Everything you Lose is a Step You Take
Get up.
You’re wasting time.
They need you. Get Up.
Come on, kid.
Spider-Man.
You aren’t done. Get Up.
Pay your debt.
In the great expanse of consciousness, there were flickers of memories. Smells that couldn’t quite be placed, except around the hazy idea of an emotion. The color of sunlight the day after it rains. The coolness of the concrete bathed in shade. The sharpness of ash and the lightness of breeze, carrying away everything in a sigh.
There was no pain. There was no need. It would be so easy to lay here forever.
—-
“As cool as it would be to get shot by you, please don’t.”
“I appreciate the compliment, but you haven’t yet given me a reason not to shoot.” Pepper said, not taking her eyes off of the kid. At first glance, he looked like the picture-perfect attendee. But whoever sponsored him was sloppy. The suit, while designer, was several decades out of season, only blending somewhat well due to the surface-level timeless design. Micheal Walters was a bold choice for a fake identity, given that he hadn’t ended up being blipped and wouldn’t be seventeen anymore.
This is what Pepper got for letting the publicists handle May’s memorial dinner. Weasels in her server rooms with zero finesse.
“If I tell you I’m a friend of Peter’s, will you believe me?” The kid asked, hopeful. His hands were still up; he was either unarmed or waiting for her to lower her guard. No chance.
“Forgive me if I tell you I’ve already heard that one.” Pepper said. The kid nodded thoughtfully.
“The tracker in Peter’s suit is located four inches under the spider-emblem.” He blurted out. “You would think it would be in the spider-emblem, since that’s where Karen’s stored, but Mr. Stark probably thought Peter wouldn’t risk hurting Karen over babysitter programming.”
Pepper stared. She tried to calculate the odds that someone could know that information from chance alone. Hell, she didn’t even know where the tracker was. That kind of logic tracked with Tony, though.
“Now, if Peter had been Spider-manning alone, he never would have gotten that tracker off during his decathlon trip to D.C.” He continued. “But he had me, and I love a challenge. Most kids who hack multi-million dollar projects get on the no-fly list. But Mr. Stark could never prove I hacked the suit, not without outing Peter’s identity. So, the second I turn 18, he told Peter he was going to hire me to Stark Industries. I’m Ned Leeds.”
Either this kid had done a hell of a lot of research, or he legitimately knew Peter from before the Blip. Having a cover-story that detailed clashed with his risky intel strategy and an incredibly dated alternate identity. Pepper lowered the gauntlet.
“Oh, come on. Has Peter not told you about me?” Ned asked. “I’m at least responsible for 12% of the times where he should have died Spider-meaning but didn’t.”
Despite herself, Pepper laughed.
“So is this part of a revenge plot for never getting hired by Stark Industries?” Pepper said, gesturing toward the servers. “Spoiler alert, the juiciest information there is Feast’s tax information, which is as clean as a whistle.”
“I’m more interested in trying to figure out Tony’s mind when it comes to encryption. I’m going to guess he handled Feast’s servers because he felt guilty about Peter, and because he only wants the best, he modeled Feast’s security framework after his own. Am I right?” Ned rattled off. When Pepper couldn’t respond, because how could he know that, he snapped his fingers and smiled. “Good, I am right! God, that feels nice.”
“Though, I guess that’s useless now, because you’re here.” He said. “You see, Ms. Potts, the last time I saw my best friend, he told me to make a distraction while he climbed out the side of a bus to help Mr. Stark fight aliens. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
“It’s insane.” Pepper smiled.
“Yeah. And then I wake up, and I’m with MJ, but Peter’s not there. Peter’s not anywhere. His aunt is dead, his identity is out, and nobody knows where he is.” Ned said. “I know Peter, I know Spider-man, and suddenly I’m worried. The state wants to challenge custody; the Bugle thinks he killed a guy; and once again, the guy in the chair has heard nothing. You start to think something dark is going on. You start to think that gauntlet killed him.”
“It didn’t.” Pepper said quickly.
“Then why hasn’t Peter asked for me?” Ned challenged. “Or MJ? Why hasn’t he reached out? Where is he?”
“I guess you aren’t as close as a friend as you think.” Pepper suggested. Distantly, she heard footsteps down the hall. Good; the discount security was finally making their rounds. “I’m assuming your friend MJ is here, too.”
“Peter’s in a coma, isn’t he?” Ned asked. Deflecting. There’s more than one trespasser tonight. Stark Industries is never partnering with Bishop again.
“You know I won’t tell you anything.”
“You won’t have to.” Ned said, and lowered his hands for the first time to remove a USB stick from a black monitor beside him. “Eventually, this will tell me everything I need to know. But I wish you had believed me, Ms. Potts.”
Pepper raised the gauntlet again. “Security is just down the hallway, kid.”
“Yeah, and they’re going to cross at the atrium to meet the side-door security because someone just realized that Micheal Walters never RSVP-ed and his sister is somehow at the door trying to get in even though she technically checked in a half-hour ago. I never planned to be here long, Ms. Potts.” Ned said. His voice was wavering though, as if he was reciting a speech for class. Whoever he was, he wasn’t good at espionage. He was a little too excited to reveal information. “As for your gauntlet, Mr. Stark had a similar one made for Peter. It only has enough energy for one shot in it, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.” Pepper said, just as the footsteps turned right and faded away. Just like Ned said they would. “Are you trying to find out?”
“No, I’m trying to be realistic. Feast’s financial data is stored here, right?. You can’t afford to slip up right now. If you miss me, it will look very suspicious that you slipped away from the party to destroy financial data.” Ned said. “Especially when it turns out that I am who I say I am. And if you do hit me? Now that’s a mess for Stark Industries to clean up.”
“I can’t let you leave with that information, Ned.” Pepper said.
“Fine, take it, then.” Ned said. “But in return you’re going to have to let me see Peter.”
“You’ll have to get in line behind a lot of ambassadors and talk-show hosts.”
“Well, then.” Ned stuck the USB in his pocket. “It’s been really cool meeting you, Ms. Potts. Seriously. It's been hard to keep my cool this entire conversation. But I’m going to leave now, and you won’t shoot me.”
He made a move to push past her through the door, and by the way Pepper shifted, his eyes blew wide as if she would actually shoot him.
But he was right. She couldn’t slip up, not tonight. The sound a repulsor would bring security running, and no matter which way it was spun, there’s no way to hide how shady this situation would be to the press.
He made it past the door. And Pepper stood there, watching. She tasted ash in her mouth.
A minute passed.
“Hey- uh, wow. Mrs. Stark.” Pepper’s head snapped toward the door. By the large ‘BISHOP’ tag on his vest, he must be security. His eyes were locked on the gauntlet. “Is everything ok?”
“Yeah.” Pepper lied. God, Tony didn’t need another thing on his plate, especially not re-writing their personal security. That kind of work took weeks. “I just thought I saw something.”
The guard, who couldn’t be much older than twenty, puffed his chest out slightly at her admission. “Don’t worry. We have the venue secure.”
Pepper laughed, it was fake. Who else was here that posed a threat? If Ned Leeds could slip in and out, then the doors might as well be open to the public.
“Thank goodness.” Is what she said instead, and allowed the young man to accompany her back to the party. Because that’s what it was. A party in the middle of the un-end of the world.
—
Do you even know who you are anymore?
Get Up.
And in that expanse, from the roots of these memories, came ideas. They weren’t heard as much as they were understood, only identifiable with the concept of what they would sound like coming out of the throats of people that might be. Mentors, mothers, friends, enemies… the difference in their origin didn’t matter, they just existed. Connotation held no weight, but nevertheless they formed clouds in the sky that might rain if they grew too heavy.
Droplets could have hit his skin, if they were real.
—-
PEPPER POTTS CONFRONTS POTENTIAL NY V. STARK SUIT, REMEMBERS MAY PARKER AT FEAST GALA by Cindy Moon
11:43 PM on May 25th, 2023
Pepper Potts-Stark has defined her return to the public eye with the phrase “shaken, but resolute.” The almost celebrity-CEO said as much during her short speech at the FEAST Memorial Gala for co-founder May Parker.
“And may it be said that we will stand by Peter Parker as a family, and carry on what the Parker’s envisioned for philanthropy in this city,” Pott-Stark had said, raising eyebrows across the room. Obviously, her central theme of family is designed to combat the state’s claims of Stark exploiting Peter Parker. However, such a tactic falls flat by continuing to imply that Peter’s teenage vigilantism will resume under their care. Look at all the “adventures” of Spider-Man in the past- what kind of family allows their child to do that?
Not one fit for custody, that’s for sure. However, despite the Stark’s legal situation, Potts-Stark dazzled the memorial dinner tonight- literally - in a floor-length gown outfitted with thousands of white gems. For someone with such a public friendship with May Parker, her display tonight suggests a different story behind the scenes. After all, with Parker gone, she has the opportunity to head an organization entirely of her own creation, instead of taking the reins of Stark Industry that her husband so generously gifted her.
With still no public appearances from Peter Parker, community leaders are pushing for the state to sue for custody. The DA office has refused comment at this time, but the Honorable Quentin Beck is expected to be attending Senator Brown’s post-election rally.
“The Starks and their associates have been acting as an unelected, fourth branch of government for the last decade.” Brown said in an interview with CBS. “Custody of Parker is proof of their consolidation of power. We aren’t Russia, this isn’t an oligarchy, and I refuse to be ruled by billionaire elitists.”
Whether or not Brown’s words will hold up in the next few months has yet to be determined.
—-
You’re better than this. You’re alive for a reason.
Get Up.
You’ve been asleep too long.
Then, there was the rolling thunder of remembering. Moments from a lifetime ago pierced through the wisteria fields of his sleep. There were people who loved him, who had died. There were spelling bees, bake sales, soccer teams, and funerals. He lived through war. He lived through seventeen Christmases. The taste of pad thai reminded him of the way Ben would play the piano on a rainy Thursday night. Lightning strikes of physical sensation, of pain, took him to a landscape bathed in ash and fire.
It took him to a god that he had killed.
—-
Ned decided, when all was said and done, that he would be turning down Tony Stark’s job offer to do grunt work in the depths of R&D. He knew what he was worth, and being able to narrowly pull off a data heist and mostly be able to sort through what he got all within hours was pretty damn impressive, and pretty damn employable by any government or tech giant that he wanted.
This is all to say if he didn’t get arrested for it first. Getting caught by Pepper Potts is a pretty big fuck-up. He’ll be lucky if the FBI doesn’t come knocking within the hour. Bathed only in the light of his laptop in the living room and the streetlight outside, he couldn’t help but to shake the feeling of being watched; but everytime he glanced outside, there was no one out but the shadows.
He needed to stop listening to True Crime podcasts.
Needless to say, Ned was confident that his future either behind bars or behind contract was pretty secure, given that by around the three a.m. mark (which was shepherded by the most ominous rain) he had more or less had an understanding of Tony Stark’s security coding. However, to say that he could use that to locate Peter by himself would be like saying a fish could jump out of a pond and land on the moon. Sure, he knew how to build a wheel, but that doesn’t get you a car. God, he needed friends outside of his Nana’s book club. Their wise old lady phrases were wearing off on him. Anyways, he had a start. An in, even.
It wasn’t truly sure what he was looking for. The way Feast’s encryption was formed more or less just mirrored Peter’s suit, which was based loosely off of FRIDAY’s code. And as far as Peter knew, or as far as Peter told him, FRIDAY was only installed in properties Tony Stark owned and controlled. Avengers Compound, the Tower, some small properties scattered on beaches or nestled in six-figure neighborhoods…
The Tower.
Ned had been to Stark Tower three times in his life. Once, when Peter first began his real internship with Tony Stark, and they had used the lab for Peter and Ned’s science fair project. He had also visited when Peter fought a low-level villain and ended up in the Medbay. The final time was three hours after he was snapped back to existence, and he stumbled in the doors hoping to find his best friend. In those three times, he had learned several key facts about Stark Tower and Tony Stark: he employs only the best security, he employs only the best medical professionals, and you could go as far as hide a Norse God on the penthouse level and no one would be the wiser.
Huh.
It would be hiding him in plain sight, but honestly, how off brand is that for Iron Man?
The only issue is that Ned had no idea how he’d get inside. Pepper Potts herself knew what he looked like; at this point, she probably had had security go through and run facial recognition. Shit- she could be on her way with the FBI at this moment.
He needed someone powerful, someone people trusted. The kind of person who could easily slip into important rooms with poise. He also needed that person to pick him and MJ up in the next thirty minutes.
Across the city, the cucumber casserole had solidified into an unpleasant disk by the time Betty had finally combed through Wanda Maximoff’s account of Norman Osborn’s death. She felt sick. She felt helpless. She felt very, very, young, watching the tour guide for her high school’s field trip fall apart into dust.
“Write what you know.” Betty whispered aloud to herself, before letting her hands fall into her head. God, what a mess she’s fallen into. She knew too much. What did she even know?
That Peter had trespassed in an OSCORP lab, that’s what she knew. She also knew Norman was there after hours, in a facility he had only publicly visited once at its construction. And then there was… the thing that Wanda had described. The creature. The monster. The darkness. It felt more fiction than reality. This entire document did. Like some poorly constructed thriller written on a college student’s shitty Macbook…
Harry would want her to publish the whole thing, zero-censorship, even if people ended up reading between the lines. The right spin could make Harry’s plan for a holiday more reality than a plan. Although her paycheck had more zeros than her dad used to earn in a year, almost all of it went to OSCORP, to Harry’s dream. This would put them afloat, instead of scooping water out of a sinking ship.
Across the table, her phone began ringing. Ned Fucking Leeds. Betty stared at the massive spread of papers on the table. She didn’t want to believe any of it. Maybe she could cross reference with public documents and poke a hole in it. Hopefully the timing didn’t match up, the account of the weather was wrong, something that Betty could find to make all of this disappear. Most of all, she wanted it to be fake, because she was terrified of what Harry would do.
The phone rang again. Betty stared at it. She felt like a marionette operated by strings; she watched her own hand reach for the phone and answer before she could stop herself. She should have stopped herself.
“Betty?” God, Ned’s voice was so young. Did he always sound that way? “Thank God you picked up, listen-”
“Hey Ned.” Betty’s voice wavered. Her eyes stung. She so desperately wanted to be that kid at Midtown again. The word unstable repeated in her head. That’s what Wanda Maximoff had said. Unstable, unstable, unstable. Understatement of the fucking century. Did Harry end up going to the Gala, or was he on his way home from work? How long did she have before he reached the apartment? She felt like a prey animal.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me. That’s fine. It's been five years.” Ned said quickly. “But you have to hear me out. I need your help. It’s about Peter.”
And well, Peter needed all the help he could get, didn’t he? She took a deep breath, and decided that Harry, and the world, would never see these papers.
“What do you need?”
“I need a ride.” Ned said. “A couple other things, too. How does Pepper Potts feel about you?”
Despite herself, Betty laughed. A ride she could do. She switched the call to speaker as she scheduled a ride for Ned on Uber.
“Well, considering Cindy ended up writing the scathing article about the gala and not me, we’re at least lukewarm.” Betty said, sweeping the papers into a neat pile and back into the folder. Mattress. It would have to go under the mattress.
“That’s all we need.” Ned said. He paused. “I don’t want to talk about this over the phone.. Could we come over?”
“Now’s a bad time.” Betty said. She could only imagine how Ned Leeds in their kitchen after Betty essentially stood Harry up would go over. He would call her obsessive, and she didn’t trust him in an apartment with both the manila folder and Peter Parker’s best friend.
Ned remained silent on the line.
“I have the keys to my office at the Bugle, though.” Betty said. “I’ll send an Uber for you while I take the subway, and we’ll meet in 45?”
“That’s perfect.” Ned was smiling through the phone, she could hear it. There was a soft silence on the phone, drawn out in a painfully nostalgic moment that Ned ended when he stumbled into, “I just… I need you to know that I know you’re grown up, and time passed, and all of that. I’m sorry I called you so much in the beginning, but this is an emergency and I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t absolutely need your help.”
Betty bit her lip as she fumbled with her coat. She sighed. “This was never your fault. Don’t apologize.”
“It's not yours, either.” he said. “It’s fucked up, and we both got screwed over, but in the very least, can we still be friends?”
“I would really like that.” Betty said. She toed her shoes on and grabbed the folder to shove under the mattress. Her soul felt light from saying the first true thing in weeks. The feeling lingered for a moment. But as she stood up, inspecting the seam of where the mattress meet bedframe, dread weighed heavy in the soles of her feet.
—
Get Up.
He remembered the way his hand shook as he twitched his fingers into a snap. He remembered the flames reflected in blue eyes as they watched him, face fixed in a perfect display of horror. Ms. Potts. She was there, wasn’t she?
Or was that Mary Parker?
—
Tony was gone when Pepper got home. She knew this. She knew that Tony had a late-night meeting with a lawyer to prepare for a custody battle. It didn’t make the house any less depressing, though. Did he leave on purpose?
This - all of this- was her fault.
Happy was in the guest room, asleep, and Morgan had long since been put to bed. The cabin was washed in shades of gray from the white and blue mosquito lamp outside. When she turned the right way, the light caught in the jewels of her dress and refracted across the room. Pepper’s head fell into her hands. The speech was a total wash.
Without warning, an unmistakable desire, a calling, even, fell onto Pepper's lap. She couldn’t do this anymore. The cabin was comfortable, too comfortable. It let her fall into this slump, one that a better-versed specialist may classify as depression. One day, Peter was going to come home. This was something they couldn’t avoid. She couldn’t let that be the first time she will see him since the Blip.
That thing she told May- she began as she meant to go on- what of it? What of any of the woman that May Parker befriended was reflected in the person she was today? There was this awful caricature of Pepper that crawled inside her skin and lived as her ever since May died. It was almost as if in the split second that Pepper ducked inside on the back porch, weeks ago, Pepper’s soul lingered in the rocking chairs beside her best friend and drifted off in the breeze with her last breath.
Before she could fully process her actions, she was across the room, pulling a crew neck over her dress and grabbing the keys to a pick-up truck in the backyard- one of Tony’s passion projects he bought before the Blip to fix up. By the door was a pair of muddy boots she wore when feeding Tony’s Alpaca- another one of his eccentric, post-Blip choices- before slipping out the door into the cool night. Walking to the truck was almost as arduous as sifting through the steel beams and dusty air of Tony’s compound.
The pale moonlight made her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel all the more obvious. As the sounds of the night shifted from crickets to cars, rustling to rumbling, equanimity to electricity, she drew closer to a fluorescent “A” in the sky, to May’s kid, who was now her son.
And most of all, she would finally face what she had done.
—-
Voices. He registered voices of all types. Some were dark and sharp. Others were lighter, gruff. Some had a metallic, feminine lilt. Others were tired.
Some of them were his.
You remember it, right? Don’t you? You must.
You’ve been out too long, kid. Get Up.
Get Up.
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And then there was a voice he hadn’t heard before as he drifted through states of awareness. She- because it had to be a she- spoke very softly, as if afraid.
“Has he always looked this bad?”
“No.” The cold, metallic voice replied. Peter liked it, though. This one was logical. She spoke plainly of hard to grasp things. Subconsciously, he had heard all about brain scans and neuroimaging and metabolic rates all during this time. She liked to address him, too. Peter.
“He looked worse.” The metal replied.
“Oh.” The second woman’s voice was like honey and cinnamon. Soft, with sharp inflections.
“You haven’t come to the Medbay since April.” Metal pointed out.
“Morgan needed at least one parent to be there full time.” Honey Cinnamon said back. “SI needed me to take the reins.”
Metal hummed.
“You don’t know what it’s like.” Honey Cinnamon said. “Grieving them was hard… this is harder.”
“My sister came back in the middle of a road. She was five meters in front of a moving car.” Metal said. “That is hard. Peter is alive.”
“Oh, God.” Honey Cinnamon said. “Why are you here? Your family-”
“Tony and I have trust issues.” Metal said. “I don’t start jobs that I don’t finish. Part of my ego wants to be responsible for saving him. Pick whichever you would like.”
Silence.
“The truth is, I’m scared to go back to Korea.” Metal said. “I never went home for those five years. It was easy to stay here. My mother had passed before the Blip; my sister and her nieces were my only family left there. My friends and colleagues were either dead or mourning. It is not my home anymore.”
He registered beeping. The sound of it. Incessant.
“I had no idea.”
“I’m not usually an open book. You’re lucky that I’m excited for company that isn’t your husband or his friends.”
There was a strong antiseptic smell in the air that lingered in the back of his nose and created a dull ache.
“Peter’s my primary patient right now, but I’ve been hired to provide care for the Avengers, plural. If you didn’t see me for a follow up on your minor wrist fracture, you should have seen someone else, and you didn’t. Why not, Pepper?”
“Helen-” Honey Cinnamon’s voice was sharp.
“Tony’s worried about you. I am, too. You were in a warzone, Pepper, with your family.”
“I’m fine, Helen.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Pepper, and you showed up like a ghost begging to see him. Where is Morgan?”
“She’s with Happy.” Honey Cinnamon sighed. There was a metallic scraping ground. There was a scratchy blanket on top of Peter. There was beeping. “I wouldn’t just leave her.”
“I know that.” Metal said. “I know that. But you can understand why I’m concerned?”
“And you can understand that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter? I’m wearing a fucking ball gown. I think I’m fine.”
Peter’s own voice begged him to get up. He could hear. He could understand. He listened.
Peter’s first few breaths felt compulsory, as if oxygen was being sucked into his lungs against his will. The colors in the room spun in a disorientation of oversaturated shapes, twisting and overlapping in an awful kind of way. If his senses had ever been dialed to 11, this was like being dialed to 100. He could feel everything; almost everything.
His eyes didn’t as much as flutter open as much as shoot down into the creases of his skin; the air stung as he looked around. The world slowly began to make sense.
There was a woman there with him. Her hair was messy and she wore an old sweatshirt. He fought for control of his throat, and managed in an impressive display of control to release his gasps with phonetic quality.
“Mom?” Peter gaped. Her mouth was moving, but there was a slight distortion to his vision, as if the neural pathways responsible for interpreting light into concepts hadn’t been active for quite some time. Maybe they hadn’t.
“It hurts.” He said again, processing the speech after he said it. His mom’s face fell into pieces; she spoke again, looking at the door expectantly, before reaching to hold Peter’s hand. He watched the movement in apathy. He couldn’t feel it, just the pain.
For some reason, above all else, that frustrated him the most; not the pain, not the disorientation, not even the growing nausea that he couldn’t ignore any longer. He longed to hold her hand; but twitching his fingers yielded nothing. It lay there, limp. He shifted his head to his right side with the intention of moving his right arm to lay atop his left; holding his mother’s.
There was nothing there.
His arm was gone. A cold rush traveled down his chest as something in the middle of his ribcage flared into an awful kind of pain. He moaned in an attempt to be heard over the quickening beeping piercing the air- where was his arm? His arm? Peter had an arm, he used to have an arm, he knew it.
He seized control of his abdomen to prop himself up, but nothing happened; Peter didn’t know it, but his muscles had atrophied slightly in his rest. He flopped slightly like a fish. Tears filled his eyes. His mouth opened and closed slightly.
There was another woman in the room. Her hair was straight and black, her coat was long and white. She moved with insect precision to adjust the monitors in the room. Peter didn’t know what they did; he couldn’t even process the question in his state. Her mouth moved quickly too, and over the slow beeping he began to register a soothing tone.
He became very tired. The coldness in his chest dissipated. The hand holding his left tightened.
Darkness, again.
—--
Harry remembered the days leading up to the Blip almost more clearly than the last few weeks of his life. It was one of those weeks where everything felt sharper, more potent; almost like the days leading up to Christmas, but slightly more sinister. That, or hindsight was a bitch.
Either way, that period of his life was marked with a deep sense of teenage melancholy- he had just transferred for the fifth time in his high school career. A poorly concealed burner phone ensured that his dad was now aware of his minor brush with some of the harder illicit substances, so he was enrolled in a tidy little under-the-table rehab program instead of any extracurriculars that would actually help him advance his career.
Worst of all, his arm itched terribly from another one of his father’s pharmaceutical cocktails that he and Dr. Connors had been developing, which, if not outwardly stated, was incredibly hypocritical of Norman given Harry’s current relationship with drugs. If he wasn’t fully aware that his father’s research was being indirectly financed by over half of the senate, then he would have been a little worried. Instead, he was just annoyed. Thanks to the twenty he had slid to some asshole during lunch, a blunt was his solution to take the edge of the burn away.
And then there was Michelle Jones.
She was someone who had grabbed his attention since his first day at Midtown, which had been three days prior. He had this game of taking the first day at each school to fully compartmentalize the social ecosystem he was working with. People, as it turned out, were very predictable. You said the right things, you offered the right incentives, you put in just enough effort, and they would eat right out of your hands. Not Michelle, though. She was like him. Sharper, more aware than the average blundering teenager; she was one of the few people who would truly matter in the next twenty years. And now, she was staring at him with her arms crossed and nose turned up, as if she had smelled something foul. Harry considered the blunt in his hand. Maybe she had.
“Are you going to lecture me?” Harry asked sweetly, before taking another drag. Michelle looked at him long and hard.
“No.” She said, and crossed the length of the concrete platform to sit beside him. Above them, a few hairpin drops of rain began to patter against the bleacher benches.
“You weren’t at practice today.” She said after a moment. Harry blew out a cloud.
“I won’t be here long enough for it to matter.” He said, watching her with a lazy type of interest as she began to unzip her backpack to reveal a drawing pad.
“So dramatic.” She shook her head and idly began throwing lines on the paper. A lone raindrop managed to fall between the benches and land on the far corner. She brushed it away. “Have you ever considered doing something with Daddy’s fortune, or are you planning to waste away on a Caribbean island?”
“Daddy doesn’t have a fortune, thanks to Tony Stark.” Harry corrected. “So I think I’ll just settle for something Baltic.”
“Very economical of you.”
Harry shrugged. Michelle was the kind of girl the teachers hated, because she couldn’t be paid to care about the social realm or rules of high school, but was too damn smart to seriously punish. They couldn’t risk scaring her off with anything worse than detention, because who wins all their awards? Midtown was a MIT prep course masquerading as the normal high school experience. They needed Michelle more than Michelle needed them. That’s why Harry liked her so much.
“Peter and Ned might be losers, but they’re good people.” She said, “I don’t sit with them at lunch, but we usually end up at the same table. You should join us.”
“Michelle, they’re children.” He laughed. Her head tilted slightly towards him, shifting her curls from her eyes to reveal daggers.
“Yeah? So are we.” She said. The lines on her sketchbook began to layer, forming a blurry suggestion of a figure.
“No.” He said wistfully. A drag and a puff later, he added, “We’re different.”
The pencil stilled. “Harry, we are nothing alike.”
“My dad has some charity event in two weeks, do you want to go?” Harry asked. “It's supposed to solve world hunger, I know you care about that shit.”
“Why would I go with you?” She asked nonchalantly. Her pencil began looping again. A drag and a puff.
“Because you’re self-aware and I’m insanely attractive.” Harry shrugged. “We’re a match made in heaven.”
“I already have plans.”
“I didn’t even tell you what day it was.” Harry complained.
“You’re right.” Michelle said. “Let me know what day it is so I can arrange to be busy.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re an asshole?” Harry asked. “I’m being genuine here.”
“Three times today, if you count Mr. Gonzalez calling me a bitch under his breath.” Michelle said. She began to erase stray lines.
“That’s cheating.” Harry said. “Twice. You’ve been called an asshole twice. Which is not nearly enough, in my opinion.”
“Did I hurt your feelings? I guess you’re not used to being told no.” MJ said with faux sympathy, holding up her sketchbook to reveal a near perfect depiction of Harry’s scowl. “Do I need to add tears?”
“You’re something else, Michelle.” Harry said thoughtfully, after a few seconds of silence.
“My friends call me MJ.” She said, throwing the sketchbook back into her backpack. She zipped it and stood up.
“I don’t have friends.” He said.
“Give it a try.” Michelle said. She stuck her hands in her pockets. “New school, new you, and all that.”
She walked away, not knowing that hours later, his father would die, and the very next day, so would she.
And now, the memory played over and over again in his head as he stepped out of the ballroom of Feast and into the cool night air. Girlfriend? She was Peter’s girlfriend now. Well, that explained how she and Leeds got an invite to May Parker’s memorial. It also confirmed what he had been suspecting for a while. Parker was awake, being harbored in some off-the-books Stark property until he was at full strength and ready to go on a media parade to postpone the inevitable: conviction.
Was the Michelle he met years ago a fiction, or was the Michelle he met tonight one? He scratched his right arm as he hailed a taxi. Where the hell was Betty? He looked like a fool without her, hanging off the edge of the bar. His head felt disorganized; a part of him was beginning to regret taking advantage of the open tab. He needed Betty. He needed to go back in time. He needed to be in his father’s lab, and finish the complement to whatever he shot in his arm five years ago. It was beginning to wear off; he could feel it.
Where was Parker?
A taxi cab appeared before him, Harry’s legs moved without instruction to deposit him in the back seat. He should be going back to Queens, but Manhattan tumbled out of his mouth before he could say otherwise. The lights began to blur during the drive. Whatever clarity possessed him in the ballroom was long gone.
A part of him had wished he had gotten to take Michelle to that gala, but she was right. She was a child. There was an immature optimism present in the very core of her personhood that Harry had grown out of in their time apart. What used to feel so empowering about the age seventeen was just pathetic when observed from older eyes. As it turned out, after being freed from the prison of high school, everything that made Michelle, well, Michelle… lost its spark.
“Here.” He said, just as the taxi passed the edge of Midtown Manhattan. “Get me out.”
“Are you sure?” The driver asked in a soft voice. “You don’t look too good, kid.”
Harry’s eyes flickered to the driver. He was older, in his late fifties. Taped to his glove compartment was a picture of his family, with a young man who looked slightly younger than Harry.
“I’m not him.” Harry said, and threw a wad of cash at the driver. He pulled on the handle.
“What?” He asked, but Harry slammed the door shut immediately after climbing out. He stuck his hands in his suit jacket and began wandering. At first he followed the alleyways leading him to the giant “A” emblazoned in the void, but quickly lost interest, and walked until the architecture shifted from steel to brick. The first few harpin drops of rain began to pierce the air, and he couldn’t help but to think of Michelle and the bleachers. He could kill for a blunt right now.
The hairpin droplets shifted into a gentle downpour which blurred the halos of street lights.
Very soon, he realized, there was a woman walking towards him. Her skin was pale, and her hair blended in with the darkness. She walked with a self-righteous purpose. She wore a Stark lanyard.
Harry didn’t remember much after that.
—
Pepper stared at Peter’s body, lifeless once again. His face was pale again, save for a light pink tint brought on by his panic. She squeezed his hand, blinked the tears from her eyes.
“What was that?” She turned to Helen, whose countenance was schooled into strict balance.
“I don’t know.” Helen said softly. “From what I was getting from brain scans, he wasn’t capable of waking up yet.”
Pepper heard Helen laugh for maybe the first time. “He has too much of your husband in him. Stubborn. Loud.”
Pepper laughed, too. There was a giddy feeling in her chest. She needed to call Tony. “Yeah.”
“I’m going to call Stephen, you call Tony.” Helen delegated. Her tone was serious again. “I don’t think this is strictly empirical anymore; I want to do another round of scans. We need to figure out if it's even ethical to allow him to be awake right now.”
Pepper nodded. It was all she could do. She watched Helen step out of the room, no doubt to retrieve her phone, and Pepper pulled hers out. She swiped until she found Tony’s name and hesitated.
A part of her felt a twisting, deep shame at being here while Tony was not, being able to look Peter in the eyes while Tony could not. It wasn’t like she had been looking over him night or day like Tony, or Sam, Bucky, and Helen. She got lucky- she always did. She was lucky enough that someone picked up the gauntlet, she was lucky enough the kid from the gala wasn’t violent, and she was lucky to have stumbled into the tower just as Peter chose to grace the world with his consciousness.
Pepper was staring at Tony’s name still when Helen returned back into the room. She was wearing a raincoat instead of her white coat.
“Stephen is an asshole.” Helen said shortly. “Silencing my phone isn’t something he gets to do. I’m going to go to him directly; he lives nearby. Is Tony on his way?”
Pepper stared for two seconds. She made a choice. “Yes. As fast as he can.”
Helen smiled; the action allowed the creases in her face to be that more evident. She was tired. “Good. Good. I’ll be back soon. I’m sorry to leave you like this.”
She shut the door behind her. Moments later, rain began to patter against the window.
—
It was cold outside. Unusual for this late in the spring; there was almost a compressive hand over New York, pressing the rain into the skyline and grinding with its palm. A pervasive cold had occupied a good portion of the evening, and there was no sign of the current rain letting up. Droplets ran down Daredevil’s back, joining glassy pools which his feet disturbed. Without meaning to, he first drew towards Queens- evidently, Stark’s words had worn off on him. After the man had left, he couldn’t get into his suit fast enough. But now the evening was beginning to wind down, and the fine line between Midtown Manhattan and Hell’s Kitchen was where he found himself when he stumbled upon a crime scene.
In front of him was someone of a leaner build; his breaths came out in frantic gasps as his victim lay at his feet. Copper stained the air the same way blood was staining the concrete. Matt frowned. He sounded animalistic.
“Step away from the body, kid.” Matt said. Despite the rain, his grip on his baton was firm.
“Does this look like your business?” The kid bit back. His feet sliced through puddles as he stepped closer.
“Rude.” Matt said. He stood his ground, even as the kid advanced. “Clearly you haven’t been to this part of town recently.”
“It’s a dump, for one.” The kid said. His voice echoed off the walls of the alley. It was hard to pinpoint him. “What the hell are you supposed to be?”
“If I tell you my name, you’ll make fun of me.” Matt said. “So let’s cut to the chase. Who's the lucky lady?”
It was a good guess; his words drew an immediate reaction from the kid. “She’s one of Stark’s doctors. She’s already dead, by the way. So you can stop acting like you want to rush in and be the hero.”
The longer he talked the better idea Matt got of the alley. To his left there was a dumpster, half full with the lid open. The right was open save for three metal trash cans. The kid was equal paces closer to Matt as he was away from the doctor. Matt elected to draw close to the right in slow, measured paces. Combined with the rain, he couldn’t determine if the woman’s heart was beating. There was conviction in the kid’s voice, though. He feared the worst.
“Why do we hate Stark?” Matt asked. If anything, this would be a good literature review for the upcoming case.
“Why would anyone like him?” The kid asked. “He’s harboring criminals.”
“Captain Rogers was pardoned for his crimes, as was Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson.” Matt said. “I think their case has more nuance than you would like to believe.”
“I don’t care about them.” The kid said. “I mean Peter Parker. He’s a murderer.”
“And what does that make you?” Matt gestured to the body. “She doesn’t look too good.”
“This was… You don’t understand.” The kid paused. His heart rate picked up. “I thought she was Michelle.”
“Who is Michelle?” Matt asked softly. His mind cycled through several scenarios. A mother, aunt, friend, girlfriend? Or maybe the motive was financial… a landlord collecting debt, a woman who moved into his home during the Blip…
“It doesn’t matter.” The kid shut down. “I need to… you didn’t see this.”
“I assure you, that’s not a problem.” Matt said. He shifted the baton in his hand. “But I can’t just let you go.”
“You sound like a comic book character.” The kid said. The question threw Matt off.
“I’m just matching the energy.” He shrugged. He had a very close range on where the kid was. He was disorientated, emotionally unattached. His attacks would be erratic and aggressive. Matt tightened his grip, stepped forward and then-
A sharp force to his chest. Matt’s back was on the concrete; cold wetness seeped in. No average mugger should move that fast and that forcefully. He was enhanced. Matt got to his feet and swung at the kid as he went in to punch him again. Baton met bone; he heard the puddles ripple as the kid was thrown by the force several feet away.
“Hell of a punch.” Matt said.
“Hell of a stick.” the kid said. Matt heard him wind up for another hit, the sweet ring of metal as it sliced through air- he had the edge of his blade between his fingers. Matt snapped his left arm out and felt the baton meet the soft part of the kid’s elbow. He was flung back again. Matt pursued to where the kid should be on the ground, but despite the blow, he was already up and ducking away.
The air was cut again, and then there was a line of white pain spanning up Matt’s arm. His heartbeat was fluttering from several paces in front of him, just waiting for Matt to react.
The kid slashed him. Matt adjusted his grip on the batons. Any sympathy he had for this kid, whatever his story was, now dissipated. His jaw was set. His balance shifted.
The woman- who Matt had, with shame, forgotten- released a shuddering gasp, and the split second in which Matt’s attention shifted towards her, the kid used whatever strength he had to sprint off into the night.
Matt should have followed him. He’ll torture himself over the what-ifs for years to come. His hesitation wasn’t fruitful- by the time he crossed the length of the alleyway to reach her, he could tell her heart had just beat for the last time.
Still, he knelt by her side. She was wearing a plastic raincoat which repelled the rain in a light tap. Matt’s movements were mechanical; he patted her lightly until he found a lanyard around her neck. Revent. Even slick with the rain, his fingers were able to glide across the slight dents along the bottom.
Dr. Helen Cho.