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Peter was having a pretty good day before the bodega exploded.
Seriously. It was a quiet afternoon, just a few muggings and an attempted car robbery. He was swinging back to his place, on his phone, texting Ned about the new Lord of the Rings LEGO sets — when a soft boom set off his senses. He immediately stuffed his phone and twisted in that direction, skipping up a few blocks right when the second one hit.
He got there just before the police.
The bodega’s windows had been absolutely blown out, littering the street with broken glass and merchandise. People were running in the street, ducking down, covering their heads, bleeding from superficial cuts — a couple kids were darting through to grab the chips and candy that had come flying out — but no one seemed seriously injured. A car screeched to a stop too quickly, but Peter zipped behind it and yanked another one back before a fender bender could happen. He landed on the sidewalk just in time to catch an elderly woman from tripping.
“Hey, Mrs. Aguirre.” He held her arm, helping her over the remains of her front facade. “¿Estás bien? ¿Qué pasó?”
She told him, in very disgruntled Spanish that he caught the majority of, that something had exploded in her shop and now she would have to argue with the insurance devils about it (her words, not Peter’s). Her husband soon found her, and, after patting Peter on the back, the two started at what would’ve looked like an argument to anyone else. They were both covered in dust, and speckled with what looked like water from a burst pipe, but seemed okay.
According to the people around, there had been two parts to the explosion: a first wave, then the main blast. Most folks had gotten out when the first wave broke the windows, only one guy who’d been near the ice cream aisle twisted his ankle when the main blast bowled him through the door. Peter helped him up, and handed him off to the ambulance when it came on scene. A familiar police car was just behind it.
“Hey, DeWolff!” Peter waved at her, and his favorite detective came jogging out onto the street to meet him. Her dark eyes quickly scanned the scene, cataloguing injuries, damage, and potential further threats. He brought her up to speed, and they were just about to venture into the ruined bodega to look for the source of the explosion, when said source made itself known.
A low rumble echoed throughout the street, and everyone froze. DeWolff pulled out her handgun, along with a few others — and slowly, they advanced towards the blown-out facade.
There was something still in there.
“You see anything, Spider-Man?” DeWolff called, as Peter went ahead.
“Nothing yet!” He squinted through the still-falling dust: almost every shelf in the shop had been blasted over, along with all the glass refrigerator doors. All the fluorescent lights had taken hits, most of them dark if not actively flickering and popping with sparks. Over where the ICEE machine had once been, a burst pipe ran freely. “Looks pretty bad in here — I wonder if —”
Peter’s senses tingled. He held up a hand — just as something shifted in the center of the wreckage.
Not wreckage, he realized — a blast radius.
“I see movement!” DeWolff shouted, and all around the street, guns raised. She started talking into her radio. “Potentially enhanced individual, corner of 14th and 30th —”
The shape moved further, and Peter’s heart shot into his throat. “Oh my God — DeWolff, that’s a kid.”
“What?”
“That’s — lower your gun, man, lower your gun!” Peter jumped through the shattered window, waving for the police to stand down.
In the center of blasted shelves, scattered snacks, and dust, was a small, shivering ball of denim.
Glass cracked under his feet, and the kid froze. Peter held up one hand. “Hey, there.”
A head appeared — pale, pink and blotchy, topped with a mop of shaggy black hair covered so thoroughly in dust, it almost looked white. The teenager’s eyes were wide and blue-gray, one of them distorted behind a cracked glasses lens.
At the sight of him, her shoulders quivered again, and she let out a low whimper. “Oh, no.”
“Hi,” He took a step closer. “Are you —”
“Oh no,” she repeated, and her eyes went wild. She gripped her elbows and slowly began to rock back and forth, her voice tightening into a sob. “Oh no, oh no, oh my God —”
“Woah, woah, woah.” Peter crouched. “Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Oh my God, is that —” She craned her head, and all the color drained from her cheeks when she saw the flashing blue and red lights. A choked sound left her throat and she froze, holding onto her elbows as though she might blow away in a storm.
Peter couldn’t stay still. He was over a fallen shelf in a blink, crouching next to the girl on the floor. She barely even seemed to notice him. Her hands moved from her elbows to her hair, digging in as though she wanted to claw her skull open.
“They’re gonna take me,” she wheezed. “Oh, God, they’re gonna take me, and they’re gonna tell my parents, and then —” She seized with another choked noise, and the rubble around them began to rattle.
Shouts echoed from outside. Peter held a hand up, yelling, “Hey! Gimme a sec!” He turned back to the girl. “No one’s gonna take you. You hear me?” He moved into her line of sight. “Look at me. I’m not gonna let them take you.”
She was looking at him, now. Her eyes were glossy with tears, red and shattered from more than just the lens. Slowly, the splintered wood and fallen ceiling tiles around them slowed to a stop.
Peter scanned her for injuries — no blood that he could see. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Everything . . . went out.”
“Okay, good. That’s good.” He glanced up — the ceiling seemed to be holding, even though the lights were all blown out. “Okay. It might not be safe for us to stick around, so, I’m gonna have to get you out of here, okay?”
“I can’t.” Her eyes were drilled into the linoleum floor, her hands falling from her dusty hair to claw at the tile. “I can’t — I can’t —”
“Yes, you can.” Peter held out a hand. “Come on, I don’t know how stable the building is. If we stay here, there’s a chance the whole thing might collapse on you —”
“Maybe it should.”
Her voice was deadly still.
Peter’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“Oh, it would be so much simpler.” The girl gripped at her jacket again, fingers clawing at patches that looked homemade. “Oh, my God, then I wouldn't have to tell them — I wouldn’t have to have that conversation — they wouldn’t have to know —” She let out a choked, almost crazed laugh, but her eyes were glossy with a sob.
Peter kept his voice steady. “Who are you talking about?”
“ — because they can’t, they can’t.” She receded into her jacket, tears tracking through the dust on her cheeks. “They can’t, oh my God, they already have so much to worry about, they can’t deal with me, they could never deal with me, I’m fine — I was fine — but now I —” Another gasping breath, but the energy seemed to be draining out of her. “Oh, my God, this is going to make everything so much worse!”
Oh.
Oh, jeez.
“Hey.” He sat down in front of her. Fuck it, he’d lift the building off them if he had to.“Can I have your hands?”
She blinked. Stared at him. Bewildered.
Gently, he pried her hands off her arms, and held them. “Squeeze my fingers.”
“Wh . . . what?”
“Squeeze ’em. You won’t hurt me.”
Slowly, she did. She was strong for her size, but he’d had way worse. As she gripped his fingers, her hands shook, and her breathing gradually slowed.
“This jacket’s really cool,” Peter said. “Did you make it yourself?”
She nodded. “The — the patches, yeah.”
“They look awesome.”
Her lips twitched slightly. “Thanks.”
“Do you wanna tell me what’s going on?”
She looked past him, at the ruined shelves and cracked linoleum, and began to shake again.
“Hey. Look at me. Keep squeezing my fingers. Has this, uh . . . .” A light above their heads sparked, and he briefly glanced up at it — not a threat. The ceiling looked stable enough so far. “. . . kinda thing happened to you before?”
“Never this big.” Her eyes welled with tears again, and she began to softly rock back and forth. “I thought I had it under control.”
“How old are you?”
“S-sixteen.”
God, she was tiny. Peter would’ve thought fourteen or thirteen from her size. She looked like she’d be blown over in the next strong wind, yet here she was, covered in dust and broken glass.
“Y’know — all this superpower stuff happened to me when I was around sixteen, too,” he said. “I thought I was going nuts. I had to figure it all out myself.”
“This isn’t — superpowers, this is —” Her voice broke, and she shook her head. “This is —” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Oh, my god, this is going to make everything so much worse. I can’t be a problem — I can’t. There’s — there’s already a problem, you see, it’s my brother.” She sucked in a breath. “And my parents, they’re already so exhausted by him, he’s already done so much damage, I can’t — I won’t add to that.” She trembled slightly, and another tear dropped down her cheek. “I won’t.”
“Hey.” Peter felt as though he’d been hit in the chest, but he tried to keep his voice steady. “Your parents — they love you, though. They care about you.”
She laughed without humor. Her eyes opened, bloodshot and hopeless. “Most of the time.”
“What — what do you mean?”
“Whenever I — snap, or — or get tired, or — when he hits me, they just . . . .” She shook her head weakly, and pitched her voice higher. “‘You know, you’re so lucky to live in a healthy family, even if it’s ‘mostly’ functional, ha-ha —’” Her eyes went glossy. “I . . . tried to tell them. A therapist tried to tell them.” She snorted. “Guess who no longer sees that therapist. Putting me in a ‘victim mindset.’ I thought I would just — ride it out until college, but now —” Her voice broke. “With this — God, I’m fucking done.”
Forget getting hit in the chest, Peter felt as though someone had opened his ribs and pulled his heart right out.
“Do you, um —” He swallowed. “Do you have anywhere to go?”
“I can’t leave.” She drew in a shaking breath. “If I leave, I leave school. I don’t get to go to college. I lose my whole family — there’s no way they’d believe me over my parents. And, I lose health insurance. My dad, he’s immunocompromised, I have the genetic markers — it showed up for him when he was in college, if it happens to me, I . . . .” She shrugged helplessly, coughing, “I guess I’d just die.”
Peter sat there for a moment, holding her hands in a broken bodega.
He felt absolutely fucking helpless.
“I —” The girl blinked, and she let go. A sudden change came over her, and she straightened. “I’m sorry I told you all that. Really, it’s — it’s fine, my brother hasn’t hit me in a while. And it’s just him, everything else is mostly okay . . . but, here I am, all thinking about myself, I mean —” She blinked rapidly, raking her hair out of her face and swiping at her eyes. “How many — how many people did I hurt? And, God, Mr. and Mrs. Aguirre — do you think the city’ll cover —?”
“Hey — no one’s hurt bad, just bumps and scrapes.” Peter tried to catch his breath. This girl — she was going through shit, and she was thinking about goddamn insurance — “And the Aguirres definitely have a clause in, I mean, after the Battle of Manhattan. . . .”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay, thank God.” A breath rushed out of her. “So, if I can just — make it out of here, without the cops seeing me — but oh, God, Mom can track my phone —” The change fell away, and her eyes glazed over again. “Jesus, she’d see me here, and check the news —”
“Hey, woah, woah.” Peter held up a hand. “That’s a good first step. Let’s get you out of here first, and worry about everything else after that. I’ll take you out the back way, no cops, no cameras. They won’t see you.”
She looked at him again.
“Trust me, dude,” he laughed, “I know where all the cameras in this city are.”
Her chest trembled. “Okay.”
“Okay. I’m just gonna tell my buddy DeWolff that we’re headed out. She’s cool, she won’t follow us. Okay?”
The girl nodded shakily.
“Alright, stay down.” Peter rose to his feet, hands up as he called to the police through the rubble. “Hey, guys! She’s good, just a little freaked out! I’m gonna get her out of here.”
“Peter?” DeWolff’s voice. “Whoever that kid is, she’s dangerous —”
“ — and she’s really freaked out, so I’m gonna take her off your hands. You’re welcome!” He crouched back down. “Alright, let’s get out of here.”
They crawled together across the floor tiles, pushing aside debris as they went. Peter kept one eye on the ceiling, but it didn’t give way. The back door was blocked by a fallen cooler of fizzy drinks, but Peter got a shoulder under it, and pushed it back up.
“Okay.” He rose to his feet, easing the cooler back into place. “Probably shouldn’t try opening any of those.” He looked back at the kid — still freaked out. She looked tiny, practically swallowed by her huge jacket, picking at the cuffs as she got to her feet.
She barely even came up to his shoulder.
Peter looked back at the store: busted linoleum lights still popping with electricity, windows completely blown out, shelves bowled over, water running from a burst pipe and pooling on the floor.
He pushed open the back door. “After you.”
Her eyes flicked to him, then outside, assessing a hundred things in the span of a second.
She stepped out into the back lane.
“C’mon, this way.” Peter headed after her, then nodded towards a split in the alley. “Gotta keep moving. I work with cops, but I don’t trust them. How are you with heights?”
The girl looked up at the sky between buildings. “I . . . I like climbing trees.”
“Alright, awesome.” Peter shot a web, pulling down a nearby fire escape ladder. “This is like climbing trees, but — easier. You wanna go up first? I’ll be right behind you in case you slip.”
“Yeah.” She brushed some of the dust out of her hair, rolling back her shoulders. “Yeah — okay.”
The kid was a natural. She started off shaky — perfectly normal for someone coming down from a panic attack — but before long, she was scaling the ladders and steps as easily as though they were OSHA-certified. Peter followed right behind, ready to catch her, but ended up not needing to.
Once they got to the top, the girl took a slow, deep breath. Her hands uncurled. She looked back at Peter, her eyes clearing. “You’re sure no one was hurt badly?”
“Yeah, they all got out when they felt the first wave.”
“I tried to hold it in, I just . . . .” She shook her head, then crumpled with her back against a broken air conditioning unit. “God. I’m so tired.”
“I can imagine.” Peter sat down next to her. The tautness in her muscles was unspooling now that they were away from the broken bodega, but she still held a tension in her upper body, like she was always ready to look over one shoulder. “Hey — what’s your name?”
“Mer.”
“Huh.” Peter smiled, and hoped she could tell through the mask. “I like it.”
Her lips twitched back. “Thanks, I picked it.”
“Good choi— wait.” He blinked. Fuck, that was one of the patches on their jacket, he’d completely missed it. “Oh. Are you — uh, pronouns —?”
“I’m non-binary.” They hugged their knees. “It’s fine. ‘She’ is fine. Less complicated.”
He gave them a look. “Is it?”
Their face screwed up, and slowly, they shook their head. “Uh — nah, not really.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” Peter laughed. “I totally assumed your gender, sorry about that.”
“It’s all good. You were more worried about the whole exploding-bodega thing.” They tried for a smile. “And it’s always okay to misgender me to cops.”
“Good to know.” He held up a hand, and they gave him a weak high-five. “Are you out to your family?”
“They, uh . . . ‘don’t want my life to be hard’.” Mer shrugged. “Could be a hell of a lot worse.”
Peter’s stomach twisted. “It already is, though, isn’t it?”
“I can deal with it, though,” they said, receding into their jacket again. “It’s — it’s not even that bad, I just —”
“If it’s got you considering killing yourself, then it’s that bad.”
They stilled. Blinked. Looked at the ground. “I . . . I wasn’t serious about that —”
“You were,” Peter said. “I could see it in you.”
I know what it looks like.
Mer sniffled. “It’s just . . . rough.”
“I know.”
“My parents, they still — care about me, kind of, it just —” They pulled off their glasses, swiping a sleeve at their eyes. “It doesn’t feel real, I guess. They always put my brother over me. It’s probably not even intentional.”
“It’s still awful, though.”
Mer received that with a slight shiver and a blink, as though the statement only bounced off of some wall in their brain. “And with my brother, it's like —” Their voice hitched, and their eyes narrowed. “It's like I'm not even a person to him. He just treats me like an object, or — a source of entertainment, or a way to get his anger out. I’m not — real to him.”
Peter felt like there was a stone in his throat. Mer let it out like a toxic breath, releasing it with tears to the air, and Peter knew he could never un-hear that.
“Well . . . . for what it counts,” he said softly, “you're real to me.”
Mer’s lips twitched slightly. “Thanks, Spider-Man.” They took in a deep breath, and looked back at him, squinting. “Y’know — why are you doing this? It’s not like you can help me.”
They didn’t say it as a complaint, or hidden plea. It was a fact.
He couldn’t do anything. Nothing that would matter, or last.
“That’s . . . not true.” Peter shifted slightly. “Talking about this stuff helps. I mean, what happened back there —” He swallowed. “I know what it’s like to shove stuff down and pretend you’re fine. For people like us, it — it can mess with our powers. The less we take care of ourselves, the harder it is to control them. The less . . . honest we are, to ourselves, the harder it is to exist.”
Mer looked back out at the sprawl of Queens, blue-gray eyes glassy again.
“I know you feel like you’re trapped on all sides,” Peter said, “and the only way out is through. I wish I could tell you how to get out of it, or . . . I don’t know. It’s a real old mess.” He drew in a breath. “But you can’t be shoving this stuff down. It’s not good for you.”
They didn’t look at him. “For me, or my powers?”
“Both,” he answered. “At least for me, well — I am my powers. They’re part of me, like my emotions and my thoughts, and we need to take care of that stuff just as much as our physical bodies. Speaking of which —” His eyes darted up Mer’s tiny frame. “Are you eating enough?”
“Hm.” Their lips twitched. “Most people miss that.”
“Including your parents?”
Mer blinked. “. . . Yeah.”
“God, no wonder you lashed out.” Peter stared at them. “Forget ‘tired’ — you must be exhausted.”
They let out a choked laugh at that, and he noticed the dark shadows under their eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I —”
Buzz. Buzz.
Mer tensed immediately. Their throat bobbed in a swallow. “It’s my mom,” they said raspily, and dug a buzzing phone out of their jacket. “I — I have to —”
“Yeah,” Peter’s voice was barely a breath as they took the call. “Yeah, go ahead.”
“Hi,” they said, and took on a whole new face in an instant. Mer sat up, polished their expression, shook the bits of dust from their hair and tried to brighten their voice. “Hi, Mom — yeah, I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Did you see the news? Oh my God, were you there —?”
“I — yeah. Yeah —” They glanced at Peter. “Spider-Man got me out, though. I’m okay.”
“Spider-Man? Oh — well, I’m glad you’re alright.” A breath. “Did you see my texts?”
Their posture shrank. “Yeah. I did.”
“Sweetheart, you need to get back home as soon as possible.”
“I know.” Mer’s free hand fisted in the fabric of their jacket.
“You’re speaking really quietly — are you sure you’re okay? Where are you?”
“I’m fine,” they said. Peter realized Mer had been speaking quietly — with his super-hearing, it hadn’t been a problem. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“You’re being evasive.”
“I —” Mer’s voice hitched.
“When are you coming home?”
They froze up. Their eyes had gone glassy again, their hands shaking —
Peter plucked the phone from Mer’s grasp and held it to his own ear. “Hey there, ma’am, this is Spider-Man. Your kid’s still a bit shaken from the explosion and all. Mer’s just gotta answer a few questions for the police, and then we’ll see about going home. Is that alright with you?”
“. . . Spider-Man? I — I suppose —”
“Great, thank you. Have a nice day!” He pressed END CALL, then handed the phone back. “There you go.”
“Um . . . .” Mer took it and looked up at him, dazed. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Peter let out a long, heavy breath. “The texts she sent you . . . is that what set it off?”
Their posture shrank slightly. “Yeah.”
“Is it . . . bad?”
“Kinda.” Light refracted through Mer’s cracked glasses lens, glittering like a spiderweb. Their voice tightened. “Yeah — it’s kinda bad.”
Peter waited for them to elaborate. When they didn’t, he leaned back against the broken air conditioning unit, and gave them all the time they needed.
The two of them sat in silence for a little bit, watching dust billow up from the street. Emergency lights still flashed off the surrounding buildings, but after a while, they dimmed, and the noise died slightly. Peter suspected they were cordoning off the bodega, and sweeping debris out of the street to open it up again for traffic. Emergencies were emergencies, but at the end of the day, New York was still New York. Peter hoped the bodega’s security cameras hadn’t caught enough footage to link Mer to the explosion. If they had, well, he might have to do some volunteer work.
When Mer finally spoke again, their voice was small and soft.
“I don’t know how I got this.” Their hands shook, even as they just held them up to the light. “This power. Whatever it is. It just kind of — started, one day. I know Captain America had the serum, and you had your spider bite, but . . . .” Their eyes narrowed, blue-gray as river rocks at their own hands. “It’s like this thing . . . chose me. Or it was always part of me. Does that make sense?”
Peter was nodding before they even looked at him. “More than you might think.”
Something like hope sparked in their eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah. In fact —” He pulled out his phone. “I think I know someone who knows exactly what you’re talking about.”
“Do you think they could help me?” Mer’s throat bobbed. “Or — cure me?”
“Cure you? Nah.” Peter remembered his inhibitor technology, and felt a twinge of guilt. “You’re not sick, Mer. But she can definitely help you.”
“Okay.” They glanced back down at their hands. “’Cause — I really need to get this thing under control. Like — really. This kind of thing, it can’t happen again.”
I can’t be a problem.
“I’ll text her,” he said. “And — I can walk you home, so I know where to find you, if —” If something happens. “ — when I get a response.”
“Alright.” Something loosened in their shoulders just then, and they leaned back against the broken old air conditioner. A faint smile traced across their face. “Thanks, Spider-Man.”
“Yeah, anytime.” His voice was raspy, and his eyes suddenly stung. I’m sorry I can’t do more.
I’m sorry I can’t save you.
Peter opened his phone, swiped to his messaging app, scrolled past about ten stupid photos of himself (seriously, how was she getting those?) and tapped out a message: found one of yours.