End Of Beginning

Peter

Peter ends up in Matt’s apartment, pants off and lying on his couch. Peter snorts as Matt digs the bullet out.

“I think I’ve been pantless in front of you more than I ever was in front of my girlfriend in high school.” He laughs, his laughter morphs into quiet sobs. He pulls his bloody mask off, chucking it across the room. It lands in a soft heap by the stairs.

“Pete, you need to stop moving or I won’t be able to get the bullet out.” Peter nods, wiping at his eyes.

“I’m such a fucking dumb ass. I don’t deserve that mask. I don’t deserve these powers. I almost killed him.” He starts laughing again, delirious. Matt sighs before clamping his hand down on Peter’s wound. Peter’s laughing stops.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” He sighs. “I’m so sorry Matt.” Matt finally gets the bullet out, wrapping the wound with a bandage. It was already healing while he was fishing around inside of it, it wouldn’t need stitches.

“Flip over.” Peter flips onto his back, resting his head against the couch's arm rest. Matt pulls the top half of his suit up, fingers grazing the webs over Peter’s wound.

“Just pull it off like a-” Peter bites down on his knuckle as Matt yanks it off. “Mhm, just like that.” Peter sits up, blood trickles out of the wound as he clenches his chest muscles. The skin around it is red and irritated from the webs being pulled off.

“I will never not be amazed by healing powers.” Matt mutters, cleaning the irritated skin around his wound. “Peter, what you did today was… That wasn’t you. Don’t let anything that Scorpion said get to you, he was just trying to mess with your head, trying to get you to act the way you were.” Peter shakes his head.

“No, he was right. I hurt people. Every time I get close with people again they get hurt.” He thinks about Karen and his lip wobbles.

“Pete.” Peter shakes his head, sitting up. He stands up, pulling his suit pants back on.

“Thank you for everything Matt, really. I’ll apologise to Karen eventually, I just don’t think I can see her right now.” Matt nods, standing up from his crouching position.

“I’ll talk to her, let her know.” Peter nods, padding quietly towards Matt’s door. He looks back, taking the room in. Taking in Matt.

He wasn’t going to see him anymore. He wasn’t going to see him or Karen or work with him or Deadpool. He thought it would be different this time, maybe he could finally have friends without fucking everything up.

“I’ll see you around.” Peter lied. He knew that Matt could tell it was a lie, but the other man didn’t push further.

~~~~~~

Karen shows up to Matt’s later in the night. The sun was just dipping past the horizon, casting beautiful pink and orange hues into the sky. Had Karen been paying attention she would have pulled her phone out and taken a picture, but she was on a mission.

She ducks under Matt’s arm once he opens the door, moving into the living room. The couch and coffee table were scattered with crumpled up pieces of bloodied gauze and bandages. Karen crinkles her nose as she pushes it to the side, dropping a piece of paper onto Matt’s now cleared coffee table.

He groans as he bends over, picking it up. He runs his fingers over it, looking at Karen. It was Peter’s old business card again.

“Really, Karen? I thought you dropped this.”

“I thought I did too but,” she takes the card looking it over. “We know Peter Parker, we just don’t remember it.” Matt shakes his head.

“I know I’m getting old Karen, but I think I’d be able to remember a client from three years ago.” Karen smiles. It’s not as big as her usual smile as the groves in her cheeks hurt when she smiles, the skin pinching.

“Peter said some things when he was out of it.”

“Yeah but he was drugged Karen, you can’t trust what he was saying.” Matt interrupts. “He was spewing absolute nonsense last time, something about his aunt choking him.” Karen shakes her head dismissively.

“Something was different this time Matt, he wasn’t as violent.”

“Have you seen your face?” Matt interrupts once again. Karen glares at him.

“Would you stop interrupting me?” He nods. “This time he was talking to ‘Doctor Strange’, something about a spell.” She said the name with air quotes and Matt nods. “He was talking about some sort of spell that Doctor Strange did, people were supposed to forget Peter, but he messed up the spell apparently.”

Matt raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

“I know, I sound crazy, but he swears that you and I are supposed to remember him, that’s why he was so upset.”

“Okay, so we’re supposed to remember him. Do you remember him now that he’s said that?” Karen thinks, and then she thinks harder. Life had been absolute chaos after she had gotten back from the blip and she couldn’t remember much, everything had a sort of fog to it but she knew she didn’t remember Peter.

She shakes her head.

“So we talk to Doctor Strange.” Matt proposes. Karen laughs. “Do you know who you’re talking about? We can’t just find Doctor Strange and have a casual conversation with him, plus he probably isn’t going to remember Peter either.”

She pockets the card and marches back over to Matt’s door, picking up the grocery bag with Peter’s clothes in it. Matt rushes over, blocking her.

“Woah, where are you going?”

“I’m going to talk to Peter, make sure he’s okay.”

Matt shakes his head.

“I don’t… I don’t know how to say this but I don’t think he wants to see us anymore.” Karen gawks at him before shoving his chest gently. He stays standing where he is.

“Matt, that's ridiculous, you’re just going to let him be alone? That’s the last thing that he wants or needs.”

“How do you know what he wants?” Matt asks. Karen scoffs.

“Because he told me earlier today while he was all drugged up. He was crying, talking about how he’s alone now. I promised him I wouldn’t let him be alone.”

Matt shakes his head.

“He won’t see you right now. He told me to tell you that, and he doesn’t want to see me right now either.” Karen sighs, frustrated. She ducks her head and something catches her eye. Turning around she sees a small red heap on the ground by Matt’s room. She walks over, Matt stays by the door but listens, curiously.

She picks it up, the fabric stretchy under her fingers. Small raised black webbing runs along it, meeting right between the eye plates. Spider-Man's mask. She smirks, pocketing it as well.

“Karen-” Karen turns on her heel, walking back towards Matt.

“Now he’s going to have to see me. When he realises it’s gone tell him I have it.” She pats Matt on the chest before finally ducking out the door. She stops in front of Peter’s apartment but feels Matt staring holes into the back of her head and decides to move past, letting Peter have his alone time.

She walks home, the street lights coming on as the sun has fully set. She talks to Foggy over the phone on her way home, reassuring him once more that she was fine. Even though Karen hadn’t specified what happened, he regretted leaving her today. She was going to need to figure out if her makeup covered up the cuts on her face.

It did, quite well actually. From a distance she couldn’t even see the small red crescent moons. She made a mental note to take Matt shopping for concealer to cover up the wounds he frequently got on his face, something he probably should have been doing for years.

Karen shoves Peter’s mask and the business card in her bedside drawer, making sure that they were hidden. He’d need it soon, she was sure of it. She was expecting a call tonight even, but after tossing and turning in bed for almost two hours, she didn’t even receive a single notification. She sighed, opening her phone and squinting at the bright blast it delivered.

She needed more about Peter Parker. Pulling up Google she types his name in. It loads for a moment before popping up with pages upon pages of Peter Parkers. The first two that pop up are an Instagram account and a website for a tech repair company. She clicks on the second one, knowing that Peter works for one.

It’s an old website, it’s setup confusing. Along the top is a large picture of the staff. A small group of old men dressed in blue polo shirts stand in a lineup. At the end is Peter, awkwardly crouched in on himself, wearing a small smile. It’s an older picture, probably taken when Peter first started. Karen smiles.

The only things from Peter on the website are his email and a few reviews. All positive. Of course.

Karen checks his instagram next. There are no photos of Peter but judging by the few scenic pictures that he had posted of New York she assumed it was him.

Dead end.

She searches up his high school next. Sue her for being creepy or whatever but she needed to figure out if Peter was spewing nonsense earlier or not. She scrolls around on the website for a bit, looking at awards and such before finally reaching what seemed like a social media feed that the school website had. She scrolled down a bit until she made it to Peter’s last year.

Graduation pictures, no Peter.

List of graduates, no Peter, and no MJ. Karen wasn’t sure who that person was that he mentioned earlier but she also could not find anything about an MJ.

Finally she gets to pictures that the school had taken while in what looked like Europe. Giddy teens fill the pictures and Karen finds herself smiling to herself before she notices a pattern. One of the students, who was wearing plaid in far too many of the pictures, was always covered. A hand over the face, a bird flying by, face blurred by movement. It was the same kid over and over.

She continues to scroll down. Pictures of a dwindling school population were posted during the blip, but not many.

The year prior there were more pictures of the faceless kid. Academic Decathlon pictures, a crewneck wearing teen is covered by the trophy. Robotics club pictures, a boy is bent over a robot, too focused to look at the picture. Marching band, a teen dressed in a uniform is hidden by a massive tuba looking instrument.

Karen analyses all of these pictures over and over again, noting that in all of them, only this boy is covered.

She downloads the pictures to print off before shutting off her phone, content with what she’s found. She probably looked crazy scraping so hard for the evidence, but she believed she would figure out more about Peter and that spell.