Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
OCTOBER 3RD, QUEENS.
IT RAINED the night they killed the boy’s last remains of a family.
The weather came before they did, the waterdrops arriving almost like an omen. He knew from the second he walked up to the apartment and felt his Spidey Sense throb wildly at the back of his skull, that something was horribly, horribly wrong.
He remembered his senses going haywire: yelling for him to run the other direction and flee from the scene. Still, he opened the door. Never would he know that it was going to become the move he was going to regret the most.
The rest of the memory was foggy. Flashes of loud noises, angry voices. His aunt’s cries. He remembered sneaking, trying to address the situation, his heart pounding hard in his chest. His clothes soaking wet from running home from the subway in hammering rain.
He remembered fighting. Heavy, dreadful footsteps. Pain, he remembered how his head suddenly hurt. The dizziness. A crash, a thump, guns pointed at him before he kicked them out of grips. How he dodged.
It was chaos. It had only been mere months since he had been bitten by a radioactive spider and gotten his powers, so he had barely had the time to teach himself how to throw some good punches. Though there was no doubt he was strong.
There were five, six soldiers, dressed black to the bone. Maybe more. Most likely more. As he was too busy trying to knock them out, he had no time to count how many they were. But hell, they fought good.
Heavy machinery guns. A man and a woman stood out, dressed far more formally in the midst of it all. Neither of them looked menacing, but not particularly kind either. Around ten people in total.
“That’s enough.”
He remembered how his heart had dropped, and the fear that had shivered down his spine when he turned to see the gray-haired woman pointing a gun at his dear aunt. She was tied. Unable to speak. Crying, his uncle too.
“Stop resisting, Spider-Man,” she had said. Peter could only watch the utter emotion of surprise, yet disappointment, mix with sadness on his family’s faces. This was not how he had imagined they would find out. Not at all.
The way the room had spun in front of him was unforgettable. There had been an ocean of nausea before his eyes, shock in his bones. He wanted so desperately to wake up from the nightmare, but he was stuck, frozen in place with his feet tied to the ground like roots.
“That’s right,” the woman had continued. Peter knew already then that he didn’t like her, and it wasn’t only because she was still pointing a gun at his aunt’s skull. She spoke in such a calm yet cold tone that made him utterly sick to his stomach. “We know who you are— and you, Peter, are coming with us.”
Peter had felt so lost, so trapped, unsure of what to do or say. He didn’t want to be there.
He had hesitantly met her eyes. “Look. I don’t know what you think you know, but you’ve got the wrong guy,” he had tried, hopeful in his own words.
The woman had laughed at that. It was a gut-wrenching laugh that made his blood run cold, yet he let out short chuckle to appear more convincing.
Peter played along with the lie. “Yeah. It’s funny. You must’ve made some sort of mistake.” There was a short pause. “But, I mean... I’d gladly help you with anything else if you could just be so kind and let my aunt and uncle go. And, you know… put down the guns. I would appreciate that.”
“Listen,” The strange man in the room had suddenly and impatiently spoken up, his voice cool. Peter took in his features: his tailored suit, how he carried his tall height with easy self assurance, and his hair which was streaked with gray— the haircut obviously expensive. He couldn’t be older than in his mid 40’s. His gray eyes held a basic wariness as he signaled for the woman to lower the gun, then cautiously approaching Peter.
Despite that Peter was tall too, the man crouched down in front of him. Peter had considered taking up the fight again, but there were too many soldiers, too many guns pointing at him and his poor, innocent family. Fuck, they didn’t deserve to be in this situation. He couldn’t risk his aunt May’s- or his uncle Ben’s life; however his deep eyes couldn’t hide the horror that was festering inside of him like a black hole.
“I’m sorry it has come to this... but don’t make it any harder than it needs to be, son.”
Peter swallowed hard. So they knew. There was no point in trying to convince them otherwise. They really knew.
He had looked at his last remaining family members with a broken glance, his aunt May and uncle Ben who had taken him under their wing after his parents’ death. The two people who had raised him like their own son. They had done nothing but good to him, and now they were being paid by it like this. They were being taken away from him, he taken away from them.
It was unfair. It was his fault— not their.
When he felt the man’s hand on his shoulder and onto the back of his head, Peter grunted, and, now officially in a state of panic, flinched away and made a run for the the nearest exit. It was an entirely vain attempt to free himself, he knew, but he had wanted to call someone, maybe the police, or even Ned or Harry. MJ. He needed someone to help him. He needed to get out, he needed to free his family.
What else could he do in such a situation? These... people wanted him, for a reason that was unknown to him then.
The two soldiers blocking the door stepped forward and prepared themselves for impact, but Peter had been quicker and pushed them hard into the wall, sending them flying through it and into the bathroom.
Getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout-
Suddenly there had been a sharp pain in his back launching itself through his muscles, sending him propelling to the ground. It had only been a matter of seconds before the 15-year old teenager was crumpling on the floor.
A pair of soldiers came to lift him up, but Peter had lost it. He snarled like a wild animal and tried desperately to get out of their strong grip on his arms.
“Let me go! Let me go, you-… you… ” It was for no use. The world around him was fading. His eyelids were suddenly so heavy and sounds overlapping one another. That was when he realized his body was no longer responding, that he had been sedated, and reality hit him like a brick.
The man’s face was suddenly in his suddenly cloudy vision again. “You’re apart of something bigger than yourself now, son. Don’t fight it.”
When the man turned away, the two soldiers half-carried, half-dragged him out of the house. Next came the sound of two gunshots cracking through the frozen air, and his heart sank into a dark abyss knowing he would never see his aunt and uncle again.