The Fall
The sky was falling. Or, no, the sky was rising ? Getting farther and farther away by the second. That’s what it was. Peter felt a nagging in his head about this, whispering to him that it was important, but that whispering was nothing compared to the resounding screeches of his spider sense.
Bad! Wrong! Stop it stop it stop it!!
It said as the wind whipped past him. Why was he falling? Where was he? He couldn’t remember. His eyelids felt heavy. Maybe it’d be easier to just close them. Replace the rising sky with comforting black. Yeah, that sounded nice.
Open! Look!!
His eyes snapped back open, halfway between instinct and on purpose. He was bleeding. He could feel the wound in his side, deep, sharp, but numb. Blood droplets seemed to float in his vision as he fell along with them. His spider sense was fighting through the concussion he had, and Peter made a mental note to thank it later for pulling overtime. How did he get here? He couldn’t remember, and as the panic finally began to set in he realized there were no buildings nearby to swing from, nothing to shoot his webs to and use to slow down. He was falling at an alarming rate and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
No, that’s no way to think. Fall into that line of thinking and he’s doomed. Take stock of his situation while he can and then fix it. Spider-Man has fallen before, this won’t be any different.
Alright, first things first, injuries. Besides the concussion (he’s quite used to them at this point) and the frankly worrying wound in his side (had he been shot? Stabbed? He couldn’t recall…) he could feel several broken ribs and multiple cuts along his arms and legs. Cuts that made it even through his suit. His suit! Right, that was the next priority, how was his suit holding? The cuts were tearing the fabric, and the wind wasn’t doing it any favors as strips of cloth tore away, but it was there. And now that he was focusing on it the colors looked… wrong. No, not wrong, not from one eye at least. His mask must be torn as well, as his left eye had the slightly altered perception he gets through his goggles still. Right, so the suit was…. Well it’s seen better days, to be sure, but it was there, and at least half his mask was as well. He could work with that.
How long had he been falling? Frankly, it was concerning. He shouldn’t have had time for all this reflection. Granted his powers tend to give him heightened perception when he was in danger (at first he had thought he could slow down time, but that wasn’t very spider-like and besides, Tony and the others said they hadn’t felt any change at all, turns out he could just think faster when in trouble) but even that couldn’t explain how long this free fall was. And still no buildings in sight, though he was looking towards the sky. He should fix that.
With great effort and more than a few groans of pain Peter twisted in the air, flipping himself around to see the (terrifyingly quickly approaching) ground. A dank, dark city that looked like it hadn’t seen the sun in ages, and the roof of the tallest building around seemed to be where he would crash land. There was no swinging out of this one then. He was cold, freezing really, the temperature was bad enough but the biting wind chill only made it worse. The numbness from the cold masked the pain at least, but it was of little comfort.
Running out of time!
Very helpful, spider sense, he hadn’t realized that. If he had the time to, Peter would have rolled his eyes, but his spider sense was right, he may have been falling for what felt like forever, but forever was about to come to a very abrupt end in just a few seconds, and he didn’t know what he could do to stop it. His body wouldn’t listen to him, it was the best he could do to put his arms in front of his face as he faced the cold stone roof and braced for impact.
The first impact was made known through the breaking of his arms, both of them. With a sickening crunch that could likely be heard in the alleys below, he wagered. But that was just the first as the concrete cracked beneath him and gave way. He tumbled into the building, most of his momentum carrying through the next two floors (and the next two impacts with them) before he was finally caught and held by the third floor down. At least the interior floors were wood and broke easier than the roof had. Thank god for small miracles.
Alright, no longer falling, good, time to take stock again. Easy one out of the way, the suit was there, well, about twenty percent of it anyway. Now injuries: his side was still bleeding, faster than before even, his concussion has spawned a twin, at least that’s what it felt like but Peter didn’t really know if you could have multiple concussions at once. His ribs were still broken, (a few more than before in fact) his arms and legs were still covered in cuts (a lot more than before). Speaking of arms, they were both broken in multiple places, and at least one of his leg’s bones was in more pieces than it’s supposed to be in.
Oh, and he has the equivalent of a wooden stake made of building debris sticking out of his stomach.
Probably should have started with that.
His vision was going black, and somehow in all the damage and destruction he had ended up facing the sky again, so he could see the multiple layers of holes he had made and the gray, clouded sky.
Missing? Gone? Where?
There was something missing, and he squinted as he tried to place what it was. Though his vision was swirling and swaying so much it took a while, but he finally realized there were no stars. Nor the moon. It was odd that his spider sense would pick up on that though, that’s fairly standard for a heavily cloudy night.
No. More missing. Here. You.
Him? Peter? No he most certainly wasn’t missing, he was here. And he was painfully aware of it, as even through the numb and cold, pangs of pain shot up and down his body like lightning. God, it was going to be a long night, and even longer until his healing got him back into a patrol-worthy state. His healing.
That’s what was missing.
Normally his super healing was… well it wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t hurt either. More than anything it itched . Like poison ivy. But that itching was gone. His healing wasn’t kicking in. No, that’s not it either.
If he focused, he could feel the itching, way deep in his wounds but it was… muted. Almost hiding. Why was it…?
Oh.
It wasn’t enough. Peter had finally broken himself to a point his healing couldn’t fix. He was bleeding out, passing out, and going into shock and his regenerative abilities were doing all they could just to keep him awake right now. Even that was an uphill battle. And they were losing.
Peter was… he was….
Dying.
His spider sense agreed. And that was terrifying. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to pull that wood out of him and fling it across the city in rage. But instead he was bleeding out, in the cold, in the ruins of some abandoned building. Instead he was lying here, helpless, alone, and so desperately afraid. It wasn’t fair. These injuries, they shouldn’t have killed him. He could live, he had to live, for May. For Tony. He should already be on his way to the avengers medbay. Sure it was too much for his healing factor alone, but they would stop the bleeding. Bandage him. Fix him. Give him the care he needed so that his healing factor could do the rest. But he was alone.
Peter didn’t want to close his eyes, but his rapidly failing body gave him little choice. In the black of his eyelids he thought of Tony, the last thing he could remember of him, the last time he saw him. He could practically see it now…
———————
“Alright, look kid. I’m rooting for you. You go out and you give them hell, then you come back and see me.” Tony clapped Peter on the shoulder, giving him a smile. It was the same little pep-talk Tony had given him before his practice press conference. Not that Peter could see the smile, no, he was far more focused on the room in front of him. An elaborate thing, full of screens and projectors, made to be able to simulate practically anything one could dream of. This was no PR training. This was gonna be his final combat test, and Peter didn’t want to even chance getting distracted.
“Friday? Activate simulation A-00137A.”
A woman’s voice spoke out in reply,
“Are you sure you wish to show the kid that, sir?”
“What?” And then with a face that had rapidly grown worried “shit, Friday, simulation A-00137B. If you please.”
“Right away, sir.”
Peter gave Tony a look, smirking as he asked “what’s in sim A?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older, now focus underroos.”
Peter turned back to the room, holograms beginning to appear as the door shut behind him, Tony behind it.
Alright, he could do this. Just get through this test and you’ll get your first Stark-made suit. No more working in his own cobbled together spider disguise. No more goggles, no more simple cloth, he could do this. The simulation was simple, a hostage situation, five baddies, one kid in a chair.
Wait, kid? That’s not how he remembers it…
All five men were armed, but there was plenty of room for Peter, no, for Spider-Man to crawl along the roof without being seen. It was an unnatural movement, one that Tony still struggled to get used to, and Sam absolutely hated (unfortunately for Sam, Peter made an effort to be as spidery as possible in his presence). But Peter be damned if it wasn’t effective. Baddies never look up, and even if they did he knew how to blend into the shadows. The first guy was down no problem, a quick web to cover his mouth then a few more to pull him and cocoon him against the ceiling. Quick and quiet. The other four were in pairs of two. That wasn’t much harder. The first pair found themselves webbed to each other, each with an accompanying web gag as well, complimentary with every spider-takedown. The last two didn’t even need any webs. Standing back to back, it took no effort at all to drop down from the ceiling on top of them, and a well placed kick as he did so guaranteed neither would be waking up any time soon. Just like that it was over, all he had to do now was rescue the hostage.
He… he did it?
The kid had a bag over his head, and it was likely for the best he hadn’t seen Spidey’s handiwork, he would’ve freaked out and alerted the thugs if he had. Though as Spidey went to pull the bag off, something felt off.
Wrong. Familiar. Get it away!
His spider sense has never reacted like that before, and to the hostage? It didn’t make sense. Still, he had to do what he had to do. As he pulled the bag away he found himself looking at…
Himself? The kid in the chair, it was undeniably Peter! But, how? Why would Tony put him in a simulation? Make him save himself?
That’s not how it went!
What was the point? And why did this version of him look so… so hurt? What had happened? The simulation was breaking down around him. His webs were melting, the baddies were waking up. They shouldn’t be, they weren’t even real thugs. The ceiling was gone. It was getting darker and darker….
———————
Peter flashed awake. He was stuck, tied to a chair. There was a bag over his head. His arms were tied behind him. He was stuck, but he was alive. The itching wasn’t quite as deep in his wounds any more, it was making progress. Speaking of wounds, they were bandaged, he could feel the gauze wrapped around practically his entire torso. His arms weren’t broken anymore, neither was his leg, but he figured his healing factor simply went to those first. It had a way of understanding what he needed, and right now he needed to be able to move, so the cuts and ribs could be saved for later. Sure, his movements were going to be far from graceful, and they were going to hurt like hell, but he could take it.
For now though, he needed intel. He needed to know who had him, and why. Did they know who he was? No, he could feel the half mask on his face still, the goggles (or at least what was left of them) still in place. Whoever it was either recognized him from half his bloodied face alone, or didn’t care who he was under the mask. One of those options was significantly scarier than the other.
“Is he with the bats?”
He could hear voices, it hurt to hear them, his concussion still ringing through his head, but he needed that enhanced hearing right now, so he put up with it.
“He’s a kid in a suit running around Gotham. If he isn’t with the bats then he will be soon enough.”
It was two women. Young sounding, and with implacable accents. They were talking about him. Though, now he had all sorts of questions. Gotham? Where was he? That wasn’t any city he had ever heard of, granted geography wasn’t his best subject and he hadn’t really been out of New York much, but he’d think he’d know if there was a place called Gotham in New York. Maybe he wasn’t in New York anymore? Then how did he end up falling here? He didn’t recall being kidnapped. Well, before the fall at least. Clearly he had been after.
And bats? What was that about? Were the bats, well, actual bats? No, that’d be silly, though the idea of man-sized bats swooping through the city on a common enough basis to be casual talk was funny enough to linger on for a moment. Alright, so if not real bats, then it’s code. Was he with them? That sort of question meant they were a group of some kind. And the fact that he’s a kid in a suit makes these two think he might be? That narrows things down quite a bit.
He’s got it. Crime family. The bats are a crime family, use kids down on their luck as thugs. He’s heard of kids being used as drug mules and the like, most people don’t dare bat (ha!) an eye at them so it makes them less suspicious. Put ‘em in hero suits, and it’s just like they’re playing a game of some sort, no reason to bother them playing make-believe, and no way to track which kid is which to even start putting together a case against them. Sure, it would be a weird operating style, but god knows every villain and minor ruffian these days has some wack gimmick. Besides, what other explanation could there be for these “bats”? No, it sounded like something Spider-Man would have to take care of once he was out of whatever this place was.
“Of course. Should we contact him then?”
“You’d best ask Talia first. She’s the only one he’ll even begin to listen to.”
“As you wish, sister.”
Talia? Who the hell was Talia?