The woman stood on the sidewalk, with slumped shoulders and her head hanging low. Her hand was clutching something in her pocket, a phone, perhaps, or a key or a 5-dollar bill. She had the certain something of a person who was waiting for someone, someone important, someone she was either dreading or longing to see, someone who was running late.
Peter watched her for a while longer, allowing his eyes to zoom in until he could see everything, until it felt like he could smell the faint reminder of coffee in her breath and catch a glimpse of the panic in her eyes. Then he tore his gaze away, looking at the bypassing cars instead – bypassing, not slowing down and not coming to a halt in front of the woman, probably not even noticing her.
Stupid, he thought. So stupid. The woman was a stranger, someone he had never known and wouldn’t have ever wanted to know had he not been sitting on this rooftop on a cold evening in a noisy city after a truly horrible day. Usually he wouldn’t care about the woman. He wouldn’t spare her a second thought, had he not been so stupid. On a normal evening he would be swinging around town, maybe even land on this very rooftop, and he’d come to the obvious conclusion that the woman was waiting for a taxi, that she didn’t need his help, and that he should better look out for shop lifters and lost grandmas, unless, of course, he wanted to start his own cab company and give that lady a ride home. Maybe, no, certainly, that wasn’t even a bad idea. In fact, a career change, the thought of doing something normal, something that wasn’t way above his pay grade, was easily the best idea he had come up with all day.
But this wasn’t a normal evening. No, today he couldn’t just look away from the woman on the sidewalk without wondering if perhaps it wasn’t a taxi she was waiting for. Maybe she was scanning the street for a boyfriend or a girlfriend who should have picked her up an hour ago. Today his mind was filled with pictures of the woman’s tear-stained face when she'd finally pull her phone out of her pocket to send an angry or an annoyed or even a worried text, just to see a new headline pop up on the screen. She’d click on it with numb fingers, not yet shaking, and she’d read about a terrible incident on a ferry in NYC. After the first dramatic sentence of the article she’d realize that it wasn’t just a ferry, but the ferry that whoever she was waiting for had been on. Her hands would suddenly be too weak to hold her phone and she’d see it fall, fall, fall until the screen would shatter on the pavement. She wouldn’t care enough to pick it up because the newspaper had told her that there were so many injured, so many dead that they still hadn’t finished searching the water for the ones who had drowned.
Maybe, if Peter was lucky, she wouldn’t have got to the second part of the article, the one filled with clips of a man - a boy - in a stupid red suit, doing stupid stunts on a ship because he was too stupid to recognize a trap when he saw one. Peter could feel the taunting headlines swirl around his head, hurling insults and accusations and terrible, terrible truths at him. The tight ball of guilt in his stomach grew bigger and bigger, forcing its toxic way up his throat and into his mouth. It pressed tightly against his lips, almost escaping, but, despite his clocked nose and his throbbing eyeballs, he wouldn't allow that to happen because he didn’t deserve that relief, not when this was all his fault.
Peters legs felt heavy as he allowed them to swing freely off the edge of the roof he was sitting on. With every time that his feet banged against the concrete wall beneath him, the voice in his head telling him that he was the one to blame, he alone, weighed him down just a bit more, slowly pushing him closer to the edge. He didn’t try to get away, didn’t try to stop it because there was just no way this was going to be okay.
Long before he bothered to look up, he could hear another sound through the bangs and the stupids and the sirens that were still howling in the distance. Even as the roaring of the suit grew louder, even as Peter saw the red and yellow in the corner of his eyes, he kept his head down and his gaze fixed on the street. As soon as he’d look up, he’d have to speak. He’d have to find the words to somehow, miraculously fix this and he didn’t know how to do that without releasing the fiery ball of guilt sitting behind his teeth.
“Previously on Peter Screws the Pooch…” The words cut through the air like knives, freeing Peter from the obligation to think of something to say because Mr. Stark always spoke first. Always.
Peter heard the accusations Mr. Stark threw at him, listened intently, absorbed every word. He had been told to stay away from this. He had been told to keep a low profile, to search for lost dogs and eat his churros in silence. He had been told all of that.
And still, through the thick layer of guilt, Peter could feel the last bit of spite building up deep inside him. He smothered it violently because everything Mr. Stark was saying was true. The anger, the annoyance and the disappointment soaking their way through the biting sarcasm were more than deserved; they were his rightful punishment, and, oh, how they stung.
“Is everyone okay?”. Peter had muttered the question before he could stop himself, needing to hear that it wasn’t that bad, that there was some comfort left. The words left a sour taste in his mouth. He closed his eyes, waiting for the sting of whatever insult Mr. Stark would throw at him to rush through his body.
“No, thanks to you."
Peter's eyes snapped open and, even though he knew Mr. Stark was right, knew it, knew it, knew it, the anger inside of him carefully lifted its head.
“No, thanks to me?” Red was filling the edges of Peter's vision. The anger unleashed itself, pulling him to his feet, loosening his tongue and pushing the guilt back down, far, far, far, to some dark place where the only reminder of its sting was a faint tingle. He was aware that he was speaking too loudly and gesticulating too widely to ever, ever be taken seriously. He knew that he was being disrespectful and stubborn and everything else you weren’t supposed to be. At the back of his mind he could hear the voices of the adults in his life mixing together in a taunting choir, telling him to calm down, to apologize, to stay in his lane. He couldn’t. The frustration, the fear, the feeling of betrayal that had been carefully tucked away for the past few months ripped through his last layer of self control.
It felt good, so good, because Mr. Stark deserved it. Mr. Stark who wouldn’t talk to him unless he was about to drown, Mr. Stark who didn’t tell him anything, Mr. Stark who never listened, Mr. Stark who didn’t care. It didn’t matter that he had stepped out of his suit to stand on this shabby rooftop next to Peter. It wasn’t important anymore because if Mr. Stark actually cared, he would ask Peter if he was okay, he’d check for cuts and bruises, he would have never, ever ignored Peter and locked him into a crammed storeroom like a mindless puppet; a bit dusty and flawed, yet good enough to fight whenever the situation was desperate enough.
“I don’t care that you called the FBI! How would I know if you never tell me anything?” Peter was vaguely aware that he was shouting, that he was going too far, way too far, but Mr. Stark just wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t stop going on and on about how Peter was unworthy of being Spider-Man – too young, too naive, too weak. Peter’s suit was clinging onto him tighter than ever, as if it was trying to hold him back, as if it was trying to prove that Mr. Stark didn’t get it at all, that he didn’t understand why Peter needed the suit, why he couldn’t give it up, why he was no one, no one at all without it.
He would show Mr. Stark that he could be like him, that he could stop giving a damn if he wanted to. He would tell him exactly what he thought of him. He’d make him feel the pain. Fury clouded Peter’s vision, made everything feel unreal and far away, made him want to hurt someone. He didn’t notice that Mr. Stark had gone completely silent, didn’t notice how the anger in his eyes slowly turned into concern.
Peter’s voice grew louder, sending shivers of overwhelming rage down his spine. Suddenly his hands collided with something solid, something warm, and his vision cleared enough to see Mr. Stark stumble backwards. The world went silent. Peter knew that Mr. Stark would only have to take one small step to get into his suit, to defeat him, to make sure he’d never overstep this line again, and a part of Peter was begging him to do that, begging him to fight him, to hurt him.
The static in Peter's ears smothered his words and shut out the world around him, but when the first tear trickled down his face, he felt it with shocking clarity. Desperately trying to keep that painful, weeping lump inside of him where it belonged, he raised his hand again, further this time, determined to hear Mr. Stark’s cheek bone crack. The tears made his face feel disgusting, so disgusting, and he just wanted it all to end when a hand grabbed his wrist.
If this had been a normal evening, if Mr. Stark had been a normal bad guy, Peter wouldn’t have stopped there. He would have freed himself and put even more force into his blow. But this wasn’t a normal evening and Mr. Stark wasn’t normal in any way. Peter felt his hand slow down, the last senseless word die in his throat and his body give in. The silence around him turned into something else, something less encouraging, less numbing, something that forced more tears down his face and made him take two wobbly steps before falling, down, down, down.
His lungs were too small, his blood too slow to transport the air to his muscles and his brain. He would never land again. He would fall and fall and fall forever, hearing and feeling only his muffled heartbeat. Down, down, down.
Then he stopped. The impact forced air into his lungs and made him squeeze his eyes shut. His face was pushed against a soft, wet surface. Mr. Stark’s shirt, something whispered at the back of his mind. His tears were dampening Mr. Stark’s shirt. Disgusting. For a moment Peter screamed at himself to lift his head, wipe his eyes and walk away as fast as he could before Mr. Stark would see even more of the stupid child he was. He tried to move against the sobs still tearing through his body, making him shake and weep and crumble, tried to push away the hand that was keeping his head pressed against the warmth. The panic in his bones was growing stronger as his senses returned slowly, forcing him to become aware of his surroundings, and the mess he had made.
“I’m sorry." he whispered against the shirt and then he couldn’t stop himself from saying it again and again, sorry, sorry, sorry, although he knew it wouldn’t cut it. It never would until it could repair the ferry, cure the injured and undo all of this; until it allowed him to take back the awful, awful things he’d said, the terrible, painful confessions he’d thrown at the man who had given him so much and who didn’t owe him a thing. The man who was rubbing slow circles on his back and was carefully combing his fingers through his hair. The man who was holding him even after all he’d done, despite his stupidity. Guilt washed over Peter again, not because of the woman on the sidewalk who had surely, hopefully left by now and not because of the terrified people on the ferry. Instead he was thinking of Aunt May and of how disappointed she’d be if she knew what he’d done, of Liz who he had left again and of Ned who had been alone at the party. He thought of Happy who had to deal with his stupid messages and of Mr. Stark who had had to fly here and fix everything again.
Another sob made Peters legs buckle. The arm around him tightened ever so slightly, and he heard something else over his crying. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” The words were spoken silently into his hair and a breeze of hot air brushed against his cheek. “You’re okay, Peter. You’re okay.” Peter kept listening to the words, breathing them in and holding them close, as his whispered apologies melted into Mr. Stark's mumbling and his warm chest.