Chapter Text
When Karen told Peter that the glowy purple rock he left with Ned was an explosive Chitauri energy core, only explosive if exposed to radiation, his mind immediately went to the fact that after the AcaDec competition, the students would likely visit the Washington Monument.
The Washington Monument has X-rays. X-rays that people have to go through to get into the monument itself.
It's okay, Peter tells himself. Ned probably left it in the hotel room.
...But there's still a chance that Ned, knowing Peter told him to take care of it, brought it to the competition with him. It'll likely be in his bag, or, knowing Ned, his pocket.
So he has to hurry. He immediately tries to call Ned, but it fails.
Okay, so he really has to hurry, then.
He leaves the crate he'd been searching in, webbing up to the vault door. Banging on it, he cries out, "Hey! Please! Please, somebody let me out! Hey!"
When he doesn't get a response, he looks to his right. There's a box there, a control panel- And hey, that could help him open the door!
"Karen, you have to help me override that time lock."
"Okay Karen, you have to lower the voltage and run it." Peter says calmly, pressing some buttons on the control panel. He really doesn't want to have to manually test all of the input codes, but he will if he has to.
"Trial unsuccessful," Karen informs him.
Damn it. "Okay, we're just gonna have to try every sequence."
Peter resigns himself to what will hopefully not be a long time of inputting numbers to open the door.
"Initiating trial 247."
The door opens a second later. Peter almost jumps back in surprise. "It worked. It works!"
He shoves his notebook and pen back into his backpack, zipping it up before slinging out of the door. He lands on the ceiling and drops down onto a moving truck beneath him, using it to get out of the facility.
"Karen, you have to get me to the decathlon as fast as possible!" Peter's voice is a little panicked.
Karen shares no such emotional distress. "Sure thing. Just tell me where it is."
"Right across the street from the Washington Monument." Peter's phone plays Ned's voicemail, and he swears mentally. "Ned, call me back, the glowy thing is a bomb!"
When Peter finally gets a hold of Ned, it's because Ned called him.
His ringtone plays out, and he fishes his phone out of his pocket, relieved. "Oh, Ned, you're alive!"
"Peter, are you okay?" Ned's voice is a whispered hush on the other end, but Peter isn't listening.
"Hey, Ned, Ned- Where's the glowy thing? The glowy thing-"
"Don't worry, it's safe. It's in my backpack."
Well, shit.
"No, Ned, listen! No, Ned, the glowy thing, it's dangerous-"
"You missed the decathlon! I covered for you-"
"Ned, listen to me!-"
"We're at the Washington Monument, I-" Ned's voice is cut off, and suddenly, it's not Ned talking to him.
"Peter, is that you?" Liz's voice calls to him, and Peter freezes. He tries to act causal when he responds, but the only thing he can get out is a high-pitched, rushed "Oh, hey Liz-" before Karen's voice is in his ears.
"Is that Liz?" Karen asks, and Peter ignores her, focusing on talking to Liz. "Please put Ned back on the phone-"
"You should tell her how you feel," Karen encourages him. He tries responding to Karen, but at the same time, Liz huffs at him, "You flake, you are so lucky we won- You know, I want to be mad, but I'm more worried. Like, what is going on with you?"
"Liz, I have to talk to Ned, it's really important- Liz, there's something in Ned's backpack, it's really dangerous, don't let it go through an X-ray!"
Peter doesn't get a response. "Liz? Liz! Damn it!-" He picks up his pace, even though he'd already been sprinting.
Peter webs his backpack to a tree, hoping it'll stay secure for long enough that he can get to his friends.
Then he watches the top blow up, fragments of the stone falling to the ground. "No, no, no no no- Karen! What's going on up there?!"
His lenses analyze the building as Karen explains to him what happened. "The Chitauri core has detonated and caused severe structural damage to the elevator."
"Oh, no," Peter breathes out, a jolt of fear running down his spine like electricity.
"My friends are up there!" MJ is behind him, pointing at the building. Peter turns around, mentally cursing himself. "What? Uh, don't worry, ma'am. Everything's gonna be okay-"
He hasn't even finished his sentence before he's off running, shouting his pardons for rushing through a crowd and bumping into Peter. If there's one thing people could confidently say about Peter, it's that his manners will always be a top priority.
"Oh my God, that's tall-" Still, Peter jumps up onto the side of the Washington Monument (!), climbing up the stone as fast as he can. He needs to get to his teammates before the structure collapses.
"Estimating 10 minutes before catastrophic failure," Karen reminds him. Peter continues to climb up, panting as he goes.
"The safety systems are completely failing," She informs him. Peter swears.
"The occupants are in imminent mortal danger." Peter groans, straining himself as he tries to get up. "I'm going as fast as I can!"
"You now have 125 seconds until catastrophic failure," Karen tells Peter, and he looks up, shocked. "What?! Why?"
"Unexpected motion has caused the deterioration to escalate." She answers.
"How do we get in there?" Suddenly, the spider emblem on his chest is no longer on his chest.
That's so cool.
"Activating reconnaissance drone."
"Woah. Has that been there this whole time? That's awesome," He breathes out, astonished as he watches the drone fly away.
"Locating optimal entry point," Karen informs him. A second later, she continues, "Proceed to Southwest window."
"Karen, I'm on my way!" With that, Peter is off.
He will save his team. He's determined.
At the Southwest window, Peter finally looks down at the ground. It hits him then, just how high up he is. He presses his back against the sloping bricks, looking back up at the sky.
"What's wrong? You've reached the Southwest window." Karen's voice sounds awfully like a concerned mother, despite being an AI made by Tony Stark. "Why are you hesitating?"
"It's fine, I've just never been this high before," Peter whispers, mortified. He watches as a few pigeons sit on the top of the Southwest window in question.
"You have also not reinstalled your parachute, so a fall from this height would most likely be lethal."
"Perfect," Peter says, because maybe if he pretends that didn't just make him even more terrified, he'll feel less terrified.
He knows he still has to keep moving. He has a limited amount of time to save his friends, but hearing that- Hearing Karen tell him that if he falls, he would die, it brings up a plethora of new thoughts. If he were to die, right now, as Spider-Man, that means he would've failed to save his friends. He would've failed to save his team, and he would be unmasked.
The world would remember Spider-Man as a dumb teenager who died falling off of the Washington Monument, a dumb teenager who couldn't save his decathlon team, a dumb teenager who had so much power and lost it just because he couldn't do one simple mission. Tony would be disappointed, so would May, and he isn't sure his friends would even be around to care.
But he steels himself anyways, grunting as he tries to break the glass with his foot.
"Why is it not breaking?" He huffs out, frustrated.
"It's four-inch ballistic glass. You'll have to create more momentum." Okay, great, so the one thing he doesn't want to hear. He's not stupid, he knows how to create more momentum, he just doesn't like the process involved.
He shoots a web right above the circular aircraft warning light above the Southwest window, using it to keep himself steady. Taking a deep breath, he leans back, his heels pressing flat against the glass. He prepares himself for just a second before using the window to propel himself backwards, coming back down onto it and-
The glass doesn't budge.
Okay. That's fine. He tries again, jumping with a little bit more force this time. The glass cracks. He almost cries out in relief; He's getting somewhere! This isn't for nothing!
However, right as he's about to jump a third time, two helicopters surround him.
"This is D.C. Metro Police. Identify yourself." The speakers blare at him.
Peter doesn't have time for this. "My friends are in there, my friends are in there, stop!"
They either don't hear him or don't care for what he has to say, because the response is a demand for him to return to the ground immediately. But he can't do that, he can't abandon his friends, even when his spider-senses are telling him that there are snipers trained on him.
Peter has to make a decision. The elevator keeps moving, and the police choppers keep telling him to stand down and go back to the ground or they'll open fire.
Spider-Man does not return to the ground. In fact, he climbs up even higher, crawling onto the very top of the Washington Monument. The officers tell him it's his last chance.
"I'm gonna die," Peter sighs, then jumps off of the monument. He uses his web-wings (that's what he's calling them, because he's a spider, and he thinks that a name pertaining to a flying squirrel won't make much sense) to keep from falling straight to the ground. He goes over the police chopper closest to him and webs along it as he goes over the other side of it, using it as leverage to shoot himself through the Southwest window.
"Break!" He shouts, just before his feet land against the glass and shatter it completely. He shoots a ricochet web against the tiles that used to be the ceiling of the elevator, hoping and praying that it'll catch onto something anchored. Preferably the floor, as that was what he was aiming for, but beggars don't get to be choosers, he supposes.
He knows his web has caught onto something when he's pulled across the floor, almost into the elevator. He uses his legs to catch himself, keeping his body from going into the elevator shaft. He's desperately hoping that his webs are strong enough to hold. He knows they are, from a scientific standpoint, but as a teenager who knows his crush, best friend, and the rest of his decathlon team (save for the few who got out of the elevator before he got there), he's allowed to be worried that they won't hold.
A second passes. His web holds. He gasps. "I did it!"
His web promptly pulls him down with the elevator. His web itself could withstand the weight. The doors he was using to keep himself in place could not.
The falling elevator catches, staying in place. When Peter lands on his back on the floor of it, it falls down some more. Knowing he needs to react quickly in order to keep them from plummeting to their death, Peter shoots a web through the rather large hole in the ceiling (or lack thereof, honestly).
It attaches to a point much further above them and stops their descent, but pulls Peter into a small corner of what's left of the ceiling. He ends up planting his feet against it to keep them from falling completely down.
He clears his throat as their movement stops. In a terrible imitation of a New York accent, he speaks. "Hey, how you doing? Don't worry, I gotchu."
Ned waves his hand in a victory motion over and over, feeling entirely grateful to his best friend for saving them. "Yes! Yes!"
"Hey, hey, hey, big guy, quit moving around!" Peter exclaims, watching as Ned shakes the elevator.
"I'm sorry, sir, so sorry-"
Peter uses his webbing to pull the elevator back up to where their previously rescued decathlon team members and the proper authorities are waiting, and he watches as they pry open the doors. Mr. Harrington and Ned scramble out of the elevator, and Peter can feel the metal of the elevator ceiling bending beneath his feet.
"Alright, this is your stop. Go, go, go! Everybody out, move it, people- Move it, move it-"
Liz hesitates, however, and the metal bends completely. The elevator falls without Peter as an anchor holding it up, and Peter reaches for Liz. He doesn't catch her in time.
Even if he isn't able to catch her with his hand, he still needs to catch her. He shoots a web onto her hand, and Liz stops screaming, but she's still breathing heavily.
"You're okay, you're okay-" Peter reassures her, slowly pulling her up.
"Oh my God, oh-" Liz breathes out, gasping as the rescue team pulls her through the doors.
Peter looks at his team, but his focus is mainly on Liz, even as he returns to his awful, over-exaggerated New York accent. "So, uh, is everyone okay?"
Liz nods. Karen's voice rings into his ears, speaking softly. "This is your chance, Peter. Kiss her."
Peter does not get to kiss her. He doesn't even get to think about it, because at that moment, his web snaps, and he falls down the elevator shaft.
"Are you really friends with Peter Parker?" Flash calls down the elevator shaft.
Flash does not get a response.