Chapter Text
For some people, white noise was simply the sound of their spinning fans at night, or a specific app used on their phone or TV that played that weird static, or even—for New Yorkers—the sound of sirens blaring as paramedics or police officers raced past their open window. For Peter Parker, however, white noise was the howling wind rushing through his hand-stitched mask as he plummeted toward the frozen Manhattan asphalt.
Spider-Man was all he’d been for the past year. Through heavy rainfall or blistering heat, the mask stopped being an addition to his life and became the mainstay. Now that the world had completely erased every trace of Peter Parker, he had no need to maintain a personal identity. He lived and breathed the spandex-laden life because, at this point, it was all he had left.
The window to change that had closed long ago. His last chance to do so was in that cramped donut shop MJ worked at on the day he was supposed to deliver the letter that explained everything. The moment he saw the physical proof of what loving him had done to her—the bandage covering the wound she got from the battle atop the Statue of Liberty—he just couldn’t bring himself to deliver it.
A sharp thwip cut through Peter’s thoughts as he extended his wrist, bracing himself for the web line he shot to snap taut and catch him out of freefall. Web swinging had become purely instinctual. He had some support from Karen and other variants of Stark A.I. in the suits that Tony designed for him, but now it was his own mind subconsciously working through the physics of being a 150-pound pendulum. It was all just him… and the basic A.I. companion he programmed to substitute Karen.
“Mask temperature is falling to dangerous levels, Peter. Prolonged exposure at this altitude is ill-advised,” a soft synthetic voice chimed directly into his left ear against the wind.
“I’m fine, EV,” Peter muttered, watching his breath plume and fly away through his mask as he shot another web. “Just tell me if there’s any update about the drug deal I’m heading to.”
“Understood.”
Yes, it was freezing. New York’s December winter was especially harsh this year. Not only did it get dark impossibly early, but the overcast sky that always threatened snow never seemed to let up. The spandex suit he made with the help of May’s sewing machine did well to trap body heat, but if he started off cold, it took forever to be able to heat up.
“Patrol confirms two units dispatched to the alley behind 145th Street, but heavy traffic on the West Side Highway has delayed their response,” EV reported. “Estimated arrival is six minutes. You have a narrow window if you intend to intervene before the transfer completes.”
“Six minutes is plenty,” Peter grunted.
He released his web line at the top of his arc, launching himself high above the Upper Manhattan rooftops. For a fraction of a second, the world fell eerily quiet. The snow that threatened to fall began to materialize and the snowflakes that were caught in the glare of the lights below him became visible, tumbling past his fogged, mechanical shutter lenses.
Below him, the alley off 145th was a narrow trench wedged between two pre-war apartment buildings. Within that trench, tucked beneath the rusting overhang of a fire escape, sat an idling black van, its tailpipe puffing thick gray clouds. Two men in heavy coats stood near the rear, hands jammed deep in their pockets as they watched a third man just across from them pry open a wood crate with a crowbar.
Spider-Man dropped out of the dark sky, landing squarely on the roof of the van with a metallic thud.
Before the guys behind the van could even look up, he swung over the lip of the roof, firing two web shots.
“Evening, fellas!” Spidey called out cheerfully as the man he fired his webs at was yanked off his feet and slammed face-first into the van’s rear bumper. “Lovely night for some light cargo unloading, isn’t it? Very subtle with the big, non-descript van, by the way. Totally blends in!”
The second man gasped, reaching frantically toward his waistband, but the webhead closed the distance in a flash. He swept the guy’s legs out from under him, sending him sliding across the icy ground. As the man tried to use the wall to get up, Spider-Man shot out a thick strand of webs, anchoring him firmly to it.
The third man—who Spider-Man could only assume was the buyer— panicked, dropping his crowbar and scrambling in the opposite direction.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on!” Spidey shouted, casually trotting after the guy. Even at a lazy jog, he was able to gain ground on the man’s frantic all-out sprint. “You’re really going with the ‘run away in winter boots’ strategy? The traction on those soles is an OSHA nightmare, man!”
The man whipped around, pulling a compact 9mm from his coat with trembling hands. “Get the hell back, freak!”
“Look, I get it, the cold can make you cranky and act out,” Spider-Man said, raising his hands in mock-surrender and stopping in his tracks. His shutter lenses clicked loudly as they adjusted to the low light and brought the man into clearer view. “But being a good boy and waiting in the warm van until the cops show up is a much smarter move than pointing a gun at a guy in bright red spandex.”
BANG.
Spider-Man’s spider-sense buzzed in the same familiar prickle that he felt at the base of his skull. He tilted his head casually to the left, the round that left the handgun embedding itself harmlessly into the brickwork behind him.
“Okay, rude,” he said, flicking his wrist. A web-line attached itself to the handgun, allowing Spidey to yank it free from the man without any resistance and pin it to the underside of the fire escape that sat atop the van. “And honestly? Terrible form. Don’t you criminals know you’re supposed to aim for the center of mass? Going for a headshot practically guarantees a miss.”
His spider-sense buzzed again as the man resorted to charging straight at him. Without much thought, the webhead caught the man’s wrist and redirected the man’s own arm into his chin, knocking him out cold.
“Heh, heh, you hit yours— OW”
His spider-sense never stopped buzzing because it was a two-pronged attack. With his attention squarely on the guy who charged him, the first man he knocked out got up and hit Spidey squarely in the back with the previously dropped crowbar.
His mechanical lenses clicked once more as he turned to face the guy who hit him—squinting at him in the best angry-looking face he could muster. The man, undeterred, was ready to swing again, but Spider-Man simply webbed his face and dragged him forward, striking him with a tornado kick to the head as he stumbled toward him.
“Sneak attacks are not cool, dude,” he berated the now unconscious man as he rubbed his back. “That hurt like a motherf—”
“Hands up where I can see them!” A gritty female voice called out from just beyond where the van was facing, opposite of the alley entrance where the buyer tried running.
The harsh glare of a flashlight beam cut through the snow, pinning Spider-Man in place as a woman in a brown heavy winter coat approached, her sidearm drawn and trained on him. The gold shield pinned to her lapel caught the light—no uniform underneath, just plainclothes and a badge. Detective Jean DeWolff.
Spidey put his hands up, muttering to himself. “Seriously? That’s twice now that I don’t get to finish a sentence. Where was the heads up, EV?”
“Patrol unit is still approaching,” EV's voice chimed in response. “Perhaps this was in response to the gunshot that was fired.”
“That was thirty seconds ago,” he whispered back. “She had to have literally been right next to the alley if that’s the case.”
“Maybe she was,” EV said.
DeWolff stopped a few paces away, her boots crunching in the fast-forming slush as her firearm remained locked on his chest. Her sharp eyes scanned the scene, taking note of the conscious man webbed up to the wall, the two unconscious men lying at Spider-Man’s feet, and the handgun pinned high on the fire escape.
“Keep your hands up where I can see ‘em, Spider-Man,” DeWolff repeated, her voice carrying a gravelly timbre that was seemingly unbothered by the freezing temperature.
“Hey, Detective—nice touch with the brown and the badge—usually people start with ‘thank you’ when I do all the heavy lifting,” Spidey said, gesturing vaguely at the scene with two fingers. “Though if you’re here to write me a parking ticket for the van, I should probably warn you, it’s not mine.”
DeWolff didn’t crack a smile. Without taking her weapon or eyes off him, she reached into her coat with her free hand and pulled out a radio.
“Dispatch, this is Detective DeWolff. Show me on-scene at 145th. Cancel the responding units. I’ve got three collared, situation under control. Need a transport wagon for pick-up.”
“Copy that, Detective,” the radio crackled back. “Canceling sector cars. Transport unit en route.”
With that, she stuffed the radio back into her coat pocket and holstered her handgun. She crossed her arms, as if suddenly remembering it was supposed to be freezing cold, her gaze lingering toward the small tear near his hip where the crowbar cut into him.
“You’re bleeding,” she noted coolly.
“It’s fine, just a scratch. The snow’s keeping it iced anyway,” Spidey replied, keeping his hands raised in semi-mock surrender. “So… are we doing the whole ‘stand still while I call this in as a vigilante arrest’ thing, or…?”
DeWolff let out a long breath, a cloud of pale steam rising into the darkening air.
“I have two little ones,” she finally said, shifting her posture enough to drop the heavy police aura she exuded at first. “A boy and a girl. They have your poster glued to the door of their bedroom. Every time you show up on the news, they think that you’re the greatest thing to grace God’s green earth.”
Spider-Man’s mechanical lenses blinked in surprise to match what was going on under the mask. His posture slumped as he slowly lowered his hands. “Oh. Well… tell them I said hi? And that they should listen to their mom, especially if she packs good lunches.”
A faint, almost imperceptible twitch touched the corner of DeWolff’s mouth before her stern expression snapped back into place. That twitch was a win in Spidey’s book.
“I’m giving you ten seconds to clear out,” she said, turning her back to him to inspect the crate near the van. “If you’re still here after I turn around, I’ll have to take you in for questioning."
“Ten seconds? Detective, you’re too generous,” he said, flicking his wrist toward the lip of the tenement roof above them. He pulled on the line and launched himself straight up into the falling snow. “Tell the kids Spider-Man says to stay in school—oh and to buy winter boots with actual traction!”
DeWolff didn’t look up, but as the sharp thwip of Spider-Man’s webshooters echoed down the narrow alley, she muttered softly, not knowing Spidey could still hear her with his enhanced senses, “Get that back looked at, kid.”
High above the street, the wind caught Peter as he cleared the roofline, the chill of the mid-evening air hitting him squarely in the chest as he zipped in the direction of Morningside Heights.
The second he was sure he was out of sight, he felt his internal thoughts settle back into place. The quick-witted, lighthearted Spider-Man was replaced once more with the battered and tired Peter Parker.
“That’s probably the best cop interaction I’ve had since Fisk started campaigning for mayor,” Peter snidely remarked, his breath hitching as he fired another web line to maintain momentum. “Maybe I should take a crowbar to the kidney more often to draw out some compassion.”
“I have no diagnostic telemetry for your physical condition, Peter,” EV chimed once again into his earpiece. “However, based on the sharp spike in your respiration rate, I can deduce you’ve experienced physical trauma when the crowbar struck you.”
“Yeah, brilliant deduction, EV,” Peter grunted, twisting in the air to line up his next arc in the direction of Central Park. “Remind me to program you some actual body sensors when I can finally get my hands on a real workbench.”
“Processing request. Note added: integrate full-suit telemetry into future hardware revisions.”
Peter let out a breathy laugh that immediately turned into a muted hiss as his lower back started to spasm from the strenuous twists and turns. With what he had, the best he could do was a basic interface that connected to his phone and his mask. It would be kind of difficult to integrate an A.I. into a full-spandex suit, so he’d have to figure something out on that front first. The tear in it that allowed the wind to hit his raw wound was proof enough that the material would not be able to handle that sort of integration.
“Can’t rest yet anyway,” he said, wincing as he straightened his spine to counter his momentum attempting to flip him forward.
Before dispatch dropped the call about the reported drug deal, Peter was in the middle of his task on 116th Street—the whole reason he’d been all the way out here in the cold in the first place. Every month since her passing, no matter how much crime he had to stop or how brutal the weather got, Peter made sure to bring May a fresh bouquet of assorted flowers. It was a small ritual; a ritual that served as the only tethering point he had left to life as Peter Parker before the spell swept him out of everyone’s memories.
He was blocks away from a small, family-owned bodega when EV buzzed his phone with the NYPD dispatch feed. Now, with the shop’s closing time looming, he had to double back through the freezing Harlem air while his lower back throbbed in beat with every swing.
He released his web line and let gravity take over. The wind howled past his mask, carrying the sharp scent of vehicle exhaust and wet brick.
Below him, the grid of 125th Street glowed like a river of gold and red, congested with evening rush-hour traffic exacerbated by the weather conditions. To his left, the sprawling silhouette of Marcus Garvey Park swept past, its snow-dusted treetops looking like jagged white inkblots against the city’s orange haze.
Peter fired another line, snagging the decorative masonry of an old pre-war brownstone. He used the pendulum arc of his swing to catapult himself even higher, taking a sharp right and banking toward Broadway where Columbia University was. The cold was absolutely brutal up here. It bit through the raw tear in his suit, but the rhythm he found himself swinging in was what kept him moving.
After a while, he finally spotted the familiar five-story building tucked just behind 116th Street. On the ground floor sat the neon-lit green awning of the bodega, its glass windows fogged over from the radiator heat inside.
He swung low over the narrow alley behind the building and let go of his line, landing on the gravel rooftop with a snow-muffled thud. The sudden impact sent a sharp jolt of pain shooting from his lower back straight up his spine, dropping him to one knee.
“Gah—okay,” Peter wheezed, pressing a gloved palm hard against his side. He pulled his hand away and squinted through his lenses; the red fabric near his waist was soaked dark and slick. “Note to self: cheap crowbars still hurt.”
“Your heavy breathing is making it hard to understand what you’re saying into the microphone, Peter,” EV made a note of her own. “And based on where we currently are, your assumed destination is closing in approximately seven minutes.”
“Yeah, thanks for the countdown, EV,” Peter sighed, dragging himself against a brick chimney.
He reached behind a rusted AC unit and pulled out a battered canvas backpack he’d stashed in the alcove before he took off. He pulled out the clothes he’d worn from it and laid them out across the piping. His Peter Parker uniform for the day: a graphic tee that said “TACO TUESDAY” with the picture of a pepperoni pizza, a very oversized winter coat, a pair of faded jeans, and some worn out sneakers that were never meant for the snow, and a beanie. All thrifted; all very cheap.
Reaching into his mask, he unclipped the small earpiece from its inner lining and slid it into his coat pocket, cutting EV’s audio feed. Peter then peeled the mask up over his face, gasping as the freezing night air hit his bare skin. He was pale, hair dripping in sweat despite the biting wind. He quickly began to put his clothes on, every movement he made to squeeze himself into them causing his back to cry out in protest.
Once he was bundled up in his oversized street clothes, he reached into the bag’s inner pocket and pulled out his phone, headphones, and (practically empty) wallet. He replaced the items he took out with his boots given there was nowhere else for them to go, then slung the bag over his shoulders. Spider-Man had fully disappeared. Now, he was just another shivering kid making his way down the fire escape ladder and trudging through the snowy sidewalk of Morningside Heights.
The yellow glow of the bodega’s front window cut through the gloomy darkness. Peter pushed through the door, a small brass bell chiming overhead. The sudden wave of heat, lingering coffee scent, and the hum of the old refrigerator that had all the bodega’s pre-made sandwiches hit him instantly. Behind the register, a man in a thick flannel shirt gave him a quick nod before looking back down at his small TV screen playing a soccer match.
Peter’s attention shifted toward his right where a few buckets of fresh-cut flowers sat near the door. His lower back gave a sharp twitch as he bent over to scan the selection. By this point in the night, just about everything was picked clean. A lot of what remained started to wilt from the irregular temperature caused by the cold drafts from the door clashing with the heat of the radiator. However, his eyes finally landed on a vibrant assortment: bright yellow daffodils, deep purple irises, and three immaculate white carnations all nestled together in clear plastic wrap.
He pulled the bouquet free, making his way to the register. He set the flowers down on the counter and reached into his coat pocket to pull out his wallet. Digging through it, he laid down a crumpled ten-dollar bill and a few quarters.
The cashier glanced up from the small television, his eyes scanning the shivering customer standing in front of him. The guy had seen Peter in here enough times late at night, always looking worn-down and always buying flowers.
Without a word, he hit a button on the register and the drawer popped open. He smoothed out the ten, dropped the quarters into their tray, and reached beneath the counter to pull out a heavy-duty brown paper bag. With it, he grabbed the flowers off the counter and carefully wrapped the base of the bouquet, taping the top to create a tall shield around the delicate petals to provide at least a small amount of protection against the cold.
He slid the flowers back over to Peter along with a dollar in change.
“You’re late tonight,” the cashier said in an accented, raspy rumble as he leaned back against the cigarette rack behind him. “Thought maybe the snow got ya.”
“Just traffic,” Peter said, his voice also raspy but only because he’d been swallowing a bunch of freezing air while webswinging. He picked up the change. “Thanks for wrapping them.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t let ‘em freeze before you get where you’re going,” the cashier muttered, giving a brief nod toward the door before turning his attention back to the soccer match on his screen.
Peter carefully cradled the paper-wrapped flowers against his chest, tucking them beneath the front zipper of his coat to add an extra shield from the wind. Pushing back out through the door, the brass bell chimed once more as he stepped back out into the freezing night.
He ducked down into the nearby 116th Street/Broadway subway station, tapping his phone against the turnstile.
The ride back up to Northwest Harlem was a noisy blur of screeching metal wheels and flickering overhead fluorescent lights. Peter sat huddled in the corner seat of the nearly-empty train car, one hand resting protectively over the bulge in his coat where May’s flowers were stashed. Every sudden jerk and rattle along the tracks sent a throbbing ache up his back, reminding him that he wasn’t in high school anymore.
To distract himself from the back pain, Peter pulled his phone from his pocket with his free hand and flipped it open. The screen was cracked across the top corner, a spiderweb of hairline fractures that made themselves visible whenever the train lights caught them at an angle.
He didn’t have much on it—not a single text thread nor a missed call. All the notifications he had were news alerts and weather updates. Despite knowing better, he thumbed through the phone’s tabs and opened up his social media app, returning him to a page he had opened earlier.
It was a livestream he was watching at the time—well now a recording that was posted by Ned Leeds. Peter tossed on his headphones and hit play to resume where he left off.
“—officially a wrap on freshman year, first semester!” Ned’s voice boomed through his headphones, making Peter flinch from the sheer volume of the excitement that came with being completely unburdened. The camera swung around, capturing Ned’s beaming, pencil-stached face bundled up in a crimson MIT parka and a pair of thick earmuffs. “Four finals in three days. We survived, guys. We actually survived!”
The camera pivoted, catching Michelle Jones as she walked beside him, her scarf wrapped high around her neck. She gave the camera a characteristic roll of the eyes, but a genuine smile broke through once Ned goaded her to speak more.
“Barely.” MJ’s voice carried that dry, sarcastic tone, but there was that lightness to it she always had when speaking among friends. “I didn’t know what was going to kill you first—the exams or all that Sharkfire crap you drank to study for them.”
“Oh, come on, MJ! Those got me over the hump! But hey, now there’s no more Sharkfire Energy because Winter. Break. Is. Here.” Ned did a little shimmy as he panned the camera over to the rest of their friends who were walking beside them.
Peter stared at the screen, his chest tightening as he rewound the video to rest on MJ.
Freshmen. Finals. Winter break. They were moving forward. They were building lives, making new friends, and celebrating surviving exams way out in Boston—completely safe and completely unaware that there was someone watching them from a rattling subway car in Harlem who they used to love. Someone who MJ used to love with all her heart was now someone she didn’t know ever existed.
The spell worked. It protected them just like he wanted. But watching them thrive in the life he was supposed to share with them was as suffocating as the train car Peter was in.
He swallowed the lump that formed in his throat, tapped the screen to exit the app, and closed his phone, sliding it deep into his coat pocket before pressing his back against the vibrating plastic seat with a shaky exhale. He was alone. Completely. Alone. But as he adjusted his arm to continue keeping May’s flowers safe, he reminded himself why he bore the weight: they were safe. They were happy. That had to be enough… right?
The train finally shuddered to a halt at 157th street, the automated voice announcing the stop through the crackling of static.
Peter pulled his coat tighter around his chest, keeping one arm cradled over the paper-wrapped flowers as he stepped out onto the platform. He trudged up the concrete stairs, pushing through the turnstile and stepping back out into the freezing cold.
The snow was falling heavier now. Thick flakes were drifting down through the glow of the streetlights. A few blocks up, the heavy iron gates of Trinity Cemetery stood open against the dark backdrop of the Hudson River.
Every step up the gentle incline of the cemetery pathway was a battle with his own body. His sneakers offered zero traction on the slush, so he had to resort to using his spider-stickiness, which did a number on his lower back. He kept his eyes fixed on the snow, following the path he knew better than any other in the city—up toward the crest of the hill, beyond the granite mausoleums, heading straight toward the bare oak tree that overlooked the water.
Beneath that oak tree sat her headstone.
MAY PARKER
WHEN YOU HELP SOMEONE, YOU HELP EVERYONE.
The site was dead quiet, save for the soft whistle of the wind through the bare branches above him. Peter sank to his knees in the fresh snow, a sharp hiss escaping his teeth as his back flared in protest. He ignored the pain, using his bare hand to brush away a layer of frost that clung to the marble base.
He unzipped his coat, pulled out the bouquet, and gently replaced the already-wilting flowers at the foot of her headstone with the new ones.
“Hey, May,” Peter whispered, his breath clouding in the freezing air as he rested his fingers against her name. “Sorry I’m a little late tonight. Got caught up in traffic.”
He rested his forehead against his knuckles, letting the heavy silence of the graveyard settle over him. He stayed like that for a long time, the cold seeping through his worn jeans and into his skin. He told her about his new place in the Lower East Side—how he’d managed cheap rent for such a large space simply because it used to be an asbestos-filled storage closet. He told her how hard it was to keep up with the rent on his own, thanking her for being responsible enough to leave him a modest nest egg to fall back on. He told her about his cheap, hand-stitched spandex suit that kept tearing, and how much he missed her advice when the city felt too big and too loud to carry on his own.
He didn’t have to hide his exhaustion here. He didn’t have to put on a mask or crack a joke to prove that he was fine. Here, sitting in the snow beneath the oak tree, he was just May’s kid.
A faint, steady crunch of snow on the gravel path behind him broke the stillness.
Peter’s shoulders tensed. His spider-sense didn’t flare so at least he knew he didn’t need to be completely wary of the presence that was approaching. He stayed still for a beat, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve, before pressing two fingers to his lips, touching them to May’s headstone, and pushing himself up from the snow. A suppressed wince caught in his throat, but he fought through it and turned around.
Through the heavy, falling snow and the ever-darkening twilight, a figure was walking up the incline toward the crest of the hill, bundled in a dark coat and holding a single flower wrapped in plastic.
Peter squinted through the haze of falling white, his breathing hitching as the blurred silhouette crossed beneath the glow of a nearby pathway lamp.
The light caught a flash of light platinum-blond hair tucked beneath a dark beanie, framing a familiar face wrapped tight in a scarf against the Harlem chill.
In an instant, memories of the past flashed through his mind—the awkward high school broadcasts in his early years at Midtown Tech; Ned's cool machismo sparked by their whirlwind romance on the trip to Europe; her sharp confident smile as she reported for Midtown News in his last year in everyone’s lives. She was older now, her posture carrying the much more polished edge of someone who looked like she'd taken that high school passion and turned into a real career. Despite that, the resemblance was unmistakable.
Peter stood frozen in the snow, his heart pounding against his ribs as her eyes met his across the quiet graveyard.
Of all the people he could have run into from his previous life, this person was the one he didn’t pay much thought to, yet here she was.
Of all the people he could have crossed paths with, Peter Parker crossed paths with none other than Betty Brant.