In the past month Peter Parker has been alive, been dead, and been alive one more time. Really he counts it as about half a month, because for the first two weeks after coming back he’d just laid in a bed and let people hook wires and tubes to him while he either slept or stared up at the ceiling. So, really, in the past month Peter Parker has been alive, been dead, been a zombie, and been alive one more time.
Sometimes he thinks he might still be a zombie. He’d even brought it up with Mr. Stark, who’d then laughed and looked immensely relieved as if this was some sort of breakthrough, like Peter was joking and this was good because it was the first joke in weeks.
But it had been a serious question. Isn’t a zombie just a person who had been dead, and now isn’t? What’s the distinction? Does coming back to life only count if you have control of your brain once again?
Sometimes Peter thinks he doesn’t even have that going for him.
“What are they?” Sam asks, and the awe in his voice does not bode well. Peter has learned by now that all of his fellow Avengers have seen enough weird shit to last a lifetime, so when they’re caught off guard by anything it’s bound to be very weird.
Peter sort of misses the days of just webbing up burglars and Liz’s dad. Now that Earth is scrambling to recover from its little hiatus, there are invasions by alien species like, all the time. So far it’s been fine, because according to Mr. Stark the only species dumb enough to attack a planet that’s now quadrupling down on its security are those who aren’t all that threatening in the first place.
But still. The street he’s looking down at right now is infested with a horde of aliens that resemble alligators and are spitting some sort of neon green, most likely lethal substance. A bank robber would be nice right now.
“They’re uh,” Bucky looks down at the holopad balanced over his metal palm, “K’th—Kith—I don’t know. They’re aliens.”
“What do they do?” Peter asks, and Bucky tries to hand Peter the holopad to see for himself. But that would probably give Peter a much more vivid picture than he needs, so he clarifies. “I just mean like, obviously we should avoid the acid or whatever but is there something else to be on the lookout for? Like maybe the teeth are actually razors or something, that might be good to, uh, to know.”
“If their teeth aren’t razors are you just gonna let them bite you anyways?” Sam asks with a smirk. “You gotta relax, Pete, it’s the same drill as always.”
“I’m relaxed!” He insists. Sam and Bucky exchange a look, which varies slightly between them but conveys the same message.
Peter likes Sam and Bucky. He loves them, really, and he feels safe on their little trio missions. There’s a new protocol in the Avengers now wherein the people who never died get to go on important, world saving missions, and the zombies like Peter and Sam and Bucky have to do stuff like wrangling a few alien alligators when they bust through some poorly guarded space portal and start crawling around in parts of the city that are under construction anyways.
It’s been three missions now, all involving aliens, and all relatively unimportant. Sure, it’s important to keep toothy monsters from feasting on civilians, but honestly these things could be handled by just Bucky or just Sam, even maybe just Peter on a good day.
He doesn’t get it. Mr. Stark and Steve have both given Peter almost identical explanations—a lecture about how it may not seem like much right now, but pretty soon what happened to him on Titan will catch up and he’ll be grateful for a smaller load. And fine, maybe they’re right.
But Sam Wilson? Bucky Barnes? They don’t need a smaller load. If anyone can bounce back from being dead it’s them, especially Bucky considering he’s already had some practice.
“Alright,” Bucky abruptly shuts off his holopad and takes a few steps back, away from the ledge of the rooftop they’re perched on, “this should be easy. Go in, take ‘em out, come right back.”
“Avoid razor teeth.” Sam adds with a complimentary light punch to Peter’s shoulder as he activates his wings.
“First to ten wins?” Peter says hopefully.
“I don’t think there are even ten down there.” Sam replies. “But sure, kid. Kill ten aliens and win a prize.”
“What’s the prize?”
“Barnes’ll give you a ride on his bike.”
“Seriously?”
“No,” Bucky immediately shoots a glare at Sam, who’s laughing hard enough to miss it, “will you stop telling him that? Steve would kill you for even suggesting it.”
“But I could—“ Peter’s protest is wholly ignored as Sam and Bucky both take running leaps off the edge of the building, Sam rocketing upwards to the sky and Bucky diving into chaos. “Shit.”
A web goes straight for the adjacent building which has been completely decimated from about the twentieth story up. Peter is cautious around crumbling buildings ever since he found himself under one, but this one is in just the right spot for him to swing directly into the middle of the alien clump.
In the frenzy it’s about ten degrees hotter and there are immediately all kinds of teeth coming at him from every direction. Bucky is a few yards away to his right, sticking his metal arm directly into the throat of one of the beasts and punching up through the roof of its mouth. This seems to work well, and Peter wishes for the billionth time that he had a metal arm.
But he does not have a metal arm. He has a regular arm. He used to have an arm covered in metal, but even that luxury is no longer equipped. It could be, but every time Peter so much as looks at the Iron Spider suit his legs feel weird and jello-y, and the first time he tried to wear it after evaporating in it, he’d almost thrown up.
So he’s back to the suit he wore before things got crazy. He likes this one the best out of all three because it has the least traumatic memories associated with it. And he loves Karen.
“Karen deploy taser web!” He holds two fingers down on the shooter in preparation, aiming directly into the mouth of the nearest gator that’s trying to swallow him whole. The web deploys and the alligator promptly seizes up, giving Peter time to web all six of its legs and step back to admire the way Sam gracefully yet lethally drops down to absolutely decimate the poor thing.
Taser web works. He sticks with that one. It goes well for about another four gators, and then when he’s on his fifth there’s a sudden sort of roaring that seems to come from every direction.
“What the hell?” Bucky’s voice crackles in his ear. Peter hastily wraps a web around the current alligator’s elongated snout and looks around, frantic to find the source of whatever that is.
“Christ.” Sam sighs. “Another portal.”
For some reason Peter’s heart decides that this news is not at all okay, which prompts Karen to tell him that his BPM is rising and he should try to calm down.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah I’m good. I’m good, Karen. Put me back on spider web.” Peter mutters, aiming for the building closest to the new portal. He lands a bit clumsily on the edge of the roof, sticking out a hand to steady himself. The portal is directly below him, its edges seemingly tearing at reality as it sucks in loose asphalt and debris.
Peter thinks it’s really dumb how freaked out he is right now. Nothing is even coming through the portal yet, but his heart still insists on rattling around and his mind insists on racing through the possibilities of what might be coming.
He never used to be like this. He used to just fling himself toward commotion and not even worry about the inevitable scrapes and bruises. Now he still flings himself toward commotion, but it feels like a calculated choice instead of a second nature.
Which sucks. Because, he has to wonder, will the time ever come when he chooses his fear over helping? And who might get hurt because of that?
“Okay, incoming.” Sam’s voice almost startles Peter off his perch. Before whatever is incoming can actually come in, the spider sense hits him like an oncoming train.
Danger.
And this isn’t just the sense he gets on patrol. This is the sort of sense he got on Titan before he and half the planet died. And so, knowing that, Peter makes the sudden conclusion that,
“It’s Thanos.”
“What?”
“Kid are you—“
Danger.
“I can feel it.” Peter tells them, and through his slightly clouding vision he can see the aliens entering onto the streets of Brooklyn, vaguely aware that they’re bipedal and oddly shaped and could very easily be the army of Thanos.
It’s still a choice. Peter chooses to leap off the edge of the building.
Danger.
Sam and Bucky are saying things to him, so is Karen, but the sense is all encompassing. It’s like a wave that’s fallen over him. Everything is slower now, slightly blurred and instilling a sense of urgency to get back above the waterline.
He clashes with the first alien immediately, throwing punches and shooting webs in an unyielding frenzy with no discernible strategy. He lashes out in every way he knows how to.
Danger.
There are claws and knives flying at him. A scaly texture grazes his skin repeatedly. The world seems impossibly hot and impossibly loud. The beings he’s fighting must be a multitude of sizes and shapes because everything his eyes are taking in seems drastically different from the last.
Danger.
Peter doesn’t even know how much time passes before he feels a hand on his shoulder. It’s a distinctly heavy weight which is cold against his skin even through the fabric of the suit and, logically, it’s Bucky.
Danger.
But Thanos still has the reality stone. And the reality stone means he can make everything feel real. It means he can easily make a giant purple Titan hand feel like a familiar metal hand.
Danger.
And that clearly isn’t Bucky’s face looking back at him. If it was, the sense wouldn’t be sending throbbing spikes of panic through his body.
Danger.
Peter throws a punch aimed for Not Bucky’s left eye. It lands, and Not Bucky reels back for a fraction of a second before firmly planting his feet again and standing steadily in front of Peter.
Danger.
He goes for another punch, this one landing on Not Bucky’s jaw, and another which misses and one more which lands but feels weak in comparison to the first.
Dan—
And then Peter realizes that there are no punches coming back at him. That Not Bucky isn’t defending himself and there’s no reason to be braced for a hit.
“Peter,” Bucky says calmly, “you there?”
The dark overcast in his vision seems to be clearing up. The sense is ebbing away, leaving him with a view of Bucky, hands raised slightly in a placating position. There’s a bruise forming around his left eye.
“I’m—“ Peter’s voice cracks. “Oh my God.”
“It’s okay, kid, it’s fine.” Bucky still has his hands up. His gaze shifts past Peter and he flicks two fingers up, summoning Sam who promptly drops both hands over Peter’s shoulders.
“You got him good, I’ll give you that much.” Sam says cheerfully. “Now you can say you gave the Winter Soldier a shiner, huh?”
“More than Wilson can say for himself.” Bucky adds. Peter is vaguely aware that they’re walking now, both of them at either of his sides.
“What—“ Peter tries to look back, but Sam easily intercepts his head turn and forces his eyes to stay trained ahead. “What did I do?”
There’s a little silence. The only noise now is the sound of their footsteps and the distant hum of the still-working parts of the city.
He can almost feel Bucky and Sam passing the ball between each other. He can feel them exchanging a glance and an unspoken truth. Finally, Sam squeezes his shoulder and puts it out there.
“You panicked.”
He’s in bed. Not his bed, not the one in Queens with his ceiling just a few inches above him and May just a room away. It’s his temporary bed in his temporary room in the Avengers facility upstate.
Because you don’t just freak out, punch the Winter Soldier in the face, and still get to go home afterwards.
Someone is gonna come give him a Talk soon. He can feel it, like when certain days just feel like they’ll bring rain. The most likely candidate is Mr. Stark, but Peter honestly hopes it isn’t him. The confrontation they had after the ferry is still replayed in his mind some nights when Peter lays awake in bed, and with it he’s gotten accustomed to the fear of disappointing Mr. Stark.
He’d said, “I wanted you to be better.”
How can Peter be better than Tony Stark? First of all, Mr. Stark is an adult. He’s had time to make mistakes, to bust up ferries, and Peter just doesn’t feel like it’s a fair comparison. He doesn’t want another conversation that he thinks back to with shame, with the everlasting feeling that he’s failing the people who believe in him. Failing the Avengers.
It could be Bucky himself, considering he was the one most directly involved and wouldn’t miss any details. But there’ll be a bruise around his left eye, and Peter won’t be able to look at that without possibly crying.
It won’t be Sam. He’s just not the type to come and give a teenager a Talk. And so it’s looking like Peter will have to endure a conversation of shame, but there’s a soft knock on the door and a familiar but startling voice.
“I guess you knew this was coming.” Steve says. His voice is calm, but not scary calm, just calm. He sounds normal. Not angry, not disappointed. “You aren’t in trouble, Peter.”
Peter sits up, trying to look less pathetic and more casual. He ends up cross legged with his back against the headrest and Steve Rogers on the edge of the bed. “I punched Bucky in the face.”
Steve smiles at this. Peter expects this from Sam, from Bucky himself, but not from Steve.
“I heard.” Steve says simply. “But I don’t think he’s holding anything against you. He said you seemed pretty shaken up.”
“Yeah.” Peter says lamely. “I—I was.”
“You want to tell me what happened?”
He doesn’t. But that’s not a sullen teenager thing. It’s because the truth about what happened is embarrassing and he’s Captain America.
“I just felt so sure that the aliens were somehow connected to...him. To Thanos. Everything feels connected to him like, it’s crazy how many little things will make me think about it.” Peter swallows against the dryness in his throat. “Sometimes when I’m falling asleep I feel like my body is falling apart again. Stuff like that. And I swear my spider sense was going off like crazy. So I—I know this makes me sound insane but I thought Bucky and Sam and everything was just a trick.”
“That doesn’t sound insane to me.” Steve assures him. Peter chances a look up, and he finds that Steve looks entirely genuine. “You know, I use to think almost the exact same thing.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I mean,” he smiles faintly, “not anything to do with aliens. But I would sometimes stop myself and think, what if none of this is happening? A person can’t be frozen and wake back up seventy years later, it’s impossible. And when I saw Buck again, I thought for sure this was all just a dream.”
“Do you still feel like that?” Peter asks, voice smaller than he’d like. “I mean did it go away ever?”
“Well, eventually I figured if this is all a dream, it’s a very long one.” Steve replies with a light laugh. “It gets better with time. You won’t feel like this forever.”
Peter nods. He looks down at his hands, one of which was bruised earlier on the knuckles. “But how do I stop feeling like this now? I mean if I can’t even trust my spider sense—“
“Is it possible you confused your powers with a panic attack?” Steve suggests. “Sam said the way you described it sounds a lot like the panic attacks he’s had before.”
This is new information. It makes Peter feel astronomically more normal. And the proposal makes sense, though it’s still dismaying.
“I wish there was a way to know.” He sighs. “Like a second spider sense that could tell me if my first spider sense is actually my spider sense or if it’s my freakin’...”
“PTSD?” Steve supplies, gentle. “I know, kid. Things would be easier if there was a superpower for this. But there isn’t. It’s frustrating but that’s just how it is, and it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Just means you went through something tough and now your brain is working overtime to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Peter sighs again, less out of despair and more to just exhale what he’s feeling. He’s still scared. He wishes he could go back to before Titan, before Thanos, when he was a friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
Still. It feels better to know he isn’t the first and only person to ever feel this way.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody.” Peter finally says after a minute of quiet. “I’m just worried that it might happen again. Bucky could take it but what if the next person can’t? Or what if I don’t snap out of it? Or—“
“A lot of things could happen.” Steve concedes. “But you can take time off if you need it. Spend some time with your aunt or your friends and just focus on that, alright? And when you do come back, tell Sam or Bucky when you feel scared.”
Peter nods. Being benched doesn’t feel like failure, for some reason. It’s a relief. Like maybe this is the choice he’s been so afraid of making, but this time it’s preemptive.
He won’t have to choose between his fear and helping people if he can get his fear under control now. If he can let his brain...fix itself.
“Can I ask you something?” Peter blurts, and Steve nods. “I know I’m on team recovery or whatever but, are you guys getting close to finding Thanos?”
Steve shakes his head. Not to say no, it seems, just to say there’s no way to really tell. “There’s a whole universe out there, and he’s got six big advantages over us.”
“Right, yeah. It’s really soon. And that’s totally understandable, I just meant—“
“We’ll get him.” Steve says, sounding completely sure. “And until we do, you can call me if you need to talk.”
“Thank you.” Peter says. He feels emotionally exhausted and wants nothing more than sleep, but he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight. Somehow Aunt May being in the next room makes him feel safer than a whole compound of superheroes. “Can I go home now?”
“Of course.” Steve stands, making the mattress shift as Peter stretches his legs out and prepares to collect all his stuff. “And Peter, seriously. Don’t think that sitting out for awhile means you did anything wrong.”
“Shouldn’t you be more upset with me for punching Bucky in the face?” Peter demands, because he’s tired and losing his filter. And it’s a valid question. “I mean like, he’s your person.”
“Peter you didn’t mean to.” Steve sounds equal parts amused and perplexed. “Bucky’s punched a whole lot of people without meaning to.”
“Oh it’s like karma?” Peter muses. “Like he punched people when he was brainwashed or whatever and the universe was like, we’ll make sure you get punched by a seventeen year old to even that out.”
“Let’s go,” Steve puts a hand on his shoulder and steers him toward the door, “I think you really need sleep.”