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FEBRUARY 10TH
Honestly, he thought he could keep the secret longer than this.
FEBRUARY 3RD
Despite the feeling of coercion when it came to joining Midtown’s track team, Peter enjoyed it. He couldn’t always be going out as Spiderman (and when he did, he had to keep a low profile), so there weren’t many other opportunities to work out. Sure, Peter was allowed to go on jogs through the park so long as he wore his tracking bracelet (always fixed by the end of every patrol, to keep away suspicion) and had an escort, running nearby.
But he could never just run – just go as fast as he could and keep running until his enhanced body finally gave out, lungs straining, heart screaming, legs shaking like they would never hold him up again.
He couldn’t do that at school, either – at least, not for long. Peter had cemented himself as the fastest runner in the team to avoid forcing himself to play down his abilities too much. Sure, he was still holding back, but not as much as he could be.
So when he was at track, he could just run, listening to Coach Wilson’s distant yelling and whistle blowing; taking the lead on the small pack of runners who joined him each week.
It was still early in the year, so they usually ran around the indoor gym – but that day was inexplicably warm for a Friday in early February, so they ran outside. The field wasn’t big, nor well maintained, but there was a regulation running track and plenty of time for Peter to spend, focusing his hearing on the sounds of his feet slapping against the ground.
Eventually, the track team finished their runs and collapsed on the grass, chugging water until their bottles dried up.
“Parker,” Coach Wilson barked, sidling over. “Nice work today. We don’t have track meets for another few months, but when we do, we might finally win one.”
Peter shot a glance over to the other runners, but none of them seemed to mind the insinuation. He knew that most of them joined because they either liked running or had negotiated their way out of gym class by joining the team – Peter knew it was a popular incentive; getting a free period twice a week and spending an hour running or playing football after class.
“Thanks, Coach,” Peter replied. He was worn out, sure, but he had to put on a bit of an act. He found he was always acting; he was either pretending he couldn’t run as fast as he could, or that he was a home-schooled kid, or that he was actually at Ned’s when he said he was. Somehow, his life was twisting itself into a series of seemingly minor white lies.
(Peter knew they were anything but. White lies had a tendency to grow and fade to darker shades; his life had been a lie since age six when he was told that HYDRA was who he was, when Parker became his last name, when he slipped up at age nine; crying and calling the scientist that would later mutate his cells Dad, just to beg for comfort. Lies were spiralling, fickle creatures, and if he didn’t look out, they were going to swallow him whole.)
Happy was waiting for him out front when they were done. He hadn’t changed, and threw his backpack of clothes and books ahead of him into the backseat when he clambered in.
“Kid, you reek,” was all Happy said.
Peter nodded his acknowledgement and relaxed into the leather car seat, shutting his eyes and letting the journey pass him by. Silently, he was figuring out the weekend’s plan – because that’s what his life was now, avoiding and dodging questions from his parents and pretending that was okay.
They just want what’s best for you. Maybe they won’t freak out if you told them about Spiderman. They might not even stop you.
He hadn’t felt bad at first, but Pepper always asked what he got up to at Ned’s and soon the lies were beginning to take over. Peter didn’t know how he’d gotten himself into this mess; how he could have ever thought that lying to the only people that cared about him was the better option.
He’d listened to Pepper cry once, while pretending to be asleep in a hospital bed.
(Pretending, pretending, always pretending.)
He didn’t want her to feel that kind of hurt again. Not Pepper, not his Mom.
Peter climbed out of the car when it finally stopped, sending a quick thanks to Happy and trudging into the house. The front door was always locked with a key, needed a biometric scan of his right forefinger and an approved facial scan from FRIDAY to open.
“Welcome home, Peter,” FRIDAY greeted when he shut the door behind him.
“Hey, FRI, where is everybody?”
“Boss is in the lab, downstairs, and Mrs Boss is in the kitchen.”
Peter blew out a breath and followed the scent of cooking, to where Pepper was stood over the stove, stirring a pot.
“Hey, honey,” she called over her shoulder. “How was track?”
“Fine,” Peter said. “I’m still fast.”
“That’s good.” Pepper took a glance at him, still in his gym clothes, and wrinkled her nose. “You’re going to have a shower before dinner, right?”
Peter cracked a smile and waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Just thought I’d say hello.”
“Well, hello. Dinner’s in thirty. Leave your gym stuff by the washer and I’ll make sure it’s done by Monday.”
Peter followed instructions, dumping his clothes by the washing machine and stepping under the freezing cold spray of the shower. He managed with it for less than twenty seconds before turning on the heat – the spider part of him couldn’t stand the cold.
I could totally just tell them about Spiderman. What’s the worst they could do?
(Lock him up in a glass box, give him over to SHIELD, tie him to a table and let a radioactive spider crawl over his chest-)
Peter turned off the shower and changed. He kept his mind on light subjects, unobtrusive ones that wouldn’t pierce his shell and hurt him from the inside out.
Peter helped Pepper set the table, and eventually Tony emerged from the lab, wearing oil-stained jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt with a scorch mark at the hem. Pepper’s cooking was a lot better than Peter’s was, and they ate most of the meal in companionable silence until Tony finally spoke.
“You’re going to Ned’s tomorrow, right?” he asked.
It was the first time they’d allowed him to go to Ned’s at the weekend. Peter could feel the restraints being loosened, little by little, as they tried to get used to the life they were now living.
(They all pretended they hadn’t read the articles about Tony and Pepper’s disappearing acts, about Pepper spending less time at the office, about Iron Man sightings becoming more and more infrequent.)
“Yeah. I agreed to be there at 10.”
“You’re working on a project?”
Peter nodded. “It’s for the robotics club,” he replied. This was actually true. They were working on a robot together – Peter had built the robot and Ned’s duty was the coding. They weren’t planning on working on it tomorrow. “We were gonna watch a few movies, too.”
Pepper nodded. “That’s fine, just be home by 9, alright? And call Happy when you need a pick up.”
“You got it,” Peter agreed, before shovelling a forkful of food into his mouth. Eleven hours was a lot of time to patrol.
FEBRUARY 4TH
They kept everything but the webshooters at Ned’s, because Peter didn’t need FRIDAY breathing down his neck. When he arrived, they agreed to spend the first few hours watching a movie (Pacific Rim – Peter had never seen it before and now his life was changed forever) as they fixed up the stitches in the suit, from where the goggles were coming loose, and tinkered with the webshooters, as there was a jam Peter hadn’t noticed throughout the week.
They made the web fluid at school, and Peter fed it into the cannisters as the jaegers and kaijus battled to the death on screen, and Ned talked over the movie, explaining that Mako Mori deserved better, but the second movie was being made, and he had hope that she’d get it.
After lunch, Ned hacked the watch and changed his location.
“You’re good to go, Spiderman,” Ned said.
Peter peeked out the front window, spotting two agents sitting at the café. They were different to the normal ones, but even Peter figured they couldn’t sit there all day and would have to switch out eventually.
“Alright,” Peter said, pulling his mask on. “Tell me if there’s anything going on. Nothing too big-”
“I know,” Ned interrupted. “We’re still going small. Though, you could totally do something bigger – what if there’s a bank robbery? Or a murder! Oh, Spiderman could hunt a serial killer!”
“Ned,” Peter said, stopping him. “We’ve been over this – my Dad will recognise the webshooters if he sees them on the news.”
Ned rolled his eyes, but he didn’t seem put out. He nodded and waved a hand towards his bedroom door. “Go on, Spidey. I’ll let you know if anything’s going down.”
-
For a few hours, Spiderman and Ned stopped muggings and pulled cats down from trees. He led an old lady across the road and stepped in the way of the speeding car that would’ve run them down, ignoring the red stop light. The wheels had squealed against the ground and two dents appeared in the hood, where Peter had slammed his hands to slow the vehicle.
“Red means stop,” he told the driver before turning back to the old lady. He helped her the rest of the way across the road, then leapt up and around a building to get out of sight.
“What just happened?” Ned asked in his ear.
“Car ran a red light,” Peter replied, shaking his head. “New York drivers are the worst.”
“Are you gonna get your license?”
Peter shrugged. He was on the roof of an apartment building, crouched by the edge and watching the people walk. “Maybe, I’m not sure.” He hadn’t thought about it before – hadn’t wondered how it would work with his parole-like lifestyle. He’d driven before and he wasn’t great – HYDRA had given him lessons; Agent Barnum sitting in the passenger seat of the car, giving him strict instructions. It wasn’t like real driving, with stop signs and gentle braking; it was getaway driving – it was a tearing up the streets and speeding from the cops kind of driving, but he wasn’t very good at it.
Briefly, he pictured Tony trying to teach him to drive in one of his flashy Audis. He could only see the destruction he’d likely cause.
“My Dad’s teaching me,” Ned said.
“How’s it going?”
“On a scale of those toddler cars you drive with your feet to Fast and Furious, I can firmly say I almost ran down a woman and hit a stop sign but not hard enough to knock it over.”
Laughter bubbled up and out of Peter, and he took the moment to feel the joy as it spun around inside him. It was cut short however, when there was a pull at the back of his neck, and he turned to look down the street. Only a second later, the building he stood on shook in the aftermath of the explosion.
Smoke billowed up and out of a bodega down the road, cars swerving to the sides and bodies littering the ground. The smoke spiralled, suddenly, around a shape; it moved out into the light – a ten-foot lizard, standing on its hind legs and shrieking.
“Holy shit, Batman,” Peter said, leaping to his feet.
“That’s not the line,” Ned replied.
“I’ve never seen it.” Peter jumped off the ledge, using a web to catch himself and catapult him down the road. He took the seconds to form a priority list – civilians first, then the lizard.
He landed on the ground in a roll and moved to his feet to help a man up. Peter ducked and darted about the scene as the lizard swung around, its tail knocking down a street lamp, which Peter caught to keep it from crushing a child.
“Get out of here!” he yelled, setting down the lamppost. A woman took the child and then Peter was rushing to the people that couldn’t stand; pulling them from harm’s way as the lizard chose a direction and bound towards it. The cars and people in the way meant nothing to it, and Peter swung behind, chasing.
“I’m getting the reports,” Ned said as Peter shot a web at the lizard’s back and drew himself in. “Is it really a giant lizard?”
“Either that or we’re living Jurassic Park right now,” Peter answered, the air forced from his lungs at his bad landing. He clung onto the lizard’s back as it ran, crawling up to its neck. He took a breath and used a web to try and blind it, swing around its face and landing on its back once more, only to be thrown off and into the side of a building. The reptile turned on him then, its target apparently forgotten as it stomped towards Peter, who was forcing himself onto his feet once more.
Apparently, being flung into a building hurt.
“I’m not Jeff Goldblum,” Peter said as it got closer. “I have no idea what to do here.”
Still, he fought.
People ran, screaming, and the police sirens echoed off the windows, surrounding Peter as he fought the lizard in his makeshift onesie. He was thrown once more through the window of a jewellery store when the bullets began flying.
Though the store’s alarms were ringing like crazy in his ears, Peter sat up, watching the bullets hit the lizard – but it seemed bothered, more than hurt, and started running on all fours now, towards an alley. Peter pulled himself from the window display and chased after – running around the corner as best he could-
Only to find the alley empty.
“It’s gone,” Peter said with a huff.
“Just, like, disappeared?” Ned asked.
“Yeah. Poof. Thin air.”
“Hey!” Peter turned at the voice, finding three police officers with their guns out, trained on him. “Where’s the lizard?”
Peter shrugged. “No idea. It vanished.”
The officers looked between themselves, their guns still raised. Peter had felt bullets before, he’d been shot a few times, the most recent being at the compound-
(Holding up a building and red spreading across his shirt, the people he’d once fought side by side with dead on the ground behind him.)
-but he didn’t want to do this right now. He couldn’t think of how he’d explain it to his parents, especially without leaving Ned’s house all day.
“We’re gonna have to take you in,” the centre officer said. “Just put your hands up, and we’ll take you in, nice and easy.”
“Peter!” Ned called in the comms. “Don’t-”
Peter stopped listening to Ned. “Why are you arresting me?” he asked, eyes darting up to get a good look at the alley around him.
“Vigilantes are against the law,” another officer said. “Especially ones that haven’t signed their contract for the Accords.” Peter didn’t know much about the Accords – he knew it had caused a splinter in the Avengers, but not one that couldn’t be patched up. He knew they’d been revised and fixed, but he hadn’t ever considered signing them himself. Instead, Fury had forced a different series of documents under his hands to keep him from having to sign anything else for the time being.
“How do you know I haven’t signed the Accords?” he replied, still not bringing his hands up in surrender.
“There’s no Spiderboy on the list,” an officer said. “Now, hands up.”
Peter huffed. “It’s Spiderman.”
“Not with that voice.”
“Hit puberty, kid, then you can call yourself that.”
“Well, that was rude,” Peter replied. “And just for that, I’m gonna give you one of these.” Peter flipped them the bird before raising an arm and shooting out a web, suddenly flying through the air after it as he swung up and out of the alley. “Later, boys!”
He ran across the rooftop and leapt off, headed back in the direction of Ned’s house.
-
His bruises were mostly on his torso, and Peter spent the rest of the day hanging out with Ned, his costume hidden deep in the recesses of Ned’s closet. The two of them didn’t talk about the police officers, didn’t talk about driving or how Peter winced when he moved. They spoke briefly of the lizard, but in no capacity other than that’s fucking wild, right?
At the end of the day, he went home, giving a little wave to the SHIELD agents, watching from across the road. They didn’t acknowledge him and Happy rolled his eyes at his antics. At home, Peter excused himself to bed as soon as he got in, not catching sight of the television screen his parents watched, playing the news at a low volume with a poor-quality video of New York’s newest vigilante, Spiderman, battling with a giant lizard.
FEBRUARY 5TH
He could feel their eyes on him, but he couldn’t explain why.
It felt similar to the worried gazes Tony and Pepper would send his way at the beginning, before he slipped into place in their makeshift family.
He kept his head down, stayed in his room and completed his homework. He ignored Ned’s text messages until started getting panicky and told himself, when he saw the first article with a blurred picture of him and his onesie, that no one would know it was him. Not the kids at school, not SHIELD and definitely not his parents.
FEBRUARY 6TH
On the Monday, he had band during lunch (and by that, he meant that he ate his lunch in the band room while Ned played the clarinet, and Michelle half-heartedly sounded the triangle twice a song, because he couldn’t play an instrument and didn’t really want to sit alone in the cafeteria), and robotics after school. Peter tinkered with the mechanism of the robot as Ned uploaded the code, and after, Peter persuaded Happy to drive Ned home.
“Dude,” Ned whispered in the back of the car, once Happy had slid up the screen because he didn’t want to listen to annoying teenage boys. “I get you’ve got your Stark internship, but do you go every day? He always picks you up – and now this?”
Peter shrugged. “Yeah, basically, but even on days I don’t have the internship, Mr. Stark has Happy drive me home.” The lie slipped through his teeth without resistance. It was so easy to let them pile up. “Something about the bad neighbourhood, or whatever.”
“That’s so cool.”
Outside Ned’s house, Happy pulled over to the side of the road.
“Hey, Hap?” Peter called, knocking on the glass. “I’m just going to go inside for a minute, I left my phone charger here on Saturday.”
Happy rolled his eyes and waved him off, Peter climbing out of the car behind Ned. For once, he was telling the truth. The StarkPhone could either be charged with a cord – like the one he left at Ned’s – or a small plate that the phone could sit on. He’d taken the cord to Ned’s, left his phone there to charge as he went out Spiderman-ing and never brought it home.
It was as Peter was picking up the charger from Ned’s desk that the rumble shook through the house. Peter took a sharp breath, his body darting to the front window before he knew he was moving. Out in the street, about five houses down, stood the lizard – just the same as when he’d fought it before – prowling the streets. What could it be after that it would come to Ned’s neighbourhood?
The lizard moved forward, coming up the street to where Ned’s house stood, both boys staring out the window, when the sleek black Audi caught Peter’s attention. It pulled away from the side of the road, wheels squealing as it shot out into the street and raced around the corner. Peter’s phone rang a moment later.
“Happy? What’s happening?”
“Stay inside. That’s an order.”
“But the lizard-”
“Stay inside. This is a No Black Spider situation,” Happy explained. “Just stay inside, don’t attract attention to yourselves. I’m calling Tony-”
“No, you don’t have-” The dial tone sounded as Happy hung up and Peter swore, shoving the phone into his pocket.
“This is totally a chance for Spiderman!” Ned exclaimed. “Look! You’re here, so’s the suit.”
Peter could only picture it; taking down the lizard and Iron Man arriving, recognising the webshooters and immediately calling Peter out on it. Peter had seen the shaky footage of the fight from Saturday, but his parents hadn’t – they were yet to bring it up; the spider-themed vigilante with the same tech as him.
Peter shook his head. “Happy said to stay indoors.”
“Since when do you listen to Happy? This is a Spiderman event!”
It’s a No Black Spider situation, Peter thought, because while he logically knew there was a difference between the two of them-
(Assassin, assassin, assassin)
-Peter knew there was something of the HYDRA agent still inside him. Happy wasn’t saying that the assassin couldn’t help, he was saying Peter and his abilities couldn’t. He shook his head.
“He said he’s calling Iron Man,” Peter said, watching the lizard trample two cars, alarms blaring.
“You could fight with Iron Man!” Ned insisted. “Come on! That would be epic!”
That would be epic, but Peter remained steadfast. He watched from the window as the lizard took off around the corner, and an idea popped into his head. It sounded a lot like the At Least We Didn’t Have to Pay for Karate Lessons protocol.
“Come on,” Peter said, watching the lizard take off around the corner. “I wanna watch.”
“You want to watch?” Ned asked, incredulous, yet still following right behind his friend. “You could take it out!”
“Or I could watch.”
They raced out of the house and down the street, breaking through the flow of people running the other way. At the corner, they poked their heads around to see the lizard growling and throwing a car into a house. The windows smashed, glass raining down, another alarm sounding into existence.
“Come on,” Ned whispered. “We shouldn’t be here – not without your suit.”
“Calm down,” Peter said. “Nothing’s going to happen – watch.”
Peter had already caught the sound of thrusters on the wind, and now Iron Man flew into view, taking a moment’s pause to assess the situation before flying down and shooting the lizard with his repulsors.
“Whoa!” Ned cried, suddenly forgetting his past fear.
They watched Iron Man battle, but Peter couldn’t help but notice how the lizard didn’t seem to care about getting hit. It took the blasts and largely ignored Iron Man, choosing instead to continue causing havoc and breaking whatever it ran into on the street – almost like it wasn’t controlled by an intelligent brain.
Like there wasn’t a game plan; it was just… going.
When Iron Man stepped it up a notch (Peter feeling oddly proud, the words that’s my Dad swelling inside him), the lizard made a break for it. Peter knew what was going to happen before it did, and as the lizard bounded back up the street, to where they were watching from the corner of a house, Peter leapt back, pushing Ned with him and narrowly avoiding the sweeping tail that hit the building they hid behind.
Behind him, Ned was shaking, and Peter watched wide-eyed as the lizard trampled the cars in its wake.
Peter frowned – why wasn’t Iron Man keeping up with it?
“I’m sure Happy told you to stay in the house,” a metallic voice said behind him. Peter spun around, eyes like saucers as Iron Man lowered himself to the ground.
“Busted,” Ned whispered.
“Not helping,” Peter hissed back. He looked at his father and then turned to where the lizard was-
It was gone.
“Come on,” Peter complained. “It got away!”
“And you barely got away from being hit just now!” Tony shot back, the faceplate rising to reveal his glare. He then blinked and shook his head. “Nope – not doing this. You’re going home. I’m calling Happy, he’s coming back, and he’s going to take you home.”
“Tony-”
“Kid, nope, not today. Giant rampaging lizard is enough for today. We’ll talk about you blatantly disregarding Happy’s instructions later.”
Behind him, Ned whispered, “Did you just call him Tony?”
Peter ignored that.
He huffed and Iron Man nodded once before shooting back off into the sky. Peter watched him fly down the street in search for the missing mutant lizard. He walked Ned home, dodging his questions all the while, and eventually got back into Happy’s car to be driven away.
-
Needless to say, dinner was tense that night.
“-You were told to stay inside-”
“What’s the point in that Karate Protocol if I can’t do anything when there’s danger?” Peter asked, interrupting Tony once again. They’d been going around in circles, and Pepper had sat at the table, her food, like theirs, going cold as she massaged her temples.
“It’s for emergencies-”
“A giant lizard feels a lot like an emergency to me!” Peter shot back. Their voices were raised and both of them were itching to stand and shout over the table – it was only an award-winning amount of restraint that kept them seated.
“No! An emergency is when Stark Tower gets infiltrated! Or this house! Or you’re in immediate danger-”
“The lizard-”
“Was out on the street! You were inside Ted’s house-”
“-Ned-”
“-and completely safe! The Karate Protocol is for when you’re not!”
“But I can help,” Peter insisted.
“But you shouldn’t have to!”
“But I can! I have these powers, and-”
“And if SHIELD catches you using those powers, you’ll be right back in some shitty cell, Peter!” Tony’s voice was louder than Peter had ever heard it, and Tony’s chair scraped back as he stood, his knuckles white on the table. Peter clenched his jaw, eyes firmly locked on Tony’s, and waited until his father lowered his voice. “I appreciate that you want to help,” he said, diplomatically, “but not only are you still on SHIELD’s watchlist, but you signed all the papers Fury gave you-”
“You told me to.”
“I know,” Tony said, shutting his eyes and exhaling a sigh through his nose. “I know. They keep you safe. They mean you don’t have to sign the Accords yet. They mean you get to stay here with us, rather than a facility somewhere, because – whether any of us like it or not, despite the lack of choice you had – you were indoctrinated into HYDRA, Peter. You’re dangerous. You can’t be using your powers-”
“You put me in a high school,” Peter replied. “If I was so dangerous, that would never have happened. I want to help. I want to be helpful and do something. Is that really so bad?”
“It’s not, sweetie,” Pepper said before Tony could reply. She looked up from where she held her head in her hands throughout the entire argument. “It’s really not. We’re so happy you want to help, but the world doesn’t know about Peter Stark and it certainly doesn’t know that you have abilities. We know you’re capable and talented, we do – but, honey, we made these protocols for a reason. You’re a minor, whether you feel like it or not. You’re still a kid and we need to keep you safe, so if that means Happy telling you to stay in the house when a giant lizard is running through the streets, then you stay in the house – someone else can deal with the lizard.”
Pepper reached across the table and took one of his hands in her own. She squeezed it gently and Peter swallowed his anger.
“We don’t want to lose you again, okay?”
Peter nodded, silent.
He left the dinner table a moment later, food uneaten and cold on his plate and parents watching his retreating back without comment. He understood that they wanted to keep him safe, but they didn’t know about – or understand – the good he had and could do. He’d saved lives since he put on the Spiderman suit. He could save more – in fact, he decided when he landed heavily on his mattress, he could take down the lizard and show his parents that he could be a hero.
Peter Parker was banned from the action, but Spiderman wasn’t.
FEBRUARY 7TH
He kept his head down at school. The school news covered the lizard attack in Queens, mentioning Iron Man being present, and then immediately went on to talk about something else.
“It was crazy,” Ned insisted. Michelle was looking at him with a dead expression. “It was right outside my house! And Peter was all like, let’s check it out, so we go out there and I kid you not – the lizard ran right by us! It almost hit us with its tail too, but Peter pulled us out of the way! And then Iron Man was there!”
Peter rolled his eyes, staring into his locker. He still didn’t have much of a use for it, but he’d started keeping a few text books there that he didn’t need to take home. Overall, it was just a useless space in the wall.
“He talked to us and everything!” Ned continued. Peter couldn’t be bothered to tell him to lower his voice – despite the NDAs and all the legality twisted up in it, everyone at school had some idea that Peter was Tony Stark’s personal intern; it was one of the many rumours that were still tumbling down the grape vine almost two months after the Field Trip Incident. “Or, well, he talked to Peter, but I was right there!” Ned frowned then, turning to Peter as the latter of the boys shut his locker. “He seemed angry – did you get in trouble for going out there?”
Ned’s expression looked sincere so Peter sighed. “Something like that.”
“Sorry, dude,” Ned said with a frown.
“Not your fault. It was my choice.” He still figured it was the better of the two – Peter preferred Tony seeing him at the crime scene as Peter than as Spiderman, especially after the argument the night before.
“Well,” Michelle said, pushing away from the lockers, “it sounds like you two had quite an evening.”
Peter wasn’t allowed to go to Ned’s that night, when he asked. Pepper claimed she barely got to see him and so Happy drove him straight home and Ned caught the bus. When Peter got back, he didn’t bother to ask FRIDAY where his parents were – he went straight to his room and didn’t come out until dinner.
FEBRUARY 8TH
There were no lizard sightings on Wednesday, and Peter came straight home to do his homework in his room. On Wednesdays, Pepper always went into the office and Tony would order takeout, considering his cooking was even worse than Peter’s. However, she knocked on his door at 4PM, and entered to find him sitting at his desk, working through his Calculus homework.
“How was school?” she asked, shutting the door behind her with a soft click.
Peter shrugged. “It was fine. Normal.”
She nodded, moving bare foot over to the bed, where she sat down. “Do you like school?”
Peter frowned and looked away from his homework. “I guess? I mean, it’s challenging sometimes, but it’s not bad. I get to hang out with Ned and Michelle.”
“Are they your only friends?” Pepper asked. “You never seem to talk about anyone else.”
Despite himself, Peter smiled ruefully. “They were the only ones who wanted to talk to me before the field trip,” he said. “So they’re the only ones I talk to now.”
Pepper nodded and stood up again. She wandered over to his shelves and looked along the book spines, her fingers grazing along them as she read the titles. Peter watched her in silence – he didn’t know what this was about, but he’d learned enough in the past to know that giving someone the space to talk meant they probably would.
He was proven right a few seconds later, when she turned to him abruptly. “The webshooters are missing from the lab.”
Oh.
Peter swallowed. He didn’t say a word.
“Now, I know I don’t have them,” she said, looking uncomfortable at the conversation she’d started, “and Tony swore on his life that he didn’t misplace them.” Still, Peter said nothing, just watched as she met his eye, noted his silence and continued. “FRIDAY says she has no record of seeing the webshooters in the past month. There’s absolutely no footage of them leaving the drawer they were last put into, but – they’re gone.”
“Are you asking if I have them?”
Pepper opened her mouth and then shut it again. A moment later she nodded. “Yes. I am.”
He nodded and span the chair around to face his desk. He didn’t want to be buried under another lie – especially one so thin and flimsy. He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the notebooks that sat there. Right at the back sat the webshooters, which he placed side by side on the desk.
Pepper’s mouth made a thin line as she eyed them.
“When did you take them?” she asked, quiet.
Peter shrugged, mentally checked the date. “Three weeks ago?”
“How did you take them without FRIDAY seeing?”
He shrugged. “I added a line or two of code to her,” he said. “She had a twenty second black out, I took them, and when she came back online, she deleted the coding to fix the problem.”
Peter could’ve sworn he saw a flash of pride in Pepper’s eyes, but it was gone a heartbeat later.
“Why did you take them?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? The why. The motive. The reason Peter would go to the trouble of switching off the omnipresent AI and having her delete his own footprints, just to get the webshooters.
He didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t tell the whole truth, not after Monday. Not after the way he’d argued with Tony, and he’d watched his father desperately rein himself in and not let the matter spiral out of control.
He settled for a half-truth; the best he could do.
“They’re mine,” he said quietly. “I wanted them back. I just… I miss having them. They make me feel safe.”
Pepper’s gaze softened as she stepped towards him. “Honey,” she said, and reached out a hand to run through his hair. He leaned into her touch without hesitation, the thought Mom washing in and out of his mind before he knew it. With his head pressed against her stomach, Pepper ran soothing fingers through his curls and down his neck, letting the quiet envelope them.
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide anything from us,” Pepper whispered. “I want you to know that we’re on your side – we want to keep you safe, we want to help you – but we can’t do that unless you let us in.”
The words pressed against the back of his teeth but Peter refused to let them out. He believed her, he did – he believed that she wanted what was best for him, but that didn’t extend to Spiderman. That didn’t extend to him putting his life at risk and letting him continue; it meant that they’d take away the suit, the webshooters, the trips to Ned’s house, and then he’d be trapped again, locked inside a glass box or the house, SHIELD breathing down their necks as he paced about like a trapped animal.
(Peter had read it online somewhere: Intrusive thoughts are usually irrational and incorrect. They do not represent reality, but your most deep-seated fears and worries. The words had calmed him for all of ten seconds, but they hadn’t helped since.)
He said nothing, because maybe the bad thoughts would mix in with the truth and he didn’t want Pepper to hear either. Instead, Pepper sighed quietly, and pressed a kiss into his hair.
“You can keep the webshooters,” she said, “as long as you don’t use them in public. They don’t leave this house, okay?”
Peter nodded, didn’t speak.
“I love you, honey,” Pepper promised, and Peter sat silently until she left the room. He listened to her footsteps retreating and then strained his ears until he heard it:
“What did he say?” Tony asked, muffled and distant.
“He told the truth,” Pepper replied. “He took them. Then he stopped talking to me.”
Peter stopped listening after that.
FEBRURARY 9TH
On Thursday, Peter went to Academic Decathlon, where Michelle was Captain. She drilled them and quizzed the team with question after question, but Peter was preoccupied. He felt like he was suffocating, slowly, subtly, like the lack of oxygen was creeping up on him in an attempt to give him a surprise.
The lies were piling, crumbling around him and smothering the boy that laid underneath. He was lying to Ned and Michelle – his only friends, the only people who were nice to him from the beginning – with his identity, with Spiderman, with his family that Peter wouldn’t let Ned meet. He was lying to SHIELD: breaking the contracts he’d signed, the ones that kept him safe within his parents’ reach, and what would happen if they found out he’d broken them? Would he be taken away and slipped back into another cell – only this time, no one would visit him, bring him books and remind him what it meant to be human?
And his parents. He was lying to his parents, which make his stomach flip with unease at the sheer prospect, because despite it all, they still wanted to look after him. But Pepper and Tony didn’t know – couldn’t know – about Spiderman, about “Ned’s house”, about the storm that was building inside his body when he thought about the messes he was making. It wasn’t just suffocation, it was drowning. It was him being pulled under and sinking into the depths; the panic rising in his throat, desperate and screaming for air, only for water to rush into his lungs.
Peter’s chair scraped back against the floor with a screech and the Decathlon members looked at him. He didn’t meet any of their eyes as he grabbed his backpack and bolted for the door.
He barely made it into the toilet stall before he was throwing up, retching into the bowl and mentally cursing himself out. Peter was only surprised that he’d thrown up vomit instead of bile. He’d thought that with all the water in his lungs, it would’ve been the first thing to come back up.
As Peter washed up, he thought back to his first weeks out of the cell and in the new house. SHIELD had forced a psychiatrist on him for all of two weeks – but Peter felt fine. Sure, his centre was a little off, but a lot was happening. Still, he insisted he was okay, managed to get the psychiatrist to back off and stopped the sessions before they had a real chance to begin. Peter wondered now if that was a mistake; if there were issues hidden at his core that he should’ve been working through, rather than letting them fester.
They jumbled up inside him, screamed for attention.
(Peter Stark, HYDRA, Black Spider, lying, family, parents, Black Spider, glass box, Stark, Stark, Stark, Parker, deceit, betrayal, a building collapsing, Pepper on the ground, red was his favourite colour despite how it looked seeping through his t-shirt-)
He waited for the car to pick him up outside. For once, he felt alone – he couldn’t see any SHIELD agents watching; couldn’t see any of the four new teachers who happened to join the school at the same time as him. He was Peter Parker, alone, sitting on the steps of the school, and he spent the time forcing his problems into a box he could lock up and not look at again.
It was Bucky who picked him up. Happy was busy with his real job that didn’t involve driving a teenager around, but Peter wasn’t sure who he would prefer. With Happy, he could sit silently in the back, hiding his gasps for air, but with Bucky-
Peter sat up front and pulled his feet up onto the chair.
“You alright, мальчик-убийца?”
(Assassin boy, assassin boy, assassin boy.)
The name had never bothered him before.
Peter nodded, mute, and watched New York pass him by. Bucky tried to strike up conversation, but Peter didn’t take the bait. Instead, he switched on the radio and the two of them listened to it in silence, until they finally pulled up outside his house.
“Kid,” Bucky said, placing a hand on Peter’s arm when he moved to get out. “Can we talk for a second?”
“About what?”
“About… what’s wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” Peter lied, because he didn’t seem capable of telling the truth anymore.
“You sure? Because usually you talk my ear off, but today you’re…”
“I’m…” Peter prompted.
Bucky shrugged. “You don’t seem okay.”
“I’m fine,” Peter promised. “Just tired. I’ll see you later.”
He escaped the car and entered the house, ignoring FRIDAY’s welcome call and heading up to his room. Only, he made it half way up the stairs before FRIDAY spoke again.
“Peter,” she said, “Boss wants to see you in his lab.”
Peter let out a long breath and dumped his backpack on the stairs, heading back down them again. At the lab, he typed in the code and the glass doors slid open.
“Yeah, Tony?” he asked when he entered.
His father looked up from where he sat, wrist deep inside an Iron Man suit. “Nice to see you, too,” Tony drawled. “Oh, how am I? I’m good, good. Except from the fact that my son hasn’t spoken to me in three days and I know it can’t just be because I wouldn’t let him fight a giant lizard.”
Peter’s jaw tensed without him meaning it to. He stood near the door for an easy getaway.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Tony sighed, pulled out from the suit and turned to face him. “There’s nothing I want you to say,” he replied. “I just want you to be honest with us. Pep and I – we’re trying to protect you-”
“I know,” Peter interrupted, something like fire sparking up in his bones. “It’s all you two can say recently – we care about you, we’re protecting you, we’re just doing what’s best for you-”
“Has it ever occurred to you that we’re telling the truth?” Tony asked.
Peter huffed. “I know you’re telling the truth, but it doesn’t-” he fumbled for the words but couldn’t find them. Peter turned, looking back to the lab door. “You’re not- you don’t… get it. You don’t get it.”
“Get what, Pete?”
“That- that-” Peter span on one foot, looking at Tony. For once, he had his father’s undivided attention. There was no phone in his hand, no suit taking him away, no robot vying for his attention. He just wants to help, like always. “I’m still in that fucking glass box.”
Tony didn’t mention the swearing. “The glass box?”
“Yeah, that glass box that you guys put me in and I had like ten foot by ten foot to walk around in, but that was it. I was trapped, and constantly being watched and I couldn’t go anywhere.”
“You’re not in the glass box, kid.”
“But I am!” Peter replied, exasperation seeping into his tone. “That’s what you don’t get! I’m still in that stupid glass box because everywhere I go, there’s an agent! Or there’s you! Or there’s this stupid tracker watch that I haven’t taken off in six months! I can’t go anywhere on my own, I can’t do anything for myself, I can’t be myself because I don’t even know who that is, and you and Pepper just keep telling me that it’s for my own good-”
“Pete-”
“-That I’m dangerous. Well, guess what, I know that! I know I’m dangerous because I was trained to be! I’ve fucking killed people! And you sent me to a high school and pretended that it would solve all my problems! But wherever I go, it’s just like that fucking glass box – because no matter what, someone is watching me, whether I’m reading, or sleeping or just trying to take a piss-”
“Peter-”
“And I’m sick of it! It’s fake, Tony. This isn’t freedom. This is Big Brother or some shit! If there was any decency in this situation, you’d just put me in a cell again, because right now, I’m in one but none of you will say it.”
Peter was breathing heavily – heavier than he ever got while running track or jogging through the park. The kind of heavy breathing that made his heart threaten to leap right out of his chest.
Silence reigned in the lab, and Peter swivelled on one foot before leaving. He went to his room and didn’t come back down, even for dinner. To block out the sounds of his parents’ hushed conversation, Peter pulled out his phone.
PeterMan: bring the spider stuff to school tomorrow
PeterMan: can you hack the tracker there?
guy in the chair: uh yeah probably
guy in the chair: why do you need it?
PeterMan: just do, please and thank you
FEBRUARY 10TH
Peter slumped his way through school with barely a word. He didn’t answer when the teachers called on him, just stared a hole in his desk and tried to remember what it was like to not feel so watched. He couldn’t, because the only time in his life when he wasn’t being surveilled was when he was a kid, before the bomb and the men in black – but even then, there was the press, crawling all over them with their cameras and microphones, and Peter Parker-
(Peter Stark, Peter Stark, Peter Stark)
-has never once had a day in his life when he wasn’t being watched.
He ignored the looks Michelle and Ned shared; took the things from Ned when he got the chance and shoved them deep into his backpack.
Near the end of the day, he tugged on Ned’s sleeve.
“I need you to hack the watch,” he said. “Make it look like I’m still here at school.”
“What? Why?” Ned asked, his brow furrowing.
“Because I have track this afternoon but I’m not going,” Peter replied. He didn’t give another explanation, even later when Ned begged him for one. Instead, Ned did what he was asked, a frown in place, and Peter left school, changing into his costume in an alley and leaping up onto a roof with the webshooters Pepper had told him not to take outside of the house.
Everything was falling apart.
(Should’ve stayed with HYDRA. At least everything there was cut and dry.)
Peter shoved the thoughts away as he swung through Queens. He had rage pent up in his body and needed to let it out; needed to find that stupid fucking lizard and take it down so it would stop appearing in the streets and causing causalities wherever it roamed.
It wasn’t bright, he could tell that much. The locations it had appeared in were random; there seemed to be no target or goal, just mayhem. Peter could do with a little mayhem.
For once, something went right.
He heard it in the distance; the sudden screaming, and a shiver ran up his spine. There, it said, turning his head. Over there.
Peter swung towards it, landing on a nearby rooftop to watch the lizard trample the cars. Too many people were down there – too many people were going to get hurt.
“Hey, ugly!” Peter yelled before he had a chance to think it through. The lizard stopped at the sound of his voice. “Up here!” he yelled. “What? Am I too high up for you?”
The lizard took the bait, stomping over to the building and beginning to climb the wall; debris scattered to the ground, cement falling where its claws latched into the brickwork. Peter stayed in its line of sight until it was most of the way up before moving back.
“Hey, liz,” Peter greeted, when it screeched and climbed over the edge of the building. “Want to play?”
Their battle was messy. Blood splattered too early on; neither of them with a strategy or tactics, just delivering their hardest hits and watching the other be flung to another rooftop that the other would leap onto a moment later. They were leaving destruction in their wake, but Peter didn’t have it in him to care; he just wanted to get this done, he wanted to fight and take down this stupid fucking lizard, as if doing so would solve his mounting problems.
It was when he landed a punch that sent the lizard hard onto its back that Peter noticed.
The skin of the lizard changed colours, just barely; it faded in and out, almost in the way of the Hulk, like there-
There was a human under there.
“Hey,” Peter said, wary, moving towards the lizard. It didn’t move from where it writhed on its back, tail swinging wildly from under it. “Hey – is there someone in there?”
It was shedding its skin and not. Flakes of scales peeled off the lizard, only to regrow a moment later; it was turning back into a human and forcing itself to stay a lizard at the same time and Peter did the only thing he could think of:
He spotted the clawed hand of the lizard turning back into human skin and he reached forward, grabbing it.
“Hey,” he said again. “Is anyone in there? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Distantly, Peter could hear the sound of helicopter rotors; of police sirens and ambulances. He focused on the lizard; on how it turned more humanlike the more he spoke.
“It’s alright,” Peter continued, watching as the lizard’s skin peeled away to reveal the human underneath. “I’m here. I’m not going to leave you. You know, I can turn into something horrible, too – there are monsters everywhere, I guess. But you’re okay – you’re right there, I can see you.”
The last of the lizard skin peeled away to reveal the man underneath; a pale-skinned middle-aged man in ripped clothing. He was dazed, looking around and confused, his breathing shaky and heavy.
“Hey,” Peter greeted. “Do you know your name?”
Somehow, the anger drained from him. The lizard-man didn’t need rage to help him, he needed understanding.
“Kurt,” the man replied as Peter helped him sit up. “Kurt Connors.”
“Hey, Kurt. I’m Spiderman. Nice to meet you.”
Kurt’s hands shook, his whole body quivering with nerves or pain – Peter couldn’t tell.
“You need to leave,” Kurt said, looking at Peter for the first time. “I need to go. We-just-” He retched but nothing came out, and soon enough Kurt was flipping over onto his front, trying to crawl from Peter’s grasp.
“Kurt! I can help you!” Peter insisted, moving onto his feet. The lizard sheddings had dissolved, leaving no trace of their being there. It made sense how it had disappeared before; how the lizard might’ve just vanished and left a man standing in its wake-
“No,” Kurt heaved, spluttering and coughing as he crawled towards the ledge of the building. On his feet, Peter rushed after him.
“Kurt,” Peter repeated. “Come on-Hey!”
Peter jumped back suddenly as a clawed hand rounded to scratch at his body. Already bruised and bloodied from the fight, the front of his hoodie was now stained blood red, three large claw marks ripped through the fabric and skin underneath.
He hadn’t spotted it before, but he saw it now; saw the way Kurt’s skin was remoulding into scales, how it turned a green hue; a tail beginning to grow from his lower back.
“You can stop this,” Peter said, but maybe he couldn’t, maybe the lizard and Kurt Connors were one in the same and the two couldn’t be separated, maybe-
Peter lurched forward as Kurt pulled himself over the edge of the building. He screamed, his throat suddenly hoarse, as he leapt after him.
One strand of webbing connecting him to the roof, one strand of webbing on Kurt’s newly scaled chest, but-
Peter heard the sickening crack of bones shattering.
He hung there, holding the webs like they meant anything, like they’d helped at all.
Peter stared at the body of the man beneath the mutant lizard; at Kurt Connors, skull cracked, neck snapped, spine broken, dead on the ground.
The lizard scales began to peel right off, dissolving in the wind as if they’d never been there at all.
Peter held onto the side of the building and stared as the paramedics rushed forward, as the police pointed their guns and yelled at him to move, as the civilians shot photos, screaming and crying and afraid of everything they’d seen. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. He let the ocean wash up over his head, the undertow dragging him down as seawater filled his lungs.
-
He walked home, the suit stashed in his bag. He forgot to call Happy or have the tracker fixed. He didn’t talk to Ned; he hadn’t put in his ear piece anyway, and he didn’t want to hear his voice, the disappointment that would lie there.
So he walked home, and he held his pain in a tight coil inside his chest, hoping it would last until he made it into his bedroom.
It didn’t.
See, honestly, he thought he could keep the secret longer than this, but he shouldn’t have tried to keep it in the first place.
He made it as far as the kitchen before letting out the first shuddering sob.
“Peter?”
“Pete? Kid? Are you okay?”
His fingers were like spider legs, clawing around his mouth as he dropped onto his knees, stupid fucking backpack falling to the floor just like Kurt Connor’s did – he almost expected to hear the sounds of bones snapping, rather than books.
“Peter!”
There were arms around him, warmth flooding into his system, but he cried and he sobbed and he couldn’t hold it all in anymore, he couldn’t keep it back. He was some form of disaster child; HYDRA knew what he was, they knew what they’d made him and somehow they thought this was right; that someone should have these abilities and still not be able to use them for good. Pepper and Tony hadn’t known how fucked up he would be, and neither had he; HYDRA was something of a hellscape, but he never thought it would affect him, never thought it would make him cry on the kitchen floor, his parents crouched by his sides, murmuring soft, comforting words into his ears.
They deserved a better son.
They deserved a Stark son – the kid they remembered from a decade ago that still knew what joy was without having to force a space for it within the misery.
He’d let it all run around behind dams, ignoring its very existence and just trying to be okay; Peter should’ve known that dams broke and floods happened and even he couldn’t hold out forever.
“You’ll be okay,” Pepper whispered. “We’re right here. We’ve got you.”
“We love you so much, Peter,” Tony promised. “More than anything.”
“Mom,” Peter sobbed, voice cracking. “Dad.”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Pepper replied. “It’ll be okay.”
“I fucked up.”
“That’s okay,” Tony replied. “We all fuck up.”
“He’s dead. I didn’t catch him – I, I tried to catch him-”
“We know,” they both told him. “We know.”
“I can’t even be good when I’m trying to be,” Peter coughed. His head was on his father’s chest, his hands wrapped in his mother’s fingers. They curled up together on the ground, and Peter felt like the building was toppling in on him, like he’d have to hold it up again, but this time he’d fail and everything would be his fault. “What’s the fucking point of not being the Black Spider if that’s all I can be?”
Pepper shushed him lightly, a hand running through his hair. “You are more than they ever made you to be,” she promised. “The Black Spider isn’t who you are; you’re better than him, stronger and braver.”
“You’re good,” Tony promised. “You’re so good.”
“Dad,” Peter sobbed.
“I’m here, buddy,” Tony whispered. “I’m always gonna be here.”
FEBRUARY 11TH
Tony took the destroyed onesie but didn’t ask for the webshooters back. They didn’t watch the news all weekend, just let Peter sleep and heal from the fight. It was Saturday afternoon when Peter told them the truth – all of it. Spiderman, Ned, the bad feelings he’d shoved right down and ignored for the better part of six months. The lies spilt from him at last, showing their true colours and freeing up the space in his lungs. He could finally breathe again; at least with them.
“I do feel okay most of the time,” Peter promised. “But sometimes I don’t, and they all come back at once.”
They understood and they held him tight, asked if he wanted to talk to the psychiatrist again; the one he’d pushed away because he hadn’t known of the trauma that was biding its time, waiting to drag him down. They didn’t mention how he’d called them Mom and Dad, so neither did Peter, but he did it again later anyway and caught the look in his father’s eye before it was swallowed once more by worry.
“Peter,” Pepper said, near the end of their talk, taking his hands and looking him directly in the eye. “We will never put you in a cell ever again, you need to know that. I’m sorry that our home has felt like one; that by trying to keep an eye on you, we’ve made you feel like a prisoner. I’m so, so sorry we’ve made an environment in which you don’t feel comfortable telling us the truth – that’s on us.”
“We’ll do better, Pete,” Tony promised, as if they hadn’t done they best they could, as if they were willing to shoulder Peter’s responsibility and his shortcomings.
So will I, Peter swore, because they deserved better than that.
Pepper’s eyes flashed with an idea and she smiled. “One second,” she said, before rushing out of the room, her stride filled with purpose. When Peter looked at Tony, his father just shrugged, and they waited for her to return. When she did, her hands were clasped behind her back.
Pepper knelt in front of Peter, where he sat on the sofa, and placed a hand on his knee.
“I don’t know if this will help,” she started, and Peter swallowed at the sincerity, “but this helped me a lot when you were first gone.” She pulled out a small, worn blanket from behind her; whatever pattern it once had was faded and gone, but the dark blue colour remained. Peter felt a tug, like he should remember it, even if he didn’t. Tony’s arm, that sat around Peter’s shoulders, tensed. “When you were little, you wouldn’t go anywhere without your blanket. It was the only thing that kept you calm with the press and you’d take it everywhere with you – this one time-” Pepper’s smile widened at the memory “-you took it to the park with you, and it got so muddy, completely filthy within minutes. We had to put it in the wash, but you didn’t want your blanket to be afraid, so you sat in front of the washer with all your toys the whole way through the cycle.” Pepper pressed the blanket into Peter’s hands. “After you left, I took this blanket everywhere with me for well over a year, like it was the only thing keeping me together. It gave me some peace – maybe it’ll give you some, too.”
-
At night, he saw Kurt Connors falling from the rooftop, heard the sickening crunch of the landing. He didn’t want to know what the news was saying; didn’t want to be branded a murderer by people who didn’t know that a murderer was all he’d ever been.
When Peter awoke from the nightmares, he was never alone, though. Pepper and Tony – Mom and Dad – were always there. As his grip tightened around the blanket he’d once loved, they’d brush the sweaty hair from his forehead and promise him a brighter tomorrow.
It took all he had to believe them.