Work Text:
Chapter 1:
Peter was at Delmar’s with Ned when he got the notification. He glanced reflexively at his phone while petting Murphy, waiting for Ned to finish his order, and almost keeled over. Staring back at him was a notification of twitter’s top trending hashtag, #spidermanispeterparker. Time stalled as he gaped at his screen. His phone was black again, but it was like the words were burned into his retinas.
“Ned,” he choked out, his voice a strangled gasp of a thing. Peter lurched forwards so he could grab his friend’s arm. “Ned,” he repeated. Ned turned, confused.
“Peter? What’s wrong?” Peter showed him his phone screen and Ned’s face contorted in horror. “What?!” Ned pulled out his phone and started typing furiously, but Peter’s focus had drifted. He could hear other people in the shop whispering his name, and it was like there were a million eyes on him. His chest wouldn’t expand and it wasn’t until Ned gripped his shoulders to face him that he realized he was spiraling into an anxiety attack. Ned was saying something but Peter couldn’t hear him. There was a ringing in his ears, a whiteness encroaching on his vision.
“Peter!” Ned shook his shoulders and Peter snapped back to reality in an instant. “I called Happy, he’s gonna pick us up, let’s go,” and he steered him out of Delmar’s and onto the crowded sidewalk. Out here, everything was worse. Every screen at the intersection was displaying his yearbook photo next to shaky video footage of Beck on loop.
“Spider-man’s real name—! Spider-man’s name—is Peter Parker!” Again and again and again. And the whispering was back. People had recognized his face and now people were pointing, saying things. Ned kept him moving but then it hit Peter suddenly that Ned was in danger by association. He stopped abruptly and Ned turned.
“Peter, what—?” but he cut him off.
“I have to go, I have to get out of here.”
“Peter, wait!” But he didn’t listen. He was already looking frantically for an escape route. All around him were people, some of them glaring at him, approaching and looking dangerous and Ned was Right There—
Figuring his secret identity was already shot to hell, he rolled up his sleeves so he could access his web shooters, grabbed hold of Ned, yelled “hang on!” and swung away from the crowd.
After he had swung so he was only a couple blocks away from Ned’s house, he landed in a back alley, and stepped away from his friend.
“I have to go now,” he said, more autopilot than anything. His voice was outside of himself, and he sounded a lot calmer than he felt.
“Wait, Peter, I called Happy, we just need to wait for him to come pick us up!” Peter was already shaking his head before Ned finished speaking.
“Please Ned, I’ll figure something out, but I need to stay far away from you right now. As long as I’m near you, you’re in danger.” Then he swung away before he could hear Ned’s response, focusing only on aiming his webs.
Once he had gotten to a sufficiently tall building, he came to a stop, landing harshly on the gravel of the roof, tearing his clothes. He sucked in deep ragged breaths. He needed to keep himself from spiraling into a panic, needed to take stock of his options. Happy would protect Ned, MJ, and May and so long as he stayed away from them, they wouldn't be targeted, at least not before Happy could bring them to the tower or the Stark’s secluded lake house. Taking the public on a wild goose chase would hopefully buy Happy enough time.
For a moment, his instinctual panic broke through and he curled in on himself. What the fuck was he going to do? He could never go back to school after this, could never live a normal life. His loved ones would always be in danger so long as they were around him. He felt like his heart was pounding out of his chest as he scrambled for something tactile to ground him.
Peter’s phone rang sharply over the sound of his labored breathing and he jumped. The caller ID was Tony’s. Peter choked on a sob and fumbled to turn his phone off. Why would Ms. Potts call him from that number? Beck’s illusion tumbled to the forefront of his mind, vying for his attention: the gravestone; Tony’s armor, decaying like a body and crawling towards him; If you were good enough, then maybe Tony would still be alive.
“Fuck,” Peter breathed out shakily. He wiped the back of his hands over his cheeks, unsurprised to find them wet. He needed to… to distract… keep people occupied… keep their attention on him. He rummaged through his bag for his suit and webbed the thing to an outside air vent. He took a deep breath and leapt off the building.
Distracting people was easy. Everywhere he went, eyes and phones followed him. Some people threw trash at him that missed by a large margin, as high up as he was. Some of them shouted encouragement. But all of them were watching him.
His eyes latched onto Stark Tower as a landmark in the city, and he made his way in that direction. Working on autopilot more than anything, on a childish hope that in the tower his dead mentor would be there waiting for him with a quick fix for the whole situation. What he wouldn’t give to have KAREN in this suit right now.
Passing through Times Square to get to the Tower was, in hindsight, a mistake. The noise level tripled from all the extra foot traffic and Peter had to stop for a moment on the side of a building. It was like all the breath had been punched from his chest. His stupid school photo had been blown up to fit on every screen in Times Square. Some of them were accompanied by that video of Beck—how had he survived, EDITH had said all illusions were down how did he do this what was he going to do—and some of them by J. Jonah Jameson of the Daily Bugle calling Mysterio a great hero, greater than Iron Man and calling Peter a murderer, and that was what stopped him in his tracks, what punched the air from his chest. Murderer?
And Peter actually stopped and watched the tape of Beck, pushed past the instinctual panic of seeing him and hearing him and the rising thoughts of it’s another illusion, and watched Beck accuse him of executing the drone attack in London.
Peter felt like he was going to be sick. How could people believe this? And for a moment he was sated with the quick frantic feeling that nobody would believe the word of this man that had just appeared a week ago for the first time over him, over someone who had been saving them for years, over their friendly neighborhood Spider-man. But one look down at the crowds surrounding the building he was sticking to and the nausea built in his stomach once again.
It wasn’t like everybody down there wanted his head on a stick. He could make out the shouts of some people who were on his side, the we believe you spidey!’s and get somewhere safe spidey!’s reached his ears. But they were all but drowned out by the louder and meaner comments. The ones roaring for his imprisonment, the ones calling him a killer and a liar and oh god Peter’s head spun with it all.
His idea of distraction was working but what was he supposed to do now? The mob of people below him kept shouting as he watched that video play over and over again from every angle, and he couldn’t seem to move. He felt horrible and leaden. He’d done it, he’d distracted the public and Happy had probably rounded up May and Ned and MJ so they were safe and now he was stuck in this one spot because moving felt like too much to handle. They’d have to erect a gravestone here, right on the side of this building for him, and it’d say, this idiot forgot how to move. Or maybe it’d just say murderer. He guessed it depended on who wrote the thing.
He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t recovered from the shock of that video, when he heard the sirens. Oh god, he thought, someone called the police on him. That at last shook him from his stupor enough to get away from Times Square. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking when he had decided to head to Stark Tower, so he quickly changed course for the suburbs. Hopefully people wouldn’t think to look for Spider-man so far from tall buildings.
In the interim between the suburbs and the city, when half the buildings were still tall enough to swing from, but he had to be precise about his swings lest he end up flattened on the pavement, Peter’s spidey-sense spiked in agony, arching across the back of his neck and down his spine. He felt like his eyes were spinning in his skull from how quickly he tried to look around him for the source of danger. Ultimately, it was probably that instinctual panic that doomed him. Terrified that someone was tracking him, he decided to stop the obvious swinging and continue as his now-know-but-less-obvious-counterpart.
As he landed in a secluded alley between two of the tallest buildings left and started changing out of his suit, determined to make his way on foot from there so as not to be detected, he felt another painful spike of his spidey-sense. His body moved of its own accord, dodging a knife attack he hadn’t even seen coming. His eyes widened as he came face to face with his attacker. He was still half in and half out of the spider-man suit so all he could really do was dodge as he struggled to pull his arms from the sleeves. And then there were more men in the alley way, 5 more at least. And Peter raised his fists and swung at the closest one, the one with the knife and— . His fist went through the man.
Peter froze. It couldn’t be him. He was dead. But then he didn’t have any more time to think because the man was still there and even if he thought it was an illusion, that knife looked very real and he couldn’t let him get the upper hand. And in the moment just before the man attacked Peter watched the people behind the man disappear into nothing.
He was too late to realize the knife had been an illusion too. Then there was a syringe in his neck and everything was turning soupy. He could feel the man grabbing him, picking him up and holding him against his chest. His eyelids were so heavy. He needed to focus and get out of this, but he could barely move his body. He swung an arm out wildly, completely uncoordinated, and the man caught it easily. As he watched, just before his eyes slipped closed, the man grinned, his wrist still caught in his grip, and his face seemed to melt away, revealing something, someone, so scarily familiar…
Chapter 2:
When Peter became aware again, he was careful to keep his breathing even and his eyes closed, trying to take stock and not wanting to attract any unwanted attention. However, his stealth plan was cut short when he heard a voice—May’s voice—call out his name.
“Peter?” He jerked in his seat as his eyes flew open. But after a quick scan of the dark room he found himself in, he couldn’t find her.
“May? May!”
“Peter, honey, I’m here. I’m right here.” And then a hand caught hold of his, the gold band and the callous from holding pencils wrong on the fourth finger a familiar enough touch to soothe him momentarily.
“May,” he breathed out, holding her hand tightly. Peter craned his head over his shoulder to get a look at her, and found her already watching him, a sad little smile on her face. She was sitting in a chair like his and her hands were bound in front of her with plain rope. Peter tugged on his own bounds to find that they were a lot stronger than rope, and that his chair was bolted to the floor.
“May, I need you to see if there’s any way you can get out of that rope. It looks pretty loose.” Peter said as he himself wrestled with the reinforced handcuffs he was in. May stayed silent and he turned to look at her, confused. “May?”
“Oh, Peter,” she said, smile still so soft and sad. She looked almost… at peace. Peter struggled to maintain eye contact at the awkward angle he was craning his neck.
“May, what’s going o—” he was interrupted by a gunshot, and May’s head jerked forward. For a moment Peter was speechless. Then, he saw the blood starting to pool in May’s lap and stream down the back of her neck and his brain finally caught up with what he was seeing.
“No!” he screamed, tearing his wrists raw against the unforgiving metal of his handcuffs, “May! May! Ma-!” he cut himself off with a sob. He hung his head down, turned fully away from her body—her body—and tried to breathe through his heaving sobs. It was like Ben, like Tony all over again, the same insatiable stinging ache in his chest, like a raw wound torn open. He didn’t think he could handle this again.
“May,” he choked out, head turning, trying to instinctively seek comfort from her. But when he looked behind him, she was gone. He felt hollowed out, unable to think. “What?” He whipped his head back around, searching the room frantically, but there was nothing.
What must’ve been hours passed with no change. Peter periodically tugged at his restraints but otherwise was still and quiet. Based on the way the sound of the clinking metal moved in the room he thought he was in some sort of warehouse, but he couldn’t be sure. There was a dim glow emanating from somewhere, just enough to see about a foot in any direction, but there didn’t seem to be any source of the light. For a moment Peter had occupied himself with that puzzle, but then his thoughts drifted to May, and nothing else was important.
The quiet steps finally were enough to lift his head up from where it had been dropping down against his chest. And there in front of him was Beck. Peter felt like he didn’t have enough emotion left in his body to react. He just stared blankly at the man, waiting for some sort of explanation.
Beck was clearly waiting for some sort of reaction from Peter, but if he was he was going to be waiting for a long time. As it was, he felt like he could barely keep his head up enough to watch the man’s movements blankly.
“Well?” he said, and spread his arms wide. He seemed to be gesturing at the expanse of darkness that encroached into the space. “I thought I’d be receiving a different kind of reception. Maybe something more, exciting?” Beck moved closer, and that finally made Peter squirm unconsciously away. Not that he could move very far, or much at all. He did succeed in scraping the legs of the chair he was tied to about half a foot back though. Beck smiled at that.
“Ah, there’s something then!” He faked a pout. “I thought for a second there that you weren’t actually happy to see me, which would be a shame after all the effort I’ve put into making sure your stay here is comfortable.” As he talked he moved around Peter in circles, stopping finally where he had started, back in front of him. Peter finally found the will to say something.
“May,” he croaked. Beck’s grin grew.
“Ah! Didja like that little trick of the eye?” I thought it was pretty impressive myself. Took awhile to get the timing right to make sure the body was wiped as soon as you looked away but,” he shrugged, “I’d consider it well worth the wait.”
Peter stared for a moment and then sighed in deep relief. His depleted energy seemed to come back to him almost instantaneously at the knowledge that May was safe from Beck’s mania. And with his energy, his chattiness.
“So you’re not dead.” Peter said drily. “I don’t know why I thought you’d ever die you piece of—”
“Ah, ah! Don’t you know it’s rude to swear! Especially for a growing boy such as yourself. You must have gotten those manners from Tony.”
“I can show you just what manners I’ve got if you untie me.” Beck gave a full laugh at that.
“Still a chihuahua it seems. Well, that’s no problem for me. Even if I let you go, the amount of people gunning for your head at this moment well…” He tsked in disapproval. “Let’s just say there aren’t many civilized discussions going on right now. You’re quite the controversial figure, Spider-man.”