Chapter Text
The Blipped, as Peter has learned to call himself and all the rest of Thanos’s victims, caused widespread chaos with the paperwork created by their return. Peter, being one of many students killed before finishing the school year, will be once again a Junior come fall.
May doesn’t quite understand his frustration, citing that “You’re back from the dead, Pete. You and about four billion other people. The world needs time to recover, and so do you.”
Being dead, as far as he remembers, is just the same as sleeping, save for some weird dreams about a woman made of bone. He doesn’t need time to recover, he needs to be busy beyond reason to keep his mind from wandering. He needs to be graduating as quickly as possible to catch up to his friends, who are halfway through their own junior year at college.
He races to Ned’s apartment as soon as he’s settled— on foot, because May has yet to clear him for his usual extracurriculars. Mrs. Leeds opens their bright red door and her face breaks and brightens all at once. “Oh,” she says with every emotion known to man. “ Peter .”
She ushers him in, hand on his shoulders, yelling something in Tagalog that carries up towards Ned’s room. Peter knows the similarities between Spanish and Tagalog don’t necessarily mean congruency in everything, but it’s enough that he knows what she means; come down here, your best friend is alive.
Ned’s door is thrown open, and sprinting down the stairs comes someone who almost looks like someone Peter’s met once upon a time. Bulk that’s obviously muscle, a loose black shirt tucked into adidas sweats, and most startling of all— a navy-blue zip-up hoodie hanging open on his shoulders, OSCORP proudly emblazoned on his breast.
“Ned,” Peter breathes. “You didn’t.”
Ned glances at his chest and back up towards Peter, eyes wide and pupils small. “Peter, wait, I can explain—“
Peter shakes his head, backing away slowly. “Oscorp ? I never knew you to sink that low.”
“Please, I’m a college student. I need the cash, Peter—“
“I hope you’re happy with yourself. You and your dirty money. What did it cost?”
“Everything.” Ned answers, and then laughs his traitor ass off. “Oh god, you don’t know that one. You were dead. Holy shit this is terrible, let me just—“
After holing up in Ned’s room with blankets and an Oscorp laptop that makes Peter want to clean his soul in boiling water, Peter leans his head on Ned’s shoulder and sighs. “Dude, what the fuck did I miss?”
Ned makes a hollow sound that Peter can almost see, in the scars and the calluses that Ned’s accumulated in the five years he’s been gone. “You don’t know the half of it, man.”
Friday night, Peter and Ned head out to a relatively clean part of the sewer that Peter remembers fighting in (five years and) two months ago. It’s easy access so far as sewers go, a couple blocks from the actual entrance that actual employees of this fine city use, already putting it ahead most of the underground lairs he’s been lured into. Very little rat friends though, three stars.
“MJ!” Ned calls, hand cupping his lips. “There’s something you’re gonna want to see.”
There’s quick, hard hitting footsteps bouncing off the walls of the tunnel. It reminds Peter of his own steps, jumping around during melee fights in claustrophobic spaces. While the baddies remember not to give him the space to swing, they always forget that he can walk on walls.
A dark figure comes to a halt in front of them, just out of the light. They’re concealed by a too-big black hoodie over black leggings, a black face mask that looks like it's part of a turtleneck pulled up over their nose.
Then they come into the light, and Peter’s lone brain cell craps out. “Hold on, MJ?”
She nods, blank faced and yellow eyed. “Hey Peter, how’s death?”
“She’s good,” he says without thinking too much on it. “What’s going on with, uh—“
MJ tilts her head. “With what?”
“Uh, your— you know what, nevermind, lets just ignore the demon cat eyes. How’s college?”
“It’s eh, there’s a lot of people to draw though.”
“That’s great, MJ.” She does like to draw people in pain, after all. “What’s your major?”
Ned wheezes. “Holy shit, guys. MJ please, don’t leave him hanging like this, c’mon.”
Rolling her eyes and bestowing mercy upon poor, lowly Peter Parker, MJ explains.
“You’ve been gone for a long time, Peter. The city needed Spidey, and when it didn’t have you, everyone else had to come together and fill the vacuum.”
Peter points to himself. “Spidey? Me? I think you’re mistaken—“
“Boy, you couldn’t keep a secret from me if you shoved it up your ass and jumped off a bridge. Also Ned cracks like an egg under pressure.”
“Point.”
“Hey!” Ned shouts, and is promptly ignored because they all know the truth. Not that Peter blames him— MJ could crack any of them open and fry them, and no one would be able to stop her.
“Also your web shooters are out, pull down your sleeves.”
“Oh fuck, thanks man.”
“You’re welcome, anyway—“ she pulls down her mask, revealing two extra eyes hiding on her cheeks. “Shit happened.”
Peter whistles. “Those are fucking sick, MJ.”
MJ smiles and her new eyes smile with her. “I know. They let me see heat signatures, so I can track people down and find them even in the dark.” She looks especially proud of this fact, while Ned looks actively terrified. There’s a story there that Peter isn’t going to pursue. “Apparently, there’s this thing called an X-gene present in most of the human population. It’s only active in about a quarter of us, though, and it’s usually activated by either puberty or extreme stress. When everyone Blipped, it induced the latter for me and a lot of other people, and now we have superpowers. You probably had a dormant X-gene before the spider-bite, which explains why you got your powers and didn’t just die from radiation exposure. My major is biochemistry, by the way.”
“Woah,” Peter breathes. “So you’re like, Charles Xavier and shit?” He heard Tony mention that guy once, offhandedly. He hadn’t pressed beyond finding out that the guy was a mega powerful telepath, and that he was on the Good Guy Team, patent pending. He regrets that noninterest now.
“Yeah, like Charles Xavier and shit, except not at all,” she says. “Prof X runs the X-men, which is a mutant superhero group that really only fights when there’s mutant-related conflict. I’m lowkey one of your vigilante replacements, highkey a Murlock who works to help mutants left homeless and living in the sewers, highkey an activist for mutant rights overall.”
The Murlocks, apparently lead by some badass named Callisto, all live down here in the sewers together in some utopian marxist community. History’s shown that that structure won’t last, so MJ leads protests and storms conferences pushing for mutant rights, especially mutants with obvious physical mutations like herself and most of the other Murlocks.
“It might’ve been okay if we were just humanoid mutants, like most of the rest are. But there’s no way we can hide it. Some of us were evicted, some of us were disowned. This is a safe place.”
“What about you?”
MJ shrugs. “Beats paying rent.”
Apparently, Ned has also taken up the vigilante torch, but he wanted to wait until they were hidden beneath the city to say anything.
“In my defense,” he says, hands raised above his head. “The nature of my job lends to being wiretapped and shit.”
Peter crosses his arms and pouts. “The ladies and gentlemen of the jury take that under consideration, but still require you to defend your case, Mr. Leeds.”
“Okay, Okay. So—“
With the rising influx of vigilante activity in New York City came the rising demand for good Guys in Chairs. Ned, being the best Guy in Chair he knew, purchased himself a few burner phones and started distributing numbers. He quickly became the guy in the chair for most of NYC’s underground heroes, and a few in Westchester. He also became a target, which he then remedied by training with the Murlocks and a few of his other loyal customers.
“And now you’re a jacked IT guy,” Peter summarizes.
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“And you've been cheating on me with half of New York?”
“Peter, no, it’s not what you think—“
Poising his fingers to activate his web shooters, Peter shakes his head. “I won’t hesitate, bitch.”
“I hate both of you,” MJ decides. “Also, if you web up my sewer I’m putting you on the ban list.”
Peter gasps. “No wait, I love it here! This is a three-star sewer! MJ!”
When they wind down, and Peter is crouching on the wall above his (old as shit) friends, MJ thinks to ask, “When are you planning on making your comeback?”
Peter blinks. “My what?”
“You’ve been gone for five years, Pete. They built a monument for you. Once you start spidering again, it’s gonna be a big deal to a lot of people.”
He lets himself fall to the ground between his friends, suddenly too small for his skin. “They built me a monument?”
MJ and Ned exchange glances. “Okay,” Ned says, grabbing his hand. “Let’s go.”
The Spider-Man monument isn’t particularly huge, but it’s bigger than Peter expected it to be. There’s a short pedestal, a statue of Peter in-suit, holding a bike above his head, and a pathway lined with a short, smooth rock wall with names carved into every inch.
MJ explains; “It’s all the people you’ve saved that have come out and credited you for it— and the people who donated to the monument, of course.”
Peter can’t breathe, watching all the tourists and the native New Yorkers walk through. “Oh. I was a pretty big deal, huh?”
Ned laughs. “Yeah dude, yeah you were.”
MJ elbows them both in the ribs, to which they loudly protest. “You’re still a big deal, Peter, for all that you’re also still a weirdass nerdy kid. The city misses you, and you’re gonna give yourself back to them, right?”
Peter things of the suit, hidden away in his closet. He thinks of Aunt May crying into his hair. He thinks of the names on the rock wall in front of him. “Yeah,” he answers honestly. “Of course, I’ll do it tonight.”
Aunt May is not so much amenable to this idea. “What the fuck do you mean, you’re going on patrol?”
“The city needs me,” he says, fully suited save for the mask and standing in the middle of their living room, where he’d been attempting to say goodbye for the past five minutes. “Or they need Spider-Man, anyway. I want to let them know that I’m back.”
“Peter, I just got you back.” May stands up from her spot on the couch, cupping his face in her hands. “Don’t leave me again so soon.”
“May,” he tries, but he can’t finish it the way he wants to. I’ll be fine, or that’s never going to happen again, don’t worry. Instead, he sighs and puts his own hands on May’s shoulders. “I have to. Saving people is what I do, and without me lots of people would be dead.”
Peter tries to ignore the shine in his aunt’s eyes when she nods and kisses him on the forehead. “Come home safe, yeah?”
“I will,” he promises, though it’s empty, and hugs her tight before rushing to his room to pull clothes on over his suit. He needs to take off from 23rd or around, because last time he was closer to 7th, and— even if it was five years ago— switching it up is a healthy part of a superhero’s daily routine.
Finally, he’s back on the field. New York isn’t going to have to miss him for much longer.