Chapter 9
“Wake up.” It took Peter a second to blink his eyes open to Wade’s urgent and serious voice. Wade did not often use that voice, and as soon as Peter started to understand that something was wrong.
Their bedroom was quiet and dark, Wade fresh in from patrol. This was Peter’s favorite type of night, a box fan in the window blowing on him while he sleeps, taking up all of the space as sprawled across the bed.
It couldn’t have been that late, because Wade would usually be home by two in the morning on his solo patrol nights. As Peter woke up a little more, he started to feel that uneasy prickle at the base of his spine. The monotonous sound of sirens wailed down the street, the cool spring air settling in the room.
“What’s wrong?” Peter hastily shot up out of the blankets and really started to feel the goosebumps climbing his arms. Peter’s last week of high school lay in the week ahead. He had been studying for finals before he went to bed, tomorrow’s being calculus. That’s why Peter had slept tonight rather than patrol, a rare commodity in his life. A shudder climbed his spine as dread started to fill his thoughts.
“Stark Towers was attacked. Ten minutes ago, we need to go.” Peter flew out of bed as Wade held out his spider suit. The words took no time to process. His father’s tower was attacked.
“Who did it?” Peter’s response was immediate, the thought of his father being hurt shadowing his other emotions.
“Don’t know.” Wade responded as Peter finished up the last of his suiting up. Then they were out the window, Wade clinging to Spiderman as he whipped through the air. Small, shallow breaths entered Peter’s aching lungs.
“Is he hurt?” Peter asked over the sound of the rushing air, not really wanting to know the answer. Wade squeezed his arm tightly, knowing what the question was. Peter’s heart thrummed in his throat and his hands trembled as they reached to shoot his webs.
“I was on my way home when it happened. Heard it in Bushwick before I got the message from Hawkeye.” Tony had created a new paging system for the Avengers (and others) to use and gave one to Peter about a month ago in a brief, albeit anxiety-inducing meet up. They carried it around on patrol.
“Nothing else?” Peter made a sharp turn towards Midtown Manhattan, pushing himself a little harder to get there.
“CNN said there are confirmed casualties, none identified. First and second floors were bombed.” Peter swallowed the thick ball in the back of his throat. The closer they got to the building, the louder the sirens rang in the air. He could feel his heart beat in every limb, on every inch of his body. “It’s gonna be okay, Petey.” Wade breathed out, pressing his face into Peter’s back.
The tower came into sight and it was pretty obvious that the first couple of floors had been bombed. Fires roared from the windows so loudly that Peter swore he heard it from the sky. They landed close to the police officers.
“What happened?!” Peter asked, and one of the officers stepped up to explain.
“Green Goblin bombed the first two floors. Lots of bodies, fire burned so hot it incinerated the doormen.” Peter gasped. “They’re in there trying to deal with him now. Couldn’t tell who, though. Been a mess. Evacuating the fourth floor and up now, we were able to get everyone on the third out. Cleared out one staircase for people to go through.” The stream of people through the front door made Peter’s breath catch in his throat.
“Do you need help with the evacuation or the fighting?” Peter asked, praying that it was the ladder so he could see if his father was alive.
“The fighting.” The officer responded, gesturing his head. “They’re up towards the top. We’ve got the fire under control enough that we can get everyone out.”
Peter didn’t even wait to respond before he had started to make his way to the top with his webs. He didn’t even grab Wade, so nervous to see if Tony was up there, or if he was incinerated on the first floor with the rest of those people. He could hear fighting, hear the explosions of those stupid pumpkin bombs that Norman had.
The thought of Peter once again being fatherless after getting to know Tony was devastating. His heart was beating in his throat, bile rising in his esophagus, as thoughts ran wildly through his brain. It was almost an out of body experience, that apprehension of not knowing whether or not Tony was okay.
When he finally heard the familiar sound of his father’s repulsor rays, he let out a cry of relief.
Peter finally found a hole into the building, and was met with the sight of the battle.
Tony was up there, fighting. Peter felt guilty he hadn’t thought of Steve, but when he saw Steve he felt similar respite. He could join the fighting without thinking about losing another dad.
“Nice of you to join us!” Hawkeye shouted over the commotion, and Peter flipped his middle finger up. It was a giant mess. Norman had really done some damage to Tony’s building, but the fighting was brutal. Clint, Tony, Steve, Natasha, and now Peter were the main contenders of the battle. Wade showed up after a little bit, probably straightening out something with the police downstairs. Stephen eventually arrived, and he was a good addition to the team.
What followed was a chaotic, sloppy confrontation. Peter hadn’t seen a fight like this before, it felt like everyone was off their game, probably because it was the middle of the night. It finally boiled down to the point where Peter was able to web Norman’s feet to the ground multiple times, and although there was a good fight put up, Tony was finally able to point his blaster at him and stop him in his tracks. The fight around them came to a stop, and all eyes went to the middle of the room.
Peter’s heart stopped as he looked at Tony’s face, unadulterated rage in his eyes. He knew that something very bad was about to happen. Tony was about to kill.
Norman’s eyes met Peter’s. The hand pointed at his chest threatened Norman’s very existence on this Earth, and Peter tensed violently. He could taste the thickness in the air, see the twitch of Tony’s lethal weapon wrapped around his hand, feel the anger, hear every single beat of Norman’s heart. As the high pitched noise of Tony’s repulsor rays buzzed in Peter’s ears, he was forced to make one of the most important split-second decisions of his life.
Peter’s wrist flicked, shot his web, and pulled Tony’s firing weapon back all in a matter of milliseconds. Tony’s rays shot towards the ceiling, and as Peter jerked his hand back again, another shot was sent hurtling towards Peter. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wade make a move towards Tony, but there was nothing he could do about it now. In slow motion, the repulsor’s energy hit Peter in the leg, right below his knee, and burned through his suit to his skin. He suppressed the cry of pain as time started to flow faster, almost too fast, as Tony’s face turned confused.
“What are you doing?!” Tony cried out as he turned his body to confront Peter.
“You can’t-can’t kill him!” Peter’s exclamation was broken with a crack of his voice. Norman couldn’t die. He couldn’t do that to Harry, kill his father, when Peter had gone through that exact pain when Ben died. That pain he felt when he thought that Tony could have died in this attack. He would never cause that pain.
“CAN’T KILL HIM?!” Tony roared, and Peter took a step forward to defend himself. “I CAN KILL SOMEONE WHO HAS RUINED MY BUILDING, KILLED MY GUARDS-”
“Just bring him to jail!” Peter shouted back. Everyone in the room was still as ever, watching the situation unfold. Hawkeye and Natasha were behind Wade, who had stopped his advance on Tony because Peter stepped up. Steve stood at the door, too stunned to do or say anything.
“He’s escaped seven times-” Tony seethed, and in that moment, Peter realized he had never seen Tony this angry, this resentful. “He can not go back to jail. This has to end now.” Tony turned back towards Norman, who had also been shell-shocked by the whole situation that he hadn’t moved a muscle. Peter was yet again met with the pressure of making another choice, another god damn decision for him to betray his own moral code, or his father.
Peter’s webs connected with a piece of rubble before he flung it at Norman. Everyone in the room jumped at the movement, everyone except Norman who seemed to have known what Peter was doing. With the distraction, Norman was able to get out of the webs at his feet and jumped back to the edge of the destroyed room before he flung himself off, meeting his glider halfway to the ground and making his escape.
“THANKS PETEY-” Norman’s voice trailed off as he flew out of sight.
It all happened in less than five seconds, before anybody could even comprehend what was happening, but when it all settled, all hell broke loose.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” Tony screamed, louder than everyone else in the room who had also started to vocalize their displeasure. Peter flinched at the tone, at the intensity of his fury, but he had to stand his ground. He could not be the reason that Norman was murdered, but there was no way he could tell them that. He couldn’t even get his voice to work. Everyone started to put their two cents in.
The screaming and yelling around him intensified as Wade added in, trying to defend him in any way he could, but Peter didn’t - couldn’t - move from the spot he was in as Tony stormed over to him. Tony raised his hand, to do what Peter didn’t know, but Wade was immediately in between them.
“DON’T TOUCH HIM!” Wade shoved Tony backwards, and that had pushed Tony to the edge.
“Arrest them!” Tony barked at a bodyguard who had finally made his way up the burning building to help, as a couple of others followed behind. The first guard froze for a second, digesting the order to arrest Spiderman, before they started to advance forward.
“Should have NEVER let you run around New York playing superhero with no consequences, doing more harm than good-” Tony started, and as much as Peter didn’t want to admit it, the words stung to his core.
He felt frozen, glued to the spot he was in. It was like he had left this plane of existence and joined Stephen Strange in a different world. The dissociation gave him a brief moment of peace, of the idea that none of this was happening to him, and that everything was going to be okay.
Peter knew that was not what was happening. His father had just ordered him to be arrested, and said that he had done more harm than good. It was on the contrary, though. There was nothing more important to Peter than doing good. He would not kill. He would not let Tony kill.
“We need to go.” Wade grabbed Peter’s wrist, tugging, but Peter felt frozen. The bodyguards ran to apprehend them, and Wade knew he had to act quickly. He grabbed Peter by the shoulders, pulling him out of line of the guards and away from Tony. Hawkeye remained still, and Steve had somehow made his way over to Tony to protect him.
“NOW!” Wade’s voice shook Peter out of his trance. The direness of the situation struck Peter in the face, and he immediately conjured up an escape route. He had already been burned, badly in the leg now that he was back in his body and could feel, what would a little more fire hurt?
He grabbed Wade’s hand and pulled him over to the burning stairwell, jumping down the middle into the flames. He knew that the bomb had been detonated on the top floor of Tony’s penthouse suite and that the fire couldn’t have climbed down many floors, and he was right as they fell further into a safe area.
“Fuck.” Wade grumbled as they fell towards the bottom of the 93-story building, thankfully not on fire, and Peter shot a web at the bottom to catch them. It was a hard landing, but they were up in a matter of seconds.
“Out the door.” Peter muttered, giving the last of his energy into getting out of the building. They were met with a barrage of policemen, firemen, and SWAT teams at the ruined front of the building, but they were able to escape with no more than an off-handed comment. Peter sprinted down the street to the familiar subway station, over the police barriers and past the fare gates, Wade tailing close behind.
“Can’t go home.” Peter breathed out, and Wade nodded in agreement as they started their way down the subway tunnel. They could get a couple of stops down the line before anybody even entered the tunnel.
“Sister Margaret’s?” Wade asked, but Peter shook his head. “They know you live there.” Wade hadn’t lived there for months, but that was his last known residence.
“Mansion. Charles can help us.” Wade tried again, and Peter nodded. Charles would help them, because Peter would be able to show him why he did what he did.
They just made it to the X-men mansion before Peter collapsed in total exhaustion.