Annihilate

The sewers are quiet.

Tommy is so glad he can stick to the ceiling. He’s been re-tracing the lizard’s steps from the school, following claw marks and dented pipes and the occasional blood stain. He grabbed the old makeshift version of his suit from Deo’s apartment, which has turned into his apartment more or less. He has his mask on, and he’s completely still for once, entirely focused on listening and engrossing himself in his environment. 

He can hear water running and his heart pounding in his chest, but every time another noise echoes through the sewers, he halts with bated breath. He makes his way through the tunnels like that, trying to disappear into the shadows, the serum neatly tucked into the lanyard he usually uses for his camera.

This is him righting his wrongs. He promised the lizard something, in the darkness of Laboratory C. He promised that he would help it. It blamed him for making it this way back at the school, and he’s going to right that wrong and keep his promise now.

But he needs to actually find it first.

Him, Charlie had said.

Tommy travels far through the sewerage. So far, in fact, that he comes to a section break where the sewage becomes industrial sewage. He has to be near or beyond Oscorp now – its facilities have their own sewer system to filter the chemicals out of the water and get it back to New York’s rivers. Environmentally clean company and all that. Well, he guesses they have to do something to be able to sleep at night.

Hyper-focused on not making a single sound, Tommy peeks around the corner and finds himself in a long hall leading to a sort of open space, with three other hallways leading away. A sewer crossroad. There’s a ladder upwards in the hallway he’s in, leading back to the surface. His spider-sense comes to life, and the hair at the back of his neck stands up.

Danger.

Is that not exactly what he’s looking for?

He ducks into the shadows again, crawling along the edge of the hallway. Soundlessly, he perches on the wall, looking into the open space.

Nothing.

Danger, his spider-sense sings. Look up!

Tommy looks up and the lizard lunges at him.

It comes down from the ceiling, and he dodges its claws, shooting a web and swinging to the opposite side of the wall. It lands in the industrial sewage, roaring at him. Tommy flinches at the loud sound echoing through the tunnels to all sides.

“Spider,” it hisses.

“Spider-Man to you,” Tommy grumbles and shoots another web. He got attached to the dumb name he laughed about what feels like so long ago.

The web hits the lizard’s claw and tapes it to the wall, but it’s strong enough to rip itself free with some strain. Tommy decides to fuck it with caution and swings towards it, his banged-up ribs sending pain flaring up in his brain as he does so. The lizard hisses in anger and swipes at him, barely missing his head as Tommy twists into free fall.

They exchange blows for a bit. Tommy is slow, he notices much to his own horror, he tires out easily and suddenly. He’s injured already, from the fight at the school and the fight with the Green Goblin. He’s being more than reckless; fighting the lizard in this state is borderline suicidal.

It’s not like anyone would miss him, though. He fucked it up with his family and his friends. This is all he has now. And this just might be a complete suicide mission.

As he promptly gets demonstrated when it swipes at him again, feinting before bringing its talons down on his chest, and ripping him open shoulder to abdomen.

Tommy manages to move back just enough to keep it from shredding his organs, but it definitely slices them. Oh, fuck. This is not good.

The blood loss makes him stumble. Dizziness washes over him when the lizard grabs him and throws him against the wall, and something in his back cracks. Tommy bites his tongue and tastes blood, sight blacking out too long for him to stick to the wall.

He faceplants into the sewage.

It’s warm, shockingly, and it lights his injuries, old and new, on fire. No wonder, really, since there could be anything from ammonia to straight-up oil in the murky industrial wastewater. Oh, fuck, this isn’t good. Tommy fights to swim, but it’s kind of useless, since the lizard pops out of nowhere and swipes at him again, moving way too fast underwater.

Tommy’s blood explodes around them, a cloud of dark red blooming from the wound the lizard tears into his shoulder. It tries to grab him again, but Tommy kicks out his legs and manages to escape its grasp, swimming to the surface.

As soon as his head pops out of the water, he heaves his arm into the air and shoots a web again, pulling himself out of the sewage that stings in his eyes. His mask is suffocating, heavy with wastewater, so he pulls it up over his nose and coughs out sewage, trembling from sudden cold and blood loss. His heart is racing in his chest.

The lizard bursts out of the water and tries to grab him again, but Tommy pulls at his web and flings himself at the wall. He grabs the lanyard, surprised to find the serum still intact. Seems like God’s on his side here. The lizard lunges and Tommy, in a last ditch effort to right this god-damned wrong, lunges towards it too, pulling the serum out of the lanyard.

Instead of dodging around its claws, Tommy lets himself fall, sight blurring around the edges, and rams the serum into the lizard’s neck as it buries its talons in his abdomen. Pain explodes in his stomach, and he simply ignores it.

He presses down on the button at the end, and the neon blue liquid sinks into the lizard’s scaly skin as it freezes up.

Tommy gasps for air horridly, blood pooling in his mouth. He can feel the lizard’s claws scraping against his ribs and pelvic bone. This is shaping up to be a very bad day for him. The lizard’s eyes go out of focus, then fix back on him – and, wondrously, the slit pupils blow up into round ones. For a second, there’s silence save for his heaving gasps for air. Then the lizard drops him.

He shoots a web, more instinctually than consciously, and manages not to land in the sewage again, swinging straight into a wall instead. He sticks to it this time, head tipping forward, and forces himself with nothing but pure power of will to stay awake.

The lizard convulses. Its tail starts to form back, its scales falling off. Tommy watches, shaking like hell, as it turns back into a human. A familiar, horribly familiar human that he failed in every way possible. Before he can fall into the sewage, Tommy shoots a web at him and pulls him straight towards him.

Sapnap dry-heaves, scales turning into mere dark dots on his skin before vanishing. He looks so disoriented and confused that Tommy is pretty instantly sure he has no fucking idea where he even is. He just clings to Tommy, shaking even worse than he is, and he decides to get the fuck out of dodge right there and then.

The nighttime air is cold and Tommy feels like he’s burning. Blood is still running down his side, soaking through his suit – he tries talking to Sapnap, but the man is completely shut down, staring into nothingness. He’s also butt naked, and Tommy did prepare for this, but the clothes he brought are soaked through just like his are. He barely feels the cold, but Sapnap is human again.

That’s why the motherfucker didn’t reply to his e-mails. Oh, God, it makes a horrible lot of sense that the lizard was him. He was already not there at the field trip where Tommy got bitten by the spider. Holy shit, how did he not put two and two together?

Tommy shoves those thoughts aside, along with his pain, and focuses on buying clothes with his last cash at the next best Walmart. The employee doesn’t seem to care about the money being soaked. He’s deeply thankful that NYC is weird enough for him to just show up in his costume and not even get a look.

When he comes back, Sapnap has slung his arms around himself and is cowering on the ground, face buried in his knees. Tommy pulls him up and helps him into underwear, pants, shirt and boots and jacket and gloves. It’s cold out, January coming to its middle, and he doesn’t want him to freeze to death in his disassociated state.

He’s getting more dizzy by the minute himself. He has to patch himself up, wash the chemicals out of his suit. Or maybe dying is fine. Maybe this is all the debt he had to repay and it’s up to Ranboo and Tubbo now to care about the rest of Oscorp’s crimes. And Schlatt will die with time. And it’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay.

Sapnap grabs his shoulder. Tommy startles and flinches, sight blurring until he blinks hard. The scientist’s eyes are harrowed with guilt and grief, flickering with a concerning light, but they’re clear.

“Thank you,” he croaks out. “Thank you.”

That’s really all he needs to say, isn’t it?

Tommy nods jerkily. “Just doing my job,” he manages to say. “…Maybe quit yours.”

He shoots a web to a passing train and lets it fling him into the air.

In free fall, his beloved free fall, Tommy almost faints. Every alarm bell in his head is harshly ringing, shrill noise telling him he’s gonna fucking die. He presses his hand to his still-bleeding abdomen and swings with the other, blindly finding his way back to the New York he knows, through Manhattan, to Queens.

The night is loud around him, as loud as New York always is. People holler at him when he swings over their heads. There’s a voice in his head that keeps saying that it’s going to be okay. The lights blur.

Before he knows it, he lands on a familiar roof. He stumbles and curses himself when he realizes where he is – his foster family’s apartment. He can’t be here. He needs to go to Deo’s. Or maybe a hospital. No, that’s a bad idea. He heals too fast and too freakishly and Phil would probably find him and drag him back home. And throw him back in the fucking system, because he’s a failure and an abomination and he’d only endanger this family.

This family. His family. The only place he’s felt at home in since his parents died. Tommy squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, tempted to burst into tears.

He did it, for fuck’s sake. He atoned for his sins. He turned the lizard back into the human he once was. He turned him back into Sapnap, well and alive.

Tommy did it, he saved him, he promised him that he would help him and he did it. He made up for what Sapnap accused him of. He made up for making him an abomination.

He can’t stop himself from smiling, tears springing to his eyes.

Then he goes very still when he hears the familiar noise of a gun’s safety being switched off.

“Put your hands where I can see them,” a familiar voice says.

Tommy is frozen in place, his thoughts coming to a hard stop as a cold wind tears at him. A tremor runs through his body. He’s cold – for the first time in a while, he’s ice cold all of the sudden. It reminds him of the funeral. God, he’s gonna fucking keel over at any second.

“I said,” Phil angrily says behind him, “put your hands where I can see them.”

He needs to think. He needs to go. He doesn’t think he’d make it very far before collapsing. Tommy can’t move, all his courage dwindling into nothingness. Suddenly, he’s scared. Horribly, incredibly scared. He’s back to where he started – a kid on a rooftop, terrified for his life.

“Now!” Phil yells, and Tommy flinches.

He raises his hands slowly, hyper-aware of the snow starting to fall on them, the distance between him and his foster father, the gun pointed straight at the back of his head. He’s not fast enough to get out of this. Not with this much injury slowing him down.

“Turn around,” Phil orders. “And identify yourself.”

Tommy hesitates. His breath is painting clouds into the air. It’s coming in stuttering heaves now, barely there, his heart rapidly pounding in his chest – trying to get enough blood to his system, blood he’s losing.

“I swear to God, I will shoot you,” Phil hoarsely says. “Turn around and identify yourself.”

Tommy turns slowly. He’s trembling. Phil is trembling too – a slight tremor in his hands even though he seems dead serious about being ready to blow his head off. He stares at him for a moment. He can’t identify himself. He can’t take his mask off. He just– can’t.

“Y’don’t–” he starts before stopping and clearing his throat. His words come out slurred and garbled. “You don’t… have to do this, Captain.”

“Don’t you tell me what the right thing to do is,” Phil hisses. “You’re under arrest. On accounts of trespassing, assault and vigilantism. Don’t make me add resisting arrest to the list. Identify yourself.”

“I can’t,” Tommy hoarsely says. He takes a slow step back. He’s on the edge of the roof. “I… I can’t do that.”

Phil’s hands tremble. Tommy takes another tentative step back. He can let himself fall. And then? He has nowhere to go. No good place to die. No one to bury him. He wonders, distantly, what name they’d put on his gravestone. Innit? Or Minecraft? Or any of the thousand other names he bore all his life? Time would feel fitting. Thomas Time.

Deo’s brother didn’t show up to the funeral, but he did.

He takes another step back.

Tommy hears the gunshot before he feels it.

And then he feels it.

And then he falls.