the beginning
As Peter Parker swings inside through his open window, clutching his chest viciously, he thinks to himself this must be what dying feels like. What May felt. What Mr. Stark felt. Ben. His mother. Father.
There are no bullet wounds, no scrapes from a knife, no blood, no bruising. No external damage. No, no wounds, not at all. Only, there is the vivid memory of May scorching through his mind, burning through the folds and crimps like a ball of fire, like an all-consuming venom slowly taking over him. Pain. What he feels in his mind, hands, skin, veins, under his tissue, and in the depths of his lungs, all over his chest like a forest fire, is pain.
He’s not proud to admit that he is absolutely and clearly not doing well in any aspect of life. Unopened GED books stand miserably on his desk with cracked spines and blurry drawings left from their previous owner. There is a splotchy brown and green mold creeping over the left corner of the ceiling. He is hungry, more like a constant state of being, just like how the fridge is always empty. He has to do laundry, set his alarm for his job in the morning, scrape himself off this carpet but he is tired. Too tired.
God. He is just so fucking tired. He is absolutely rundown with exhaustion from simply staying alive, taking one breath over another. Fucking exhausted.
He rolls around on his back and stares out of the window. This is the twenty-seventh night sky since May died. Twenty-seven sets of stars and constellations and smog that May will never get to see. He keeps reminding himself because if he does not, he knows he will indulge in a little fantasy of acting as if things are alright and May will appear in the kitchen with a burnt tray of cookies at any moment. He has to remind himself, constantly, all the fucking time, that May is gone.
From very far, he can barely see the shiny lights of the Stark Tower which, even after seeing it 26 times, still feels surreal. He feels like if he doesn’t talk to someone, just vent for the tiniest bit, ask for the simplest advice, maybe just feel the warmth of somebody’s skin and see their smile, he will be ripped open at the seams.
It’s weird to be the keeper of a secret that wasn’t supposed to be his, and it’s excruciating to know there is not a single person in the whole wide world that’s equipped to handle his agony. Hell, there isn’t a single person that knows him. Who is he supposed to ask about how the fuck Tony survived the Snap and why there is a mural of Captain Marvel in each street?
Actually, he thinks, that’s not even the question. The question is, who the actual ever-loving fuck is he supposed to tell him how badly he fucked up the balance of the multiverse to somehow end up in this timeline where Mr. Stark is alive?
Currently, his list of things that were supposed to happen goes like this:
1. Nobody remembers me. (Check)
2. May is dead. (Check)
3. Except for Peter Parker’s existence, life is the same. (Not-at-all-fucking-check)
Yeah. That’s about it. Until it’s not.
When Peter said, everybody who knew I was Spider-man before Mysterio , he never thought of the possibility of magic traveling through what he assumes are realms of life and death. Of course, he did not expect the damn magic to wake the dead. That’s why, as he first found himself mindlessly roaming the streets of New York after Strange conducted his spell, he really didn’t expect to see the overwhelming amount of screens showing the miraculous reappearance of a very-confused looking Tony Stark in his battered Iron-man suit, the same way he looked at the battlefield the day he died.
The next few days all of the news channels and newspapers were flooded with every single detail of this “miracle”, flashing with titles like Iron-man beats the Death! and Stark back from the grave , and Peter trying to understand how could Strange’s magic fail to send Mr. Stark to his correct realm. And, as a result, he came to conclude that he simply could not understand it.
The very well-rehearsed and intricately planned press release by Ms. Potts stated that Mr. Stark had been in hiding to heal from his injuries and keep his family safe, and the public knowledge of his death was established to protect him and his family in these vulnerable times. As a result, she asked for privacy and respect in these hard times for their family as Tony was still being nursed back to health with his family. The joy, strength, and authority in her voice were so prominent Peter almost believed her. Almost.
Discarding Ms. Potts, the best theory Peter has is that as he messed up the time and space the first time Doctor Strange conducted the spell, Mr. Stark somehow got trapped between realities and as a result, he came to the future instead of staying in his own timeline. Or maybe, Peter has lost his mind. At this point, he can’t even tell.
One thing he knows for sure is Mr. Stark doesn’t remember who he is either.
That’s why looking straight into the blinding lights of the Stark Tower sends another spasm through his aching chest. Mr. Stark is alive, but he doesn’t know him.
MJ doesn’t either and so does Ned. Happy. Morgan. Ms. Potts. Mr. Delmar. His science teacher. Principal Morita. Steven. Nobody knows him. Nobody.
Perhaps that’s why he finds it increasingly easier to lie and deceive people. It adds another line of ache to his chest, but he does it nonetheless. He keeps his name, Peter Benjamin Parker, but everything else is different. He is 21 (which is easily disproved by his skinny frame and sunken face, but alas, he persists), a recent graduate of MIT, who has lost his parents recently. He is not proud of his lies, but somehow he has to keep this dingy room and have some money for food.
It’s easy to alter records after the Snap as thousands of documents have already been destroyed in the catastrophe, and universities encourage sending appeals for those whose graduations or terms have been lost. So, he simply fakes it. Then gets a job at a pharmaceutical company with an excuse of a salary, barely enough to cover the room and food. So, he is managing.
At least, that’s what he tells himself.
*
His intricate balance of survival tips over on a random Thursday afternoon as he gets an alert from Karen about a fire in a kindergarten, which is not very typical but not the most insane story he’s heard, except the kindergarten is the high-security non-technology insanely rich famous children kindergarten where Morgan Stark spends two days a week, Mondays and Thursdays, under the name of Morgan Collins-Hogan.
Peter would admit ashamedly that he knows the way to the kindergarten like the back of his hand. It’s surrounded by tall trees and soil and dirt and animals, a promise to give a taste of nature to the kids forever trapped between the concrete and steel of New York City.
The children seem happy, the teachers are nice, and there are more security measures than what Peter had seen in the SHIELD headquarters, so Peter approves of the place. Morgan is safe and happy. Still, that doesn’t stop him from swinging by every day to make sure she is doing fine. Just in case. Just like how he stops by to spend money he doesn’t have on stale coffee where MJ works.
“Karen,” he screams as he swings between buildings on his way to the kindergarten, “status report, please.”
Her robotic voice echoes in his ear. “There seem to be children trapped on the second floor, but the officials already arrived and started the evacuation.”
The statement doesn’t exactly subside his anxiety as he frantically keeps swinging through the tall buildings, merely missing scraping himself each time. He doesn’t exactly mind that his help may not be needed because if he doesn’t feel helpful for a single second today, this feeling of uselessness gnawing on his stomach will eat him away. He has to help someone.
Before he sees the building, he smells the faintest tinge of smoke and a firetruck’s blaring alarm. A second later, the kindergarten shows up with several people and children lined up in between the ambulance and fire trucks.
“Karen, scan the building,” he breaths out, feeling like the swing here slightly knocked the breath out of him. He assumes the lack of proper nutrition and sleep doesn’t help either, but he’s been feeling older and weaker than ever lately, even worse than when he was seven years old and Ben had to carry him downstairs in their old apartment because his asthma would get so bad he couldn’t climb the stairs. Even weaker than when he was dead. Snapped. Washed away.
“There are four children and a teacher trapped in the fourth-floor corner room. The firemen currently cannot reach the floor,” Karen reports calmly.
“Okay,” he tells himself, “okay, okay, okay. That’s like, three trips, right? They would be okay for a few minutes.”
“Nobody seems to be in immediate danger,” Karen confirms.
Peter lands on the roof of the building and scales down to the window Karen described. The window is cracked open, and an elderly woman is trying to open it fully with her shoulder.
“Get back,” Peter shouts, and everybody looks at him in surprise for a full second before scrambling back. The teacher holds the children close to her chest and takes a step to the side just before Peter kicks the window open. He can see Morgan’s wavy hair and her scrunched little face, covered by a piece of cloth.
“Alright, I can’t carry you all at once, so I’ll take you down two by two. Alright?” he asks children who seem either too shell-shocked to cry or are bawling their eyes out. The teacher pushes the kid in her arms forward, and the child’s head lolls back, his face a sick, ashy color. For a second, Peter stands still and listens to the boy’s breathing in fear, and almost feels a strange kind of fear that he’s not ready to face yet.
May. May’s head. How it felt so heavy when she fell to her knees. How her face was stricken with ash and horror and pain. May. Her hair in bloody clumps and her body covered in blood and May bleeding out and May-
He snaps back into reality as the boy’s eyes open merely for a second, before tiredly shutting back again. “He has asthma,” the teacher urges, and Peter is out the window before she is done. He lets an EMT take the child from his arms, and immediately swings himself back to the same room.
He lunges forward to take Morgan, but the child pushes her two friends instead. “Go, Zainab,” she urges quietly, “it’s alright.”
Peter almost cries.
For a second, he feels conflicted as the thick smoke becomes more prominent with each second and he just wants to get Morgan out of there, but he gets out before he has a chance to doubt himself more. “Hang on tight,” he tells the children wrapped around his torso. Just as the children safely land, he hears the sound of tires rolling around and a car coming to a sudden stop. He doesn’t need to see it to know it is Happy Hogan’s driving.
Heartbeats. Crying. Ms. Potts. Crying. Happy’s steps. He runs.
The next time he is in front of the window, Morgan is shouting at him animatedly, pointing at the figure laying on the floor. There is too much input for Peter to process her words, somehow he manages to burn the back of his arm and there are children crying and parents crying and people screaming and cars honking and there is the faintest hint of May’s voice, but he can still sense her fear. “It’s okay,” he says quickly, “after you, I’ll come back for your teacher as well.”
“No,” Morgan screams indignantly, “her first.”
“Morgan, I-“ he starts but sees the huge drops of tears in the girl’s eyes, and instead of losing more time on insisting, he hauls the fainted teacher and jumps out again. It must have only taken a minute, but Peter still feels like he’s left Morgan up there to die, just like how he left May alone and he couldn’t save him and how everything was dark and grey and crumbling down when May died, but Morgan is alive.
He takes the girl in his arms and simply hugs her for a second, perhaps the first human contact he’s had in the last month or so, and it suddenly, deep inside and outside, from his fingertips to capillary vessels, hurts so bad he sheds a singular, weak tear. “It’s okay now,” he says to himself more than the child in his arms, “I got you, Morgan. It’s okay.”
That’s his first mistake.
The second is closing his senses for long enough not to hear the sound of the familiar repulsors closing in. He sets Morgan on the ground but the child doesn’t untangle herself from him until two sets of hasty footsteps approach them. One, Ms. Potts, the soft clicks of her heels on the ground. Steady and assuring. Peter can almost smell her fear, but she stands still and upright like a statue as she stops right in front of Morgan.
Then, more hasty, anxious, fearful steps, as if struggling to put one foot in front of the other faster. Sound of metal retracting, and a heart beating fast. Bah-bump. Bah-bump. A rhythm so familiar to Peter it burns more than his actual wound.
Morgan retracts herself to bury herself in her mother’s arms, and Peter is left to stare deep into Mr. Stark’s eyes as everybody else is too occupied with everything else. He wishes he could say at that moment the world stopped and there was only the two of them, but everything, every single crying, and breathing and drop of blood keep going, and Peter is once again painfully reminded that the time only stopped for him as each and every clock keeps ticking.
Only for May and him.
“Hello, underoos,” the man says quietly, and Peter, stupidly, allows himself to hope for a second. Just for the briefest second, he hopes that Mr. Stark remembers. That’s his third mistake.
“I’m glad we can finally meet officially,” the man tells him kindly.
Peter stares at him. Long and painful. In moments like this, his mask comes in handy as no mimic and act he could put together would ever conceal the depths of the misery he knows his eyes are showing.
“Thank you,” Morgan says quietly from the arms of her mother.
“It’s nothing,” Peter brings himself to say. He is burning. Peter. He is burning from inside out like a match and like a cigarette. Burningscorchingburningcrumblingfallingapart-
“Your shoulder seems hurt,” Ms. Potts points out with genuine concern.
“It’s alright,” Peter squeals, trying to hide the burn and the pain and the silent screams waiting patiently to slip out of his tongue.
“We can help you with that,” Mr. Stark adds.
Peter shakes his head, still feeling too lethargic to even speak.
“Are you sure you are okay?”
“I should go,” he says hastily. He wonders whether Mr. Stark can see how his eyes are begging them to let him stay, to look at them just for a single second more.
“I’ll tell you what, kid,” Mr. Stark urges, “drop by the tower some time. Maybe you can tell me more about your webs. We can take a look at your suit as well.”
Peter disappears before answering, but he stays for long enough to look into the man’s eyes to see he is genuine and long enough to forget about everything and indulge in this one little treat. That’s his biggest mistake.