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When Peter finally comes home, May is waiting for him.
She heard the news. She saw ships spilling out of the sky. She smelled the smoke, the dust, the stench of fresh destruction poisoning the air as battle once more rocked the city to its core. She knew he would be there, returned from oblivion alongside the missing half of the universe and already fighting again, with his life on the line.
When she pulls him into her arms, he breaks down to sobs.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says through his tears.
The second is, “Mr Stark.”
Her heart breaks with him.
–
Peter sleeps for two entire days.
When he wakes up, the world hasn’t righted itself. It’s still bleak, alien, the air a heavy, sticky haze that messes with his head. Dying is a surreal experience, and although he remembers nothing of the time in between, he remembers the despair, the utter terror as his body collapsed, splintered, disintegrated. He remembers what it felt like to be erased out of existence. Again and again, he finds himself looking down at his hands, tracing the lines on his palms, the ridges that make his knuckles, if only to make sure they’re still there.
He also remembers the price of this—all of this, getting everything back. What is now lost, dead, forever gone, to bring him back home, him and the other half of the universe, and keep them here.
At least his bedroom helps. So does burrowing in his own bed, under his own blanket. Peter spends hours and hours basking in these bits of familiarity, soaking everything in until he can convince himself that he can get out of bed without turning to dust.
When he steps out of his bedroom, May is watching the news. She quickly turns it off and smiles up at him, asking if he’s hungry. The tired lines on her face stands stark like ghosts that do not leave. She looks older than he remembers, and the realization makes his heart clench. Five years have passed, and yet his room, his place at their tiny dining table, everything remains as they were. She never changed a thing, let alone moved out. In fact, he’ll find out later that she had been keeping the light on every night for the last five years because, well, he might just return from wherever he had gone to and it wouldn’t do for him to come home to a dark house, would it?
They spend the rest of the day watching old corny movies bursting with happy endings and eating overcooked lasagna, followed by tubes of ice cream. She grumbles and laughs and every now and then she pats him on the shoulder, as if to assure herself that he’s really home.
Peter stuffs himself full with food and romcoms and the sound of May’s voice. He lingers in the couch, in front of the TV, until his eyelids sag and he drops off to sleep. Perhaps if he tries hard enough to ignore it, then the world outside will not exist. The world mourned by everybody on the news. The world without Tony Stark.
–
In the morning, three names disappear from the active Avengers roster: Black Widow, Captain America, and Iron Man.
–
Ned calls two days later, on May’s phone.
Their exchange, awkward and stiff at first, bursts into a blubbering mess the moment Peter hears his best friend’s voice crack.
They align their stories. Ned had been missing, just as he had, leaving his own parents and little brother to carry on for the last five years. Said little brother is now older than him—and it’s weird, he tells Peter, laughing and choking a little, and Peter wishes that they were in the same room so he could give him a hug, or at least The Handshake. But Ned is grounded. His parents aren’t going to let him out of their sight until he’s forty, and he doesn’t even sound like he minds very much.
Peter feels a bit better when the call ends two hours later.
–
The next day, he finally leaves the house with May to shop for groceries—and to get him a new phone. His old one is probably somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson. Has been for the last five years.
Walking down the street feels strange. The world is still trying to rearrange itself in the aftermath of the second Snap, five years after the first. Uncertainty is the prevalent reaction. Half of the world retains the memory of dying and the other half the memory of grieving, many with their loved ones disappearing before their eyes. Those who have moved on find themselves confronted with their past. Those who have not will discover, after the first flush of joy, the five-year chasm waiting at every turn.
And then there is the chaos. Riots have broken out in every major city. Crime skyrockets. Too many people discover that they no longer have a place in a world that has learned to go on without them. Not everyone finds warm welcome and open arms waiting for them; in fact, those who do are incredibly rare and incredibly lucky. And not a few people had rejoiced in Thanos’ vision, in a less crowded world where everything and anything was possible.
Peter learns all these in hindsight, from news all over the internet. He keeps May close, keeps an eye over the neighborhood, keeps himself hidden until absolutely necessary. Many of the Avengers, he knows, have been dispatched to deal with violent outbreaks all over the world, trying to fill the void while the military and police forces are still struggling to sort out a new chain of command that doesn’t piss too many people off.
Colonel James Rhodes has become the face of the Avengers. He keeps the public informed of the ongoing peacekeeping effort, holding press conference after press conference to calm everyone down. Peter watches him speaking from a podium and thinks that the man looks older than the five years he has gone without. Just like May.
Peter avoids mirrors for a reason.
–
Going back to school is a trial.
The registration process is complicated enough. He re-enrolls in Midtown, where special classes have been formed to accommodate students with special circumstances, as they call it.
Ned says it makes it sound like they have a disability. Maybe they do. Peter cannot really tell at this point.
Little by little, he settles into a semblance of normal life. Classes have never been more uninteresting, but he is glad to have a place to go to every morning, lessons and quizzes that can keep his thoughts from spiraling too far down a dark well. And maybe it's a good thing too that the school has put them all together in one class. When he looks around, he can see the same sense of displacement in every face looking back at him, even Flash’s. None of them will know how to interact with the 'normal' kids. Not for a long while.
But at the end of the day, Ned still comes up to him and steers him to his house so they can build another Death Star. Together.
Some things simply comes down to luck—but this, to still have Ned by his side after everything, feels so much more than that.
–
When the world decides that it has had enough of Peter Parker hiding, it doesn’t exactly offer him a choice.
The call comes to his phone as soon as he walks out of his last class for the day. The number, Peter sees in a glance, is private.
Which never means anything good, at least in his experience. He drags Ned to a corner, away from the stream of students heading for the exit and Friday-night freedom. Only then does he answer.
“Hello?”
“Peter.”
Peter’s heart catches in mid-beat. Even through the noise of so many teenagers talking at once, the deep smooth baritone is unmistakable. He finds himself blinking back tears from recognizing that voice alone.
“Doctor Strange,” he croaks. Beside him, Ned lets out a tiny gasp.
“How was the Calculus quiz?”
“How did you– wait– did you just–” he stutters, chokes, words tripping each other. “Oh my god. Did you use your magic to spy on me?”
“Only a lucky guess, I’m afraid.”
“Why is that not reassuring at all,” Peter murmurs, shifting his phone a little because of how badly his hands are shaking. “But how… how did you get my number?”
“From your aunt.”
“And you have my aunt’s number because...?”
“Because I want to contact you.”
Peter blinks. Then huffs out a sound that is part laughter, part a sob. “Right. This is the kind of roundabout talk we’ll keep having if I insist on asking the questions, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” is the mild answer, complete with an undertone of dryness that Peter has become so familiar with an eternity ago. “So why don’t you let me ask the questions instead. How are you?”
“Fine,” he says automatically. “I’m fine. Everything’s good.”
“What does that mean, ‘good’?”
“It means…” Peter frowns, swallows, tries to grab a few words at random so he can stitch them together into something that at least sounds vaguely convincing. Instead, they flit and slip out of his grasp, leaving only splinters of truth and their dead weight lying still and heavy on his tongue. “I’m trying,” he finally allows them to speak. “It’s hard but… getting better. I think.” And then, because this is also one of those truths, he adds, “I have Ned.”
His best friend’s eyes widen. “I see,” Doctor Strange says in his ear, sounding genuinely pleased. “That’s good. And you’re back at school. That’s also good.”
Peter bites his lip. “Yeah. Gotta keep busy.”
The rest of their talk continues along similar lines. Peter talks about May, about school, about the special class, about what's happening in his neighborhood. Neither of them mention the one other person who should have been here, with them in this call, who made the last corner in their party of three.
–
Then three days later, Peter comes home to find a guest waiting for him.
“Hey, kid.”
“Colonel Rhodes.” He pauses on his way in, wary for some reasons unknown. It feels wrong to see James Rhodes here in his living room instead of on TV, in the middle of yet another press conference. Wrong and intrusive. He feels ambushed. It’s as if by coming here, Rhodes has brought the world outside into the one place that Peter can still hide in.
He sits down all the same, catching the guarded edges of May’s smile. Rhodes takes an oatmeal cookie from a plate and asks him about his day. The man looks tired, but there’s a smile clinging to the shape of his mouth as he nods along to Peter’s answer.
Peter cannot help but feel like he’s been here before, with date loaf instead of oatmeal cookies.
He gets away from that line of thought as fast as possible. “You’re here to see how I’m doing?” he asks instead.
“Among others.” Rhodes clears his throat. “As I’ve been saying to your aunt, we feel responsible for involving you in a dangerous situation.”
“And as I’ve been saying to her, the decision was fully mine,” Peter responds, and if he sounds more clipped than usual, then it’s mostly because he doesn’t want to talk about this at all. The ghost in the room is just too large and he can’t deal with it—him—yet. Maybe in a year or two. Or five.
“But you’re still a minor,” Rhodes’ voice is thin, strained. “You really shouldn’t have been involved.”
Peter takes a deep breath. “Colonel Rhodes, I don’t know how to say this but… something bad happened. Okay, so it was an alien invasion—and I probably should’ve realized it was way above my pay grade, definitely not neighborhood stuffs—but don’t you see? When something threatens your home, threatens the people you care about, then you don’t think about pay grades. You don’t think about anything at all because these are the home and the people you care about and maybe, just maybe, you can do something to help. So... I could not not do something. Sorry, but I just couldn’t.”
A tiny sound catches his attention. Peter jerks his head, toward May, who has turned white as sheet. Guilt burns a path through him, not quite turning his resolve to ash but close enough. Stricken, he reaches for her hand. She clings to him in return, but the shattered look in her eyes remains. Peter wants to say sorry again, for the entire five years and the loss and anguish and all the nights she woke up thinking about the empty bedroom down the hall. But he knows he’ll do the exact same thing the next time this happens again, and he knows she knows it too.
When May raises her face, she is looking, not at her nephew, but at the man who embodies the world that has taken her nephew from her.
“As Peter said, Colonel, it was his decision,” she tells him, and almost sounds like she means it. When she finally looks at Peter, her eyes are bright with pride so sharp it can cut glass.
“I’ve always been so proud of you.” Now it’s her who is holding his hand, warm and fierce. “But never more so than now.”
Peter tries to smile. The lump in his throat gets in the way, but whatever makes it to his face still manages to make May laugh, so it’s all good. “Alright, enough of this.” She wipes her face impatiently with the back of her hands and turns toward Rhodes, “You haven’t told him the other reason why you’re here.”
That grabs Peter’s attention. “The other reason?”
Rhodes nods, clasping his hands together. “Yes, there is one other reason why I came here today, Peter.” He pauses. “That is, Spider-Man.”
Then he tells him. It has been suggested in certain quarters that a major event, a different kind of press conference, might be needed to deal with the escalating unrest. Everyone directly involved in the Battle for the Infinity Stones will be attending, or at least invited. They will disclose the true version of events that had led to the first Snap, and then the Second and Third Snaps five years later. It will be broadcast live throughout the world.
“The UN asked us to do this,” Rhodes continues slowly, too full of routine, weary facts. “For many reasons, but the most obvious one is to get the facts straight and stop all the rumors flying around. In other words, to calm the public. Assure everyone that the threat has passed for now. But there will be more in the future, there’s no way to avoid that. Now we know the kind of danger that might come from outer space, the kind of destruction it could bring to our life here in this planet. We have no choice. To face them, we have to stand together.” He pauses, looking at Peter in the eye. “It’s not mandatory, of course, especially in your case. Not only that you’re a minor, you also haven’t revealed your identity. But if you do decide to attend, then I’ll let them know.”
Peter’s mouth has gone dry. “What am I gonna do there?” he asks hoarsely.
“Just tell your part of the story. Where you were. What you did.”
Let a person I cared about die. But Peter doesn’t say them out loud. The loss is not only his own. It’s there too, written all over Rhodes’ face.
He takes a deep breath. “When?”
–
“So,” Ned begins, “you know that I’ll never do anything that hurts you, right? Intentionally, I mean.”
Peter raises his head, suddenly suspicious. He’s sprawled across the lower half of Ned’s bed, reading from Ned’s tidier notes for tomorrow’s Biology quiz. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because anything about Iron Man is a sensitive subject for you.”
Peter no longer flinches whenever someone mentions Tony Stark in his vicinity, but it doesn’t mean that the hurt has disappeared. What it means is he’s learned to keep the hurt inside—instead of spilling out everywhere, all over his expressions and tones of voice and every single thing he does. It may not be much of an improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.
“But you’re bringing this up now because?” He even manages to sound almost normal.
Ned hesitates. “You know what? Never mind. It’s stupid.”
“Ned,” Peter threatens. “You can’t say that and then back off.”
“You’re going to hate me.”
Peter gives him a look. It takes Ned about two seconds to relent, complete with a drawn-out dramatic sigh.
“Promise me you’ll send my body back to my parents.”
Peter rolls his eyes. “Just tell me.”
And then Ned shows him. It’s a YouTube clip from a news outlet—The Daily Bugle—and Peter watches as the man in the video suggests a theory so absurd and so blindingly stupid it makes his blood boil.
“They’re wrong,” he says in a flat voice. “He’s dead.”
“And you’re sure about that, right? Because this guy, he made a very good point. Neither SI nor the Avengers Rep have ever made a statement about Tony Stark’s death. I checked.”
Peter’s heart is pounding hard. He feels sick, the suggestion churning in his stomach. It can’t be hope, because hope shouldn’t have felt like this, heavy and black and dead.
“He died in front of me,” he says stiffly, each word trembling under the weight it carries. “I saw. With my own eyes. And I heard it, his–”
–heartbeat disappearing, giving way to silence. Except the words are stuck somewhere inside, all dry and shard-sharp, and Peter can’t drag them out without scraping his throat raw and bloody.
Ned’s face changes. He snatches his phone back from Peter’s hand and slips it under his textbook.
“So amphibian respiratory system–”
–
The press conference is held in the largest convention center in the city. Reporters fly in from all over the world. Despite the number of attendees and subsequent noise, the mood is subdued. Peter looks around him, at the solemn faces that crowd the wings as they wait to be called on stage. It feels more like a funeral. Three of the original Avengers are now gone and the void they left behind is too huge. Too absolute.
Then Rhodes calls Spider-Man and Peter walks onto the stage. He sits down on the third row, next to a stony-faced Falcon. Then comes Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel. One by one, the seats begin to fill up. He looks around for Doctor Strange but finds neither hide nor hair of the man. His seat, second to last in the front row, remains empty.
The press conference begins.
Colonel Rhodes opens with a brief outline of the event, followed by an even briefer explanation on a couple of guests who are unable to attend. The Guardians of the Galaxy have left. Black Panther and the entire Wakandan cortege have declined attendance. He doesn’t mention Doctor Strange. That is when Peter realizes that the sorcerer is now seated in his chair, his arrival unnoticed by most people in the room.
Then Rhodes begins the main event, with the Battle of New York. He has a presentation ready and goes through each slide with a voice devoid of emotion. These are the facts, it seems to say. Listen. Don’t question them. Peter listens, but the questions that pop up in some distant corners of his head, he knows better than to voice them. Rhodes goes on with his tale. The emergence of the Infinity Stones. How some of them ended up on Earth. How they messed with us, the puny humans.
Sometimes he surrenders the stage. Someone will pick up the story, furthering the narrative along. Everyone says his or her piece. Peter does, rehearsed lines flowing out of his mouth, carried by a modified voice. Everything is true, if highly desensitized, with none of the brutal ugly details. This, after all, is about hope; about giving humankind something to stand behind.
Then Rhodes picks up Iron Man’s story in the final battle. The desperate struggle. The way he ultimately defeated Thanos. The grim injuries he sustained. His voice goes deep and rough, and Peter almost believes this isn’t part of a performance. Maybe it isn’t. All the same, he already feels the unpleasant wetness under his mask before he even realizes that he’s crying.
Rhodes ends the account with a speech. It’s a good speech, the punchline delivered in a quiet, solemn voice. So many lives have been lost. The Avengers, too, have lost two among their ranks in the battle that saved the entire universe. Perhaps a fair price, in return of so much, but it is only fair if those left behind honor that loss by giving the world their absolute best.
There is a beat of silence, followed by a buzz of confused murmurs.
“Don’t you mean three, Colonel?” One of the reporters in the front row speaks up, her voice rising above the rest. “Captain America, Black Widow, and Iron Man. All three are gone.”
“Iron Man is gone,” Rhodes confirms. “Tony Stark is not.”
–
The uproar that follows almost splits the air.
Peter is frozen in his seat. He can barely pick up Colonel Rhodes’ answers as the man stands under an onslaught of questions. Yes, Tony Stark is alive. No, he did not die from his injuries, but it was a close call. He remained in a critical condition until very recently.
“Does that mean he is conscious?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Then why kept it from the public until now?”
“As I said before, his injuries were grave, and for the past four months, his condition was uncertain at best.”
“But he’s alive, right? So what does that mean, Iron Man is gone? Is he not going to return to the Avengers?”
“No, he is not.”
“So he’ll put down the superhero mantle? Does that mean he’ll also give up the suit?”
“The Iron Man suit remains and will always remain the private property of Tony Stark. What he does with it is his own concern and no one else’s.”
“But surely the public has the right to know what he means to do with it? Iron Man is a hero. It’s not only about the suit or who owns it, but also the reputation and influence and the whole set of responsibilities that comes with it.”
“Iron Man may be all those, but first and foremost, it is an identity, and that identity belongs to one person. Tony Stark.”
“Then he needs to make a statement. Will he be making a public appearance soon?”
“No, he will not.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you think, Colonel,” a second voice adds, even more aggressive than the first, “that the public has the right to know that this man, this hero who has done so much, not only for the planet but also for the entire universe, is at least alive?”
“No, I don’t.” A hostile note enters Rhodes’ tone. “I think the public has the right to appreciate what this man has done, but nothing more. In fact, let me put it this way. This man now owns the biggest pile of IOUs in the entire planet, perhaps even the entire universe as you've just said. The very least we can do is honor what he wants, and if he wants to be left alone, then we will do just that. Is anyone still not clear on this?”
The sudden swell of protests that rises in response to his statement suggests that many, in fact, are not clear on this. “He’s hiding,” a voice shoots above the multitude of outcries, loud and accusing. “That’s not what heroes do.”
There is a period of abrupt, fraught silence as Rhodes gives the sea of reporters a long hard look. When he finally speaks, his voice has gone so deep and dark that it reverberates in the massive hall. “I don’t think we should talk about what heroes do or don’t do,” he states, slow and ominous, “since none of us in this room have ever sacrificed ourselves against the power of all six Infinity Stones at once to save the world. None but one.”
Every pair of eyes in the room swing toward Bruce Banner, whose mouth has flattened into a tense, unhappy line. He remains silent, playing oblivious to the sudden flood of attention, but when it becomes obvious that no one else will break the deadlock, he releases a slow, resigned exhale.
“I’d really like to move on from this subject,” he informs the room in a quiet forlorn voice.
This time, no one else dares to speak otherwise.
–
Peter stumbles out of the room on unsteady legs.
When someone touches his shoulder, he swings around and almost decks them in the face—but then recognition sinks in, some part of his brain that hasn't entirely malfunctioned still picking up the pieces.
“If you have time,” Doctor Strange says, suddenly too close and yet, somehow, also out of Peter’s reach, “someone wants to see you.”
Peter blinks, and then follows the sorcerer out of a side door, to an empty hall. The stinging hurt doesn’t catch up with him until the door shuts behind him and cuts them off from the rest of the world.
He tears his mask off. “So you knew.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t say anything.”
“No.”
“Right,” Peter chokes on the word. “Okay.”
Strange pauses, looking at him in the eye. “Because you love him, Peter. What Rhodes said is true. For the past four months, his condition was precarious at best. He died—multiple times. But he came back.” Strange releases a slow, shaky breath. “You’ve lost him once. It would be unkind to force you to lose him again and again.”
“You don’t get to make that decision!” Peter shouts. Anger lights up like fire inside him, coiling his fists and staining his vision red.
“No, but he does.”
That gives his rage pause. Somewhere between his ribs, an ache blooms. “He doesn’t want me to know?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Strange steps back and opens a portal. It glows and beckons, sharper than daylight.
Peter steps through.
He emerges in a room with high ceilings and sunlight slanting through glass walls. The first thing he notices is how bright it is, and how quiet. A faint hum blankets the lofty space, smooth and soothing, and for a second or two, Peter fails to notice.
But then he does.
A slow, two-note, limping rhythm. It rises out of the stillness and settles into the shadow of the loud pounding from his own chest. A heartbeat.
Peter goes completely still. The heartbeat continues, one after another. It trips and stutters, but it doesn’t fall silent. Doesn’t disappear.
Peter breaks out of the daze and whips his head around. Every muscle in his body strung tight, bracing against whatever’s coming. Then he sees it, the bed, the kind they use in hospitals, white covers and gleaming metal frames and propped-up back—and sitting on the edge with his feet dangling off the side, is Tony Stark.
A moan slips out of Peter’s mouth. All the righteous anger he’s been trying to hold onto shatters. He flies, into Tony’s arms, and sinks into that space where wishes come true and everything else is a supernova of pain.
He doesn’t emerge until his brain catches up with the rest of him. He’s shaking. He’s being held. He’s no longer on his feet.
He’s lying on top of Tony Stark.
Peter wrenches himself away with a horrified gasp. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark, I didn’t mean to–”
“No sorry,” Tony’s voice is gruff, and he keeps Peter’s head where it is, pressed against his shoulder. “No way.”
Peter blinks. Slowly, he learns to breathe again. Tony smells like laundry and sunshine, not quite real enough. “You’re really alive. Aren’t you?”
“Still working on believing it myself.” There is a wry edge to Tony’s voice that makes Peter choke on a sob/laugh because it’s exactly what Tony Stark sounds like. Slowly, he can feel himself starting to come back, piece by delicate piece.
“But you’re okay now?”
“No idea. But some very dedicated people seem to think so.”
“You didn’t tell me.” Peter tries to sound less petulant—and knows just how spectacularly he’s failed.
“No.” A pause, followed by a sigh. “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“But–”
“Nobody thought I would survive, alright? It was ugly.”
Peter lets his eye trail across the scar-riddled half of Tony’s body. He curls his fingers into fists and sits up, looking Tony over carefully, though it’s also to stop himself from touching those scars. They look like road lines on a map, carved into palimpsests, only strangely pale instead of ink-dark.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Sometimes.” Tony gives a half-shrug. He still looks, sounds, feels like Tony. Any yawning black stretch of an abyss, if it exists, is mostly hidden behind his eyes.
Right now, they are watching him with a mixture of guilt and sympathy. “Look, kid, very few people knew.”
Peter manages a tight nod. “Like Colonel Rhodes.”
“And how I wish he hadn’t. When I said it was bad, it was– look, you can ask him.” Tony frowns. “No, wait. Don’t ask him. I forbid you to ask him.”
“And you let Doctor Strange stay,” Peter says pointedly, glancing at the sorcerer who remains silent near the foot of the bed, watching them through the same age-old eyes.
Tony scoffs. “I did not let him anything. If you think I had any say on what he did or did not do–”
“You need me,” Strange cuts in, matter-of-fact. “And I’m done giving up on people I love.”
“See?” Tony sighs but there is a softness in his expression that spreads a little warmth in Peter’s chest. It tells him to take a chance.
“Then I’m staying too,” he says decisively.
Tony narrows his eyes. “Seriously? Taking advantage of my weakened state? You think I can’t fight you right now?”
A grin bursts out from behind Peter’s teeth. “You’ve always said to seize the moment. I’m seizing the moment.”
“The moment refuses to be seized,” Tony tells him firmly. “In fact, the moment thinks that this discussion has gone on long enough and must be shut down. At once.”
“Mr. Stark.” Peter shakes his head, helpless. “I don’t know what else to tell you, or how to make you understand. I lost someone very important to me that day. Or at least I thought I did. And today I learned that I actually hadn’t lost him at all. So.” He swallows. “I’m staying.”
Tony blinks, and then nods. “Okay.” Something soft and fragile settles over his face. He nods again. “Okay. Just promise me you’re not gonna be stuck here day after day, watching me sleep or… do anything else just as creepy. Go to school. Talk to gremlins your own age. Study. Flirt. Find someone to break your heart but not too much. I can’t deal with too much right now.” He pauses, his gaze diamond-bright. “Make May happy.”
A laugh shakes itself out of Peter. It’s thin and still riddled with small nuggets of hurt, but it’s fine. He can deal with this much.
“I promise.”
–
“See?” Ned is nodding, all wisdom and self-satisfaction. “I told you.”
“Uh, no, actually. Some random guy on Youtube told me.”
“And I was the one who led you to that guy. Wow I’m really that awesome. Guy in the chair, man, guy in the chair.”
End