2
“I what?”
Nothing, absolutely nothing, about the situation was making sense.
“Mr. Stark, what are you talking about?”
“You disappeared last summer. We looked for you for ages. May involved the police. Hell, I had half the Avengers on your trail. You dropped off the face of the Earth.”
The fact that the Avengers had cared enough to look for him was shocking in itself, but he was going to have to tuck his surprise aside for another time. Right now he was focused on the fact that according to Mr. Stark, he was as good as dead to most of the population.
“I don’t...I don’t remember. Anything.” Anything but falling. Dizziness. Something cold encasing his feet, something heavy on his throat-
Peter took a deep breath. “Yea, nothing.”
Suddenly, Tony was hugging Peter, arms wrapped snugly around him. Stark squeezed harder, one of his hands finding its way to the back of Peter’s neck. “God, kid. It’s so good to see you.”
Peter had seen more affection from his mentor in the last hour than he had in the last year, the repulsor incident on the balcony notwithstanding.
“Yeah, yeah. Good to see you, too, Mr. Stark.”
Tony pulled back quickly and straightened his blazer, evidently trying his best to compose himself. He ran a hand over his carefully styled hair, brushing down imaginary flyaways.
“Your aunt will be here soon. But in the meantime, I called Banner to check you out, so we should head to the Medbay-“
“Banner? Bruce Banner? Small-dude-who-turns-green-and-huge-when-he’s-mad-because-of-gamma-radiation Bruce Banner?”
Tony huffed. “That’s the one. I’d forgotten you’ve never met him. I just figured that with how many times you’ve been to the tower, you guys would have crossed paths by now.”
Peter shook his head. No, he and Banner had never met. As far as Peter knew, Banner was out of the country helping with basic medical care in third-world countries. Peter had never understood that, because Banner had a PhD, several of them actually, but he wasn’t an MD, so-
“He’s out of the country or something, right? Africa, maybe?”
Tony gave him a sorry smile.
“I guess not. That-that must have been months ago. I guess my info is a little outdated.”
Stark didn’t look pleased, but he nodded to confirm Peter’s suspicions. “He’s been back in the states for a few months. Came back when...You know, when everything went down.”
“When you all decided I’d kicked the bucket.” The bluntness of his own words shocked him. A spark of resentment lit within his chest. He’d been gone that long? How much life had he really missed in his absence?
Tony said that they’d looked for him, that they hadn't pronounced him dead until about a year after he went missing in the first place.
Mr. Stark said that he had called in the Avengers! The freaking Avengers! Not to mention the NYPD, who were respectable in their own right. With the combined strengths of those two forces, how had they not found him sooner?
Immediately after Peter had finished his thought, he felt foolish. Tony called the Avengers for him. Searched high and low for a year. He should be nothing but grateful that someone cared so much about him that they’d go to those lengths.
But the anger was still there, deep within him, burrowing beneath his insides. Peter wasn’t sure if it would ever dissipate.
“The Avengers- Do they know? About me, I mean.”
“No. I had them looking for your friend, but by extension, they were looking for you.”
“I’m not following.”
They’d arrived at the Medbay. The doors were open, the area not currently occupied on account of the fact that apparently, none of the Avengers but Tony and Bruce were in the building.
Tony patted one of the medical beds, and Peter hopped onto the papery mattress.
“Well, when Peter Parker disappeared, Spider-Man did as well.”
Oh. Oh.
"They know what you do, how you help people. All I had to do was ask them to stark sticking their noses into people's business, to ask a few questions.”
Peter hadn’t even thought about that fact that with his disappearance came Spider-Man’s as well. Spider-Man has effectively dropped off the face of the Earth for the last year.
He had woken up in his suit. At the bottom of a river, yes, but in his suit.
Whatever caused his disappearance must have had to do with Spider-Man.
Hopefully the people of New York had thought that he had died, too. Peter didn’t know how he would deal with it if they thought he had abandoned them.
“Hello. Hi. Sorry it took so long, I was across town, and…”
Bruce Banner had entered the room, not making eye contact with either Peter or Tony directly and heading directly to a small rolling cart by another one of the Medbay beds. He grabbed it and hurriedly pushed it next to Peter’s, shoving a small stool into place next to it with his foot.
“Peter. Hi. Bruce Banner.”
It took Peter several seconds to shake the doctor’s extended hand. He was too busy ogling.
Banner looked concerned. “Is he, uh,”
Tony chuckled. “That’s not fear. Petey here is a little star-struck. Give him a second.”
Peter took a few deep breaths, calmed his racing heart. Now was not the time to embarrass himself.
“D-Doctor Banner. Nice to meet you.”
Banner pulled a pulse monitor off of the cart and clipped it to Peter’s finger. “Nice to meet you, too.” He looked to the cart’s monitor, waiting for Peter’s stats to appear. “Can you tell me what happened, Peter?”
“No.”
Bruce tapper the monitor with his finger. Peter’s pulse rate was showing as a fat zero beats per minute.
“No?”
“I don’t really remember what happened.”
The heart monitor beeped once, twice, then stopped again.
“You don’t? There’s nothing you can recall?”
Three blips on the monitor. Then nothing.
“No.”
It was windy and dark. There were voices.
The monitor went wild. Peter took a breath. The reading went back to zero.
Banner removed the finger clip and pulled a stethoscope out of another cart drawer. “It’s on the fritz. Looks like we’re doing this old school.”
Bruce tugged on the edge of Peter’s shirt. “May I?”
Peter nodded, and Banner put the diaphragm of the stethoscope beneath his shirt and above his sternum.
“Deep breath for me, on three. One, two, three.”
The doctor squinted, then moved the stethoscope. “Again for me. One, two, three.”
“What’s wrong?” Tony asked, seeing something in Banner’s face that Peter hadn’t noticed. He was too busy thinking about darkness, and wind, and water-
“I don’t...I don’t hear anything. I mean, I do, but I don’t.”
“You’re going to have to clarify that one, Doc B.”
The stethoscope was cold against Peter’s chest. “Peter, take a very deep breath, hold it for three seconds, and then let it out, slowly.”
Peter shut his eyes and concentrated on Banner’s words, trying to calm the rushing blood in his head. He tuned into his senses, focusing solely on using his enhanced hearing to find out what was going on within his own body.
He’d been trying to repress everything since waking up in the river. The sounds, the smells; it had all been overwhelming. On a good day, it took moderate effort to keep everything under control. A day like today, full of confusion, panic, and disorientation, required much more focus.
Peter released the breath, and his heart skipped a few beats. It slowed as his lungs deflated.
Then disappeared altogether.
He kept listening, kept his enhanced hearing tuned to his own physiology, for several more seconds. His heart had gone undeniably silent.
“W-What is this?” He asked frantically. “What’s happening?”
Bruce removed the stethoscope from his own ears and handed it to Stark. “Listen to this. Tell me I’m not crazy.”
They traded places, Tony moving to the stool and Bruce standing beside the bed. He chewed his thumbnail as he watched Tony position the stethoscope.
“I don’t hear anything?” The statement sounded more like a question, Stark’s tone unsteady.
“Exactly! No matter where I put it, I can’t hear anything!”
“Someone please tell me what’s happening!”
“There!” Tony flinched and ended up sending the rolling stool backward a few inches. “I heard it! But it’s already gone again, I don’t-“
Bruce stepped forward and placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Peter, I need you to think about something, well, emotionally difficult. Something that sets you on edge.”
“O-okay.”
Wind. Darkness. Water. Hands-
“There it was again!” Tony exclaimed. “I think it tapers off once he calms down.”
Bruce put two fingers to Peter’s neck. “How’s that possible, though? When I actually heard his heart, it was unreasonably slow, which is concerning in itself. But for it to stop for long periods of time? By definition, the kid dies every time his mood levels out.”
“So I’m dead,” Peter said flatly.
Bruce’s fingers trailed from Peter’s pulse point to his lower neck, presumably examining the bruises there. A chill ran down Peter’s spine at the contact, but he did his best to repress the shiver, not wanting the doctor to think it was because of him. He wasn’t scared of Bruce Banner or what he was capable of. Many people were, but Peter just couldn’t find any fear in his heart toward the man. More than anything else, he felt sorry for him.
“I don’t know, I mean, you’re still breathing.”
Peter wasn’t sure how long it took him to break his cement restraints, to swim to the surface of the river. He had no idea how long he’d been down there, or why he hadn’t drowned. Considering what he’d spit out once he had reached shore, Peter had inhaled enough water to fill a small fish tank.
“Actually, I’m not sure I am.”
Tony’s eyebrows shot up. “Come again?”
“I, uh,” Peter chuckled nervously, knowing how outrageous his story was going to sound, “I woke up at the bottom of the Hudson.”
Neither Tony nor Bruce spoke. Both just stared at Peter, their eyes flickering from his bruised neck to his eyes, back and forth.
“And my feet were encased in cement.”
“They were what?”
Tony was up now. His hand wrapped around Peter’s bicep like a lifeline, like a breeze was going to enter the room and carry his kid away again, and there’d be nothing he could do to stop it.
“I had to find a rock and break it apart, and I don’t know how long it took me, but I had to have been down there longer than a normal person could have been. And when I came up, I didn’t even really feel out of breath-“
“Peter. Peter. Slow down. Just hold on a second, okay?” Bruce retrieved the cart with the heart monitor and reattached the finger clip to Peter’s hand.
“Peter, I want you to take a deep breath, let it out, and then, just not breathe again, I guess.”
“Should I just hold my breath?”
“Not exactly. Just let as much air out as you can, and then don’t inhale again.”
The heart monitor beeped gently. Peter inhaled deeply, then exhaled until he thought he’d start coughing. His eyes slid closed. The heart monitor stayed silent.
He eventually lost track of time, so lost in the rhythm of the colors dancing behind his eyelids and his own racing thoughts that he almost didn’t realize May had walked into the room.
He quickly came back to himself when her arms wrapped tightly around him. Her chin came to rest on his shoulder. She sniffed in Peter’s ear, and he realized she must have been crying.
“Peter. Peter. My boy. My sweet boy. Oh my god.”
He simply hugged her back as she sobbed, his hands running along the soft sweater of uncle Ben’s that she always wore when she was upset, no matter the season. It was nice, the hug. The smell of May’s perfume and her hair tickling his nose was heart-wrenchingly familiar, and it filled Peter with a sense of contentment he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
“He didn’t take a single breath for four minutes. His blood oxygen level is at 3%.”
Bruce was leaning over Tony’s shoulder and whispering in his ear. May hadn’t made any indication that she’d heard him. Peter guessed he wasn’t meant to hear anything either, but sometimes he quite literally couldn’t control himself.
May pulled away and held Peter in front of her. She gasped when she noticed the marks on his neck. “Where have you been? What happened? We were all so worried. I was so worried. I thought you’d-“
Peter placed his hand over hers and squeezed. “But I didn’t. I’m here. I’m okay.”
Only one-third of that sentence was the truth. The other two-thirds, he really didn’t know.
“Mrs. Parker, this is undoubtedly a grand reunion for you, and the last thing I want to do is pull you two apart. But do you think I could have a few more minutes alone with Peter? He’s been gone for quite a while. I’d like to make sure he’s in good health.”
May, acting as if she hadn’t realized Bruce was even in the room, nodded and wiped her tears on her sleeve. “Of course. I’m so sorry. I’ll be just outside,” she squeezed Peter’s hand, “if you need me.”
Peter nodded. “Thanks, May.” Now that he had her, he didn’t really want her to go. May was Peter’s security blanket. She’d always kept him grounded, filled whatever empty spaces he had within him after the death of his parents and Uncle Ben. At a time like this, when tensions were high and there was more he didn’t know than he did know, he would have liked to have her nearby.
“Alright, Peter. So here’s the deal.” Banner’s polite and caring face he’d used on May was gone, replaced by one of stern determination. “You didn’t inhale for four minutes. Two to three minutes without air is enough to cause irreversible brain damage in an average person. Your heart only beats a few times a minute, if that.”
“He should be a vegetable from the lack of oxygen,” Tony said.
Bruce nodded. “And dead from the lack of blood flow.”
Tony whistled. “We’ve all seen some weird shit. But this?”
Banner was shaking his head back and forth. “This shouldn’t be medically possible.”
“Do you think my healing factor has anything to do with it?” Peter asked, the question aimed at Tony.
Bruce was the one that answered. “I don’t think so.”
Tony smiled sheepishly. “I gave Banner the info you and I collected a few years back. You know, just in case.”
Just in case I was gravely injured, and he had to know how to fix me.
“From the data I’ve studied, your factor is impressive, but it shouldn’t be able to reanimate a corpse.”
Bruce seemed to realize the insensitivity of his words once they left his mouth, and he stepped forward hurriedly. “Peter, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean-“
“No, it’s okay.” It wasn’t okay. “I guess I really am dead, then.”
Oh my god, I’m dead.
Regret was etched deep in the lines of Bruce’s pity smile. “By most definitions of the word, yes.”
Peter had spent every second since he became Spider-Man trying to avoid that very fate. He had protected his identity, not just to protect his loved ones (which was his main motivation) but to protect Peter Parker. He typically hadn’t bitten off more than he could chew when it came to one-on-one fights; he had high hopes, but he knew his limits. He tended to every injury he received, always made sure to pay attention to his physical well-being.
It wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough, because he had managed to die.
I died.
There were so many things running through Peter’s head, so many worries and fears and questions, but all he could do was blurt out, “Don’t tell May.”
“Kid. Isn’t this something she needs to know about?” Tony questioned. “You’re...you’re-“
Peter held up a hand. “Yea. I get it.” I don’t get it. “But telling her would only freak her out. I’m not sure she’d really understand.” Hell, I don’t understand.
“I think he’s right, Tony,” Bruce said, apologetically. “We need to keep this under wraps until we know what’s really going on.”
The pallor of Tony’s face matched the grey in his hair. “Alright. Fine. We won’t tell her. But for the record, she’s going to have our asses when she finds out something’s up.”
For the next several hours, May didn’t leave Peter’s side for more than a few minutes at a time. At one point, Peter asked if she had to go to work, and she’d scoffed like the idea was preposterous.
“I called in. This is way too important. You’re way too important.”
Peter was desperately glad to have her around, but every moment she was near him was just another moment for her to realize he wasn’t the same Peter that she’d lost a year ago. This one was paler. Breathed a lot less.
Couldn’t remember how he died.
But can I?
Had a year-long memory gap.
But do I?
Couldn’t decipher which brief, adrenaline-inducing images that flashed in the darkness of his blinks were legit, or which ones were productions of his own overactive imagination.
When Peter was very young, he had been quite the daydreamer. He’d spend entire class periods at school stuck within his own head, imagining anything from Iron Man showing up at his classroom door to take him to lunch, to dragons burning down the gymnasium. Most times the daydreams were pleasant, a colorful escape from a particularly boring math lesson or history lecture.
But sometimes his mind wandered just a bit too far, and he’d find himself picturing the death of his family, his friends. Imaginary tornados would rip through his apartment, packs of wild dogs would chase his uncle home from work. May and Ben were consulted on several occasions, the school guidance counselor continuously asking why Peter would break out in tears unprompted and at any given moment. They’d always had to explain that sometimes, he just dove a little too deep. That even in his waking hours, the nightmares still had him within their grip. They’d always attributed these daymares to past trauma, mainly the death of Peter’s parents.
He didn’t doubt that their passing was a factor, but he figured his creative instincts were also at play.
That was why he struggled so much now, had such a hard time deciphering what was real and what wasn’t. Were these current daymares just works of neurological fiction? Mental movies that he had made up to explain his necklace of bruises? Or did they tell the true story of how Peter had ended up the way he did, weighed down by concrete, stuck at the bottom of the Hudson?
“Peter, I think we need to tell the police.”
Peter wiggled away from his place at May’s side to get a better look at her face, the enormous couch they were sitting on suddenly seeming much smaller. The community living room’s TV was switched to the news. Tony was watching it with mild interest, more focused on the thermos of coffee in his hands than anything else. Bruce was off doing who knows what, probably examining blood samples and crunching Peter’s physiological numbers. Peter couldn’t care less; if the scientist could figure out what was going on with him, all the better.
“Tell them what?”
“That you’re, you know…” She brushed a small piece of hair away from his eyes. “That we found you.”
Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.
Mr. Stark joined the conversation. “I don’t know if that’s a great idea. It’s seems a little premature.”
“Premature?” May asked incredulously. “He’s right here, sitting on your couch! He’s back! How is this premature?”
“Because,” Because we don’t know if I’m really alive, “I don’t know. Maybe we should just let him settle in before we get anything started.”
The volume of the TV rose of its own accord, something Tony had programmed FRIDAY to do a long time ago because he had trouble paying attention.
“I always miss the good stuff when I watch the news,” he’d said, “so now FRIDAY just blasts anything she deems important at top volume. A beautiful solution, no?”
A perky news reporter was on-screen, blonde hair teased perfectly and red lips pulled in a tight smile. Her eyebrows were raised, like she was trying to look interested, but also cool and collected.
“City authorities are baffled today as hundreds of New York residents step forward to report a large fish kill in local bodies of water.”
Peter’s lethargic heart slowed even more. Stopped, maybe. He willed it to continue beating as to not alert the aunt next to him to the absence of its sound.
“Environmentalists suspect tainted boat fuel or other sudden spikes in pollution, but have been unable to find a sure cause due to the vast variations in fish species and locations of the deaths. So far, the most carnage has been concentrated near Battery Park, just south of the Staten Island Ferry port.”
Almost exactly where I woke up this morning.
“Fish are turning up in large groups in this area of the Hudson, so be warned, your afternoon strolls by the water may be smelling like five month old calamari for the time being.”
Suddenly there was a civilian next to the news anchor. She was more dolled-up now, clad in a dress and plenty of makeup, but Peter immediately recognized her as the jogger who had passed him in Battery Park earlier that morning.
The reporter glanced at the camera, then back to the jogger. “Madison Remming was one of the first witnesses of the horrific event, noticing the fish on her morning jog. Miss Remming, could you recount for us what exactly you saw?
Madison looked much too comfortable in front of a camera, her demeanor anything but nervous. “It was atrocious. The smell was so strong, like a Golden Corral dumpster after Lent. What’s funny, though, is that there were no fish when I left my apartment. You see, my place has a perfect view of the water, so I totally would have noticed a ton of dead fish everywhere. But they didn’t pop up until I was running through Battery. “
Peter breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t mentioned him. Hopefully she’d dismissed him as another homeless person simply using any public space for a quick nap, just another piece of NYC.
“I passed this soaking wet homeless guy in a funky outfit at one point and just assumed the smell had come from him, but I realized it was the river once I’d gotten several yards away and could still smell it.”
And there it is. Fate really loves kicking me while I’m down, doesn’t it?
Tony was sitting up, his now-cold cup of coffee half-way on a coaster on the table in front of him. “Wet homeless guy in a funky outfit, huh? That’s peculiar.”