Manners Maketh the Spider-Man
Peter
The first thing Peter notices is the smell.
Not in a really bad way. There’s no almighty stink of rotting bin bags or changing room puke or anything. But you know that distinct scent that coffee places have, that hits you as soon as you step inside? That golden smell of roasted coffee beans? It’s not there. The air has the stale, musty feel of a room that hasn’t been ventilated in a while.
Leia and Legolas glide right out of the back wall, passing through the bricks as if they were air. Clearly petty little things like inter-storyworld travel don’t faze battle-hardened heroes like them. When Snow White tumbles out the portal, she screams like Peter’s friend Ned seeing a bee.
The second thing Peter notices is the feeling. He can’t quite explain what it is, but something about this place makes him feel… exposed. Like when you wake up from a dream where you’ve been floating through places you can see but not feel, and now you’re awake and slowly coming to your senses you remember that your eyes are dry, and your hair itches and your PJs are uncomfy, and your sheets are crispy and the daylight is blinding and the air is humid like a school changing room. Peter feels the same way now, like his body is only just waking up to all the sensations that exist. The tightness of the Spider-Man suit never bothered him before, but now it clings to his skin suffocatingly. Even the rustling of everyone’s clothes and the scraping of their shoes on the squeaky floor irritates him.
They’re in a Starbucks, which isn’t too weird. What is weird is that it’s empty. The windows have been boarded up. Slithers of daylight sneak through the gaps in the panels. Chairs are stacked on top of dusty tables. The sour smell of scrambled milk wafts from next to the coffee machines. Faded newspapers – they must be at least a month old – are stacked on the counters.
Peter rips off the Spider-Man mask and flops onto a sofa. Dust billows into the air. His legs and back still ache from when Harley threw him onto the floor. He doesn’t care.
How could he care when their quest is so messed-up already? Hermione and Arya are in Harley Quinn’s clutches. Peter pictures them trapped under the vending machine, and stormtroopers descending on them like a pack of rabid vultures (Peter doesn’t actually know if vultures come in packs or if they can contract rabies, but sometimes the imagination does what it does). Maybe it wasn’t entirely his fault. Maybe it was the fault of the triceratops, or the vending machine, or whoever polished the floor to make it so slippery. But his excuses are starting to sound as lame as that time Ned tried to convince him that it wasn’t Peter’s fault that Yelena Belova didn’t want to go to prom with him, it was their math teacher’s fault for setting him so much homework that they had both become, as Ned so lovingly put it, ‘social recluses even by the standards of MIT applicants.’ No amount of silly excuses could make up for the fact that Peter screwed up. Of course it was his own fault that he couldn’t save Hermione and Arya. Things generally are his own fault.
‘Allow me to formally make your acquaintance.’ Legolas kneels in front of Leia. Pink slime drips from his cloak onto the floor. ‘I am Legolas Greenleaf, son of King Thranduil of the elves of Northern Mirkwood, prince of the Woodland realm, founding member of the Fellowship of the Ring, brother-in-arms of the warrior Gimli, son of Glóin, and Aragorn, King of the Reunited Kingdom.’
Leia holds out her arm. ‘Princess Leia of Alderaan, daughter of Breha and Bail Organa, High Commander General of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, Hero of Yavin.’ Legolas kisses her hand.
Why does every other fantasy character have such long names? Maybe Peter needs to come up with one. He hasn’t really done enough heroic things to have much material, though. What would he be – Spider-Man, nephew of Maybelle Parker, reserve C-list Avenger, Friendly Neighbourhood Stopper of Churros Thieves, Commander of the Academic Decathlon Team, Hero of his DnD campaign, brother-in-arms of his mate Ned, former Pile of Dust?
‘You’re a princess?’ Snow White squeaks, ‘I’m a princess!’
Leia pulls a face like she’s about to be sick.
Legolas stand up, leaving a puddle of pink goo on the floor. ‘We would like to express our immense gratitude for coming to our aid during our hour of need. We are most thankful…’
‘Thankful?’ Leia interrupts. ‘You bet your ass you should be thankful. I’ve had the worst day since the Death Star blew up Alderaan. There I was, herding nerfs with that stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Han Solo’ – she smiles at his name – ‘and then we see a whole bunch of stormtroopers marching through a painting of an old Jedi Master and just vanishing like a puff of smoke, so I tell Han to go and investigate and he calls me a spoilt nepotism baby, so I call him a cold-hearted carrion-hunting cash-hounding…’ she glances at Peter and Snow White, and coughs. ‘Anyway, I end up at this bunch of stupid-looking buildings that stormtroopers are besieging, and this annoying armless pervert who’s trying to hold them all off said that everything is dependent on some stupid-sounding Library and the Emperor will have unlimited power and I needed to grab a kid’s toy and find some jackasses in a pyramid in case they need saving. And you sure as hell did need saving. There were only ten stormtroopers to each of you, and that was enough to have you crying in the corner like little babies! Believe me, you would not have been recruited to my squadron. I have stuff to do, you know. I have a galaxy to save and I fully intend to save that galaxy without being dragged down by a bunch of tagalongs in children’s party dress up costumes…’
And even though all storyworlds are in danger and his friends are probably being chained up with tinsel by a demon clown barbie, as Peter listens to Princess Leia be so, well, Princess Leia, he can’t hold back a laugh.
Leia stops monologing. ‘What the hell’s wrong with the moon-faced kid in the red costume? You about to go to a crime scene forensics birthday party in that outfit?’
‘Umm…’ Peter shoots Legolas a glance that must read HELP! in every storyworld. How the hell do you tell someone that you have spent a decent percentage of your life learning as much about them as possible, but in a way that won’t get you arrested for stalking? ‘Did Deadpool explain to you how we’re all made up of the perceptions and fantasies of the people who like read about us? And we have fans?’
Leia steps backwards. It doesn’t take her long to put two and two together. ‘You… you’ve read about me?’
‘Well, yes,’ Peter confesses, ‘and watched all the movies. About ten times. And the slightly questionable TV shows. And played the games. And read the comics on the internet. And written parts of your wookiepedia page when I was twelve and had a lot more time on my hands.’
For a moment, Leia is silent, and Peter can’t work out what thoughts are going round her head. Then she fires questions at Peter with the same ferocity that she fired blasters at the stormtroopers. ‘Do we overthrow the Empire? Are they building another Death Star? Is Hoth the best place to establish the new base? Did anyone else from Alderaan survive? Does Han stay with us? Does Luke become an actual Jedi and learn how to do something other than wave the glowstick around intimidatingly?’
Even at the best of times, it takes a lot of willpower and internalised terror of being an eternal social outcast for Peter to not talk about Star Wars. Now, at what’s definitely the worst of times, it’s taking even more willpower. He has questions of his own, too. What do you know about Ahsoka Tano and Ezra Bridger? is right on the tip of his tongue. But a voice at the back of his head is screaming, NO SPOILERS. Telling Leia of her future just feels horrifyingly unnaturally wrong, like trying to fit together Lego and Duplo, or putting pickles in a peanut butter sandwich.
Everything Leia said is revolving on a loop in his mind, and Peter realises what she’s given away. ‘Have you just turned twenty-two?’ he asks. (He resists the urge to sing twenty-two-ooh-ooh. What can he say, he’s been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift lately).
Leia scowls. ‘So what if I am? I may be young, but I’ll bet I was attending senate meetings and commanding legions before you knew how to count, kid. You can learn more from one day on the front lines than you can from a year of sitting in lecture halls at once of those fancy-ass academies. If I had to pick someone to lead me into battle, and my choices were a badling middle-aged senator with ten degrees whose ass hasn’t left its office chair in a decade, or me, I would choose me every time. I…’
‘No, no, don’t worry,’ Peter shakes his hands, ‘I was just wondering.’ He doesn’t need a lecture on elitism in intergalactic politics. He’s already seen one of them on Reddit. But if he’s got his Star Wars timeline right (and Peter generally does get his Star Wars timeline right, as a side effect of not having much of a life growing up) then this Leia is from the gap between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. This Leia isn’t the wise, world-weary, Force-wielding heir to the Skywalker legacy she will later become. This Leia is the rash and hot-headed general who zig-zags across the galaxy with a blaster gun, chasing stormtroopers and Han Solo with equal loathing and passion. She has no idea that she and Luke are the children of Darth Vader. She has no idea how to use the Force. And she has no idea how much tragedy and suffering and general all-round misery is lying in wait for her.
‘Maybe we should focus on the quest for now?’ Peter suggests.
‘Indeed!’ Legolas springs to his feet with more enthusiasm than a nine-year-old Peter at Stark Expo. Clearly, he doesn’t quite know how to deal with Peter knowing stuff about Leia. At least Peter has one thing in common with him, then.
Legolas grabs a fistful of tissues and rubs his bow with them, but the paper disintegrates in the slime. Peter clambers over the counter and twists the tap. Pipes gurgle, and cloudy brown water gushes out. Peter wonders if some kind of mud monster pissed down the pipes, but then the rusty colour fades to clear. He eyes the tap suspiciously, but Legolas is unfazed, and uses the water to wipe down his slimy clothes. Snow White rushes to scrub his boots with a damp cloth, humming cheerfully. Leia rips a strip of fabric off her skirt and knots it around her wound.
Peter thrusts open cupboard doors. One – a fridge? – lights up, but the smell churns Peter’s stomach, and he slams it shut. Tucked underneath a blender is a box of cereal and an untouched packet of wafer cookies – you know, those ones with caramel in between the layers, and a criss-cross pattern like waffles. Peter pictures Deadpool slashing open the coco pops with his katanas. He rejects the cereal and crunches his way through the cookies. Bits of syrupy cardboard get stuck to the tops of his teeth.
Legolas frowns at him. ‘Theft is wrong, Spider-Man.’
‘Don’t care right now,’ he mumbles through a mouthful of wafer.
Leia grabs a newspaper from the counter. ‘Hey, could you losers check this out?’
Peter shoves another wafer into his mouth. ‘Hand me one?’
‘Don’t chew with your mouth full,’ Leia scolds. She passes him a paper anyway.
‘Manners maketh the man,’ Legolas agrees.
Peter ignores them and scans the newspaper headlines. ECONOMY YET TO RECOVER FROM GLOBAL PANDEMIC. PUTIN’S INVASION OF UKRAINE CAUSES SOARING FUEL PRICES. He flicks through the pages, newspaper ink bleeding onto his damp fingers. HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY STRUGGLES. EVERYONE IS PANICING AND RESORTING TO READING FANFICTION ON AO3.
Legolas is leafing through a paper. ‘This world is worse than anything I’ve witnessed, in all my three thousand years. It makes the wars with Sauron look like petty squabbles over farmland. Weapons capable of destroying whole cities? 800,000,000 people in extreme poverty? One in four humans are mentally ill?’
‘Are you sure this is actually the real world, and not some post-apocalyptic disaster film?’ Leia asks.
Peter doesn’t need to answer. Surely Legolas and Leia must have felt it too – that strange feeling of vulnerability that made his skin scrawl. This is the one true reality, where all storyworlds are created. And it’s more messed up than Peter’s sock drawer. No wonder they made up all those stories about heroes like Leia and Legolas.
Snow White has found the pile of papers, and she gasps daintily. ‘Did you know that 2,000 species of animals are going extinct each year? And that one and a half million square kilometres of forest have been cut down in the last four months?’ She snivels. ‘I must seek out the woods and make some new animal friends, and together we must sing a song about the importance of…’
Leia cuts over her. ‘Anyone who spontaneously breaks into song does not have their head screwed on right.’ Peter decides that now would not be a good moment to mention that Leia did in fact sing in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Perhaps she erased it from her memory, like pretty much everyone else who’s seen the Star Wars Holiday Special. ‘You lost the two warriors, you barely escaped alive, but you manage to bring along that pathetic excuse of a princess? What were you thinking?’
Peter doesn’t know what to say to that. When he’d run back through the stormtroopers to rescue Snow White, he wasn’t really thinking at all. It was just one of those instinctual things that your body does on autopilot without your brain questioning it. You see a short wall? You walk on top of it. You see Krispy Kremes? You buy four. You see long grass? You strip the seeds off with your fingers. You see someone struggle? You drop everything and help them, even if that thing you’re dropping is a box of Krispy Kremes (man, Aunt May was pissed that time Peter went out to buy doughnuts and came back with a dying pigeon).
Legolas must have noticed Peter’s slumped soldiers and general look of misery, because he bins a wad of slimy tissues and claps Peter on the back. ‘Take heart, Spider-Man. It is the darkest times that make the strongest heroes. The loss of Lady Arya and Miss Granger is an opportunity to learn…’
Peter nearly spits a mouthful of wafer all over Legolas (it’s a good thing he doesn’t, really, because those manners certainly would not maketh the man). ‘Opportunity to learn? Are you kidding me? Opportunity to learn?’ He can practically feel the anger rising in him. ‘Because of me, and because of you too, really, our friends are probably rotting away in a cell somewhere, or being tortured by a lunatic, or being eaten on toast by a tinsel-wearing triceratops, and now we’re going to lose like half a day of trying to find the Library, and we have no idea where to begin, and you call it an OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN? I once got a C in biology, and Aunt Mary didn’t even try to sugar-coat that as on ‘opportunity to learn’!’
Peter waits for everyone to respond to his outburst. He pictures Leia shouting back at him, Legolas lecturing him back into his place, Snow White hiding in a corner. But instead Legolas simply asks, ‘why would we lose half a day?’
And then it hits him: Legolas and Leia aren’t planning to save Hermione and Arya. They’re going to leave their friends to the mercy of the demon clown barbie and press on towards Steven Spielberg like the girls had never fallen out the portal onto the train in the first place.
‘You can’t,’ Peter says. He hopes his voice sounds firm and full of gravitas, and not like a whining teenager (he normally sounds like a whining teenager). ‘I’m the leader of the quest, right? I get to do all the decision-making. And I am making the decision that we try to rescue them. Harley Quinn told them that she had something fun planned for them at the spikey turtle’s castle with cars, didn’t she? We have something to start with. Mr Deadpool told us with all his all-knowing fourth wall breaking prophetic powers that me, you, Hermione and Arya were four of the seven heroes I would lead on the quest to save the Library, wherever I liked it or not. You saw how amazing they were at fighting all the stormtroopers! There’s no way in hell that we’re saving the Library without them. I just know it.’ Plus, they’re my friends, Peter silently adds, and it feels wrong to leave them in a mess I couldn’t save them from before. That reason may be the most important to Peter, but it probably won’t be to Legolas.
‘Why the hell are you in charge of this mission?’ Leia jabs a finger at Legolas. ‘I thought you were.’ Peter ignores her. He really can’t be asked to have that same conversation again.
Legolas speaks slowly, like a parent talking to a child, or a racist talking to an immigrant. ‘They have been captured. They are gone. We have two days to save all storyworlds from the Villain in the Dark. I know that Peter Parker may like them, and think they are his friends and he should do nice things for them, but this is a war. This is not a time for Peter Parker, this is a time for Spider-Man. Yes?’
He nudges Leia, who looks confused for a moment and then loudly repeats, ‘yes. Look, kid, it’s times like this when you’ve got to ignore your heart and think clearly. The only thing we can afford to care about right now is the Library. Got it?’
Peter does get it. He gets that there’s no point arguing with two people who clearly aren’t used to losing arguments. He mumbles something about needing to figure out what’s outside, slams the newspapers down on the counter, and weaves through all the covered tables to the front of the room. He does want to see where they are, but even more than that he doesn’t want to look Legolas in the eye again. Legolas doesn’t exactly strike him as the kind of man (or elf) who would react well to Peter breaking down and crying in front of him. (And Peter is extremely close to breaking down and crying right now).