Chapter Text
Peter watched in shock as his webs dissolved under the onslaught of sound and machinery.
“Isn’t it funny,” the Hands said in unison, “how your friends at Damage Control developed a special weapon just for you?”
Peter would be lying if he said that didn’t sting. He had figured that Metzger was full of it, and he knew that the DODC was obsessed with contingencies, but he had thought that he of all people was helpful enough, useful enough to warrant an exception.
“They’ve got a whole task force ready,” Jean told him, “just in case you ever get out of line.”
Peter blocked a shock baton, feeling the energy fizzle out across his suit as he rolled away from another swing. He webbed two of the Hands to the wall, dodging a blade and throwing star from a third, but the people wielding those sonic guns were dissolving his webs faster than he could make them.
“People are monsters.”
Peter jumped up to avoid a rushing attack from five Hands, and found himself in the crosshairs of two sets of anti-web weaponry. The web shooter on his right wrist vibrated, and he turned it away from himself just in time to watch it burst, catching a red-cloaked Hand in the blast from the impromptu web grenade.
“You shouldn’t trust them any more than they trust you.”
Peter landed in a crouch just as a call came up on his HUD. He reached for his mask, trying to accept the call from Frank, but a Hand threw a star just barely too fast for him to dodge, and he hissed as it cut through the suit and nicked his wrist. Another Hand rushed at him, and he barely dodged. The air around him felt thick, like he was walking through syrup. It was tiring, and it only seemed to affect him. He knew he couldn’t last much longer like this.
He slipped past a swing from one electrified baton and straight into another, feeling it connect with his head and cause his HUD to glitch out. Frank’s call disappeared.
“My sister died in this room, surrounded by these men.”
Peter stumbled upon hearing that, barely righting himself as a blade sliced straight through his left web shooter. His spider-sense screamed at him right before he was tackled to the ground by three Hands at once. Sharp edges pressed against his wrists, neck, and ankles, and he knew in an instant that moving would mean serious injury.
The Hand pressing down on top of him removed his mask with none of the roughness he had expected. Jean was gentle, careful not to hurt him unless he moved.
“And her only crime was that she was special.”
When Peter’s face was exposed, Jean’s Hand reached out a hand to wipe away the grime of the past day from his cheek.
“Just like you,” she whispered.
Peter was far from blameless. He hadn’t told MJ about her memories of him until he was forced to. He had tried to kill Norman Osborn until Peter-Two had stopped him. Hell, he had taken too long to get the Infinity Gauntlet off of Thanos’s hand. There were times when Peter hated himself for the choices he made.
He was tired. His body had been overloaded on adrenaline for too long, and he had just gotten his ass kicked in one fight after another, with the Hulk and then the Hand. Besides, it wasn’t like he could move much anyway.
Over the last four years, Peter had become a master of excuses. And it had been so long since anyone had touched him without trying to kill him.
He leaned into the touch before he could stop himself. The Hand above him blinked, some of Jean’s surprise bleeding over into her expression. Then she smiled, a soft and content thing that was gone in a heartbeat, but he saw it. Peter tried to pull away as soon as he realized what he had done, but the hand followed his face, which was rapidly turning all kinds of red.
“People like us,” Jean whispered, “don’t get to have a normal life.”
Peter was shaking, trying desperately to stop himself from leaning in again and feeling the gentle pressure of another person’s hand on him. God, the second she stopped trying to kill him, he fell apart? The second he was shown any shred of sympathy? He really was a simple spider.
“We don’t get to have friends, or a family.”
She was right on that. He had learned the hard way over the last four years.
“Those people are gone.”
He could hear the overwhelming, angry misery in Jean’s voice, bleeding through into the Hand, and he hurt with it, with the terrible pain of loss that he knew too well. He had been trying to pretend otherwise for too long, but he knew now what, deep down, he always had. The spell worked. That life was-
“That life is over.”
She knew. She understood his pain, and she had found a way not to bottle it up, and he had hunted her for it – maybe because he had recognized that in her and tried to prove that it didn’t work. And it didn’t work. Innocent people got hurt when someone like her, like him let out their anger on the world. He had to stop her, no matter the cost.
It didn’t matter if Jean gave him the only semblance of affection he had left. It didn’t matter that she had given him a taste of hope for someone who loved him on that rooftop and cut open an old wound that he could no longer ignore. It didn’t matter if she had stripped away his every delusion of returning to a normal life and shown him that there was nothing left for him but her.
“So why don’t you just be honest with yourself?”
He had to stop her, even if it meant throwing away his only chance at comfort. There were times when Peter hated himself for the choices he made.
“Who are you?” Jean whispered in his ear.
He didn’t know.
“I…”
He was a hero who folded when his enemy showed him the tiniest scrap of affection. He was the sort of friend who cut off everything because he was afraid of rejection. He was a coward.
“I’m…”
He was the kind of person who had thrown away everything he loved for nothing, for a world that had thrown bricks into his home, and had to console himself with the knowledge that he had done the right thing. He didn’t know if he had it in him to be that person anymore.
Legally, he didn’t exist. Sometimes, he wished that were the case, and given the choice, he would say…
“I’m no one,” he whispered.
At some point, the blades had been removed from around his body. He hadn’t moved, except to lean into the hand caressing his cheek and brushing back his hair. The Hands helped him slowly to his feet, and he walked with them up the stairs to the thick metal door. It opened of its own accord, and all of a sudden, he was swept off his feet and pulled through the air by an unseen force, until…
“Damn,” Jean whispered, pupils blown wide, “you really are a mess.”
Bill Metzger was strapped to a chair in the center of the room, shards of glass floating inches from his face. His eyes darted around the room, but the rest of his body was utterly still.
Jean set Peter down on the floor, and the air seemed to return to his lungs. She reached out a hand. Peter didn’t pull away. She pulled him closer by the collar of his suit, dragging him in until mere inches separated them.
“You’re not nobody,” she whispered. “I’ve been watching you, and you’re so, so far from nobody. You’re the only person I don’t want to control. Why do you think that is?”
Because I’m like you, Peter thought, and Jean nodded.
“Because we both know what it’s like to be screwed over,” she said, voice shaking, “to have no one. Because we’re both alone, and I- we don’t want to be alone anymore.”
She cupped his face in her hands, and Peter keened, leaning into her. He expected her to smirk, to say what he was thinking and call him pathetic, but she didn’t. She smiled, a sad and wan expression that only people like them could make.
“You’ve been so brave,” she whispered. “So strong. But you don’t have to do this alone anymore. When I’m done here, we’ll go somewhere. Somewhere no one can find us.”
Peter looked at Metzger, who had lied to him and plotted against him at every turn, who had kidnapped children to torture their secrets out of them. By all accounts, he was a monster.
There were times when Peter hated himself for the choices he made.
“Jean,” he said, dragging every word like a fishhook out of his throat, “I can’t. I can’t let you hurt him.”
Jean’s eyes flashed with something that could have been anger or hurt. “Peter, he-”
“It doesn’t help. I’ve been there.”
A single tear leaked from her eye. “Like hell you have.”
Without warning, she plunged into his mind, and suddenly they were back on Liberty Island. Norman Osborn was laughing, and Peter watched himself slam punch after punch into the old man to no effect. Jean stared, transfixed, as the past version of Peter rained down blows that would have cracked concrete. Through it all, Norman laughed, a maddening sound that still set Peter’s teeth on edge whenever he remembered it. He watched himself pick up the glider. He watched Peter-Two block his desperate murder attempt and get stabbed for his trouble. Jean gasped.
Norman kept taunting his Spider-Man, and Peter could feel his fists clenching. Norman had been right. Peter was the one who had killed his aunt.
“No, you weren’t,” Jean said softly. “You had no way of knowing what would happen.”
“I knew enough,” Peter muttered.
He watched Peter-Three throw the cure to Peter-One. He watched himself stab it into the Goblin’s neck with enough force to break both neck and needle. And then it was over. The memory faded.
“Why?” Jean asked once he was back in the white room. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
“I…” Peter steeled himself for another old wound. “At that point, I didn’t even want revenge. I don’t think anyone ever wants revenge in the moment. Before, yeah, but not during. I didn’t want to kill him because he’d killed May. I wanted to kill him because he was laughing about it. Because he didn’t care about what he’d done.”
“That’s as good a reason as any,” Jean said coldly, glaring daggers at Metzger.
“Maybe so. But would I have cared, after I’d killed him?”
“Peter, he killed your family. He wasn’t your aunt. He didn’t deserve to be mourned.”
“Peter-Two thought different,” Peter said softly. “And we can’t afford to talk about deserving. That’s a luxury for normal people.”
“Why?” Jean’s voice trembled.
“Jean,” Peter said, trying to convey through his eyes the years of failures that he had built up into a crushing mountain. “What do you think we deserve?”
Jean was silent. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Please,” Peter said, reaching up to hold the hand on his cheek. “Leave him be. He’ll get what’s coming to him, I promise.”
Jean’s hand was shaking, and Peter could feel the air around her quiver.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?” Jean asked, voice cracking. “Where would we even go? And why would you take me?”
“I don’t know – it was your idea. But we’ll figure it out.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
Peter swallowed hard.
“Because you’re all I have left.”
BLAM!