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“It doesn’t make any sense. They should’ve been here three hours ago!”
He listened his capturers yell, quiet laughter escaping his mouth despite the fact that this situation was far from funny.
They turned at him, eyes blazing with anger and confusion, and he just laughed harder. “You’re laughing now, boy?” one of the men hissed, fingers curling into a fist and then striking his cheek. “Just wait, there won’t be anything funny in just a second.”
“Oh no, no.” He shook his head, trying to chase away the dizziness the man’s punch caused. “I don’t think it will ever not be funny. Because, see, I have told you this will happen like a million times already and you were the ones telling me to shut up. It’s funny because you thought you had the upper hand, but you were wrong and I was right.”
Another guy kicked him in the ribs. “Shut up!”
Peter laughed again.
He didn’t know how more obvious he should make it. When he first came to after getting knocked out in a fight, only to find himself tied to a chair with shackles made out of alien metal in an abandoned building, he didn’t know what to expect. But then the kidnappers told him they wanted to use him as a bait for the Avengers – wanted to exchange him for some serums or technology or whatever – and he told them that in that case, they had had the wrong guy.
They hadn’t believed him when he told them no one was coming for him, but it had been five hours since they send the ransom message to the Avengers, it had been three hours since the deadline had run out, and they still refused to believe.
So yeah, Peter found it funny. Almost as funny as the fact that he was still alive. But sure, whatever. He let them take their anger on him and watched as the metal wire around his wrists slowly but surely loosened.
Another hour passed.
No sight of the Avengers.
A woman frowned. “I’m starting to think he’s telling the truth,” she admitted to her accomplices.
“Yeah,” Fist Man muttered. “But – I don’t get it! Why won’t they come?!”
Not minding his injuries, Peter snorted. The better question was ‘Why would they come?”
Because they were the Avengers. The new team had more pressing matters on their hands than caring about a vigilante they didn’t ever remember.
They didn’t know him, and he didn’t try to get close. They co-existed together, sometimes fought side by side, but that was it. He watched from afar as the new team grew closer, not allowing himself to repeat the mistakes of his past.
He doubted they even noticed his captors’ message. He doubted anyone would notice that he went missing.
Once, they might have come. Before the war and the spell, back in the days when he was Peter and Spidey, they would have came.
But they will never come for Spider-Man. No one ever will.
Peter was on his own, had been for years now. It was alright. Spiders were solitary creatures, after all. He knew there was no one who would save him.
Peter just hoped he would manage to break the metal before his captors realize what he’d known all the time and decide that when they won’t get what they wanted from him, than he’s useless to them. He hated stitching his own wounds.
But that was the price one paid for not having to watch the people they love die, Peter supposed. And he was more than willing to pay it.