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The first time Peter was truly hurt, he didn’t know what to do.
It wasn’t when he was small and fell on the playground and slit open his cheek. His mother had kissed it better and put a Band-Aid and everything had been fine.
It wasn’t when his vacation at his aunt and uncle’s house was revealed to be permanent when his parents died. His uncle had sat him down and taught him about life and mechanics and everything had been fine.
It wasn’t even when Flash punched him in the face and caused his nose to bleed profusely. His friends offered to report Flash, but his nose wasn’t broken so Peter assured them that everything had been fine.
No, the first time Peter was seriously hurt was during his first time web swinging after he was bitten by the spider. It didn’t matter that he suddenly had incredible instincts and strength. Nothing could account for the skill it took to control such large swinging arcs at high speed. His newly coined spider sense had warned him, but he didn’t yet know how to change his trajectory before he hit the building straight on.
His chest had hurt terribly. Google told him he had likely cracked a rib, but he couldn’t go a hospital as every website recommended. He hadn’t yet known his DNA was messed up, but he had enough social awareness to know he wasn’t normal enough for normal medicine anymore. The news stories surrounding the X-Men at the time assured him of that.
So Peter sat on a roof and resigned himself to the fact that he would either have to push through the pain or give himself up to experimentation, and regardless his ribs hurt too much for him to move and he didn’t think he could climb down like this, also his lungs might be punctured and slowly filling with blood so maybe he would just die up here without even having a choice.
Miraculously, after a time, the sharp pain of broken ribs dulled to a blunt ache. Tentative poking and prodding revealed that nothing felt misshapen. He even had full range of movement again, even if it did feel sore. By the next day, even that pain was gone.
That’s how he learned he had a healing factor.
Coincidentally, that was also the same day he wrote his farewell letter to his aunt and uncle to be found in the event of his demise.
After the initial shock wore off, it wasn’t hard to return to the teenage sense of invincibility, more intense now that he knew he could recover from broken bones within days. Not that he really tested it much on his own. He was in the business of trying to do cool parkour, not epic fail videos.
That changed after one of his first battles with a supervillain.
Rhino was huge. Peter had thought his own super strength could counteract all that bulk, and it could, up until he got cocky and was caught in Rhino’s grasp. Super strength couldn’t do anything to stop your arm from being snapped like a twig.
He had to flee that time. He couldn’t fight when he could see his own bones. He couldn’t even hold in his lunch.
Familiar with his healing factor now, Peter turned to Google once again in his panic. Because his arm was certainly not bent the correct way, and if it healed like that then people would notice something was up. Sure enough, he found more than enough pictures to scare him about the possibilities.
In a desperate attempt to at least hide the muscle and tendons and everything else he didn’t want to see, he forced his arm straight and wrapped it in his webs. The amateur setting of his bones hurt almost worse than the initial break. It brought tears to his eyes. The fear that his arm might heal incorrectly also made him want to cry. Something like this needed surgery to get the nerves and tendons to return mostly to normal. Surely his own healing factor could only do so much. If even a few ligaments or nerves didn’t heal right, that arm would be forever weaker and limited.
He was a hero now. How was he supposed to fight bad guys with a disabled arm? What if it was ever broken all over again? What if his other limbs got the same treatment? What if someday he was paralyzed?
Luckily, to his surprise, the arm healed perfectly. Sometimes he still felt the ghost of an ache deep within, but otherwise it was back to full strength and only had a thin scar nearly as pale as the bone that had ripped the flesh.
From then on, Peter was even more reckless. He threw himself into every battle and scenario with little regard for his own safety. This worsened yet again after he learned he could heal quickly from bullet wounds so long as he dug the bullet out fast enough. Sure, the blood was disgusting each time, but that just revealed a bonus to his suit being mostly red.
Perhaps it was twisted, but he even began a record of his most gruesome injuries. Mostly it was for scientific research into how his healing worked, but also it was simply wild to reminisce on the times he got to see his organs stitch themselves back together, or when his hand was literally crushed by several tons of concrete, or the time when his leg was burned and after several days the scarred skin peeled away to reveal smooth new flesh.
That was how Peter learned that he really didn’t need to do anything when he was hurt anymore. He didn’t need his uncle or his friends or even a doctor. His body just did its thing and he was right as rain.
It still hurt when it was put to the test though. Both the healing factor and this independence. Losing Ben was his own fault, though he had at least tried to save Gwen, and Dr. Connors simply wouldn’t listen to reason.
His healing factor couldn’t fix him after losses.
At some point Peter lost count of all the people he’d lost, and by then the pain from them all was worse than any physical injury. Frankly, getting stabbed was a good distraction from his inner torment. If his time spent patrolling dangerous areas increased, he sure wasn’t going to think too deeply about that. But no matter how much anything hurt, Peter powered through. Because the city needed him. Because he needed the pain.
Ironically enough, the last time Peter was truly hurt, he barely even noticed.
The Sinister Six decided to go after his one weakness: civilian safety. They split up and targeted different highly populated areas, causing major destruction and, inevitably, casualties. Peter couldn’t be in six places at once, so he was forced to do a marathon fight at a sprint pace. He fought each one in turn, sustaining injuries each time, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. A stab here, a punctured lung there, it was all fine. He reached Dr. Octopus just in time to stop him from messing with a nuclear reactor that would’ve exploded most of NYC.
With all six villains secured in his webs, Peter finally had a moment to stop and think, which he suddenly found very hard to do because all the pain was extremely distracting.
Now he noticed everything, and there were more than six injuries if his blurry vision was letting him count correctly.
It kind of made him want to laugh. How had he not noticed all these things? The missing chunk of flesh in his leg was pretty obvious. As was the tip of the Scorpion’s tail that was still lodged in his side. There was also a pool of blood forming beneath him. When had that started? Had he left a trail of blood all over the city?
See, it was funny because he was reminiscing on his early days, and he knew his younger self would’ve fainted from shock by now. Young Peter had freaked out over minor fractures. Current Peter was simply adding up the time it would take to heal from all this. By the time he decided that he might need to take some time off from work for this, he noticed something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
No pain.
Suddenly, everything felt fine. It didn’t matter how his leg was bent or the way each breath gurgled and brought up a coppery taste. He felt fine laying here. Although he couldn’t remember when he laid down. After a moment of basking in the novel feeling, Peter was struck by realization.
He was dying.
He is dying.
This is the first time he’s not feeling all his hurt, and Peter doesn’t know what to do.
He can’t save himself. No one else is around to either. And maybe he doesn’t want to. This feels like an invitation to believe that he’s finally suffered enough. Because surely the reprieve from pain is a sign? Shouldn’t he be writhing in agony otherwise?
And when he sees his mother’s smile for the first time in years, Peter knows he’ll never be hurt again.