Chapter Text
Fog was hanging low over New York, rolling in from the river, gathering in shadowed alleys, creeping out of manhole covers.
Tinged yellow underneath the street lights it hovered at the edges of Peter’s vision. Seeping. Sometimes it was tinged blue or red from brake lights and flashing police lights. Sometimes green from the traffic lights—that was the worst.
Peter kept high to the rooftops as much as he could, far above the crawling mist, diving down into the milky sea only when his help was needed and escaping back to lofty heights quickly.
The fog muted the noises of the city, not unlike snow, swallowing sound into an eerie quiet, but still there was a shout or a scream always hovering at the edge of Peter’s hearing. Not the occasional insult or curse thrown at him from the street level or out of windows—the other kind, beckoning, pleading.
He was learning to discern the real ones from those that led him astray, a slow process and taxing. Sometimes he still perched over nothing. It was better than the alternative—better than finding out too late that someone had needed his help and he’d written them off as a ghost.
He’d rather err on the side of caution.
Peter’s eyes were itching under the mask. The night was getting on in hours, and it had been a long patrol, an early start, since he’d had no work in the afternoon. Perhaps it would be better to call it a day.
He hovered at the edge of the building for a moment, perched atop an ornamental gargoyle of sorts, trying to decide where to change out of his suit this time. It was more difficult late at night, when there weren’t as many crowds he could get lost in.
Dropping down from his perch, he swung himself down the street, blinking rapidly to dispel the sleepiness from his eyes, since he couldn’t rub them under the lenses of the mask. There had been too many late nights lately, nights so late that they turned into early mornings, nights so late he ended up getting no sleep at all. Not that the sleep he was getting was particularly restful these days. There were too many things waiting for him when he slept, too many people waiting for him. There was smoke and concrete dust, there were high-pitched screams and terrible, terrible silence. There was cackling laughter—even in his waking moments it was following him, cackling laughter echoing between the buildings—Peter jolted out of his thoughts. Laughter, echoing, faintly, and there, just at the edge of his vision—that green glow and the familiar shape of a glider …
Peter didn’t think, he didn’t see. A ripple of icy cold fire running over him, burning. His mind a roar, a blaze, deafening. He moved.
Another web to change his trajectory and he launched himself forward with all his strength, feet first.
His kick went right through the glider, smashing the drone against the wall of the next building with a crunch. It fell, crumbling in pieces, and Peter went right after it, landing on it with a punch downward, crushing what little of it had still held together.
He straightened up, breathing heavily, and peered with narrowed eyes into the fog, trying to seek out more drones.
“Oh, Beck…”, he said, voice hard. “You just went too far.”
There was nothing to see, not just because of the fog, but his hands moved on instinct, shooting webs at a second cloaked drone, yanking it towards him to smash it against his raised knee before slamming it, too, into the ground.
He knew there was a third drone, hovering further above, probably trying to stay out of his reach. He could likely still get to it if he tried, but for the moment he remained on the ground, surrounded by electronic debris, the few people about on the streets hurrying on, away from him.
He stared up at where he knew the drone was, though it wasn’t visible.
“You messed up, Beck”, he spat. “You gave yourself away. You shouldn’t have done that. Now I’m gonna come for you. And I’ll make you regret it.”
For a few long seconds there was nothing, before Beck’s voice floated towards him, disembodied, seeming to come from every direction at once, as it always did.
“Should I be scared, Spider-Man?”, he sneered. “Don’t make me laugh. We both know you don’t have the guts. You’re still just a sucker.”
“I told you”, Peter snapped, fists clenching at his sides, “you can’t trick me anymore.”
Beck chuckled, cold and pointed. “We’ll see about that, won’t we …”
With that, more drones appeared over the edges of the rooftops, and plunged him once more into a corridor of total darkness.
Peter breathed. “You can’t trick me anymore”, he muttered under his breath. “You can’t trick me anymore.”
Looking back, he should have closed his eyes right away. He knew they wouldn’t be of any use to him here. He knew they would only distract him. But he didn’t, and it was like a punch to the gut when May appeared before him, skin sallow and smeared with soot and blood.
Because it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be. Beck couldn’t know—
“Look at the people you couldn’t save, Spider-Man”, Beck said, voice tinged with disappointment. “Look at the people you’ve let down.”
More people appeared behind May, and Peter could just about register that Tony was first among them, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from May. From her stare, sorrowful but empty. Distant.
Beck didn’t know, he realised. To him, May was just another one of Spider-Man’s casualties. Just another face. It made his throat close up with bile and his entire skin burn inside his suit.
He had no right, no right to this, no right to put his filthy, scheming fingers on May, not when he had no idea—
Cackling laughter behind him had him whirling around on instinct, fists poised to strike. Goblin’s gleeful grimace stared down at him, his grin almost grotesque, teeth gleaming.
It’s not real. It’s not real. He wouldn’t let Beck chase him around again, no matter how much he itched to punch Goblin.
But then Goblin rose up on his glider, his hands around MJ’s throat, he was rising, rising, until she dangled high above the street.
“How many more must die, before you finally accept it? You are too weak to save anyone.”
It’s not real, Peter. Listen.
It was like a physical pain to tear his eyes away from MJ, but he squeezed his eyes shut. Deep breath. Listen.
There were no heartbeats around him. Not MJ’s, not anyone else’s. He was alone. Alone, except for the drones. He could hear them, humming away as they hovered. His muscles twitching, fingers curling. A spark of electricity down his spine.
A jump, flip, a kick. The crunch of metal and plastic crunching against the asphalt. Propelling himself right back up, tackling another drone off its course and smashing it into a third. Metal bending under his fingers, tearing in his grip like an old newspaper.
Wherever Spider-Man goes, chaos and calamity ensue.
Shooting a web at a street light he swung himself around it, using the momentum to kick another drone into a wall, where it crumbled to the ground in pieces.
Peter landed back on the street in a crouch and opened his eyes.
Still the eerily tinged fog was drifting in wisps around him, but gone was the Goblin, gone was MJ, gone was May. There were at least a couple more drones though, he knew. He glared up at them, every muscle tense.
“Why don’t you come out here and face me yourself, Beck, instead of hiding behind your illusions?”, he spat. “Or are you too much of a coward?”
“The time will come, Spider-Man”, Beck’s voice said, still so infuriatingly smug, as if Peter wasn’t surrounded by the remains of his biggest asset. “For now, it’s better for me to stay in the shadows.”
Peter scoffed. He hadn’t expected anything different, of course—as much as Beck thought that people would see what he wants them to see, getting into a public fight with Spider-Man when he was supposed to be dead would not go unnoticed.
“You’re nothing without your illusions, Beck”, Peter said, straightening up. “You’re just a guy. You’ll always be just a guy.”
“I am the truth”, Beck replied, but there was a sharp edge to his voice now. “And the truth will prevail in the end.”
“I mean, that sounds nice and all, and very impressive”, Peter said, tilting his head, “but really it means nothing.”
“You’ll see what it means.” Beck’s voice echoed in the narrow street, not loud but surrounding Peter on all sides. “The people believe in me. You know they do, Spider-Man. The people need Mysterio.”
“Unfortunately for you, Mysterio is dead.”
Beck chuckled, sounding genuinely amused. “Is he, though? Half of humanity returned from the dead. Why shouldn’t Mysterio? These days, anything is possible …”
He didn’t wait for a reply—with a hum, the remaining drones rose back up over the rooftops and slipped away.
Peter waited until they were out of hearing range and made sure there were no others hovering around before he allowed himself to relax even a little. He let out a slow breath, keeping his fists clenched to stop them from shaking.
Already he could hear police sirens converging on him from several directions. He looked around at the wreckage strewn on the street. At least this time there wasn’t much in the way of property damage, except maybe for a dent in a wall or two into which he’d kicked the drones. But the drones themselves … Peter huffed a bitter laugh. With any luck, these were the drones that Cleary had smuggled out from the DODC and they’d be able to trace them back to him.
Speaking of—the first police car rounded the corner a few blocks down, lights flashing, the DODC logo stark on its side.
“That’s my cue”, Peter muttered, webbing himself up to the nearest rooftop and swinging away into the darkness.
He didn’t go far, just found a secluded rooftop where he wouldn’t be seen and could fall apart in peace.
Because fall apart he would.
Already he felt the adrenaline fading, leaving him drained and more shaky than ever. Echoes of Beck’s voice, of Goblin’s laugh lingered in his ears, tugged at his mind. Anger was still burning under his skin, but with no immediate target to take it out on, it cycled and cycled through his body, dragging and chafing against his bones, against all his ridges and snagging at his rough edges until its shape changed, until it was ragged and almost unrecognisable.
He tried to ball it up and stuff it down, down, below his rib cage, below his diaphragm, down where he wouldn’t have to feel it, but it kept unravelling, an amorphous shape wrapping tendrils around his lungs and squeezing, around his heart and tugging.
He wanted to tear off his mask so he could breathe, so he could tug at his hair and feel himself, real and solid under his fingers, but he couldn’t, not now, not ever—he couldn’t let Beck see.
So instead he dug his fingers into the meat of his thighs, clenching until it hurt, trying to breathe through the suffocating grief.
Beck had clearly done his research. Peter should have expected that—he was nothing if not thorough. He’d once found out almost every detail about Peter’s life in order to tailor his deception exactly to every one of his weak points. Of course he would try to do the same again.
And while he had much less information to go on this time, there was clearly still more than enough to make it hurt.
His fight with Goblin at Happy’s condo had been very public and widely reported on. More importantly, the Bugle and Jameson himself had been at the scene. Peter knew there was plenty of footage from the portion of the fight that had been outside, if mostly from a distance. And, of course, Jameson had milked the outcome of that fight—the consequences of that fight—for all it was worth.
It wouldn’t have been hard for Beck to find out about May, who she had been. Perhaps even her connection to Spider-Man through FEAST, if not anything more personal. But it was enough. Beck knew the way the Bugle talked about Spider-Man, and he knew what Spider-Man was really like, even if he did not remember Peter’s identity. He knew better than anyone that Spider-Man was not a murderer. That Spider-Man wanted nothing more than to protect people. Of course he would try to taunt Peter with the casualties of his fight, even if he had no idea how painful a memory it really was.
Beck was trying to push his buttons, as he always did.
But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
It didn’t take away the visceral pain of seeing May before him, bloody, hurt, because of him.
It didn’t lessen the chasm that guilt tore into him, trying to drown him in it.
It didn’t soften the rage piercing his ribs like barbs hooking into him, ready to drag him into bitterness.
Doubling over, Peter sucked in sharp breaths, keening when his lungs allowed, a miserable sound pulled out of the depth of his stomach. It was too heavy. Not for the first time he thought he might just crumble under the weight of it all, fall to pieces that couldn’t be put together again. Not for the first time he was tempted to just let it happen. To just give up and let himself be buried under the rubble and not get up again. Because it hurt, it hurt to carry all this, it was just too heavy. Even his super strength couldn’t help him here. He couldn’t just pull himself together and whisper an affirmation to himself and pick himself up again, carrying all that weight on his back.
And yet that was exactly what he did.
He pulled himself together, straightening up, his breath eventually evening out.
He whispered to himself until bright spots stopped dancing in his vision. “You can’t trick me anymore.”
He picked himself up again and carried all that crushing weight on his back, carried it through the city and back home.