Grown up.
Peter woke up-once he had left Miles to his parents-to another phone call, and then silence. His phone screen was filled with forgotten-hour old voicemails, and text messages he wasn’t going to acknowledge. He felt like an idiot. Curled up under his coat in a freezing alleyway, trying to suffocate whatever lonely part of him wanted to answer the call-regardless of the fact that it would be Beck-or someone else trying to trick him.
Maybe EDITH was still under his control. Maybe that’s how he knew who Peter was-and why he was following him. Karen was the only voice he had heard…in a while actually that knew who he was-maybe all of the A.I. he’s met are the same.
“Karen? Who knows where I am?”
“FRIDAY is the only current system with access to your location Peter. Would you like me to-”
“No-No, that’s okay. I was just wondering.” Maybe Beck invaded Stark Industries. Maybe there was an alien impersonating Mister…him, and they wanted everyone who really knew him dead.
Did Peter really know him? It doesn’t really feel like it.
Everyone knows someone a different way. It’s just how it is. Peter wasn’t going to ruin his memory by overthinking. He had an emergency on his hands. He saw the car parked outside of his apartment building. It was the same car he had been picked up in on the day he met the man. Just another mistake on Beck’s hands, Mister…Mister Stark didn’t drive. He told him in a lab one day that him thinking took priority.
Lab days were the best. It’s too bad that he’ll never have one again.
Maybe one day he’ll have enough to have his own lab.
No. No he won’t.
Yeah.
It’s not likely. He’ll probably live, and die in this suit-and then Karen will try to notify someone, and no one will be there to receive it. When he’s unmasked this time, there won’t be a face-legally anyway to put to the name, and the only people who’ll recognize him will be Miles, and his family-and that's only if he manages to keep them safe that long.
Why does everything always turn out like this?
Parker curse hits harder when you don’t have much to lose. That’s just how it is. Maybe one day he’ll manage not to endanger everyone who’s ever cared about him.
Everything would be better if Peter had snapped. He could have done it-and he was probably strong enough to survive it too. If not-well, that would have been an honorable death for someone who’d already condemned themself to heroism. If someone had been able to look into the future-and see who Peter would turn into-they probably would have suggested he snap instead of Mister Stark. Peter was replaceable. A seasoned hero, with a certain outlook? Not so much.
Mister Stark wouldn’t have trusted Beck, and gotten people killed. He wouldn’t have opened a crack in the multiverse, or had to lose his identity entirely, and he wouldn’t have almost died trying to bring it back. Mister Stark wouldn’t have let his aunt May die, or uselessly tried to fix villains-just because he wanted them to live-he would have been better for all of this. Much much better than Peter was.
Mister Stark said he wanted Peter to be better than him-and look at him now! He was sitting in an alleyway, because he was scared. Mister Stark wouldn’t be terrified of someone he fought-and defeated already. He wouldn’t be freezing in his suit, wrapped in a threadbare coat just because he saw a fake-dead-guy sitting in front of his building. He would have found Beck hiding nearby, and kicked his fucking teeth in.
He wasn’t Mister Stark. He was worse. It wasn’t his fault Mister Stark never saw that.
What if they hurt Miles, and his parents because he’s not in his apartment?
He was figuring this out. Beck probably found out about his identity from EDITH, and now he was somehow attached to FRIDAY too-or even worse Karen-that might explain how he got a location on him often enough-or maybe he was looking at private city records-
Maybe he was being paranoid. This all felt awfully paranoid.
He wasn’t being paranoid, he was being tactical. He was just tired, and anxious, and in desperate need of any information he could get.
He should be protecting them, instead of hiding in a icey-alley.
Yeah, he should.
Instead he was staring at unread messages, trying to convince himself that he was drifting toward opening it because it was manipulation. That’s all it was.
Mister Stark would be angry at him. Not whatever that was supposed to be. It was hardly convincing anyway.
What does ‘C’mon’ even mean?
Maybe he should go off the grid for a bit-just so he can curl up somewhere and figure this out with a full stomach-and maybe a heater to sit in front of.
Or maybe he should just tough it up, and at least try to be someone people would want to be saved by.
“Karen? Is there anyway for me to…to keep people from getting to me-suit wise?”
“Would you like me to disable contact with FRIDAY?”
“I-Yeah-uhm, Yes please?”
“I’m unable to do that Peter.”
Then why did she offer it?!
“Why?”
“You’ve already removed the nanny protocol from your suit system Peter. Do you want me to alert FRIDAY of your position-”
“No-No, thank you though. I’m-I’m good.” Nanny protocol was relieving before. Having anyone who can get past Happy-my password is password-Hogan and basic security can see his constant movements now that no one at Stark Industries was rooting for him was not. It was good that he got rid of it. It just made it a bit…scarier that Beck was still finding him somehow.
Maybe he put a bug on him?
Karen would know by now. Well, unless he already had control of Karen-if he had that Peter might as well just willingly step in front of a train again.
How does he keep finding him then?! How does Beck keep showing up wherever he goes-
Why was he being such a coward-he fought Thanos, and he wasn’t this scared. His stomach certainly wasn’t in knots when he was pulling that glove off his hand.
He knows why. He didn’t fight Thanos alone. He fought him with everyone. He wasn’t alone. He had people to help him. This isn’t like when he got trapped under that building, or when he fought the Vulture against Mister Stark’s wishes, and he still tried to make him be better. He has to fight Beck alone. This time’s going to be harder-Peter doesn’t even have a guy in the chair now. All he has is a couple of neighbors he continues to endanger, just so he can be selfish about having someone.
That’s exactly how it’s different. He’s alone, and he has noone that can help him without getting hurt-he tried to tell Officer Davis that maybe they should be careful because ‘robberies’ and ‘violent scammers’ had been on the loose, but he had just responded with ‘I wouldn’t worry about what you saw online Benjamin’. Peter shouldn’t have tried to warn a police officer about crime. He wouldn’t believe him-he had a police scanner. Peter-and Officer Davis-both knew that crime like that hadn’t increased-so now he was leaving them utterly defenseless-all because he was nervous about being in the dark!
He’s not ready to die fighting.
He’s going to die in this suit one day. Might as well die fighting, right?
It’s not like he had to die in the suit. He’s already a coward. He could run away. Never be Spider-Man again.
He was Spider-Man. He protected neighborhoods. That was his job. It was how he lived. The minute he put the suit on for the very first time? He was Spider-Man, and nothing would ever change that. If he quit, all the people who needed him would have noone-
All the people who needed him to save their bike.
There were other things too-he saved all kinds of people. When he first put on that suit, he gained a cities worth of responsibility, and now he couldn’t give it up just because he was ‘scared’. He was going to grow up-he was eighteen after all-and haul the responsibility he chose to take on.
He couldn’t abandon it now.
“Karen. I think I’m going back to my apartment.”
“Good for you Peter.”
If he could get up. Okay-yeah, now he was going back to his apartment.