Chapter Text
When Tony Stark came from that hologram and told him that more than thirty years of his life were completely stolen from him, and that what was that of him was coming back in two years. He didn’t think that it would be the fucking apocalypse. It wasn’t Fisk or the other guys at all, Pfft! No, no, not at all. It was fucking aliens, they blotted out the sky with their numbers like it was goddamn Pompey again, eating away any organic matter they could find, which just duplicated their ugly faces. It was a world-ending threat that ripped him and anyone else trying to stop it apart before anyone competent could even blink.
New York and the entire population were reduced to nearly a quarter in just a few years, all the while the government and military scrambled around uselessly, letting the criminal factions of the underground take and take and take until there was nothing left to even properly salvage into some sort of remains of society.
That was a year(s?) ago now. Hasn’t he seen anyone else in... a while at least? He thinks he stopped tracking time once he realised there wasn’t much of a point in it anymore. Not now, he didn’t exactly have anything to wait for anymore. Not after the first few days in he got kidnapped again. Though this time it was different. Methodical in the way it was executed, and he was used. Breaking him down more and more until he was a perfect example of what they wanted.
He hated it, but he learnt the hard way why he couldn’t disobey Hydra.
It took a good while until the underbelly of society finally got its stomach slashed out from under its nose, and everything fell out. One by one, each organisation cracked and fractured, breaking down like glass being beaten over and over again, and all the other factions or clans or whatever fell.
Hydra fell with them; they just did it as explosively as possible to erase their sins. Like it would help them while they rotted in the earth in their concrete boxes.
At least they gave him some extra protection in the form of the Hydra uniforms given out with his nanotech suit.
But now? Without the iron fist rule of Hydra, or the constant turf wars with anyone and everyone. It’s just more surviving, waking up, scavenging anything he can, going to sleep on a crusty, worn mattress or sofa, and being silent as the creatures pass by.
The city that never sleeps was forcefully and very much permanently put to rest by the things that people inherently denied and thought of as fiction.
Peter isn’t entirely sure when it happened, but eventually the air cleared from the lack of air and light pollution made by thousands of people in a bustling hive of a place. Peter can see the stars clearly, likely the first time in what was likely decades that New York has had such a clear starlight sky.
Man, he wishes his kids were still here, maybe to see the sky that he currently sees right now. No- he wishes it were still normal, when it was all just fun and games while swinging around and still learning how to properly land or what new things and colours he could see, smell and hear. When he could talk with P3T3R, that AI Otto set up for him from the Tony Stark nanotach suit, and it was not just the only voice he heard other than the thoughts in his head.
But perhaps it’s a bit of a blessing that he was arrogant enough to say that he wanted the AI to be himself. He doesn’t think he could bear to hear anyone else as a shell to just relay his vital conditions. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t wish for someone, or anyone he knew, to hear his voice again.
He looks down from his confined perch at the shattered buildings, most glass gone or turned into 2D crystals reflecting the grime of what once was. Beautiful in its own right, with the slow crawl of the climbing plants native to the New York jungle and not so native to the rest of the Americas. He wonders when the concrete trees will turn into real ones, or maybe when the prehistoric ones underground will try and rise toward whatever heaven rests under the stars but above the clouds.
With a soft sigh through his nose, Peter uncurls himself, flinching at the loud crack of his knees while slowly getting into a crouching position, the support beam over his head being too low for his height. It only takes a little while of dodging the sharp bits of metal until he has to crawl on all fours like he’s climbing a building, like he used to, well, still does- kinda since he now needs to avoid being outside in general if he can help it. Avoid anywhere, really.
Especially the sewers. Do not ever go into the sewers was quickly established in Hydra once the sweet smell of rotting corpses and excrement was removed one too many times from the poor agents who went out on soldier runs- their own way to check if someone is dead (To get rid of those they didn’t need).
Peter shivers as the wind picks up again, it’s a hollow rattling crooning that now permeates New York like some ominous ‘get the hell away from here’ beacon to show something has gone horribly wrong. He hasn’t been able to figure out what exactly makes the wind do it, but he’s learned to sleep through it, and the strange wind pressure changes when it gets foggy.
Just as he comes back from his thoughts, he’s interrupted by the cries of drywall as it breaks from under him. He doesn’t make it in time, and joins the chorus of falling rusted metal and insulation that dusts the area in some sickly looking cloud of white, making his nanotech suit look almost like shredded metal as it wraps him in dark greys and dulled, dirty creams, P3T3R giving a small Hi as it adjusts to the current situation and environment.
It’s just his luck that he’s in one of the buildings with its entire interior collapsed into a gaping hole beneath.
It’s only his luck again that he snags a rusty bit of the side wall just before he hits rock bottom. And again, when he sees eight of the bastards that made this possible in the first place waiting right under him, every single one out for his blood.
‘Fuck’s sake,' he groans in his head, swinging off the metal that saved him from his fall to move back up the building, watching as the fuckers follow in kind with echoey cries that sound similar to metal and a go-away-bird.
They’re gross-looking creatures, these aliens. Instead of a usual green humanoid, or literally anything else, these bastards look like scorpions with a sword for a tail that bred with an extremely obese zenomorph and some kind of rolly-polly beetle. Their heads have the same shape as a beluga whale’s, with the bottom of the face being replaced with grizzled teeth and a fleshy beak reminiscent of a hawk.
They don’t seem to have eyes, but who knows, since they track him well enough and turn their fat heads to watch as he climbs, their long buggy legs reaching out as they scuttle up towards him, tails raised like a twisted version of a medieval knight.
Peter just makes it in time to launch himself out of the giant broken window, yelping just as another throws itself at him and falls below with an angry scream while it pushes its tail into the building to try and latch onto it for another go at him.
The hunt is only beginning, as he spots at least five on a single building, trying to make themselves disappear into the rumble for an ambush. He makes sure to go right past them, flinging himself out of their jumping distance and above the building, listening to the annoyed calls of more behind, surprised its prey didn’t fall for the usual trick they once loved to use on helicopters.
Swinging off toward Central Park, he slows from feeling the brittleness of his webs and the sting of his spinnerets starting to become too prominent to ignore. But he can’t stop, not yet.
With an intake of breath, he swings as far as he can, as close as he can to a building. He lets himself fall, just until he can reach out and touch the wall to stick to. He slides down the brittle glass, but it’s not by much, and he’s not anywhere near which shards, so he-
Peter is launched through the glass as an alien rams its entire body onto him, screeching and screaming at him as its tail pushes into his calf to create a gaping, burning hole that he’s pretty sure is way too close to the bone.
Just as the creature roars to take a chunk of him, he shoves a dagger into the roof of its mouth, causing it to let out a deafening boom ripping out from the base of its stubby neck that Peter feels in his chest rather than his ears.
It’s only just enough time for Peter to get off the floor and book it into the ruins of the building. The chairs and cubicles are in disarray, some on the floor while some are stacked up against a door, the wall next to it blown open.
Peter takes the hole, speeding down as he opens and carefully closes the fire exit door, a flutter of hope in his chest that he can lose the thing in a narrow space and try to make it lose his scent.
Unfortunately, with the hole in his leg that burns and burns until numb, he can’t go far down the stairs, nor can he try and web his way down with the burn of using too much webbing from his spinnerets.
If only he remembered the chemical formula for the artificial stuff. He should- since he made it- but then again, that was in a different time, when his future wasn’t changed.
He pants as he finally makes it down a good few floors, though the more he moves, the more the pain from his leg travels up through his body. As he winds through the hallway, he can feel and see himself moving more slowly.
Shit.
Peter whimpers as his eyes droop, his fingers twitching sluggishly as he rounds the corner, his walking slowing to a stumble despite his heart beating rapidly underneath the cage of his chest.
Peter stumbles and skids down the wall into a sitting position, his legs sprawled out awkwardly. He can’t exactly do anything now; whatever the tail of the alien pumped into him was has gone through his bloodstream from the pumping of his blood through his veins as he ran. At least he’s safe enough to wait out the paralysis.
He hears a rancid churr.
“N-o…o.. plea’e.” Peter gargles while his stomach hits the ground floor of the building he’s in, as the click of an alien's legs hits the cold tiles, turning the corner and clicking delightedly at its free meal. All he can do before it carefully stalks up to him is a feeble attempt at movement, which ends up in him just slumping sideways as his body begins to relax fully. The thing tilts its rounded head, beak and teeth, clicking as it inspects him, before rearing and stabbing its tail right into the meat of his thigh.
He didn’t realise they could paralyse prey. He just thought its tail was for stabbing, not for fucking venom.
His body coughs wetly, vocal cords warping as the muscles let out whines and hoarse moans in place of screams and shouts that he tries to voice, the red-hot static balls of agony as his nerves are crushed by the teeth of the thing. He feels himself fading- or well, listening to his nerve endings scream and slowly disappear as the crunch and tear of his muscles from the attachment of the sinew comes from the toothy maw of the alien, its armoured hide being painted with red as it clicks and churrs and chews up his flesh.
P3T3R floats out and around Peter and the alien- well, Peter can hear it anyway from the sharp buzz of the tiny little robots, trying to both take the creature off of Peter and trying to keep him inside the suit with a shitty tourniquet that keeps moving and readjusting every time that part of him is eaten away. But the nanotech was never meant for heavy armor; it was just a prototype after all.
The beast effortlessly rips through the Kevlar, nanotech, and metal reinforcement under leather as it eats, crushing it all into a soupy nothing down its gaping mouth.
He wheezes, as his body slowly gives up breathing properly in place of a weird raspy death rattle that makes the alien snort out blood from its nose, spattering his face, though warm, fat tears dripping down his face quickly clean up parts of his cheek easily enough. It burns, and he can’t make it stop.
It’s weird, the numbness he starts experiencing after a but. He should be panicking, listening as he’s slowly eaten by a beast that doesn’t even have any eyes to look into to see if it even cares it’s ripping into something like it’s fine dining. But he’s kind of both there due to the pain and far away, as there’s some sweet relief in where any nerve endings that have been eaten completely have gone to mild discomfort buzzing where flesh once was. He read about phantom limbs somewhere; he never expected it to affect him.
‘I had a good run at least.. even with thirty years of my life being well, not what it was meant to be.’ Peter thinks, his thoughts slowing down as he ends up in a state of weird calm (shock. It’s the shock getting to him, he’s gone- he doesn’t want to go- please-)
He thought he’d go out quietly, maybe with some whimper. After the first time, he watched as Harry’s holographic body hit the floor, cold and lifeless, thinking he was really, truly gone. He knew that one day, something like that was going to happen to him. Sure, he didn’t exactly think about it at the time, being a bit too busy fighting with himself to kill Kraven. But it was there. It was an easy thing for it to click in his mind. Hell, he didn’t even know it was there until he really thought about it.
Like right now.
‘I’m…so sorry, Peter.’ He hears inside his mind the robotic chime of his own devastated voice. P3t3r.
He loses feeling in his mouth, and then his limbs and his body and gods, it’s like he's floating. But he can still hear his flesh being torn apart and the mushy sounds that have taken the place of the crunching of his bones.
The buzzing in his ears gets louder and louder- who is he again? Where-
His world goes silent, and so does he.