Where could I go?

“Call me Stephen,”

“Ok…Stephen,” Peter breathed out. 

He was staring at his friends, memorizing everything he could before they forget his face forever.

Strange chuckles a bit, eyeing Peter with a look he couldn’t distinguish. How could everything go wrong so quickly? All because he made a stupid mistake. 

“Still feels weird,”

Peter doesn’t meet Strange’s eyes, instead he stares at Ned and MJ. A soft smile graces his lips as they look back up at him. Ned raises a hand to awkwardly wave at him, MJ smacks him on the shoulder, probably muttering that this was a serious moment. 

This would be better for them. Not knowing him would be better, they won’t be in danger anymore. Peter’s smile becomes strained as a few stray tears fall, he knows this is for the better, he knows this is the only way. They’ll be safe.

Then why does this hurt so much?

“Peter,” Strange called him back to the spell. “This isn’t going to feel good, kid”

“Wha-”

Peter’s spider sense thrums, he chokes on his words as sparks and light surround him, engulfing his being in burning light. 

In an instant, he’s floating through a space filled with shapes and colors he can’t distinguish. A cacophony of noises assault his senses, but he can’t move to bring his hands to his ears. The images around him flicker every few seconds as waves of pain coarse through him, he can feel his skin moving and rippling with the pain. His body feels like it’s on fire, every few seconds he accidentally crashes against something before he tries to right himself and crashes again.

For a few agonizing minutes, all Peter feels is burning, rippling, and crashing. Then, he’s unceremoniously thrown out of what he assumes is a portal. Just as the fiery pain of whatever just happened subsides, he feels the pain of a brick wall smacking against his back and the air getting knocked out of his lungs.

—

A groan forces its way out of his mouth as he tries to regain his bearings. His vision is still blurry, but wherever he is, it’s dark. A full body ache starts to seep into his bones and he gives up on trying to stand for now. At least the assault on his senses stopped, now replaced with the comforting sounds of a bustling city. He was probably still in New York, though that didn’t explain why it was dark all of a sudden.

For a few minutes, all Peter does is breathe shallowly on the floor of the alley. His ribs jostling uncomfortably with every wheezing breath.

Strange wasn’t lying when he said it wasn’t going to feel good.

Peter lies in the alley trying to catch his breath and pretend like he’s not in a serious amount of pain. He’s had his fair share of post fight alley laydowns. It’s like a right of passage, but this time the pain was different. He can’t exactly pinpoint where it’s even coming from, it’s just a mixture of different pains all across his body. It’s making him feel woozy, he just wants to go to sleep for now. Yeah, a little lie-down then he’ll get back up and be ready to keep going forward.

He’ll just take a teensy weensy nap first...

He’s about to drift off. Which, in the back of his mind, he knows is probably the worst thing to do right now (but this concrete floor is so comfortable). 

He’s interrupted when his ears pick up the sound of multiple footsteps approaching, followed by rowdy conversation. As the footsteps draw closer, Peter guesses that about five people are approaching his current, very compromised, position. Laying on the floor of an alley, clearly injured, with his mask off. He weakly paws at the area around him, trying to search for the piece of fabric. When did it get so hard to move his arms?

Please don’t notice me and just pass by, please don’t notice me and just pass by-

The footsteps pause at the mouth of the alley before slowly heading towards Peter's heaving form.

“Well shit, look what he got here…looks like you’ve already been mugged but maybe there's a few more things we can take off your hands,”

Fuuuuck

Two pairs of arms roughly pull Peter up and he can’t help but whimper to himself. His muscles protest as they’re moved from their resting position. He should be stronger, but that damn spell took too much out of him. His bones ache at the rough feeling and his body is pushed against the wall of the alley, aggravating his back even more. He’s definitely expecting a bruise there tomorrow. His spider sense weakly calls out before a fist buries itself into his stomach, his brain gets fuzzier.

“What the fuck is this kid wearing?”

Panic shoots up his spine, if they see his suit they’re gonna know who spider-man is again and it’ll all have been for nothing- everything he’s tried so hard to protect is just gonna get fucked over again by the stupid mistakes he keeps maki-

“Seems like we have another wannabe vigilante on our hands, when are these guys gonna learn? This city will chew you up and spit you out,”

?

…Ok that's weird, maybe he’s not in New York? But he’s still kind of well known at least in the US and most people recognise him in his suit, at least the emblem should-

He’s cut off by another fist to the stomach.

Ok fuck, just think for a second and compose yourself, what would Nat do? Fuck it, what would anyone stronger and cooler than him do?

Peter takes a breath and internally prays that the men holding him up are strong. Before the next blow hits him, he swings his legs up to his chest and kicks the guy straight in the sternum, knocking him back a good thirty feet to the mouth of the alley. A sharp crack! echoes as the rest of the thugs fall silent and their presumed leader lies at the mouth of the alley, breathing shallowly. Peter immediately feels another wave of exhaustion hit him again, his head sagging in the hold he’s in. The ‘leader’ grunts as he gets up again, staggering towards Peter.

Shit, way too hard

“Well shit, he’s a meta, how about we make some money off him instead boys?”

Before Peter can even question what a meta is (did they mean mutant?), blows rain down on him and he’s unceremoniously dropped to the ground. He needs to get up, he knows he needs to, but he still feels so fucking bad and the constant barrage of blows isn’t helping him out. His muscles clench as he’s kicked in the head.

Get up! Please just do something!

The fuzziness in his brain grows as he grunts, trying desperately to hold on, to do something. 

To fight back.

The last thing Peter feels before slipping into unconsciousness is a  cold device being latched onto his neck, and barbs digging into his skin.

—

When he wakes up, it's to a pounding headache and the sound of a door opening.

The light smell of mold hits his nostrils, making his head pound more. He’s in a dilapidated room, lying on a musty cot with a dim lamp flickering overhead. Which also isn't helping his headache. Concrete walls surround him, a toilet that's seen better days sits in the corner.

Glancing around the room more, the walls are cracked and crumbling. On the far side of the room there's scratch marks? The flickering light illuminates large gauges scraped into the concrete, as far as he can tell there’s no one else in the room with him so he’ll take that as a win.

Jesus, could they be any more villainy?

“You’re up,”

Peter definitely doesn’t yelp as his head shoots towards the noise to see who’s speaking to him. A mountain of a man stands in the doorway, his face mostly shrouded in darkness. He motions with one hand for Peter to stand up and approach him, the other is buried in his pants pocket. His spider sense buzzes lightly as he stands and approaches him, a sense of danger is rolling off this man, clouding his thoughts. 

As the man speaks, Peter tries his best to find any defining features in his face. A jagged scar sits above his eyebrow, somehow making his intimidating expression more intimidating. He wears a dark t-shirt with the tip of a neck tattoo peeking out the collar. This guy really is fitting the whole ‘bad guy’ aesthetic.

“Listen carefully or else. Right now you’re in a facility so you can fight people like you and win money for people like me. If you got a name, I don’t want to hear it, you’re gonna be called whatever the crowd deems you and that's it. If you start winning us some money, you’ll get to upgrade from this shithole” he gestures to the stuffy room “to a slightly nicer shithole. If you even think about getting out of here then you’ve got another thing coming,” As the man ends his speech, he brings his hand out of his pocket. A small, unassuming, remote device that fits snugly in his hand makes Peter's spider sense buzz uncomfortably. He waves it in Peter's face for a second tauntingly. 

“Do you know what this does?”

Peter opens his mouth to answer with something along the line of ‘I don’t know dude, let me go before I knock you the fuck out,’ but before he can, the white hot pain of electricity shoots through his body. A garbled noise rips through his throat as his legs give out and his head smacks the floor. Muscle contract and jerk as his vision blurs, the world in front of him becoming a hodge-podge of murky grays and browns.

 As soon as it starts, the pain stops and Peter is left twitching on the ground as the man above him lowly chuckles. He traces the button on the remote with his thumb as he stares down at Peter’s still twitching form.

“Jesus christ, you look like a sad sack of shit…y’know what, I'll give you one question, promise I won’t shock you, and it better not be: please let me out. Sniveling won’t get you anywhere in this place,”

Thoughts race towards Peter's head, he’s ashamed at how many of them are along the lines of ‘please just let me go’. He shouldn’t have to beg, he’s strong, he’s smart. But right now he feels like he could be knocked over by a light gust of wind. That device on his neck had to be the thing to shock him, and it’s remote activated? Peter is fucked.

When he speaks, his voice betrays him as his voice wavers.

“W-where am I?”

“You’re in Gotham city kid, the best city on earth for people like us,”

The man puts away the remote and pushes Peter’s form back with the toe of his boot, Peter rolls over, the cold floor greets the other side of his face as he waits for his fingers to stop twitching. 

Before closing the door the man speaks one more time.

“You fight tomorrow night. One more rule, you call me sir and I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want. Right now I'm thinking Shitsack, but prove you’re useful and I'll think up something better. Get some shut eye, can’t have someone so promising get pummeled in the first fight,”

The door closes and Peter is left in the silence of his ‘new room’, the light flickers above him. 

When he feels good enough to get up, he makes his way to the camping cot in the corner. The sheet on it has definitely seen better days, but it’ll hold him up. He hopes.

Laying down on the cot, Peter stares at the ceiling and tries not to focus on the aching pain in his body. Wherever or whatever Gotham is, Peter’s glad he’s never had the misfortune of visiting before. In less than 24 hours, he’s already been jumped and is apparently in an underground fighting ring. 

Just my fucking luck.

He tries to focus on anything but the pain he’s in, his mind drifting to Ned and MJ (At least they’re safe). He can’t imagine how they would tear themselves apart if he just up and went missing out of nowhere. Even worse, what would May do? For a second, Peter lets himself imagine what it would be like if none of this ever happened, if he could just pretend like everything was normal again and May was waiting at home for him, probably anxiously calling Happy and giving him an earful.

I’m so sorry May…

He cuts himself off from thinking of her too much, if he goes down that rabbit hole he’ll just end up crying all night and there's too much going on to waste a night of sleep. She’s gone, just leave it at that for now. Hopefully, his body feels better in the morning, and he’ll be ready for his apparent fight tomorrow.

Right now he has no one. 

Now he has to build everything back up, this time with no help. 

Before he drifts off into a fitful night of sleep, Peter thinks about what he did wrong to get to his current position. 

—

When he wakes up, there's a noticeable pain in his wrists and mouth. The rest of the pain in his body has subsided after sleeping, he thanks his advanced healing for that. Something is aching under the surface of his skin and gums. He decides not to think about it for now. There's too much going on to care about that, even if it’s slightly alarming. The light above him is still on, though he can’t tell what time it is now. 

He lets his thoughts drift for a while, trying to gauge where he is by straining his ears outside of his little room. The most he can hear is hushed voices and heavy footsteps passing the door to his room. The lack of city sounds around him leads him to believe he’s either underground, far away from a city, or they have super thick walls. If he’s in a city then he could probably get out and find help. Probably.

His fingers reach up to feel his neck. The cool circular device is still there. 

After what seems like hours, his ears start to pick up more and more voices entering whatever place he’s in now. Most of them are loud and rowdy, the faint smell of alcohol starts to drift toward his room. 

Seems like people either show up to this place drunk, or come here to get drunk. 

He tries to reach further, to actually gauge any conversations that signify where he is besides just ‘Gotham’. At this point it could be a town or just the name for this specific building. If he could just hear some type of signifying information, maybe a state or-

The heavy door opening startles him out of his focus and the man from yesterday walks in. He roughly throws some clothes at Peter. A beige shirt and pants that definitely looks like a prison uniform sits in his hands, just from holding it he can tell they’re going to be uncomfortable and itchy.

“You have a fight in about an hour, get in those clothes and be ready to throw down. I got a bit of money riding on you kid, you seem like you could tear someone apart. I don’t believe that quiet kid schtick for a second.”

Peter glances back down at the clothes as the man continues to speak, he did accidentally hit that guy pretty hard last night. Word must’ve gotten around.

“You’re gonna fight well tonight, or else I’ll have no good reason to keep you around. Are you gonna fight well?”

Peter avoids eye contact and lightly nods. What else could he even do? He’s in an unknown place full of people who will probably stop him the moment he tries to get out and-

The sharp sting of electricity shoots through his veins and he’s brought to his knees again.

“Don’t just nod, tell me yes sir.”

Peter shakily stands back up and drags his eyes to meet the man’s. He’s waiting for Peter to answer, to treat him like a superior and admit that he’s below him. That he’s his thing. 

Peter clears his throat, still twitching from the shock. His eyes go glassy for a second and he harshly blinks away the incoming tears. Not in front of him, wait until he leaves.

“Yes, sir.”

When the man leaves and the door closes harshly, Peter wipes his tears with the clothes he's given before putting them on.