Chapter Text
Peter should have known.
He'd let his guard down. He hadn't even known he was capable of that anymore. Constantly in survival mode, one threat popping up after another, he barely knew anything but hyper-vigilance anymore.
But that was the problem.
There were so many threats, so many fires to put out and so many wounds to nurse that he had to prioritise.
And he had fooled himself into thinking that this threat in particular was no more.
And now he paid the price.
He couldn't believe how stupid he'd been.
Dismissing the dread as simple paranoia, forgetting that it wasn't paranoia if people were really out to get you.
And if the last six months of his life had proved anything, it was that there were definitely people out to get him.
And Beck was right at the top of the list.
But Beck was dead, right?
That's what he'd told himself. As much as he'd still ruined Peter's life from beyond the grave, he couldn't ruin it any more. He was gone.
He'd told himself this over and over, every time he thought he saw Beck's face in a crowd, his stomach cramping up with a sharp swoop of panic. Beck was dead. He looked again, and it wasn't Beck. Just someone with a similar beard, someone with that same sharp smile, someone with those piercing eyes.
He'd told himself this over and over, every time he woke up drenched in sweat, shaking to his bones and hearing the echo of Beck's voice still lingering in his ears. Beck was dead. He wiped off the sweat, schooled his breathing and sometimes, if he needed, he consulted Karen or EDITH to make sure there were no illusions around him.
He'd told himself this over and over, every time green fog crept up on his vision in his waking hours, making him jumpy and questioning every one of his senses. Beck was dead. He paid attention to May's and MJ's and Ned's speech patterns and if they got all the details right, he listened to their familiar heartbeats and soothed himself with the knowledge that there was no way to fake that.
Beck was dead.
Peter had really thought he was done being naive.
But then there was the spell and Goblin and May ... and even though he was the one who caused it all, for a while Beck was the last thing on Peter's mind.
He should have known Beck wouldn't let him forget for long.
To be fair, most of the times Peter thought he saw Beck's face following him around, thought he heard his voice floating through the constant noise of New York, it probably really was only paranoia.
He thought back over every instance later, and most of the time it had clearly been someone else at a second glance, just his mind playing tricks on him.
Beck wasn't following him, wasn't trying to drive Peter mad—probably. After all, he was supposed to be dead, and Peter was supposed to have killed him. Couldn't give himself away.
But there was at least one instance a few weeks before Peter was shaken out of his false sense of security that he would beat himself up over for a long time to come. Because he should have known.
Should not have dismissed the man he almost bumped into one night after patrol—already out of his suit because he had to pick up a couple of things from the drug store before heading home.
He only got a quick glance at the man as they passed each other almost close enough to touch when Peter rounded a corner. A thick jacket and a hoodie underneath, hood pulled up and eyes downcast, not in itself unusual in the frigid January weather.
The distinct shape of Beck's jaw and lips, the slope of his nose.
That's all Peter saw before he was gone, not stopping in his path down the street.
Peter didn't stop either, even though everything in him wanted to freeze up. No good drawing attention to himself, giving himself away.
He did cast a look over his shoulder, though, taking in the figure hurrying away from him.
For three seconds his blood was frozen with dread and he couldn't breathe.
Then he dismissed it. The man had been clean-shaven where Beck was bearded, had held himself hunched and cowering as opposed to Beck's easy, utterly comfortable confidence.
Besides, Beck was dead.
Peter was just seeing things. Seeing ghosts.
There were a lot of ghosts following him around these days.
When he stared at Beck a few weeks later at Peter Pan's, he couldn't believe what a fool he had been.