Chapter Text
“Thank you Mary. Now onto some local news. Once again, Spider-Man manages to prevent a devastating tragedy. Earlier today there was a report of an armed robbery coming from the Central Bank. Members of the organisation known as Death Eaters have taken hostage 106 civilians, we are still to be given the official statement from the City of London Police, but sources say by the time police arrived at the scene Spider-Man had already apprehended the criminals. We are all very thankful to have someone like him protecting our streets. Now onto the weather-”
“Fuck.”
Of all things Evan Rosier knew how to do, sewing never really was one of them. He always pricked his fingers or made the stitches look so ugly that leaving a hole in fabric somehow seemed like a better option, all things considered. Though whenever the thought crossed his mind Evan reminded himself, as annoying as it was, having an ugly suit was better than no suit at all. Somehow having holes in his suit made people want to shoot at him more. Evan never really did understand what the deal with that was.
In the back of his mind Evan could hear the news reporter droning on about the weather, it was supposed to be sunny apparently. It was a constant thing in his life. Evan learned to live with it, the same way he learned to live with most things, begrudgingly and with a lot of complaining about how annoying it was.
Evan let go of the red fabric, shaking off his hand as if to help the pain before reaching to suck on the place he pricked. His eyes landed on the television in front of him, seeing a shaky video with a big title SPIDER-MAN SAVES THE DAY!. Evan let out a humourless laugh, watching the scene of him dragging out a man behind himself. A corpse. He didn’t apprehend anyone. Damn Death Eater was dead before Spider-Man could get to him.
Even with Tom off the grid, presumably dead if Evan did his job right for once, Death Eaters keep on causing trouble and it didn’t seem like the police were interested in interfering. It started a few months ago, it wasn’t even anything big. Evan was doing his daily swing through the city, looking for trouble, looking for anything if he was being honest. That was when he saw Wilkes, they were with a few of some other Death Eaters that Evan couldn’t recognize. Not recognizing them worried him because he knew every single one of them, yet there were people there he just didn’t know. They were growing in numbers. Again.
Evan finally let go of his finger, squinting at the lack of a small wound that was supposed to be there.
“Hey ELIO?”, Evan called out, reaching out to tap at a small robot on his deck.
The tiny robot seemed to wake up, making a whirring noise before seemingly looking at Evan.
“Download the Death Eaters file from the police database for me. File it under the Arcana file on my laptop and hide it”, Evan rattled off, throwing the suit onto his desk, almost onto ELIO who whirred at him in what Evan could only assume was displeasure.
“Sorry, sorry”, he laughed a bit, looking at the tiny robot.
Evan made a mental note that he should do some upgrades on him, currently the A.I. was stored in a small robot with caterpillar tracks, but he has shown displeasure with the design being so simplistic. ELIO was an A.I. Evan coded to help him, initially he was only meant to track police reports, but as time passed Evan upgraded him more, which led to him becoming, what Evan at least assumed, some of the smartest A.I. to date. Not that Evan was flattering himself, a lot of upgrades were done by ELIO himself, though he was pretty proud of the feat. And also the name, it took him way too long to name ELIO. Only thing was that ELIO couldn’t speak, which was a conscious choice once Evan realised that he accidentally developed an attitude, probably from reading novels Evan had on his phone.
Evan finally let himself fall back onto the bed, stretching out as much as he could without feeling pain in his muscles. The television still worked in the background, but Evan wasn’t paying it much mind, he mostly had it on as a whitenoise and in case ELIO missed an emergency, which was unlikely, but old habits die hard, as was evident by the amount of dirty dishes Evan was building a tower with in his bedroom. His aunt always hated it when he did that.
With a sigh Evan relaxed into his mattress, every single bone in his body seemed to scream in protest and he groaned, causing ELIO to whirl at him again not sounding too satisfied. Evan knew that ELIO upgraded himself because he sure as hell didn’t install the nanny mode ELIO seemed to have.
“Yeah, yeah. If you fill up my phone with ads for massages I will infect you with a trojan”, Evan threatened, albeit childishly getting up to stare at ELIO and put him on the highest shelf before walking away into the kitchen. He wouldn’t actually do it, simply because he had two friends and ELIO wouldn’t speak with him anymore if he bullied him like that.
Evan made his way into the kitchen, not bothered enough to get dressed. Another habit, though one he picked up once he started living alone. Evan avoided any mess that was on the floor, mostly loose parts for one thing or the other, as well as some sticky web fluid that he couldn't be bothered to clean up. He made a beeline for the fridge, opening it his eyes fell down to the bottom row to where he found a mostly empty case of beer. Another mental note appeared in his mind to go buy more. Quickly he grabbed the remaining two cans in one hand, before closing the fridge and making his way back to the bedroom.
“Add beer to the grocery list. We’re out.”
Evan was never really sure why he drank it, it’s not like it had an effect on him, he would need to be swimming in it to actually get drunk, but it felt right to drink it after he came back home. A reward so to speak, even if Evan didn’t actually think there was a reason for rewards or celebrations in the past few years. Evan could clearly remember his dad after a day of work, leaning back in a second hand armchair with his legs kicked up sipping on a bottle while some random football match was playing in the background. Evan just shook his head and cracked the beer open, hoping that maybe the placebo effect gets him drunk.
Just as Evan opened the beer and lifted it to bring it to his lips he could hear a familiar beeping coming from ELIO. Once. An emergency. Twice. Police is too far away. Quickly Evan opened up an old laptop on his desk, his beer now forgotten probably for the next few months on the corner of the table. Evan didn’t wait for the computer to boot up before he put on the suit. As he pulled it on, mindful of the new and old repairs, Evan kept a close eye on it booting up.
As soon as he saw his wallpaper, which included his recipe for web fluid so he never had to look too hard for it, he stumbled towards the desk, pulling on a sleeve, or more so stuffing his hand into the sleeve while entering ELIO’s software.
Welcome back, Evan.
“Getting a bit too trusting? Not even asking me for a password? Lay it on me, E. What’s going on. Visuals please”, Evan mumbled, throwing a look at the robot to notice he was turned off.
Soon enough ELIO’s display pulled up a map of the city, afterwards showing a floor plan of the building Evan recognized, solely from liking to hang off of it. It took a bit before Evan saw the actual visuals from CCTV. The building seemed to be fine from the outside, as if nothing was wrong, people passing by casually, inside however… was an entirely different story.
“Show me the reception cam”, Evan muttered, pulling the mask onto his head but not over his face yet.
The screen went black before showing a blurry video from what he assumed was reception. Evan leaned closer in, trying to get a picture of what was going on. The video was blurry and there was hardly a way to tell who even was on it, but Evan did his best to squint at it. Finally he managed to at least get a picture of what was going on. There were at least a dozen people lined up on the stairs of the reception, probably staff that stayed a bit too late and in front of them he saw a man holding a box, seemingly animatedly talking about… Something. It looked as if there was a line wrapped around every one of the hostages
“E, can you enhance that for me?”
LOADING…
LOADING…..
ERROR! ERROR!
Evan cursed under his breath. He hated going in not knowing what to expect. He hated knowing he had no back up. Police had more than enough time to come. But they weren’t going to. It’s too dangerous, they didn’t want to get their own killed. Not when it was Spider-Man who would come more than willing to die.
Evan ran a hand over his face before pulling on the mask, blinking a few times as he got used to the difference in display. He was a bit surprised to notice a small E in the corner of the display. ELIO wasn’t calibrated yet to be used during a mission even if the suit was created with the intention that ELIO could help him out. It seemed like even the A.I. knew something was off about the emergency. But he couldn’t just… not go.
With a sigh and a small prayer to a God he didn’t even believe in, Evan lifted the window and quickly, almost like a ghost, he slipped up the building, crawling to the top of it. The building he was heading to wasn’t too far away, just a few well calculated swings would get him there. It appeared no one had a clue about what was going on. Out of the corner of his eye he checked if he even had enough web fluid after the last mission, he didn’t have enough time to make more, since sewing his suit came first. He didn’t. Still he looked at the closest building and swung anyway.
Swinging like that came easy, it was natural. Evan somehow always knew how to do it, ever since he was bitten. He could produce small amounts of web by himself, but it was risky, leaving his DNA every time he was at the scene wasn’t something he was particularly trying to do on a daily basis. Well except his blood, but who the hell would be able to guess whose blood it was?
As soon as he caught onto the building he swung onto the next one, feeling his muscles protest. Apparently of all things his muscles hated swinging, despite the differences his body had it was still a human body and some things were hard on him, for example, his muscles and joints hated if he had to swing for a long time or if he didn’t pick his buildings and distances well. It was just one of those things.
Before he knew it Evan found himself perching on the building right across from a 7 story complex. It was hard to take it in in the dark, Evan’s eyes worked weird even during the day, but he could see a clear outline of the building. And a single cracked open window on the third floor.
An invitation.
A trap.
Evan could feel his skin crawl, every instinct in him telling him to go back, that it was dangerous. To run. Yet he still aimed for the window and without a hitch flew right in. No hesitation. Evan learned long ago that there was no place for hesitation. No time to stop and think because if he did his instincts would win over him and he’d run faster than anyone could catch him. And he still wasn’t allowed to. He wasn’t going to allow himself just yet.
“Pull up the floor plan”, Evan whispered. If he was taking ELIO for a test drive might as well push him to his limits.
Within seconds in one of his lenses Evan saw a floor plan where he was and one below him, with red markers tracing routes as well as where the hostages were. Evan was really impressed for a moment, but he quickly remembered the task at hand and lowered himself on the ground, putting most of his weight onto his hands. He needed time to figure out the situation, even if it were a few seconds, which meant he couldn’t risk being seen as soon as he walked down the stairs. With careful moves Evan descended the stairs, trying to get a glimpse of the floor as soon as he could, crawling along the railing that was thankfully able to hide him.
There was blood pumping behind his ears. Something wasn’t right.
Finally a voice broke through the silence, loud, filling the entire space: “Oh come on Spidey, come on, come on, wherever you are! We know you’re here!”
Evan knew this voice.
Evan’s breathing got harder. It shouldn’t be possible. Five years ago he finished this. He was done with this, it was supposed to be the end of Death Eaters. This specific Death Eater.
“...dey come out, come out. Or I will blow these lovely people sky high”, the voice continued to taunt, finally appearing in Evans head again as his mind tried to catch up.
Without giving himself the time to scout out the situation, he knew more than he expected to know anyways, he climbed over the railing, perching himself there. It took him conscious effort that he had to put on a persona everyone was used to. Friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.
“Avery! It’s been a bit! I thought you were supposed to be rotting away in some cell for the past five years, don’t tell me you already got the parole? Should have called me! We could have had a drink”, Evan sounded sickly sweet, way too friendly.
Avery’s head snapped to him, Evan was willing to bet that under that hat his hair was still a mess of waves it always was. He didn’t change one bit from that night 5 years ago when Evan last saw him. Well… that would be a lie, on the side of his face Evan could see a scar he knew he was responsible for.
It wasn’t exactly an accident, when he slammed Avery’s head against the wall, but he didn’t mean to leave a scar that big, but it was very hard to measure his strength that night. Though he didn’t feel bad about it, not now as he took in his surroundings. Every inch of the building was laced with explosives, windows, doors, even the air vents. Everything was laced with it. There was no way these people would survive the blast. Even Evan wasn’t sure he could.
“Well you know. Been here. There. Up and about. You know how it is”, Avery matched his tone, upbeat as ever waving around a small device as he spoke. The trigger.
“Oh and by the way… The Dark Lord sends his regards.”
That sentence alone was enough to make Evan’s brain stop working. That wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t be possible. Voldemort was dead, he was supposed to be dead. For five years he was supposed to be dead. Evan watched the funeral, he watched and watched for 9 nights in case the fucker somehow crawled out. Not taking chances. Never with Tom Riddle. Not again. Every night for more than a week Evan went to his grave and every night there was nothing wrong with it. He was dead.
Forgetting where he was Evan tried to go every single thing he thought was true. He saw the police report, Evan was handed the medical records, he spoke to the doctor who cut Riddle open and took his guts out.
It took everything in Evan not to bolt right then and there.
This can’t be happening.
“As funny as it is to watch your brain stop working, I’ve got places to be and you… well you got people to save I suppose.”, Avery taunted him, slowly backing away to the door.
Evan knew he couldn’t stop him. It was best to let him go and get the people out quickly. One step. Two. Tom Riddle was still alive. Three. Four. Avery is almost out the door. Five. Six… Six… Six. Evan suddenly shook his head, realising that Avery stopped moving. Realising that the control panel in his hand was counting down.
“What?”, both of them whispered at the same time.
It seemed like it took both of them the same amount of time to process it. Avery didn’t have the control panel. It was remotely controlled. Within seconds Evan, at least momentarily, recovered from the shock, pushing it so deep inside of him he was sure it would need a crane to pull it out or hopefully never need to, he would be perfectly happy with that outcome.
“Everyone move to the centre of the room!”, Evan yelled turning to people before realising it wasn’t only the building that was tangled up in explosives, “ Wait! ”
Luckily people listened and Evan only looked at Avery before turning towards the hostages, quickly making his way over. They kept trying to speak to him, but after years on the job Evan just learned to tune them out. It was always the same. Begging to be saved, crying into his ear as he tried to realise how to save them all. Or at least most of them. Frantically he looked over the lines they held in their hands. It was smart. Everything Riddle did was so damn smart. If any of them let go of the explosives they would be set off, Evan recognized the technology and E made a graph confirming it. Evan didn’t know how he did it, but it was one of the most horrifying things Evan witnessed.
“... Mr. Spider-man it’s so heavy I can’t keep holding onto it.”
“Whatever you do do not let go of those”, Evan quickly said, looking around the room. There was no way out, every window was laced and he didn’t have the time to move everyone, not with the explosives so close to them. They’d go off.
In the background he could hear Avery panic, clinging onto windows trying to get a look outside, probably hoping some other Death Eater was there to help him, but it seemed he was on his own.
“If you let go of those, this whole building will collapse. Police are on their way, but chances are they won’t be able to help us. If you want to call your loved ones please feel free to do so right now, however do not let go of those explosives”, Evan finally said, even, without a single quiver to his voice.
Soon enough there were multiple screens lighting up and everyone began to ignore him as they scrambled to call their loved ones. It wasn’t always needed, but in situations like these Evan learned that it was better to let people do it. There were so many victims he couldn’t save over the years whose loved ones never got that last chance.
Once everyone was distracted he tried his best to focus on the graphs he was being shown. Support beams, carrier beams, blast radius. There was so much information and so little time. Chances are if he managed to concentrate the worst of the explosion to the supporting beams, carrier beams will hold the floors above long enough for him to get the majority of the people out. But that would mean he needed to get everyone in one spot and move the explosion in the other and hope that the blast wouldn’t carry that far and scatter them.
“E, can you give me the time the carrier beams can hold the building up?”
Estimating… worst case scenario: complete failure within moments… Estimating… best case scenario: 3 minutes.
Evan let yet another humourless laugh, putting his hand to his head. Figures that he would have practically no time. Probably no more than 2 minutes. It would take the explosive 4 seconds to go off once everyone let go of it, that much he knew from experience.
And there was the other explosive, one Evan had no idea when it would go off or if it even would. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, isolating himself from anything. He could get out, he still had the time to escape through the window.
“Alright everyone! I will need you all to work with me on this!”, finally Evan spoke, animatedly moving in front of them, “I don’t have the time to explain, so I will need your trust on this. We need to work fast. I will move to the far left corner over there, once I count to three you will all throw those things you’re holding on the floor and make a run towards the front desk closer to the door. Once you get there I will need you to crouch down and stay as still as you can.”
Evan wasn’t sure if it was fear or trust, but it seemed everyone was willing to follow his directions. Once he heard hums of agreement Evan cast one last look at Avery. He could use his web to immobilise him, but he was so low that risking it wasn’t a viable option. With that he quickly went to the wall, climbing up as high as he could to give himself good room to move before he turned around and looked at everyone, where they were shuffling closer to where they were supposed to run to. Good.
Evan checked his hold on the wall again before nodding: “Okay people. On three, so one, two, three and then you throw it. Please let's be very clear on this!”
The small attempt to make a joke was followed with a few huffs of laughter, which was the best Evan could hope for. One more check on his hold on the wall.
“One!”
Evan could hear every little sound everyone made, from shuffling of their feet to the cars passing by outside.
“Two!”
He bought things he needed for pasta that Sunday, it was going to be the most expensive pasta he ever made.
“Three!”
He could almost feel the wind on his skin.
It all happened so fast he almost didn’t process it. Everyone did well, they threw the explosives on the floor just as Evan shot his web there. A quick flick of his wrist and his other web was stuck onto the space where everyone was huddling. It took him a second to trade places with it, holding his breath when he flew inches from the explosives that could blow him sky high. Everyone was doing what they were told, out of the corner of his eye he saw Avery hide on the wall furthest from the explosives while he stood in the centre of the small circle of people, covering their heads.
Every explosion sounded almost identical. Every single one left him so vulnerable because of his heightened instincts. He was pretty sure his eardrums exploded despite him tightly holding his ears. He didn’t even have two minutes. Evan was just letting go of his ears when he heard the rumble of concrete and the whole building started to collapse. Without thinking too hard about it he put his hands up above his head, lowering himself before the weight of the entire several stories above him simply… well on him. It almost took air out of his lungs. He could hear the sirens.
It took all the power inside of him to let out anything more than a whimper out of his lungs: “Run for the windows!”
Just like with everything up until that point they listened, making a run for broken windows. The building made him go lower.
Evan your body is going to collapse.
He took another breath in, listening to everyone scramble to get out, smelling blood from the cuts and coughing that they didn’t have the time for.
Evan’s body felt on fire, every single muscle in his body pushed to his limit.
Evan you must get out.
It took everything in him to look up towards the windows. People were still scrambling out. His vision was going blurry from the pain, spots appearing in front of his eyes before he spotted a lamp post. There were still more people. With great effort he let one of his arms fall. It felt like the weight of the building broke it. It hurt so bad to lift his arm, to aim for the lamp post. Breathe in and breathe out. Once again he counted everyone. Even Avery managed to scramble out. The building was slowly, but surely falling more and more and Evan felt like he was going to die from the weight of it, but he tried to check again. What if there was still someone he wasn’t noticing?
EVAN!
It felt like an electric shock shot through him with his suit glitching and within seconds Evan shot out his web and on instinct pulled himself out, his body dragged through the rubble on the floor before he hit the light post that his web was stuck to, finally being able to breathe in. He coughed, curling up to put a hand to his chest. Breathing was hard, moving was hard, even thinking was something he struggled with. With great effort he opened his eyes to look at the collapsed building, it appeared it just fell through the first floor, him holding it probably contributed to it not toppling over. So dumb. He forgot to think of probably hundreds that would have died if the building went and toppled on surrounding ones or the road.
“Spider-Man? Spider-Man are you alright?”, Evan was torn from his thoughts by a policeman coming over to crouch next to him with bottled water and a seemingly worried expression.
Evan just stared at him for a moment before nodding, reaching out to take the bottle. With slowed movements he sat, the man offered him some support to lean on the lamp post before Evan lifted the mask only slightly above his mouth to take a bit of water, obscured from view of others with the policeman's slightly large frame.
“Thank you”, Evan whispered, clearing his throat once he had some water before he pulled his mask down.
The man nodded, opening his mouth to say something, though he was cut off by a yell.
“You absolute twats there’s a man stuck under that rubble! Someone go help him!”
The voice had a posh tilt to it, like it was trained out of sounding posh, yet could never get rid of it. Both the policeman and Evan looked towards the voice. A man probably younger than Evan was standing with a very expensive looking camera held in his hands. A reporter probably. His hair was a mess and his clothes looked like he just rolled out of bed. Evan was sure he was very beautiful when he smiled, though he couldn’t tell from the face he was making at the leading officer on the scene.
“Crouch it’s none of your business”, the officer crossed his hands.
Evan looked behind them, only to notice Avery lying motionless under some of the rubble, he probably got caught under it when he tried to get out through paths Evan didn’t secure.
Evan hated reporters. They were annoying and frankly he wouldn’t mind choking a few of them off to death.
“Everything good there officer Slughorn?”, finally the man in front of Evan spoke.
This caused the reporter, Crouch, to look towards them. At that moment Evan felt his heart stop. Crouch focused on him, fixating him with eyes so full of hatred, so angry, borderline murderous that Evan couldn’t move under the gaze. It wasn’t like how other people who disliked him looked at him. No. That was the look of a man who hated his guts, like Evan did something personal to him.
“Don’t worry about it Pettigrew, Crouch Jr. is just going on about his ideals again, his father said to just ignore him”, the officer waved the man off, before looking back at the youth holding the camera.
Evan could see his jaw tighten, the way he held onto the camera just a tad more, in the back of his mind he could hear his heartbeat grow rapidly, his breathing get deeper.
“You’re all useless.”, within a second of saying that Crouch moved, side stepping the officer.
It seemed like the world was in slow motion, blurred around Crouch. The camera, which probably cost a lot of money, left his grasp, making a crack sound out in Evan’s mind once it hit the ground while the man scrambled over the rubble to help Avery. Evan could probably hear him speak as he shook the man, but everything was blurring together, it was almost like a movie scene. Evan was once again breathless.
Evan. Go.
Go. Evan should go. He was probably delirious from pain. That had to be it. He took a deep breath, pushing himself off the lamp post, still leaning heavily onto it to support his weight. He looked around for the tallest building around and once Evan noticed one which he knew had no roof access he used what web fluid he had to shoot the web there. Before he pulled himself he once again looked at Crouch, who at that point paid him no mind, too busy supporting Avery’s weight and muttering something to him. Though it seemed that once he felt eyes on him Crouch looked up and again met his eyes.
That was all it took for Evan to pull himself up and disappear into the night. Crouch. He couldn’t get the name out of his head.