defeat these beasts. A wasp stung her, and I touched her arm, but then my vision blurred and darkened, and the next event I am aware of is that I was falling through the sky, in this strange realm, and then I landed next to you, little hero.’
Peter sits down. He leans forward, pressing his elbows into his knees, and his face into his hands. The second he’d met Legolas (well, run away from him), there’d been some kind of vibe about him that Peter couldn’t quite place. His weird appearance, his almost ethereal poise, and the rather obvious face that he doesn’t know what Avengers or phones are. Some kind of otherworldly vibes. ‘Are you saying that there’s a multiverse? And that you’re from a different world to me? Somehow, the Chitauri have wound up in your world, and you’ve wound up in mine?’
‘I do not understand,’ Legolas admits, ‘but I do understand what we must do next. If the Chitauri are not defeated, if the reasons for their invasion are not discovered, the entirety of Middle Earth could be set ablaze and razed to the ground. We need heroes – heroes of honour, strength and wisdom like no other. We must gather allies, unearth the reason for their appearance, and destroy these armies of darkness. I do not understand these Chitauri, but you do. You must lead our New Fellowship back to Middle Earth, and…’
‘Woah, woah, woah,’ Peter holds his hands up, ‘sorry Mr Legolas, but I think I misheard you. I think you will be taking care of the blazing worlds and armies of darkness. I will be finding a way to ring my aunt.’ Peter starts walking towards the door. The carriage rocks, and Peter grips onto a bar to steady himself. ‘I really hope that you sort out your whole robot alien hobbit thingy. I really do! Chitauri invasions suck. But I’ve got a hell of a lot of my own stuff to sort out. As of an hour ago, I’m now the world’s most wanted terrorist, and everyone with an internet connection knows exactly what I look like and who I am.’ He hits the button, and the doors into the next carriage slide open. He yells over the rattling of the train, ‘I have my name to clear. A new identity to set up. I’m like, probably going to have to dye my hair pink or something. And I really need to ring my aunt and my friend Ned and…’. Peter glances over his shoulder, and freezes.
Legolas is standing up, clutching his great bow with his left hand, and with his right hand aiming a golden arrow straight at Peter’s heart. ‘Little hero, this is not a negotiation. You made me a vow, whether you are willing to admit it or not. I saved your life. And in exchange you are going to do, as you phrased it so eloquently, ‘whatever it takes.’ I intend to ensure that you keep that oath.’
Peter stares at the razor-sharp arrow tip. He’s seen what Legolas can do with those things. He doesn’t want it to pierce through his leg, or somewhere worse.
And this is the moment the witch and the assassin fall out the sky.