Chapter Text
2027
Patrol had been boring, which was not good for Peter—who was actively trying to do everything he could think of to distract himself.
To not think about the fact that it was MJ’s birthday tomorrow and that she was in a completely different state than him. To not think about the fact that she had no memory of him, and definitely to not think about the fact that she could possibly have a new boyfriend.
Every now and then he would pull out his phone, sit on a rooftop and stalk her socials. Checking to see if she had anyone’s name in her bio, or a highlight reel dedicated to someone.
But she didn’t post often anyways. When she did it was usually something political, related to a book she was reading, drawings she’d done in her spare time, or local architecture. One time he found himself at three in the morning replaying one of her stories over and over.
She was on her dorm room bed, her hair tied half up/half down, wearing a red M.I.T. sweater and brown and white plaid pajama pants. On the wall there were various sketches, photos of her and people he didn’t know, a poster for a live band, a concert ticket, and a periodic table. A strand of mini star lights made the area feel more homey. More like her.
Ned had been filming, his laughter poured through the speakers.
“You are the genuinely most ridiculous person I have ever met, and for some reason I still hang out with you.”
MJ’s head rolled back, holding her stomach as she laughed loudly. “What are you talking about? This was 100% a necessary purchase,” then she lifted her sock-covered feet up for the camera. Bold black lettering on the bottoms of them that read FUCK and OFF.
“Imagine you get them mixed up one time and they say OFF FUCK,” Ned giggled.
MJ’s face contorted into pretend seriousness, “Basically everywhere I go, I’m telling people to fuck off and they have no idea. It’s like a hidden talent,” she mused.
“Last week your hidden talent was confusing people by staring at their forehead the entire time they talked to you.”
“That actually gave me some pretty interesting data,” she propped herself up on her forearms, “I should’ve become a psychologist.”
“But you hate people,” Ned pushed her feet off of his lap.
“Yeah, you’re right. Animals are better than people anyways,” she flopped back down, putting her feet back despite his protesting.
“People are animals,” Ned threw back.
MJ tilted her head to glare at him. “Read the socks, Ned.”
Peter probably watched it like 36 times. But it wasn’t like he was counting or anything. It wasn’t like he kept replaying it just to hear her laugh, a little chaotic and loud, with a sad smile on his face. And he definitely didn’t cry after the 24 hours were up and it got removed from her page. Every time he closed his eyes he pictured how happy she sounded. It made him miserable.
He started to patrol more then he needed to because the thought of going back to his small apartment by himself made him feel even lonelier. Not to mention the fact that he was almost positive that he had a jug of expired milk in his fridge (like week and a half expired) and he couldn’t bring himself to open the door and face the consequences of his actions.
While no one knew who he was anymore, the world still knew who Spider-Man was, and that was still something he was getting used to. Being un-perceived in his day-to-day didn’t necessarily make him feel small in a city like New York, it just made him realize how much people simply do not care. So much so that he started to run little experiments in his head. Like: if he accidentally dropped his sandwich on the ground, picked it up and took a bite anyways, would anyone say anything? Long story short—no. And he ended up with a stomach ache.
But then he would turn a corner and see a newspaper stand with headlines like: “The City Never Sleeps, and Apparently Neither Does Spider-Man”. He would frown, and of course the lead photo would be the worst snapshot ever, one time it was him face planting into a brick building because he misjudged the distance. But hey, no big deal. Life is just one big joke right?
The weather was cold again, September blending into October, and the suit he made himself wasn’t necessarily built for it. It didn’t have all of the fancy tech of his old suit, since he didn’t have the money or the resources. So it was often that he landed himself in a sticky situation, such as a sudden midnight downpour in the middle of trying to catch bad guys running away from an armed robbery. The slickness of the sidewalk made him slip on his attempt to gain momentum into a swing, “Oh, come on!”, resulting in small bruise on his hip that healed within the hour.
But yeah, today patrol had been boring.
Sitting on top of the ledge of the Helmsley Building, right by the gigantic clock, he took a deep breath and took a bite out of a bagel he got a from a block over. The guy who ran the bagel stand always gave him one for free when he passed by. He saved his daughter once from a burning building.
There was a cramp in his leg and a stitch in his side, and he knew that he definitely was not eating enough. It wasn’t hard for him to put two and two together years ago that the abilities he gained also had an effect on his metabolism. Which meant being broke was causing him to wake up on occasion looking like he had a major iron deficiency.
He told himself that he would do one more sweep, and then he would go home and take a nap. Maybe try to workshop a way to make his suit warmer and more durable against the weather.
Then his head snapped up a second before he registered the screaming. He pulled his mask back down and the bagel fell out of his hand and tumbled down, possibly hitting someone upon it’s descent.
The sky turned and darkened, a figure he could barely make out was hovering in the air, a cape flowing behind them. Looming blackness reached the ground and started spreading. Peter shot a web and propelled himself up the building, and began to crawl to the very top to get a better view. His heart was pounding in a way that it hadn’t in a long time. This was new. Bad new.
Tendrils squirmed and snaked their ways across the sidewalks and the road. Peter watched as one of them reached a mother and her child. Then suddenly they were gone. A shadow left in their wake.
“What the hell?”
He needed to get on the ground. He needed to get people to safety first before anything else. So he moved, and he moved fast. Swinging from building to building, the wind rippling his suit as he got closer, and the screams only got louder. The second that his feet touched the ground he started moving.
“Hey! Hey, this way, come with me!”
Peter met a few people halfway. “Okay, okay! We’re gonna have to go at this with a barrel of monkeys approach. Everyone grab a buddy and someone hold onto me. Do not let each other go, do you hear me?”
The panicked faces simply nodded in response to him and held hands. He grabbed the arms of the woman closest to him and wrapped them around his waist. “Don’t let go,” and then they were airborne.
The weight didn’t really drag him down but he could feel their fear radiating through his veins. The young woman held onto him tighter and whined. “Oh god, oh god, I hate heights.”
He tried not to think about how MJ had a similar reaction the first time he went swinging with her.
“Just close your eyes, don’t look down.”
One he got what he gauged to be a safe distance away, he set them down. “I have to go back and get more people, I need you to stay here,” he held up his hands like he was approaching four wounded deer.
“What is going on?”
“I… I don’t know,” he hesitated. “But I’m gonna find out. Stay here. Don’t move.”
On his return back he saw a man screaming for help in the street, waving, trying to get his attention. He swooped down and grabbed him.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Peter panted, immediately on the move again.
He hated saying things like that, because the truth was he couldn’t promise it. But he could offer comfort, and people looked up to him. They expected him to have the answers even when there was no logical way for him to. All those years ago he stood in Avengers tower, telling Tony Stark he wanted to look out for the little guy. Because he knew what it felt like when no one was looking out for him.
He shot one more web, and in the midst of a swing he felt a pull at the base of his skull, and then a swirling feeling in his stomach. He suddenly felt lighter, and he realized that the man he had been holding had disappeared.
“No,” he gasped, and then everything went dark.
***
When the world came rushing back in like an electric shock, he found himself in his old apartment. Standing in the living room, the sound of May’s music filtering out from the kitchen that she used to play when she made dinner. He was still in his suit, and confusion hit him like a truck. May was gone. The apartment had been sold. What the hell was happening to him?
The air felt thick, wrapping around him almost suffocatingly. He passed by the kitchen and then he halted immediately. Breath catching. He ripped his mask off in an instant, moving forward. May was there. She was alive. She was swaying and mixing spaghetti sauce on the stove, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder and her hair twisted into a bun with pencil. On the fridge there was a note to Ben, reminding him to fix the freezer.
Peter’s heart was in his throat, tears forming in his eyes as he took a step closer. “M-May?”
She turned, but she didn’t look at him. She pushed a piece of hair out of her face, and said “Peter! Dinner is almost ready. Time to wash up, okay?”
His eyebrows furrowed, and thats when he realized she looked younger. Like fifteen years younger than when he had seen her the last time. A few less smile lines, face a little brighter. When she got no response, her expression faltered, she lowered the heat on the stove and made her way down the hallway.
Peter followed her, desperate to keep her in his sight. “May I—,” his voice cracked.
“Peter?” She knocked on his old bedroom door. “You okay?”
Hearing her say that made his chest tighten. He knew that she wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to past him, but regardless he wanted to reach out and hug her, tell her that he was doing terrible.
She swung the door open and Peter saw himself. Young. Sitting on his old bed, tears streaming down his face fast, chest rising and falling like he couldn’t get air. His little hands shaking and his hair a mess.
He remembered this day. He remembered what happened.
Peter watches as May rushed to sit on his bed, putting a hand on his knee. “Peter, what’s wrong?”
Younger him pushed his forehead against his knees and cried louder. “They… they called me a freak,” he whimpered.
“Who called you a freak?” There was an edge in her tone, one that she always used to use when she was protective of him. When she wanted to call somebody’s mother, and scream over the phone about the unacceptable behavior their child had towards him.
“The other kids at school,” he grabbed his calves so hard his knuckles turned white. “They made fun of me, they called me a freak! They said I look funny, and they said I’m a nerd, and that no one likes me, and—and they tripped me and my chin hurts.”
Peter watched himself, and felt his chest tighten. An overwhelming urge gnawed at him to tell that boy that he wasn’t a freak. That he was just different but that it didn’t make him bad. That bullies would come and go and what mattered was to know who he really was deep down, underneath all the noise. To remember that the only person to truly ever understand him would be himself. But the truth was, he wasn’t even sure how much he believed that. 21 years old, life in shambles, thinking about how he used to think when he got older he would be more brave.
But he didn’t feel brave. He felt powerless.
“Peter, look at me,” May said softly.
When he lifted his head, the cut on his chin made her gasp. “Oh, come here. Come here,” and little him surged into her arms, wrapping around her with his legs and feet.
Peter started to cry more, jealous of his younger self. Jealous of the version of him that was still small enough to be held by her, her hand on his back, her voice in his ear.
His head started to pound, and he tried to breathe. Then he heard something that he hadn’t in years. He swung around, eyes wide. Something that made him want to puke, creeping from the distance, like it was coming from underneath his closer door, light shining underneath it and the presence of two feet creating a shadow.
“Come sit down, Einstein,” the dark voice laughed.
“No,” Peter gasped. “No, no, no,” he turned to run away, stumbling a little on his old rug, bolting for the bathroom.
The bathroom that he used to hide in.
“Don’t run,” it got louder.
The doorknob twisted in his hand, he opened it, threw himself inside and closed it. His eyes closed.
“Shut up!” Peter screamed, panting. The world felt quiet now. He opened his eyes.
But he wasn’t in the bathroom.
He was on a battlefield.
Smoke filled his lungs alongside the metallic scent of blood. Dirt under his feet, he saw dead chitauri all over the place, one still wheezing. He saw Thanos, sitting, defeated, sighing in pain.
“We… we won, Mr. Stark,” his own voice caught his attention and he immediately twisted.
Pepper kneeling in front of a body, tears streaming down her face. Tony rested there, blood coming out of his nose and down the side of his face from the edge of his eyebrow. The stones still on his hand. His face was unmoving, pale. Too pale.
Peter whimpered, falling to his knees. “Stop, stop it, what is happening, make it stop.”
He covered his ears but he could still hear.
“We won… you did it, sir, you did it.”
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t see this. Not again. He couldn’t watch him die again. So Peter scrambled to his feet, crying loudly, running over dead bodies and purple glowing weapons. He was headed to the ship—he had to get out. He had to.
But it just got worse.
The scene shifted again. This time there were cracks in the sky, an orange band with symbols he couldn’t understand turning over and over. Dr. Strange stood in the middle of it, muttering to himself, and the faint outlines of figures in the large openings were trying to fight against it.
“Please, God, no,” he begged as he saw himself yet again. Standing next to Ned and MJ.
“You… you’re gonna forget who I am.”
Ned shook his head, blinking. Like he heard him wrong. “What?”
“Forget who you are? What are you talking about?” MJ’s brows furrowed, causing a faint line to run up her forehead.
“It’s okay. I’m gonna come and find you, and I’ll explain everything.”
MJ looked at that version of him and Peter could remember hearing how fast her heart rate was. Her eyes were watering and her lips parted in disbelief.
“I’ll make you remember me. And it’ll be like none of this every happened. Okay?”
His own voice made him angry. He saw Ned crying, and he ran closer.
“No! Don’t do it!”
“Okay but what if that doesn’t work? Wha-wha-what if that doesn’t work?” MJ’s voice cracked, “What if we can’t remember you? I don’t wanna do that.” She shook her head, “I-I don’t wanna do that,” tears started to fall down her face.
“I know. MJ, I know.”
“NO!” Peter got closer, trying to disrupt the image, trying to stop it somehow.
“There’s not something else we can do? We-we can’t, like, come up with a plan or something? There’s always something we can do.”
That Peter didn’t take his eyes off of her, memorizing every part of her face while he still had the time. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“No, you idiot! MJ! Don’t let me leave, don’t let me leave MJ!” He screamed, even though he knew they couldn’t hear him.
May’s voice whispered through the air, “I just need to catch my breath.”
“STOP IT! STOP, STOP, STOP!” His lungs burned, throat raw and rough like sandpaper.
Peter started shaking, he got dizzy, and he stumbled. Clutching his side, he tried to grab onto something, hand failing to reach anything in time. Things started to become blurry, and muffled. His vision went in and out, and he was rapidly blinking.
“It’s okay. It’s just me and you.”
His body hit the ground with a thud.
***
The first thing that registered was the sounds of sirens in the distance. Then the aching in his spine, the suit still clinging to him. Peter didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t know what he was going to see next.
“Get up,” someone spoke directly above him.
He didn’t recognize the voice.
“If you stay here, they’re going to unmask you, you need to get up.”
He willed his body to move but he couldn’t.
“Motherfucker,” the voice sighed. “Alright, then.”
Hands slid under his armpits and started to tug him out of the way.
“The name’s Frank by the way. You’re welcome for saving your passed out ass.”