Archive of Our Own

“You’re late.”

Peter didn’t jump like he had the first time, though it was a close thing. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” He sighed as he closed his apartment window behind him, still in his suit. That crappy old window used to stick when he came through, but ever since his second mutation, it had become a lot harder to keep his strength in check than before, and it closed easily and without any prompting.

“Shouldn’t you?” He turned around, pulling his mask off so that he was eye to eye with Jean, lounging on his sofa like she lived there. Which, as of three weeks ago, he guessed she did. She’d stopped in to see him, once he got out of the hospital, just to make sure he was okay. Or that was what she’d told him. If Frank was right that she was the one who’d been keeping him alive all that time in the first place, he had a feeling there were ulterior motives to her visit. Either way, she’d shown up, awkwardly asked after his health, and then…she’d sort of just never left.

Peter didn’t mind. He liked the company, actually, though admittedly he was a bit rusty on the whole ‘socializing’ thing (that wasn’t a problem, though, because Jean was too), and he’d had to move his computer setup to give them space. With his busy schedule as Spider-Man, he was out basically all day and all night, whilst Jean tried to keep under the radar and mostly hung around his apartment, reading and thinking about her sister and whatever else teenagers did when they didn’t have a vigilante alter-ego.

“I could be your guy in the chair,” she’d offered after a few days of “freeloading” off of him as she’d put it. And despite everything he knew she was capable of, all the puppeteering and freezing half the city and breathing for him from miles away, she just looked like a kid to him. Even after losing her sister, she still had these big, sad eyes that made her look thirteen and scared. He swore he never could’ve been that small. And it made him think of Ned, how young and stupid they’d been, excited over every little thing instead of really fucking scared like they should’ve been.

“Nah,” he’d waved her off, because it hurt to think of Ned, to know that if Ned ever thought of him, it wasn’t as Peter. Not anymore. Not ever again. The closest he ever would get was Legos in his and MJ’s apartment, with a mask over his face and his feet planted on some overblown pedestal because his best friend only remembered him as a hero who’d saved him once or twice in high school.

She still kept an eye on him when he was out there, he knew, but it was different than it had been when he was still her age. She definitely crept about and poked around the storage room they used as a house, eyeing up his tech, because he’d come back more than once to things being moved around, smiley faces drawn in the dust on his desk. Besides that, most days she waited up for him and they’d have hot chocolate together made from cheap store-bought mix and what little hot water they could manage, and he’d tell her about the people he’d fought and the ones he’d saved, and she’d tell him about the weird stuff their neighbors did while he was out and the diners she’d been trying to get hired at.

Tonight—or he guessed it was morning by now—was no different. “Pretty sure it’s past your curfew,” she insisted. “I was up waiting for you. And you’re late,” she repeated, somehow managing to look disapproving, which was crazy, because she was sixteen and he was an adult, thanks.

“Okay,” he huffed, shrugging his suit off. “First off, it’s like five in the morning, it’s not a big deal. Second, I don’t have a curfew. We’ve been over this. You’re a kid, I’m an adult, you don’t have to look out for me, okay?” God, he was starting to sound like Mr. Stark. “I-I look out for you.”

She made a face, unimpressed. “You look out for me? You’re barely an adult, and I could kill you if I wanted to,” she muttered, picking at her nails. He wasn’t bothered by the threat. It was hard to take her seriously when she was the only reason he was alive right now in the first place.

Still, he couldn’t help but be a little offended by her casual dismissal. “I pay our rent, Jean!” He complained, trying not to sound like a whiny kid.

She made a show of glancing around his sorry apartment. “Super job, Mr. Blue Collar. That bartending job sure pays the big bucks.”

“You try getting hired when you don’t exist,” he grumbled back, pulling a pajama shirt over his head, even though he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping much before he had to leave for his day job. Jean was right, not that he’d admit it. He was late. “Besides, do you know how many tips you get working the lunch shift in a dive bar? If I could work nights, maybe we could upgrade.”

She rolled her eyes. “You could work nights, if you ever took a break.”

Finally dressed in loose, soft clothes, he tossed his suit aside and fell bonelessly onto the couch next to her. His whole body hurt, right down to his bones. His control over his newer mutations had gotten better, but he still couldn’t shake these stupid headaches, and his wrists still ached like crazy. Turns out it was tiring work to constantly swing around New York City getting the shit beat out of him and produce his own webs and also be able to see, hear, feel everything happening around him times a hundred. “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man doesn’t take breaks,” he mumbled.

“Maybe he should,” she shot back. How could she be so argumentative after staying up all night? Peter swore he’d never had this much attitude as a kid. “You’re supposed to be a vigilante. You know, like a nighttime hero or something, but you’re out all day and all night. How you even have time for a real job is beyond me.”

“What do you want me to do, huh?” Somewhere along the lines, his hand had snuck up to rub at his eyes, trying to massage the headache out. Not for the first time, he wished he could still access some of his better tech. Mr. Stark used to keep painkillers that worked with his metabolism in the lab for whenever he needed them. Then Peter could just swing into the tower like he was popping by the pharmacy for Tylenol. Peter wished he could still just do that. He wished Mr. Stark knew who he was.

Peter wished for a lot of things.

“People…people need Spider-Man,” he finished lamely, his voice too tired to hold any conviction. He spared a glance at the teenager curled up on the other end of his couch, and he almost had to look away again when he was hit with those big eyes and those pursed, disappointed lips. Gone was the girl who’d carelessly inhabited MJ, who’d mocked him with her familiar face, with his dream of knowing her again, of her knowing him. In her place was vulnerability, bared to him like a blade held out hilt-first in surrender, but still sharp enough that he felt he’d cut his hands with one wrong move.

“You’re all I have right now,” she said softly, firmly. “I need you more than Spider-Man.” He swallowed thickly around a sudden knot in his throat. It had been a long time since anyone had needed Peter Parker. His eyes burned under his trembling, tired fingertips, and he squeezed them closed tightly again, pretending it was just the headache getting to him. Pretending she hadn’t torn right through him with that sentence. He could’ve said a lot of things to her. ‘I need you too.’ Or maybe something solid and comforting, something like Mr. Stark would’ve said, if he still knew Peter existed.

Instead, he did what Spider-Man always did. He hid the real stuff away. “Come on,” he forced a laugh, a flippant smile. “I’m all you’ve got? What do you mean? You’ve got Frank!”

She snorted, the moment broken, and he relaxed a little. So did she. “I get the feeling Frank doesn’t like me very much.”

“What? He thinks you’re great.”

“He tried to shoot me,” Jean almost laughed when she said it, because that was what passed as funny between them.

“But he didn’t,” Peter argued lightly.

“He almost killed you.”

“That was more my fault than his.”

Now Jean really did laugh, though it was sobered and more than a little tinged with bitterness. For two people as fucked up as they were, she didn’t find much humor in his near-death experience. “Does he even know I’m staying with you?” She asked instead of addressing that thing taking up space between them on the couch. That thing where she’d felt his blood in between her fingers. That thing where in one swift move he’d traded his life for hers. That thing where she’d been the air in his lungs, the steady beat of his own heart, and the opening of his eyes.

“No,” he admitted. “But Frank and I don’t really get personal, okay? I mean, the guy didn’t even know what I looked like until a few weeks ago.”

“Whatever,” she rolled her eyes, but let the subject of his work schedule drop. (For now. Peter was under no illusions that this would be the last of it. He could read her disapproval in every meal he skipped for the sake of time, every minute he decided to spend being productive instead of sleeping. Who knew teenagers could be so judgy).

He sighed, forcing himself off the couch and onto aching feet. “Hot chocolate?”

“Yeah, sure.”

———

It was the day he took Jean to see May when he ran into his old friends again. The plastic wrap around his flowers crinkled when he slid them into the holder in front of her grave, gently dusting nonexistent dirt off the stone with a shaky hand.

“Hi, May,” he said softly, even now, years later, unable to keep the childish tremble out of his voice. He almost felt a little self conscious, talking to her with Jean there. But she’d already seen into his mind, and besides, the closest thing to a grave Jean had for her sister was the scrunchie in her hair. She didn’t have anywhere to visit, anywhere to lay her flowers down, so Peter tried to be grateful for the little mercies he’d been afforded. At least Happy had gotten her a nice gravestone. “This is Jean.” Heavy silence fell like a thick shroud, and disappointment settled in his stomach again. He knew she couldn’t answer, but somehow, even after all this time, he still couldn’t help but expect her to be there when he called for her. It felt like trying to use a limb he didn’t have anymore, though he swore he could still feel it on his body. In his brain—

“Hi, May,” Jean’s soft voice broke the silence as she echoed him, and he looked up at her before quickly turning back to May—he didn’t want to risk shattering whatever spell had been cast between them. When had his eyes started to burn? “I don’t really know what to say, but you seemed…like a really nice lady. Say hi to Sarah for me, please.” His chest hurt. His stomach was twisting and his head was pounding and he swore he could almost smell May’s perfume, feel her warm arms around him as he buried his face in her shirt and told her he’d fucked everything up and lost his ‘Stark internship.’ She’d held him without any anger, without any regret for the hours spent working to keep a roof over his head.

Peter choked trying to keep the sob in his mouth, but before he could stifle the tears trying to escape from his eyes, Jean caught his hand and kept it from moving. Her palms were sweaty where their fingers tangled together, and she squeezed him so tight, she cut his circulation off. “I want coffee,” she told him. “Let’s go, before you have to get those tights back on.”

His laugh surged out like glass breaking, and he squeezed her hand back, feeling clumsy and big and weak. “Yeah, good idea. I need some caffeine or I’ll fall asleep mid-swing.” He left May a kiss to her stone before going, pretending it was warm like her skin, and turned away to give Jean the illusion of privacy when she nervously did the same. They walked together, four blocks to the coffee shop where he bought his flowers, the same coffee shop he always came to.

The same coffee shop MJ and Ned were occupying at a table just by the door. He sucked in a breath, sharp enough to cut the inside of his throat. Heat crawled up the back of his neck like a radioactive spider, and he itched to run for the door, but Jean was already inspecting the menu, and he felt the moment MJ’s eyes found him. It was too late to run.

“Peter.” MJ breathed his name like she had so many times in his dreams, melty and weighted with recognition—but it was all wrong. Recognition of him as the man she was supposed to know, a man beneath a red mask, not as the boy she’d met in high school. Not as the boyfriend she’d kissed goodbye at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, a too-bright sunrise blooming over a city that would turn cold in a second and forget there’d ever been a boy who went to Midtown High, who spent his afternoons with Mr. Stark and his evenings grabbing dinner with Aunt May before slipping out the window and into his separate world.

MJ recognized him, but she still didn’t know him.

“Hi,” he said awkwardly, jamming his hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” she said back, just as stiff, almost apologetic. Ned glanced between the two of them, confused, and it felt like a bullet straight through his back. “Um, Ned,” she cleared her throat uncomfortably. “This is Peter.” She emphasized his name with double-meaning, and he watched the light dawn in Ned’s eyes.

“Peter—Oh my God, you’re Sp—” MJ elbowed him before he could alert the teenager working the register that Spider-Man was there for his daily Americano.

“Peter,” she repeated with a forced smile as Ned rubbed his ribs dramatically. Peter wished he was sitting with them, familiar and welcomed. He wished he wasn’t standing across from them like some obtrusive stranger, jagged and mismatched. He wished a lot of fucking things. Her eyes, warm and never strange to him, even when they viewed him as an unknown variable, shifted to Jean. “Who’s your friend?”

“Right,” he cleared his throat, shaking himself. He’d forgotten MJ had never actually seen Jean, not outside the blurry picture he’d used for facial recognition on his computer. “This is Jean, uh, my sister.” The redhead beside him stiffened, but didn’t tear her eyes from the chalkboard menu.

“Sister,” MJ repeated.

“I didn’t know you had a sister!” Ned exclaimed, as if he was supposed to know that Spider-Man (and nobody else, because he was just Spider-Man to Ned) had a little sister. Like that was included on all the websites and news headlines, or on Ned’s nifty tracking app. It hurt more than it should’ve. A few years ago, he would’ve known that was a lie. Hell, a few years ago, Peter wouldn’t have needed to lie to him. Ned would’ve been there, every step of the way.

“Me neither,” MJ’s eyes were narrowed, and he winced internally. He guessed it was too much to hope that she, ever shrewd and intelligent, would have forgotten that the faceless villain who had possessed her had been called Jean Grey.

“I’ll order for us,” Jean interrupted, eyes keen and almost sympathetic. “You three…catch up.” She knew too much about his life from before. She’d seen it all for herself, in the little bits of his mind she’d accessed. He’d almost forgotten that in the face of their current arrangement.

“Right. Thanks.” He took the seat across from a freaking-out nerd, the chair legs scraping too loudly on the tile, and Peter winced, his headache spiking back to life immediately. His senses ramped up to five hundred anytime he got even the slightest bit stressed, which was really inconvenient, because Peter hadn’t exactly been vacationing for the last few years.

For a moment, neither he nor MJ said anything, an uncomfortable silence stretching between them, but then Ned couldn’t take it any longer, and burst in with whispered questions that he was still asking way too loud for such a sensitive subject. “Wait, so you’re really—? Wow! Do you really synthesize your own webs? Where did you get the materials to make your suit? Why did you used to hang around Midtown so much? What was fighting Thanos like—”

“Hah, um,” Peter sort of laughed, sort of coughed.

“Ned,” MJ rolled her eyes. “Give him a moment.”

“It’s fine,” Peter rubbed at his eyes. He remembered being fifteen and having Ned at his shoulder, whispering inane questions in his ear between classes and during lectures. Asking if he could get bit by the spider too. In hindsight, thank goodness that spider was dead. (If Peter had known when he was fourteen and felt those burning pinpricks puncturing through the back of his hand…if he’d known that it would kill Aunt May…). “I, um, I do create the material for my own webs, but,” his face burned. He didn’t elaborate or admit he didn’t use the homemade fluid anymore, because he didn’t think there was a pretty way of explaining how he’d gotten sick and woken up with holes in his wrists full of organic webs.

He didn’t know how to explain any of it without sounding completely pathetic. Was there a nice way to explain that working with the Avengers and fighting Thanos had been cool until he’d fallen apart into ash in Mr. Stark’s arms, begging and pleading like a kid? How hard would it be to explain that his current suit was designed to match that of two alternate versions of him that he’d had to say goodbye to at the same time as he’d had to say goodbye to everything else in his life? How could he explain that Mr. Stark didn’t even remember who he was anymore?

“Thanos was…he was really scary, dude.”

Jean took the seat next to him when silence lapsed again, two steaming cups in hand. “Here’s your boring Americano, Pete.” He almost jumped at the nickname; nobody had called him that in a long time. Maybe she was just playing up her role as his sister. It was hard to tell what Jean was like in a normal day, when she wasn’t so angry and lost. He didn’t know what to expect from her…didn’t know what she expected of him.

“Does it have—?”

“Your extra five hundred shots of espresso? Yeah, I’m not stupid,” she snarked, and he relaxed.

“Thanks.” He would need the extra energy for later, especially after this. He’d gone days without sleep before, but somehow sitting down to have a real conversation with Ned and MJ was a million times more trying.

“So,” Jean eyed the two people across from her curiously, as if she couldn’t read everything she wanted to know off the texts of their minds without even a flick of her finger. “Who are your friends, Peter?”

“I-I’m Ned, and this is MJ!” His best friend put in excitedly, still practically buzzing. He lowered his voice to a comical stage whisper. “We’re friends with Spider-Man!” The novelty in his tone didn’t make Peter laugh like it used to. Back then, Ned was so excited that his best friend turned out to be Spider-Man.

Now he was excited Spider-Man was turning out to be friends with him.

“Good to see you have some friends, Pete. I was almost starting to worry,” she teased, but her bright eyes had words written in them that he would bet condemned his lifestyle. She hadn’t begrudged him his lonely, trashy apartment or his grief-worn shoulders. If anyone knew what it felt like to be alone, she did. But lately, he could feel there was some sort of divide between them, a disapproval of how, as she put it, ‘he treated Peter Parker like the mask to take on and off at the end of the day instead of Spider-Man.’

“Didn’t I tell you I’m both?” He’d answered, forcibly light, when she’d said it.

She stared him down with eyes of prosecution, accusation…expectation. “Then act like it.” He wondered if Mr. Stark had ever felt terrified of having a teenager to look out for, knowing not only did he have to corral a kid’s recklessness, but he had to be a role model in turn. Probably not. Mr. Stark has been a genius, an Avenger, the man everyone wanted to be. He’d barely wanted anything to do with Peter at the beginning, but that hadn’t been fear of making the wrong move. It had just been disinterest in a kid who stopped bike thieves in Queens, because who had the time to be impressed by that when they were too busy saving the world? No, Mr. Stark wasn’t ever afraid of anything.

Besides, Jean wasn’t Peter. She was already so much more capable than he ever was, so much more mature than she should be. Jean was an unstoppable force, and Mr. Stark was the immovable object. Peter was just the boat flung around on the wild waves between them.

“That’s kind of what MJ said too!” Ned remarked, and wow, okay, that kind of stung. He guessed in an effort to make things better for him without actually exposing the truth of all their erased memories, MJ had told Ned a bit about him. And he guessed all she really knew was that he was all alone. So.

“Wow,” Jean muttered. “That’s, like, really depressing, Peter.”

“Shut up,” he grumbled, wishing he could drown in his coffee cup, that he could sink beneath the surface of the dark, hot liquid until he ceased to exist, melting down into nothing but granules of sugar to be stirred away. That was sort of what being blipped had felt like, except there had been relief. He’d felt dizzy and sick, and he didn’t even remember closing his eyes before he was suddenly waking up five years later.

“I just have to ask,” Ned went on like they hadn’t spoken. “What’s it like? Being Spider-Man?” He’d never grown out of those shining, innocent eyes. Peter didn’t remember what the world looked like through lenses like those.

“It’s…” lonely. “It’s a lot of work,” he said lamely. Jean’s chair screeched closer to his, and he winced at the noise. Her elbow pressed closely to his, steady and warm through her loose fitting green sweater. A phone starting ringing behind the counter, screaming shrilly in his ears, and suddenly Peter was hyper-aware of the whirring of an espresso machine, the excited tapping of Ned’s foot beneath the table, the forcefully even breaths from MJ, all of it loudly pounding in his ears like a drum.

His head screamed at him, face throbbing, and his grip on his coffee cup tightened until he heard the ceramic creak. Jean’s elbow dug in a little more insistently, as if trying to anchor him to earth. “We should probably go,” she blurted out, before Ned could ask any more questions.

“Oh,” Ned’s shoulders dipped a bit in disappointment, and guilt welled in Peter’s chest.

“Sorry,” she shrugged, standing. “Got a city to save and all.” It was almost laughable, but Peter’s head hurt too much to be amused, so he just nodded awkwardly to them both, eyes snagging on MJ’s for a painful moment before following Jean out like a loyal dog.

———

“I can’t believe you’re actually going out there,” she bit at him, hogging his rolling desk chair up in their storage room of a house.

“Hey, you said it, not me. City to save and all that,” he mocked a little snappily. His head was still making its displeasure clearly known, and no matter how hard he rubbed at his temples or dug his fingernails into his eyes, the pain wouldn’t back off. He could feel the fabric of his clothes rubbing on his skin, could feel the vibrations of his downstairs neighbor running on his treadmill—he was aware of everything around him all at once and it hurt so bad.

“That was an excuse to get out of there. You looked like shit.” She eyed him up. “You still do. Which is why you should stay in tonight.” For a moment, he wanted to listen to her. It would be so much easier to curl up until he was small and let the world pass him by. Somewhere dark and dim where problems couldn’t find him anymore. No one would miss him. No one lost sleep at night wondering after Peter Parker.

But the people of New York City would miss Spider-Man. So.

“I can’t,” he said quietly, not meeting her eyes. “You know I can’t. If…if I’m not out there, who’s gonna protect people?”

“What about that police lady you’re friends with?” She fired back.

“What can the police do against a bunch of criminals with high-tech, black market weapons?”

“I don’t know,” she groused. “How many times has New York been attacked by aliens in the last fifteen years? They should be used to this shit. It’s their own fault if they can’t handle it by now.”

“But it’s my fault if I don’t step in,” Peter snapped. He could feel May’s voice ghosting past his ears. With great power comes great responsibility. She’d believed in him, so, so much. And he’d failed her. He’d failed everybody. “This city is mine to protect.”

He didn’t know when Jean had gotten up or put herself in front of him, but her nails bit into his skin as she pulled his face forward—forced his eyes to meet hers. “Peter,” she said his name like a warning. “You are going to die if you do this. Do you understand? You said you’re both, but you don’t give a fuck what happens to Peter Parker at all.”

“Jean—”

“Listen to me. You’re going to die in this city. You’re going to die hiding your face like a coward.” She dug her nails out and pushed him back, and he stumbled over his own feet, eyes burning, head screaming, shame boiling over in the spaces between his ribs. “I don’t need another dead body, Spider-Man,” she mocked, eyes cold and eyes hot and eyes daring him to stand up for himself, to prove her wrong. “So either pull yourself together or get the fuck out of my life.”

He tried to say something, but his tongue felt numb in his mouth. He choked, the sound falling between them on the ground and shattering there, shards of the last few weeks lying in the dust and the remnants of webs and in his own dried blood. He wanted to beg her not to go, beg her to understand. He’d gone so long without the company, he’d been cold to it, he probably could’ve made it the rest of his sorry life without ever feeling the warmth of another person again. But then he’d had Jean. He’d shared his space and his time and his grief with her. She’d cracked through it all, and if she left now, he was afraid he might die.

But he needed her to understand. He wasn’t Peter Parker, not really. He held onto the name by his teeth because it was the name MJ and Ned had known him by, the name he’d given Tony Stark when they’d first met. The name May had called for and he had answered. But he was Spider-Man first, in a world of people who wouldn’t feel a difference if Peter Parker died.

“Spider-Man is important to people,” he whispered. “I’m…Peter’s not.”

Jean’s eyes burned blue and steadfast. “Peter’s important to me.”

“You,” he laughed, water slipping free from his eyes, and he rubbed at his face angrily. “You barely even know me. I’m,” he bit his lip so hard he started to taste metal, just to keep the sob building in his throat from coming out. “I’m a disaster.” He wanted to tell her it was dangerous to get close to him. That his parents, his uncle, his aunt, everyone in his life suffered a terrible fate if they dared to stick around long enough. He wanted to tell her that he’d met two versions of him who’s lives weren’t much happier, that maybe Peter Parker wasn’t ever meant to be happy. He wanted to tell her to save herself before it was too late, to get away from the boy who had stood on a battlefield with the Avengers, the infinity stones, the man who’d killed half the world. Hadn’t she already been through enough?

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter froze.

“What did you say?”

“That’s what May said to you,” Jean said, voice rough. She rolled her eyes at the look on his face, but there was no heat there. “Come on, Peter, you really think I only saw one of your memories? You managed to push me out the first time, but that’s it. I’ve seen you. Through your eyes and through MJ’s.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she didn’t entertain it. “She may not remember you, but the memories are still there. Buried. How else do you think I knew to say exactly what you wanted to hear?” Keep going, Peter. Touch her. Hold her. “Do you really think she would’ve given a damn about Spider-Man if it wasn’t you under the mask, Peter?”

“It doesn’t matter!” He yelled, before he could stop himself, and then grabbed his head, vision whiting out. God, he was a fucking idiot. “She doesn’t remember me,” he choked out. “She doesn’t care who’s behind the mask. And you shouldn’t either. You’re wasting your time.”

He squinted through slit, pained eyes and for a moment, when he saw her face, he thought she might just hit him. But then his phone came to life, way too loudly, and E.V’s automated voice described a robbery in progress twelve blocks away. “I…”

“Go, Peter,” she said flatly, arms crossed.

“I,” he swallowed thickly. Before Jean, he never would’ve hesitated to throw himself headfirst into danger. “Will you still be here when I get back?” He hated how small he sounded. He wasn’t a kid anymore, hadn’t been for a long time.

“You mean if you get back?” She raised an eyebrow, rock hard and angry, but her eyes were softened by a sheen that he didn’t dare to call tears. Not when these days his mind very well might be just as much hers as his. “…Sure.”

He nodded, a wash of relief he didn’t want to name almost taking him off his feet. He pulled his mask down over his face and launched himself out the window without another word.

———

“You’re off your game tonight, daffodil.”

Peter sighed, dropping his head to the concrete for just a moment, the slightest allowance of rest before he had to peel himself off the ground and jump back into it. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Frank?” He tried, but his mind wasn’t on their usual nitpicking and arguing. His head felt like it was filled with Chitauri energy cores that were feeding off his radioactive blood and threatening to blow him to pieces.

“Hey, I should be asking you that, kid.”

“I’m in my twenties!” He whined, pushing himself up onto his knees with a groan. He was tempted to ignore the hand Frank offered down to him, but he was pretty sure that last bank robber had broken a few of his ribs with that aluminum baseball bat before he’d managed to web the guy up. He let Frank pull him all the way up, clutching his side and hissing through his teeth.

“Like I said. Kid.”

“Shaddup,” he hissed.

His phone went off again, something about a bunch of thugs trying to bust into an ATM, and he sighed. “Well, I’d love to sit around all night and chat, Frank, but I got work to do.”

“Oh, you got work to do? Don’t get mouthy with me, you little—”

Peter was swinging off before he could hear the end of the sentence, the wind stealing it greedily out of even his enhanced ears. The night was cold as he breezed between skyscrapers and over busy streets. For the late hour, the city was still pretty lively. He swung past lit-up windows, glowing TVs and kitchen fans hanging over late dinner scenes. He could make out a million heartbeats like butterfly wings below and all around him, and he took a steeling breath to try and smother out the clutter in his mind so he could focus on the mission at hand. This wasn’t his first time trying to stop this sort of low-level heist, and back then, he’d only been fifteen, a tiny kid half worried about homecoming and getting Mr. Stark to like him again. It was simpler now, in a way. Peter wasn’t a kid anymore.

A few more blocks and he had eyes on the place. It was the same one across the street from Delmar’s. The same one he’d first run into the Chitauri tech in, and had to save his favorite store owner from a raging fire (that may or may not have been his fault). Picking up speed, he swung lower, webbing onto a streetlight and letting his momentum carry him right through the doors, smooth and silent.

“Hey, guys,” he dropped through the doorway, landing on his feet, crouched, like a cat. “I just saw you guys were passing through and I thought I’d drop in!”

“Shit! It’s that spider freak!” Peter barely had the time to get a headcount on the morons before one of them had leveled a truly comically large gun barrel at his face and opened fire, leaving Peter to scramble and dodge his way up the wall and across the ceiling of the bank.

“Hey, not cool! It’s Spider-Man, with a hyphen!” He corrected, webbing over the gun barrel and punching the guy in the face. The guy stumbled back a step and Peter took the opening, webbing him to the wall. Then he swung the still-webbed gun over his shoulder until it collided with the face of one of the other thugs. Alrighty then, he grinned to himself, only three to go. Something warm and familiar pushed at his head, and the ache eased for just a moment. Heat seeped through the cracks and soothed everything until it was rainbowy and elastic, like a soap bubble.

“Jean,” he breathed to himself. She was in his head. Alarm was edging at his brain, though he could tell the feeling wasn’t quite his, and for a moment he worried she’d take control and make him come back home before he was done, but he shoved the thought away before Jean could see it. He knew she’d never controlled anyone for the fun of it; she’d done it all for her sister, to try to save her, and in the face of something like that, of course her actions seemed noble, even when thinking of how she’d used MJ still made him a little sick. “I’ll be fine,” he breathed. “Now get out of here before you get hurt.” Not that he’d let anyone get their hands on her even if that was possible somehow, but he hated the idea of knowing someone could find out about her and take her the same way they’d taken Sara.

The feeling stayed in his head, though, and he knew she hadn’t listened.

The moment of distraction afforded one of the thieves the time he needed to knock him on his ass, and Peter decided that he wasn’t allowed any more distractions for the rest of the night.

———

After a couple of blows to the head, plus the headache he’d already been nursing, Peter was just about done for the night when the alert about gunfire came through. “Shit,” he breathed, exhaustion weighing his bones down. “On my way,” he told DeWolff before hanging up, swinging as fast as he could towards the dark skyline of the city. It was past midnight by now, and he ached to be in bed, but he couldn’t let even the thought of rest take root, or Jean would run with it.

He tried once more to gently brush her out of his mind, but she dug her nails in.

———

Jean knew she should’ve just left it alone. She didn’t know why she even cared about it so much. Peter was just some guy; why was it her problem whether he lived or died? Except he was just some guy who let her live with him, bought her coffee and let her eat his food. A guy who took a bullet for her. So she kept an eye on him throughout his patrol, knowing that with his senses heightened the way they were, he was in for a long night, and he’d need someone watching his back, someone other than Frank.

Most of the night was boring, just bank robbers and idiots trying to steal from ATMs. Bike thieves, carjackers, muggers…the usual crime for New York City. Even the gunfire call wasn’t surprising, and Jean was only half paying attention back at the apartment. Frank was there, she could tell, because Peter’s hackles went up almost immediately. She could practically taste the barbs they were throwing at each other already. She tuned it out, for the most part, flipping through some book Peter had grabbed her from the library—some nerdy comic he said he’d loved when he was her age.

She’d told him she didn’t want to read his nerdy junk when he’d brought it to her, but she could admit to herself, in the quiet of her own mind, that it was nice. Mindless, moral superhero stories without any of the jagged real-life stuff. Like Spider-Man, if he’d never met Mysterio, or been noticed by Tony Stark (Jean would keep that last part to herself; she doubted Peter would appreciate unsolicited opinions on memories she shouldn’t have even seen).

BAM!!!

Jean jerked, white flashing over her eyes. Her heart seized in her chest, and panic lanced through her. It took her a moment to realize the apartment was still in one piece, quiet as ever. But then what…? Peter.

She tried to get into his mind, only to find it was fuzzy and intangible.

“Peter?” She called, choking on her own breath. She tried Frank next, prying into his sharp, painful mind until she could see through his eyes. Smoke, flickers of orange tongues of fire. Frank was groaning, and she could vaguely feel the aches of his old body as if it was her own.

Stupid fucking kid—!

Frank was thinking about Peter. She forced his eyes to blink away the smoke faster, trying to see, digging deeper for clarity, until she caught blue and red a few feet away. She saw the gloves, the suit, the whites of his goggles, and—

He wasn’t moving.

She tore her claws into Frank’s mind. What the hell just happened? She snarled, and the answer yielded all too easily. Some shoot-out at a gas station that had escalated when Frank had shown up, and had only gotten worse when one of the other the guys had tried to throw a homemade explosive of some kind at the Punisher.

Peter, the fucking idiot, had gotten in the way, of course.

He’d pulled Frank back just in the nick of time, the two of them narrowly missing the heat of the explosion, but then when Frank snapped to, and when Jean peered through his eyes, she saw that Peter had a chunk of shrapnel wedged in his stomach.

“Fuck, kid! You okay?” Frank scrambled to his feet, shaking his head as if he could feel Jean there and was just trying to jar her loose. She threw herself forward into Peter’s mind instead, wincing when her senses screamed in tandem to his. His thoughts were breaking, falling all over the place.

“Peter?” She called to him, trying to keep his mind focused on hers. Tried to make his lungs keep breathing with hers again.

‘Jean?’ His mind whispered, weak and in pieces. She sobbed before she even realized she’d started to cry. ‘Hey, hey, it’s okay,’ he told her, just like he had that day when Frank had taken his shot, when Peter had put himself in front of her, shared moments of May still hanging between them. ‘Don’t worry about me, okay?’

“Please don’t leave me here,” she sobbed, trying to keep her breathing even, for him, but her throat was closing up and her chest hurt and she was hyperventilating, and—

When had she gotten on the floor? Her comic book was beside her, discarded, and she was on her knees, begging raggedly for ears that were miles away.

‘It’s gonna be okay, Jean,’ he choked out, voice bloody even in his mind, and she could feel him threatening to slip between her fingers; the only thing holding him there was her breathing, her lungs melding with his. ‘But you don’t need to see this part, okay? It’ll be over soon.’ His mouth tasted like blood. He was choking on it, gagging on it, and where the fuck was Frank when you needed him?!

“Peter—”

He pushed her out. He shoved her out of his mind and sent her tumbling back into her own body. She lost her grip on his heart, his lungs, his airways. She lost it all, left choking on breath only in her own body, for her own sake. When she screamed, it was only in her own mind, from her own lips, and she didn’t give a damn if the neighbors could hear her.

“Frank!” She sobbed out, shaking. “You son of a bitch, get up!”

———

The kid was fucking dead.

Frank was pounding on his chest, something vaguely, animally reminiscent of chest compressions. He could feel the kid’s ribs give beneath his too-big hands, blood filling his mouth and staining the fabric of his mask. There was a hole in the side of it where a chunk of metal or glass had sliced the fabric, leaving a jagged cut a few inches long in the side of the kid’s face. He’d have a hell of a scar.

If he lived.

“Hey, kid, ya gotta help me out here,” he said aloud, like a fucking nutcase, because he was no genius, but he swore he could feel that little sneak of a psychic poking around his mind, and if anyone knew what to do in a situation like this, it was her. She’d saved him before, she could do it again. “Come on,” he grumbled, another rib cracking under his hands. “I need your help, witch!”

———

Frank was calling out to her, trying to save Peter. Peter, who’d shoved her out. She couldn’t reach him, she couldn’t save him. She couldn’t save anybody. Not Sara, not Spider-Man. Nobody. Caught somewhere between Frank and Peter as she tried to force her way back into his lungs, she didn’t notice the windows start to rattle in their frames, the desk creaking and Peter’s pictures of Aunt May quaking on the walls.

She was shaking all over, wading through blood like molasses to get to Peter, all while he was lying dead on the ground, empty and useless and broken, just like Sara, just like May, just like—

The scream built in her throat before she could stop it, and she sunk her teeth into his mind, into his name, his very identity, if she couldn’t reach his body. Peter Parker, she thought, pulling with all her strength. Peter. “DAMNIT! Wake up!”

———

Frank felt an immense pressure on his mind, like when his ears popped in an airplane, except it felt like his eyes might come right out of their sockets. The air shook and shimmered like glass, a sound barrier breaking, and beneath his hands—

The kid choked.

———

Bruce was packing up his office for the night, yawning to himself. It was late. He should’ve been home hours ago, but it was his first day back since they’d let him out of the psychiatric facility—apparently Spider-Man had come through to make it clear it wasn’t his fault the Hulk had gone on a rampage—and his students had had so many questions and…

It had been a long day. He wasn’t sure he was even ready to try to put it all away yet and go to sleep. He rubbed at his eyes beneath his glasses, trying to let the comforting weight of his new inhibitor settle his frayed nerves. Even though logically he knew it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t even really the Hulk’s fault—he couldn’t put it out of his head, what he’d done at Damage Control. Of course, it was all fuzzy. First because of the mind control, then because he rarely remembered anything when the…other guy took the reins. But there were bits and pieces left, fragments of when Bruce had tried to get back behind the wheel.

And he couldn’t get the sound of Spider-Man begging for mercy out of his mind.

‘Please, Bruce. It’s Peter. I’m your friend.’ Which was odd, because Spider-Man had always seemed so protective of his identity. Not even Iron Man, who had, from a distance, kept an eye out for the young hero, had known who was behind the mask. But the way the kid had said it, like Bruce was supposed to know…he couldn’t get that small, hurt voice out of his mind.

Something wavered in the air, oxygen becoming charged with energy as it traveled, sound whistling in his ears, pressure pouring in on him from all sides, and all of the sudden—

A piece snapped into place. Peter. Peter Parker was Spider-Man. It raced back to him like a flood, memories saturating his mind. Tony, the kid, the…kid…

‘I lost the kid.’

Oh God. Oh God, no. God, how had Bruce forgotten Peter?!

———

Frank insisted on carrying Peter home, and he was too out of it to argue anymore. First he’d tried to bring Peter to the hospital, but he’d just webbed over the gaping hole where the shrapnel had been before he yanked it out and threatened to walk home if Frank tried to take him anywhere (Frank had freaked when he pulled it loose, but Peter needed it out before his skin started to knit back together).

So the compromise was that Frank was carrying him back to stitch him up himself to “make sure you don’t half ass the job, daffodil.” He didn’t love the idea of Frank knowing where he lived, especially since he’d still liked keeping a degree of separation between Peter Parker’s life and Spider-Man’s, and with Jean staying with him…

But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he was lucky Frank had slung him over his shoulder instead of carrying him like he had into the hospital three weeks ago, as it was.

It wasn’t easy getting home without attracting attention either, but Frank was good, and Peter didn’t have the energy to make noise, his head swimming and woozy, so they moved silently all the way to the elevator and then up to his apartment. He didn’t even bother trying to warn Frank about that cold storage room; he just wanted to lie down and sleep forever, not stumble through explanations on the creepy number of spiderwebs decorating the walls.

Peter watched from where he was hanging over Frank’s shoulder, his own blood dripping down his neck and onto his face, as Frank’s boots came to a stop in front of his door. Colors swam in his eyes, and he groaned, feeling hot and cold all over, all at once. He felt like he was going to keel over, to put it plainly.

“Alright, easy there, kid,” Frank shushed him, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Almost there. You got a key on ya?”

“Knock,” he groaned, blood filling his mouth. His stomach turned, head pounding, and he wondered how mad Frank would be if Peter died while slung over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Knock,” he repeated louder, before choking on his own blood. The hacking cough ripping out of him tugged at the wound he’d barely glued together, and he gritted his teeth, smothering his scream down before he could wake his neighbors.

“Alright, alright,” Frank muttered, kicking the door with his dirty boot because his hands were full with trying to keep Peter from dying. Nothing happened for a long, stretching minute, and something he was distantly aware of welled up in between the nauseous, dizzy parts of him, and it felt like fear. He was afraid Jean was gone; he couldn’t feel her in his head anymore. That warm, sea-glass presence of hers had left him, nothing in her place except his screaming body and the cotton balls stuffed inside his skull. Maybe she’d left when she’d felt the explosion hit. He hoped she hadn’t been able to feel when the shrapnel had forced itself through skin and muscle and lodged itself into him. He hoped wherever she was, she hadn’t felt him fading.

Frank kicked the door again, harder, starting to mutter curses under his breath, probably tired of lugging around Peter’s deadweight. “Put m’down, Fr’nk,” he slurred, his tongue feeling weird and heavy in between his numb lips.

“What?”

“Put me down. M’ heavy.”

“Please, this is like carryin’ a fucking pillow over my shoulder. Don’t you fucking eat?!” He kicked the door hard enough to leave a long black scuff mark that Peter would probably be hearing about in his rental agreement next month, if he was still alive by then.

(He hoped when Jean had left she’d taken that rolled-up cash he’d had stashed in his nightstand for emergencies. He hoped she had gotten on a bus out before she missed the last one for the night. He hoped she wasn’t stuck at some creepy bus station in the dark, even if he knew she could handle herself).

He hoped she wasn’t too upset that he’d gotten hurt. She barely knew him, but he knew it had to be raw. To lose her sister without even knowing it; no cinematic shift she felt in the universe when her sister was gone, no answer except a chair with metal restraints and an old hair scrunchie. And he knew he wasn’t her sister…he wasn’t someone she’d known long enough to mourn. In a way, that was a comfort—at least he couldn’t hurt her like he’d hurt everyone else. It had been scary enough letting her live with him, knowing she was tying herself to the destruction he wrought everywhere he went.

But.

He knew she’d been in his head when the explosion went off. He hoped it didn’t feel like anything. He hoped it didn’t make her sad, because despite how little time they’d spent together in the grand scheme of things, he knew he didn’t know what he’d do with himself if he lost her too. Her and Frank and him, they were all alone together, and if that was the closest Peter ever got to having a family again…well, Peter would take it.

“C’mon, kid,” Frank grumbled again. “What the hell are we waiting for? Divine intervention? Give me your damn key!”

The door opened with a creak, and Peter could taste the salt from her eyes before he could even see her shoes, dirty green converse standing across from Frank’s boots. Jean. She hadn’t left. “Oh, you’re fucking kidding me,” Frank scoffed when he saw her. “What the hell is the witch doin’ here?”

“Sh’s not a witch,” he sighed.

“Zip it back there, daffodil, or I’ll drop ya on your head.”

“He’s alive?” Jean breathed, voice nasally and thick, and he swore he heard her sniffle. He wished he could see her face, meet her eyes with his own so she could see that he was still blinking, seeing, thinking. He wished he could read her mind like she could read his.

“Yeah,” Frank sighed. “Move it, come on, I need to put him down,” he groused, but his voice was softer. He could complain all he wanted, but Peter knew he hadn’t forgotten how she’d breathed for him; Peter couldn’t forget either. He’d been unconscious through it all, but he swore he could still feel her there sometimes. When he got overwhelmed, or when he had nightmares, he felt a different kind of heat in his chest, a manual push and pull of his lungs that felt like he was wrapped in strings and she was operating them for him so he didn’t tangle himself up. She never said anything, but he was sure it wasn’t all in his head.

The door closed behind him as Frank hunkered inside, the warm apartment air washing over him. His crooked lamp in the corner was lit, as well as a handful of candles that cast a dim golden light over everything. The cramped space, the flickering light, the lingering heat, it made him feel like May was wrapped around him. He could almost feel her long hair brushing his face, the frame of her glasses cutting lines into his skin where they rested, her perfume like spices in the autumn time when her and Uncle Ben used to take him trick-or-treating.

Frank lowered him onto the couch carefully, gently, before ripping the mask right off his face. Peter groaned, clutching his side. His suit was absolutely drenched in blood, and he wasn’t looking forward to scrubbing that out later. It had been bad enough after Frank shot him. The cloth around the wound was ragged and Peter was out of practice with stitching up fabric (skin he could handle, but he had a hard time getting his stitching tight enough on his suit because of the range of motion required to swing around the city without accidentally ripping through his clothes and ending up naked).

“Are you okay?” Jean was next to him, hazy and haloed in gold, a blur of fiery hair and cold blue eyes. He couldn’t figure out how’d she’d ever looked like a villain to him. Peter had seen real villains before, shared battlefields with them. Jean, she was just a kid, with red-rimmed eyes and a puffy face. She’d been crying. He curled his fingers around hers, and she sucked in a breath.

“You’re freezing,” she hissed.

“He lost a lot of blood,” Frank grumbled, rifling around through Peter’s things somewhere out of sight.

“Spiders can’t thermoregulate,” he added, struggling to annunciate in his bloody mouth, squeezing her hand as hard as he could. Why was it so hard to make his fingers move?

“God, you’re a freak,” Frank muttered, stomping back into view with a pile of fabric that looked like Peter’s clothes. “Here,” he threw the pile on Peter’s chest. “At least put the pants on. I can’t patch you up with that stupid leotard on.”

Peter was too tired to argue, or to point out that it wasn’t a leotard, that his old suit had been nanotechnology, and he wasn’t just some kid flipping around in his underwear, despite what everyone seemed to think. He just sighed and pushed thoughts of Mr. Stark out of his mind. “Whatever.” The webs he was using to hold himself together would be dissolving soon anyways.

———

MJ hadn’t known where else to go.

She’d woken up at three in the morning for no reason, eyes snapping open in the dark and chest heaving over a dream she couldn’t remember, and—

And when her eyes opened, they were filled with Peter.

Peter in his suit, or whispering with Ned by his locker. Peter in Europe, with those nerdy Stark glasses on his face. Peter in D.C. scaling the Washington Monument. Peter and the necklace she never took off. Peter and an incredible dawn beneath the Statue of Liberty, and a kiss for the last time.

Spider-Man building LEGOs with Ned in their apartment, a mask over his face. Peter in the coffee shop that day, holding a piece of notebook paper that he folded up and shoved in his pocket. Peter.

All the spaces he hadn’t been in, too, hit her. Her and Ned at MIT, making new friends and learning new things and changing majors and changing majors again and then changing them one more time, all the while missing something they couldn’t name. The phone call MJ had made to her boyfriend a week ago, telling him she couldn’t see him anymore, because despite not knowing him at all, she couldn’t get Peter out of her head. Peter, who had never once told her she was ‘withholding.’

Peter Parker.

The tears came fast, burning her eyes as she stumbled out of bed. Her sheets tangled around her feet, and she smacked her hip on the nightstand, almost upending her sketchbook (her sketchbook still proudly displaying Ned and Peter beside each other. You look like best friends.

She choked in her dark room, head pounding. Peter. That asshole. He’d promised her, he’d promised Ned, that he would come and find them and make everything right again. He’d promised he’d come and tell her he loved her. He’d promised. Strange’s spell wasn’t meant to be the end, but then she’d forgotten, only a lingering feeling of expectation sitting in her chest for a day or two after, and Peter…

Oh God, Peter. He’d been all alone, all this time. For four years, he’d watched Ned and MJ move on without him, had lost the safety net he’d had from working with Tony Stark and the other Avengers. He’d lost May, and Happy, and any chance he had at a normal life. Where was he even living? Was he okay? He’d looked awful the last time she’d seen his face, but she’d chalked it up to nervousness; she’d just found his note, the one he’d never meant for her to read (they’d be having words when she got her hands on him).

Suddenly, she thought of the coffee shop the day before, when Peter had come in with that girl, his “sister.” Jean. MJ had been ninety percent sure that was the girl who’d possessed her and about half the city, the one who’d tried to break into Damage Control. Not that she’d had any memories to back up her suspicion that Peter didn’t have a sister, but still. She hadn’t said anything because Ned was still largely in the dark, and also because Peter had seemed sure when he left the day he ended up in the hospital that he’d gotten it wrong. That he’d been lied to, and Jean wasn’t what she seemed.

Did that mean they were close? Maybe she knew where he was, but—MJ didn’t know how to find her either. Shit.

“Ned!” She stumbled out of her bedroom. “Ned, wake up!” She pounded on his door, trying not to let her voice shake. The thought of Peter on his own all this time, patching up his own cuts and bruises, eating dinner by himself, never going to MIT like he’d dreamed…it hurt so bad that MJ wanted to cry. Peter had always been so…nice. Sure, he was tough. He was Spider-Man, he knew how to handle himself. He’d fought Thanos, for God’s sake. But that was…that was Spider-Man. That was the mask. Peter, her Peter, was soft. He had too-big, kicked puppy, brown eyes and that shy smile. He used to have glasses and asthma and he was deathly, ironically afraid of spiders. He spent his free time building the Death Star with Ned and making nerdy movie references. He liked M&Ms over Skittles because he preferred sweet things, and his eyes lit up when he got inside a library.

To think of that Peter all by himself—no one to ramble to about a movie he’d seen, no one to see movies with in the first place. No one to bounce ideas off of, or to remind him to ice his ribs or help him sew up the holes in his clothes. No one for him to hold onto after a nightmare, no one waiting up for him after patrol, praying for the moment he’d come swinging through the window, bruised and bloody but grinning that stupid smile—it was an awful thought.

“Ned!” She pounded on his door again. “Open the—”

It flew open, her fist meeting empty air. Ned was in the doorway, panting, eyes wide and white and shaking. “Peter,” he breathed before she could even figure out what she was going to say.

“You remember too,” she gasped out, almost weak with relief. It was one thing knowing their memories were missing and trying to get Peter to clue Ned in; it was entirely different having her eyes opened and trying to pry Ned’s open herself.

“Oh my God, oh my God, we forgot Peter,” Ned panicked. “W-why didn’t he come find us?” She saw the moment the last few weeks made themselves known again in his head. He fisted his hands in his hair, distraught. “Peter was in our living room! You knew! And you didn’t tell me?” His eyes were so wide, she thought they might fall out of his head. “Oh no, he saw my app! And my board!” Then, horrified, “I thought Flash was Spider-Man!”

“Focus, Ned!” MJ snapped, already turning to fumble for her purse, her keys, her phone. She needed to get dressed, she needed, she needed…

Ned followed her out of his room. “Where are you going?”

“To find Peter,” she huffed, grabbing a sweater off the back of the couch and tugging it over her head. “He’s alone out there and he needs us. He needs to know we remember.”

“But how do we find him?” And that was part of why MJ loved Ned, because of how much he’d always loved Peter. Even before she’d really been friends with them, she’d seen how closely he and Peter stuck together. Now, with memories that felt old and brand new all at once, Ned didn’t question it for a minute. He would find Peter, he just needed to know where to start.

MJ swallowed thickly, allowing herself to stop for just a second. “I don’t know,” she admitted, failure already settling itself in her bones, and she kicked at it before it could start to take root there. “But I think I know where we can start.”

———

Peter clenched his teeth, trying to stifle the scream in his throat, but it hurt, it hurt so bad and he couldn’t get away from the pain, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, she wouldn’t let him, she—

“Damnit!” Jean sighed. “He pushed me out again,” she complained, and the pain slammed into him full-force again.

“Kid,” Frank grumbled. “Stop fucking around, we’re trying to help you.” His big hands kept Peter down when he tried to writhe free, slowly and surgically drawing the needle through his skin. If he didn’t feel like he was about to die, fire in every stitch, Peter might admire the precision in his motions, the careful way he tried to be as quick and efficient as possible when he put Peter back together again—but he was burning, burning all over, and it hurt worse than mutating again, worse than The Snap. His skin was crawling with every sharp pull of the rough thread through his skin, grating on the gash in his side. “Don’t squirm,” Frank snapped. “You’ll make it worse. This ain’t no papercut, punk, you should be in a hospital right now.” He punctuated his point with a rough yank of the thread, and Peter tossed his head back, biting down on his own hand when he screamed. “Christ, hold him down!”

He felt Jean force her way into his mind again, a lot less gently than before, and though he knew she hadn’t taken control of his body, at least not fully, he could feel his limbs get heavier. Like his desire to move them had been brushed off. The pain abated slightly, too, like she was shielding it from him, but then Frank was back to his stitching, and it hurt so bad he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he—

—he wanted May, he wanted her to hold his hand and brush through his curls like she used to. He wanted Ben to sit at his bedside like he had after he’d gotten bit. He wanted someone to hold him, with their hands, with their bodies, with their skin on his skin. When was the last time he’d touched somebody without having to fight them? God, it hurt, somebody help him. May, God, anybody, help—

”—Stop his screaming before somebody calls the cops!” Frank yelled, sounding ragged rather than angry, which made no sense because a man like Frank wouldn’t be bothered by the sounds of some kid screaming. He’d had to deal with worse things than Peter could probably dream of, but—

“Fuck!” He cursed, blood filling his mouth as he yanked his hand away. He’d bitten through skin, the sharp tang of metal drowning all five of his overpowered senses in a copper torrent. “Get your hands off,” he begged, trying to yank away again. Jean was pressing herself across his chest now, like if she couldn’t hold him down with her mind, she could force him down bodily instead.

“Almost done, kid,” Frank promised, but his voice sounded a million miles away, and Peter didn’t have it in him to care. He’d felt his own body betray him more than once, his DNA mutating as his cells and muscles and bones tore themselves apart and rearranged into their own design, and still, this hurt more than he could name.

Finally, Frank pulled away, tying off the thread and snipping it short with a pair of scissors Jean had gotten him from the kitchen. Peter laid there bonelessly, gasping for breath, drenched in sweat and still bleeding sluggishly. He buried his fingers in his hair, trying to blink the moisture out of his eyes. Jean’s fingers poked at his face, and he was too tired to fight her off anymore.

“You’ve got a fever,” she told him, lips flat, and he closed his eyes tight, attempting to will his muscles to stop shaking.

“You sick?” Frank asked, the mockery suspiciously gone from his voice.

“I don’t get sick,” he mumbled. “I’m not even human.” The words felt strange to admit out loud, but they were true. They’d been true for a long time, but even more so lately. He wondered what Mr. Stark would think of him now, when he was no longer the doe-eyed kid he’d been before. When sometimes his eyes turned hard-black and shiny, more spider than man. Maybe it was for the better that Tony didn’t remember him anymore. He couldn’t disappoint someone who expected nothing of him.

“You’re not not human,” Jean pushed, sitting back on her heels next to their sagging sofa. “Just because you haven’t gotten sick doesn’t mean you can’t. Besides, these aren’t exactly the usual circumstances.” She gestured at the ugly stitches marring his side, starting just above the elastic waistband of his black sweatpants and stretching up to his ribs. That shrapnel had taken one hell of a bite out of him.

He’d like to argue these were exactly the usual circumstances, but he doubted that would help his case much. He just sighed instead, closing his eyes again. Silence lapsed between the three of them as Frank rustled around for bandages in his bag, focusing on the air in his lungs, struggling against the weight in his chest to keep going, to keep pushing and pulling.

The stress alleviated, warm sea glass snaking its smooth veins into his chest and expanding and contracting his lungs for him. Opening one tired eye, he watched the deliberately steady rise and fall of Jean’s shoulders, and felt guilt clench at his heart. She was only a kid; she should be in school, making friends and having fun. Yet here she was, cleaning up his messes and keeping him on his feet, even when he fought her every step of the way. “Hey,” he choked out, voice cracking. “Jean. ‘M sorry.”

Her eyes opened, confused, but he could still feel the weight of her on his chest, her concentration never wavering. “What?”

“I’m sorry you saw that earlier,” he whispered, blinking tears back again, nothing to do with the pain anymore. “I should’ve been more careful. I knew you were there, I—”

“You should’ve been more careful because I was there?” She whispered. “What about you?”

He furrowed his brow, trying to follow her. “What about me?”

She scoffed, looking away sharply. “I told you earlier, Peter. You’re all I have. If you die…I’ll be alone again.” In the dim candlelight, he realized her eyes were shining too. “But you still throw yourself at death like you’re invincible. That’s what you’ve been doing for years, right? You shouldn’t want to be careful for anyone, not your little girlfriend, not even me. You should want to live for yourself.”

He swallowed thickly, and even though she wasn’t looking at him, he could feel her gaze burning into him. “Jean, I…”

“You pushed me out.” Blue eyes flicked back to face him, hot and unforgiving. “I was the only one who could save you, and you pushed me out.”

“Jean…” he bit his lips so they wouldn’t tremble.

“Fuck you, Peter,” she spat. “Don’t give me some sorry apology about how you wished I hadn’t ‘had to see that.’ I wanted to be there. I want to help you, and I can’t do that if you insist on killing yourself!” He stared at her, wide-eyed and paralyzed. His body had hurt almost nonstop for the last four years; he was used to the aches and pains of new breaks in the same old bones and bruises laying over bruises, white scars layering his once-smooth skin. What he wasn’t used to was this—Jean. Someone who expected him to come home in one piece. Someone who was waiting up for him.

Hot chocolate on the couch together in the morning, no matter what time he got in. Shared nightmares, shared breaths. Sara and Aunt May. A string of grief like red yarn tied around his finger and tied around hers, stretching between them like a tether.

That was their deal, their routine.

Peter hadn’t cared what happened to him for a long time, maybe since he got bit by that spider in the first place, all those years ago. Just fourteen and scared and sick. He hadn’t had anyone else to care for him in almost as long, comfort and concern all left behind at the feet of the Statue of Liberty and on the dawn of an empty day. Now he was confronted with the fact that if he wasn’t going to let Jean worry over him, he’d have to worry over himself, or he’d let her down.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, rubbing the tears off his face before Frank could comment on them.

“Hey, daffodil.” Speak of the devil. “Sit up. I gotta wrap you up before you fall apart again,” he gestured with a roll of white bandages, and Peter took his offered hand to pull him upright. He winced, grabbing at his side as he went, eyesight going black for a minute, and he felt Jean’s hand find his shoulder to steady his swaying.

“You’re gonna need to move if I’m gonna patch him up, witch. C’mon.” He blinked the darkness out of his eyes, bracing himself for tightly wound bandages and a few days of painkillers that wouldn’t do a thing for him anyways. Instead Jean threw her arms around him, and he flinched. Frank’s eyes found his over her shoulder, and he didn’t make a face or anything, just kind of raised an eyebrow like, see what you did? It took Peter a moment to even get his arms to move. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a hug. A real one, not the one with “MJ” on the roof. It was so much warmer than he remembered, soft and tight enough to crack his ribs if they weren’t already bruised and fractured to hell. He could smell Jean’s shampoo, feel the rhythm of her heartbeat against his, could almost taste the lingering salt of her tears drying on her cheeks. They were so close he could’ve melted into her and never left. A silent sob slipped past his teeth, a secret revealing itself like a traitor, and he bit down on his lip to hold himself together at the seams.

He shook in her arms, or maybe she shook in his. For once, it didn’t matter at all.

“Alright, jeez,” Frank coughed. “Knock it off with the sappy stuff, kids. I’m not done with you yet.” Peter laughed and pulled away, taking a deep breath on his own, the weight of her leaving his lungs, and he smiled something broken at her.

“Sorry, Frank.”

“Whatever. Just hold still, you little insect.”

———

“I’m sorry. Unless you have an appointment with Mr. Stark, there’s just no way I can let you up there,” the lady behind the desk said, unimpressed. Normally MJ wouldn’t blame her; it was four in the morning. Tony Stark was probably still asleep in some billion dollar bed, in silk monogrammed pajamas, no clue what was happening down in his lobby. If he was even here.

But this wasn’t a normal scenario, and MJ needed to find Peter immediately, and if anyone could do that, it was the guy with enough money to do whatever the hell he wanted, whenever the hell he wanted. And it had already taken them way too long to get across the city to the Tower, time that should’ve been spent finding Peter and yelling at him for not telling her, and then wrapping her arms around him and never letting go. Now there was a secretary standing in the way of their only lead on Peter, and MJ just couldn’t be reasonable about this.

Neither could Ned, clearly, because he elbowed past her to lean on the front desk. “What about Happy Hogan? Does he still work here?”

The lady heaved a sigh. “Yes, but—”

“Get him down here,” MJ interrupted. “He’ll tell you we don’t need an appointment!” The secretary stared them both down, and Ned cleared his throat.

“Please.”

The lady sighed and turned to her phone. “I’ll see what I can do.” MJ didn’t dare celebrate yet, but she took Ned’s hand and squeezed it until her fingers went pale, and she tried to settle the hummingbird-beating of her heart in her chest, a painful spasm running through her every few seconds when she thought of Peter.

Ned rubbed at his eyes with his free hands, sniffling. “We need to find him,” he whispered, for the twentieth time in an hour. “I can’t imagine what he’s been through.” She didn’t even want to think about that. The last time she’d seen Peter and actually known who he was, they were seventeen, and they were saying goodbye. He’d been bloody and broken even then, but he’d always gotten up and cleaned himself off before. Even the toughest battles never seemed to weigh Peter down for long (at least until sleep refused to come at night, no matter how hard he tried to drown himself in his own pillow, in MJ’s hair).

But when she’d seen him three weeks ago, or hell, when she’d seen him yesterday…he hadn’t looked like he’d brushed himself off. He looked like his life had become one serious, never-won battle that he waged every single day. He’d been so pale, so skinny. He was still strong, muscles more defined in his arms than they’d been before, but his cheeks were sunken and his eyes were circled in gray. There was no light in his face anymore. He looked older. Not the same way she and Ned did.

Not older because he wasn’t a teenager anymore. Older because he wasn’t the same Peter anymore.

A few minutes passed, her and Ned holding vigil in the lobby, and Happy came stomping in, looking harried. “What?” He snapped immediately, then stopped in his tracks when he realized who he was talking to. “Oh. Oh.”

“Happy,” MJ breathed. “You wouldn’t believe how good it is to see you.” Yesterday she hadn’t even known he existed. “Please tell me you remember.” And this was the closest to begging she would ever do, because if he didn’t remember, why even bother worrying about Stark? They’d never get a word in to him if Happy couldn’t get them upstairs.

“Yeah,” his voice broke. “Yeah, I remember.” He said it like he’d lost May all over again. Maybe he had, the loss even fresher when he recalled how she’d died in Peter’s arms, the way he’d held her until the police had opened fire and he’d had to flee, bleeding and heartbroken. She wondered how many times they’d crossed paths at May’s grave and he’d written the boy off (God, MJ hadn’t ever even gone to see May. She hadn’t even known her name until an hour ago). “Don’t worry about it,” he told the secretary tensely. “They’re with me.”

Ned almost sobbed next to her, and MJ’s shoulders dropped, heavy as stones. Just like that, they were in the door.

———

The elevator doors slid open smoothly with a welcoming message from FRIDAY, and Happy winced when raised voices filled the air. “Do you think everyone remembers?” Ned hissed in MJ’s ear, and the worried frown that hadn’t left her face since he’d woken up deepened.

“I don’t know,” she squeezed his wrist. “Do you think that means the world will remember what Mysterio did?” Ice cubes slipped down Ned’s throat and into his stomach. Mysterio had ruined Peter’s life. He’d painted Ned’s friend as a callous murderer and himself as some tragic hero—never mind that Peter had fought Thanos, or had looked out for the little guy. It seemed all the world had forgotten how much crime rates had gone up when Spider-Man was lost in The Snap. Kids at Midtown had been too busy taking videos and calling Peter names to remember how he’d saved them in Washington D.C.

Peter had sacrificed everything to protect others—even people who didn’t know him, who didn’t want his help—and all he’d gotten in return was his dreams crushed and his body broken down. Peter didn’t have anyone looking out for him anymore. And Ned should’ve been there. They were best friends, they were family.

Ned should’ve been there.

The elevator had opened onto the private penthouse floor, which Ned had technically seen before, years ago, when Peter had gotten Ned in to meet Tony and see what he was working on with his new suit, but that memory still felt separate from him, two different lives—one with Peter and without—that were hazy and overlapping on the edges. As a result, he couldn’t help himself from drinking it all in. The tall ceilings, the fancy couches, the expensive looking bartop made of black marble, full of crystal decanters of amber liquid and bottles of things Ned hadn’t run into at an average college party. There were velvet rugs running across the polished floor in shades of wine and blood, and high-tech gadgets littered about, scatter-brained and so much like Peter’s room, messy and scrawled in his genius. And in the center of it all stood the Avengers.

Ned gasped before he could stop himself, and MJ’s hand was really the only thing keeping him from bouncing in and asking all his questions. Tony Stark was talking loudly, and though he was as stoic as ever behind his glasses, the way he moved his hands and the edge in his voice spoke to how agitated he was. Captain America was trying to argue with him, their voices overlapping until it just sounded like angry noise. Dr. Banner was sat on the couch, rubbing at the bridge of his nose and looking exasperated.

Black Widow was leaning next to Hawkeye at the bar, rolling her eyes while he poured them both a generous drink. And last, there was Pepper Pots, watching Tony and Steve volley insults back and forth like she was watching a heated tennis match.

“So cool,” Ned breathed before he could stop himself. The Black Widow’s eyes flickered over to him, and he saw her posture shift; it was obvious and subtle at the same time, almost like she was switching into another persona, or maybe like it had been there all along, and was only now being revealed in the face of danger.

“Tony,” Happy cleared his throat.

“—and I’m not asking, Rogers! This is not up for negotiation. We need to find the damn kid!”

“Do you know how to find him?” MJ’s voice killed the conversation like the swing of a knife. Every head turned their way now, not just Black Widow’s, and Ned thought he even saw Tony’s eyes widen.

“Happy, what—” Captain America started to say, sounding more exhausted than he ever had on the news or in his PSAs. Ned had never been this close to him in real life; it might’ve killed him on any other day, but in the face of one the world’s heroes, all he really cared about was Peter. On the scale of heroes that this world had seen, no one could ever measure up to Ned’s bestest friend since he was a kid—and now that Ned remembered him, now that the gaping hole in his chest had been filled, he’d never let go again.

“I know you two,” Tony Stark said, which was kind of exhilarating, by the way. He gestured between them with his hand. “You’re my,” he swallowed, backtracking. “You’re the kid’s friends.”

Hawkeye leaned forward, interested. “Peter’s friends? Does that mean they—”

“We remember,” MJ interrupted, impatient. “And clearly so do you. I’m gonna ask again, do you know how to find him?”

“Kid, if I did, do you think I’d be standing around here talking to you?” Stark sighed, taking his glasses off.

“You’re a billionaire,” MJ snapped. “And a genius. You can build a robot suit out of nothing but you can’t find one guy in New York City?! What about his suit, aren’t there trackers?” Suddenly Ned was in a hotel room in D.C. with Peter, watching him peel the tracker off the inside of his suit, insisting he wasn’t a kid anymore while he practically jumped on his bed. He looked almost like a little kid in Ned’s mind…he still did. The brief sight of Peter he’d gotten now had been before he’d meant anything to Ned, before he’d been anything at all, and the features that had been chipped away at by the passing years had a fifteen-year-old’s face superimposed over them in his head.

“He’s not using the suit I made him anymore,” Tony told her, the edge in his voice sharpening. “It’s completely offline. I don’t know where he is, I don’t know what he’s doing, I don’t even know if he’s alive right now!”

“Don’t say that,” Ned gasped, the words clawing holes in his lips and bursting bloody and mangled out of his mouth. “Peter’s not dead. W-we would know.” He wanted to believe he’d feel it. If Peter Parker had left this world, whether or not Ned knew who he was, he just had to believe he would’ve felt the universe shift. Surely his heart would’ve cracked in half, and his eyes would’ve burned, and his hands would’ve quaked where they held the memories of a handshake in the pads of his fingertips.

“No,” Stark shook his head, a bitter smile twisting at his lips. “No, we wouldn’t know. One day ago, we didn’t even know he existed. The only reason we even know he’s still in the city is because he’s out on the streets as Spider-Man almost twenty-four seven. He could be six feet under in an unmarked grave without me having any fucking clue, and I want to know why.” His hands clenched into fists, the stalks of his glasses creaking weakly. “I woke up this morning with memories I didn’t have yesterday of a kid. My kid. And I want to know why the hell I forgot him in the first place, so somebody better start talking!”

“It was the wizard,” MJ said without flinching. There was a tremor in her voice, a sheen in her eyes, but it wasn’t tears. MJ was angry. Angry at Strange, angry at the Avengers and the city of New York. Angry at the world.

Angry at Peter too, even if she didn’t want to admit it.

“What?” Pepper’s eyes had narrowed dangerously. “Strange?”

“Yeah. Peter…” MJ swallowed around his name. “He panicked after Mysterio revealed his identity. It wasn’t safe for him or…May,” Happy flinched. “No matter where they went. All three of us got rejected from MIT because of the accusations, and he thought he was ruining our lives, so.” She heaved a sigh, trying to disguise the moment her voice gave out. “He went to Strange, and he asked for a spell that would make everyone forget he was Spider-Man.” Captain America sucked in a breath.

“Then he just decided to drop off the face of the earth? That doesn’t sound like Peter,” Black Widow said slowly, and to be honest, Ned hadn’t known they were all so close. Like, Tony Stark made sense. The suit, the internship, the glasses that had gotten this whole Mysterio thing started in the first place. Stark had always had a hand in Peter’s life. But when he’d mentioned the other Avengers, it had always been in passing. Blah blah blah, Germany, blah blah blah, Thanos, blah blah blah. He hadn’t mentioned he’d known them well outside of “work,” or that they’d known him beyond the mask.

“No,” Happy shook his head slowly. “When May died, I still knew him. I saw him there, through all the smoke. I don’t know what kind of deal the kid made with Strange, but it didn’t go through.”

“The spell went wrong,” Ned rasped, throat rough with a sudden grief. God, May. It had been so long since he’d seen her hurrying around the kitchen, fanning at the smoke detectors, running her fingers through Peter’s hair and adjusting her glasses. “Peter changed his mind. He didn’t want us to forget him, just, you know, everyone else.” MJ’s hand found his shoulder, steady and comforting.

“Yeah, and Strange didn’t explain how the spell worked very well, because apparently it didn’t take well to alterations,” she bit out. “He contained the spell to stop things from going haywire, but I guess he’s a pretty bad wizard, because it got out anyways. There was a whole multiverse collision problem, and in order to stop the total destruction of everything as we know it, Peter…he told Strange to erase everyone’s memory. Yours, too. Even Ned and I.” The anger flickered back to life in her voice. “Not just that he was Spider-Man, either. He had everyone’s memories made so it was like Peter Parker never existed.” Pepper closed her eyes, like she could hide away from the truth. “I made him promise he’d come find us after Strange did it. He promised. Without May, he’d have no one, and I knew he couldn’t take it. I made him promise me.”

“He didn’t come to see you, did he?” Black Widow asked slowly, and her eyes were sad, all the lethality softened out of her by the quality of her eyes, so much more human than they’d ever looked on the news.

“He showed up,” Ned whispered, the moment coming back to him. “But he just bought coffee and left.” Something like betrayal burned in Ned’s chest too, but he shoved it down. Peter didn’t need their hurt or their anger, not right now. He just needed them.

“Why the hell didn’t he come to me, huh?” Tony snapped, waving Captain America off when he tried to calm him. “No, he was my responsibility. I’m the one who gave him that suit, I’m the one who brought him to Germany,” he dragged shaking hands through his hair. “Without me, he’d still be some stupid kid swinging around Queens in his pajamas, helping old ladies cross the street. He could’ve come to me, and I would’ve found a way.”

“Would you have believed him?” MJ asked sharply. “Would any of us? We didn’t know him anymore. He was a stranger.” Happy flinched again. “If a stranger showed up here, Mr. Stark, claiming he was your “responsibility,” your kid,” she scoffed. “Do you really think you would’ve let him in instead of calling for security?”

But Tony Stark was angry, too. And a young girl, even one as unrelenting as MJ, wasn’t going to scare him off. “Then the fucking wizard should’ve fixed it. This whole mess is on his head, right? Well, if he likes fucking around with the fabric of the universe so much—”

“He didn’t remember either,” Ned interrupted, blanching when Stark’s hard eyes turned to him instead. “When we say everyone forgot Peter, we mean everyone. Strange probably doesn’t even remember ever casting a spell like that, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t risk breaking the world again over someone he didn’t even know.”

“Well, he remembers now,” Hawkeye coughed. “Do you think he’s behind this somehow?”

“I actually was wondering about that,” Dr. Banner spoke up for the first time, leaning forward on the couch. “I mean, about who all got their memories back. If it was the world at large, there’d already be a special running on the news about Spider-Man’s secret identity. Those media vultures never rest,” he adjusted his glasses. “Trust me, if somebody like Jameson suddenly woke up with information like that, you’d know. Which means the spell only broke for some people. Why is that?”

“Who cares?” MJ cut in. “Unless that’s going to lead us to Peter, then it’s a waste of time.”

“We need to know if someone did this intentionally,” Captain America interrupted, holding a hand out as if to placate her. “And if so, if they pose a threat. For all we know, this could be a plan to draw Peter out of hiding. We could be leading someone right to him.” Ned really wished he hadn’t said that. “Our first priority should be protecting Peter and his identity.”

“How can we protect him if we don’t even know where he is?” Clint snorted, taking a sip of something colored deep-amber and strong enough to send a shudder down Ned’s spine just from watching.

“I hate to say it, but Peter can handle himself while we try to figure this out,” the Cap said. “Have you seen the news lately? Spider-Man’s unstoppable.”

“Peter isn’t exactly operating at the same level we remember,” Black Widow conceded slowly, looking hesitant to agree, especially with the murderous look on Tony’s face.

“Did you miss the report where he ended up at the hospital in critical condition?” Happy insisted, his tone heated.

“Oh, God,” Pepper groaned, as if only now putting together the pieces. Ned was having a hard time wrapping his mind around it too. Every article, every news report, every sighting of Spider-Man had been Peter too. All the injuries and negative headlines and those long hours belonged to his best friend, the person, just as much as the superhero.

Captain America looked away, dropping into a chair with his head in his hands. “Okay. You’re right. But we’re still no closer to finding him.” He glanced at each of them slowly, as if daring them to argue, or maybe begging them to supply a magical solution. “You two,” he said finally, gesturing at Ned and MJ. “Sit. We’ve got a lot to catch up on, and something tells me you know more than we do.”

———

It took the two of them a long time to explain it all. Well, MJ did most of the explaining. She’d never gotten around to telling Ned about most of the stuff that had gone down, and she hadn’t managed to convince Peter to come forward, so. He’d basically been in the dark just as much as everyone else. Still, she couldn’t exactly paint the clearest picture either.

MJ did her best to sum up the problems Peter had been having with some kind of telepath, a young girl named Jean Grey who kept trying to get into Damage Control, and how when he’d finally managed to take her down, he’d realized from her description of what the mind control had felt like that Metzger had lied to him. “He webbed off and that was it,” she shrugged. “After that, I heard he was in the hospital, but I didn’t see him again until yesterday.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this,” Ned hissed, eyes swimming with a hurt that she didn’t want to look in the eye.

“So the girl, Jean,” Black Widow inquired. “She wasn’t the problem?”

“I don’t know,” MJ shrugged again, trying not to hate the words as they left her mouth. She used to know everything that was happening in Peter’s life, from his grades to what criminals he fought each night. Now she didn’t even know if he was okay. If he was alive—

No, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t think like that right now.

“He hasn’t told me anything else,” she finished lamely.

“But,” Ned frowned. “Hang on, Peter doesn’t have a sister.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Tony snorted derisively.

“Tony!” Pepper elbowed him sharply, and it almost made MJ smile; it probably would’ve if she wasn’t processing what Ned had said.

“That girl,” he continued, though his face burned at Tony’s response. “At the coffee shop yesterday. He said she was his sister, Jean.”

“And Peter doesn’t have a sister,” Hawkeye—who’d told them to call him Clint—repeated, understanding dawning.

“So, what?” Happy frowned. “She’s got him under her spell or something?”

“No,” MJ said immediately, almost surprising herself. “I don’t think so. It didn’t seem like that.” She ignored the part of her that knew she had no idea what it really looked like when Jean got inside someone’s head. Even experiencing it herself hadn’t given her much to go off of, and that day when half the city had frozen…whatever that had been, it hadn’t been that blink-of-an-eye blackout from before.

“Did Peter seem like himself?” Dr. Banner asked curiously.

“How am I supposed to know what he’s like nowadays?” MJ said defensively, digging her nails into her palms. She didn’t want to be angry at Peter; she’d already had her say, that day at Frank’s when she’d found the letter. He knew she was hurt that he’d never said anything, he knew where she stood. But she also knew why he’d done it (to protect them like always; some things clearly never changed), and though her anger now felt different, more justified now that she could see the look he’d had in his eyes when he’d promised to come find her, it also felt harder to hold onto. This was Peter. Her Peter. And he’d been all alone for four years.

She shook herself. “Anyways, I don’t think Jean’s a threat. But I do think she’s with him. If you can’t find Peter, finding Jean might be a good start.” How hard could it be? Peter had gotten a hit on his computer almost right away. If a broke twenty-two-year-old (God, when had they all gotten so old?) could track her by himself, then surely Tony Stark should have no problem, especially now that she wasn’t trying to hide.

“There’s one more thing,” Banner admitted slowly, looking conflicted. All eyes snapped to him with rapt attention. He fiddled with his glasses nervously, wiping the lenses on his shirt. “I saw him a few weeks ago, too. I mean, obviously I didn’t know, but—”

“Oh, yeah!” Ned burst out. “That fight at Damage Control! Dude, that looked crazy!” His smile shrunk when he realized he’d just interrupted the Hulk. “Right, sorry. Carry on.” His face burned, and MJ rolled her eyes. She wondered if Peter was still just as much of a nerd as Ned was (she thought of the two of them in her apartment, building LEGOs and quoting Lord of the Rings and almost smiled to herself).

“Like I was saying,” Banner cleared his throat and slipped his glasses back on. “I actually did see him while he was looking for Jean. Not just as the Hulk. He came to one of my lectures.” The man peered at the two of them over the tops of his lenses, almost smiling. “He told me his name was Ned Leeds.”

Ned’s eyes filled on the spot, and MJ had to force herself to keep breathing evenly. “What did he want?” She asked. The news had made it look like Spider-Man had been fighting Hulk back at Damage Control, not that he’d been the one to invite him there.

“He wanted to ask about my inhibitor,” the man tapped at the device on his wrist. “So he could make one of his own.”

Tony sat forward, sobered. “What? Why?”

“For Jean,” MJ pursed her lips. “He told me that’s how he took her down at Damage Control. He used it to neutralize her telepathic abilities. It was universal, he said.” She had the vaguest memories of helping him make it, too, at Frank’s, but it was blurry under the onslaught of older memories.

“That’s just it,” Banner insisted. “He specifically wanted to know if it was possible to make an inhibitor that only targeted some parts of a person’s DNA. In his words, he wanted to know if it was possible “hypothetically” to suppress only the “bad parts” of mutated DNA. Why would he only want to suppress parts of Jean’s powers, especially when he was still under the impression that she was a threat?”

“Meaning, what?” Black Widow sighed, looking exhausted.

“Do you think he was trying to find a way to neutralize the spell’s effects in only some people?” Clint tried.

“That wouldn’t make any sense,” MJ argued. “It’s magic, not science.”

“Yeah, and none of us have inhibitors on, anyways. How would Peter have done it without hooking us up to any tech?” Ned added without hesitation, and Clint held his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright, don’t bite my head off. How am I supposed to know what the kid was doing? I’m not a science geek like him and Tony.”

Tony rolled his eyes in response to the jab. “I’m bored of this,” he announced. “We’re not getting anywhere, and clearly everyone here is equally useless.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Happy shot back, exasperated.

“FRIDAY,” Tony said instead of deigning that with a response. “Do me a favor and pull up any footage you have of Spider-Man from the last few weeks.” The tv on the wall started to flick through a dizzying blur of camera footage, and Tony turned to MJ quickly, snapping his fingers at her. “You! What’s this coffee shop you saw Peter in yesterday?” MJ rattled off the name without thought. “Uh-huh. And when was that?”

“Um, I don’t know, just before noon maybe? What does this have to do with—” Tony was already turning back to the screen, where Spider-Man was fighting Scorpion in the streets, a red and blue blur of crazy flexibility and reflexes like a lightning strike. It was weird how he still felt unrecognizable to her like this. She knew the face under the mask and she didn’t at the same time.

“Where did he even get that suit?” Pepper mused softly. “That’s not anything like the nanotechnology you made him, Tony. He would’ve had to start from scratch.”

“Not important,” he waved her off, though he did it with a lot more consideration than MJ had seen him employ when waving off Steve Rogers or any of the others. It was good to see he wasn’t a total asshole to his wife, at least, though MJ still wasn’t entirely on sold on “Iron Man.” Not that it mattered; all that mattered was Peter, and not only did he have the best resources to find him, but Mr. Stark was also just about the closest thing to a parent Peter had left in this world. “FRIDAY, I want you to run the footage in front of this coffee shop yesterday, at around eleven in the morning, too.” Another window popped up beside the video of Spider-Man, flickering now to a fight between him and some bank robbers from the night before. The street corner just outside the coffee shop came into view, slightly grainy, and MJ could see yesterday morning’s overcast sky reflected back in the storefront window.

Through the glass, she could also just make out her and Ned ordering, then sitting down. They talked for what felt like forever, mouths soundlessly moving, until Tony impatiently told FRIDAY to speed up the video—just a few minutes later, Peter appeared at their table. Or at least, the side of him did. The camera only caught dark curls and the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A moment later, a girl with ginger hair took the seat next to him, holding their coffee.

“That’s them!” Ned grinned, all the weight seeming to lift right off of him. She tried not to get her hopes up, but Ned’s excitement was contagious; as though he really thought this was the lead that would bring them to Peter. As if it would be that easy. (Then again, Tony had found out Peter’s identity when he was still a small-time hero in Queens. Maybe this really could just be that easy).

Another few seconds of the sped-up footage passed, and out came Peter through the front door, already leaving, coffee in hand. “Stop,” Tony snapped his fingers and FRIDAY froze the video immediately.

“What?” Clint was on his feet, stepping closer to the screen and trying to see whatever Tony had seen. Tony didn’t answer. He was just staring at the screen, taking in the first glimpse he’d had of Peter without the mask on in four years, and MJ lost her breath.

He really did look different. He was even paler than she’d remembered, like he didn’t feel the sun on his skin unless it was through a red and blue suit. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders tensed like he was gearing up for an attack, and he wasn’t smiling. His lips were flat and almost downturned, his eyes brown and big and dark like always, but lacking that spark that had made him Peter. There was bruising along the side of his jaw in shades of yellow and purple that she hadn’t even noticed before, already fading and faint.

“He looks so,” Happy swallowed. “Grown up.”

“He’s…we…um, we’re twenty two now,” Ned said awkwardly, like grouping them all in together would change the fact that Peter had turned twenty two by himself, and twenty one by himself, and…

Black Widow swore under her breath, and Pepper’s eyes were shining.

Happy was watching the clips of Spider-Man on the left side of the screen again. “May would be so proud of him.”

Tony was still only staring at the image like he was waiting for Peter to notice him and smile. MJ couldn’t imagine what he was feeling right now. Peter looked so cold and different, like all of the softness had been carved off of him against his will, leaving this stranger hanging off of his bones. He looked…he looked like Tony Stark.

Captain America, Steve Rogers, whatever she was supposed to call him, said the same after a moment, clearing his throat thickly. “It’s uncanny,” Pepper agreed hollowly. “If he just had some glasses,” she laughed sadly. “You could be father and son.” Tony didn’t look at them.

“He used to wear glasses,” Ned said just as softly. “Before Spider-Man.”

MJ wiped her eyes roughly. “Such a nerd,” she muttered softly. It was impossible to rationalize this as the same kid who used to wheeze his way through gym class freshman year, before the bite. Back then, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face without his glasses, and if the air conditioning kicked on during class, he’d probably be sick by the next day. Now he was…now he was Spider-Man.

“FRIDAY,” Pepper finally said, when Tony still hadn’t moved. “Unpause.” Peter jumped to life again, and the red-haired girl, Jean, stepped out of the shop behind him. They walked off in the same direction, falling almost perfectly into step. “Follow them,” she commanded, before they could get out of view, and FRIDAY skipped to a different camera, the angle jumping, to track their path.

They almost lost them a few times, but Stark’s tech was almost too good, and she almost always found them again a street or so later. The cameras traced them all the way back for several blocks before they finally turned up the crooked steps of some crappy apartment building. The door closed behind them with the finality of the last word of a book.

MJ was on her feet before she’d told her legs to stand. “Wait,” Clint started to say. “We can’t all just rush over there—”

“Do whatever you want. We’re going. Come on, Ned.” And Ned followed without question, because they were so close to having Peter back it hurt, and there was a bitter aftertaste in MJ’s mouth, a fear that this would all get ripped away again before she could get to him.

“You don’t even know what floor he’s on,” Clint tried again.

“We’ll ask around,” Ned almost rolled his eyes, as if all the hero worship had just fled his body at once. “Peter’s not as sneaky as he thinks he is.” At least, MJ hoped that was still true (though it probably wouldn’t kill the nerd to protect his secret identity a little better; MJ had figured it out herself, and not everyone would be as generous with that information as her. Case in point, Mysterio).

“We’re coming with,” Pepper said, standing too. “Happy, pull the car around.”

“You don’t think it’ll attract attention?” Banner fretted. “I mean, the Avengers showing up out of the blue at some random New York apartment?”

“Who cares?” Tony came back to life, determination written in his features. “If you’re that worried about it, throw on a hat. The kid needs us.”

“He needs all of us?” Clint scoffed. “At once? You’ll scare him off.”

“He’s afraid,” MJ remembered, though she almost wished she didn’t. “That’s why he never said anything to us. He’s afraid that everyone he gets close to will die.” The energy in the air fizzled and died, thinking of May, and of poor, lonely Peter.

“Tony’s right,” Rogers said, standing too. “The kid’s been on his own for four years. And yes, he’s probably afraid to have us get close to him, if he’ll even believe what we’re saying.”

“That is not what I said, at all—”

“I’m agreeing with you, Tony,” Rogers gritted out, losing his cool for the first time. “Point is, the kid’s a flight risk without a doubt. Which means we’re gonna need all hands on deck to make sure he doesn’t slip away again.” That seemed to finally rally them together, the Black Widow throwing a hat and some sunglasses to the Cap with the slightest smirk.

“Happy,” Pepper coughed, exasperated as she noticed him still standing there, as if watching the show. “The car.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

———

Peter groaned as he stumbled into the kitchen, trying not to make too much noise. Frank had slipped out about thirty minutes ago to check on the criminals that had set off the explosion earlier, make sure they hadn’t gotten away while he and Peter were distracted, but he’d promised (or threatened) to be back within the hour.

Once he was gone and Peter didn’t have two full-time babysitters, he managed to talk Jean into getting a little bit of sleep, since she looked like she was about to fall asleep standing up. He’d shuffled her off to the bedroom with only a little arguing (it had been hard enough to convince her to take his bed when she first moved in; he’d had to swear up and down the couch was comfortable enough for a guy who barely slept anyways), and he’d finally gotten a moment to himself.

Of course, that was when his headache had decided to slam back into him full-force, and with ringing ears, he stumbled around the apartment, trying to find his medicine cabinet through blurry eyes. He couldn’t tell if the headache was from his second mutation or if it was from the impact in the street earlier, when he’d been thrown back hard by the crude explosion, or if maybe it was caused by both. All he knew was that he couldn’t think straight and Tylenol wasn’t going to do anything to help him, but if he didn’t do something he was going to collapse.

He gripped his countertop weakly, the old linoleum of his kitchen floor swaying and tilting beneath his feet. He smacked his hip hard on the edge of the counter as he struggled to keep himself in a straight line, digging his nails into the skin around his eyes as the pain spiked. He groaned again, his knees shaking.

It would be so much easier if Peter could just lie down and wait for Frank to come back, let himself be carried back to the couch like a little kid, but that wouldn’t solve anything. It would only embarrass him. And Frank wasn’t his father. Peter had no father.

Still, any conviction he had to handle this himself pretty much went away when his head throbbed so hard it felt like someone was hammering a railroad spike into the back of his eye, and he seemed to lose the bones in his legs. His back hit the counter and he slid clumsily to the floor, something sticky and hot running down his face as he panted for breath. He was sweating again, fingers biting into his skin so hard he knew he’d have bruises after, at least until his healing kicked in. It was funny; he almost couldn’t feel the wound in his side anymore with how hard his head was pounding.

Peter brushed a shaky hand under his nose, squinting one bleary eye open and finding his fingers smeared with red. Great. Another nosebleed. As if the headaches weren’t bad enough by themselves. He pressed his free hand to his nose to try to stem the bleeding, wincing at the feeling of thick, warm blood already starting to dry between his fingers, tacky as it embedded itself in the lines of his palm. Maybe he could get himself cleaned up if his head would just stop wailing at him…

Everything went sort of fuzzy for a while, the pain thumping like a heartbeat in his head; he could almost hear each pulse in his brain, blood lazily sliding down his face, his neck, painting his lips. He couldn’t breath; it was gushing down the back of his throat, choking him. His eyes wouldn’t focus, he…he was so tired…

Peter didn’t have it in him to worry about Jean waking up and seeing him, or worse, Frank, but when the ache started to ease up, he knew he wasn’t exactly inspiring an image of health from where he was collapsed on the floor, covered in his own blood. It took a few minutes to get his body to work again, pulling himself hand over hand on the counter up to his feet again on trembling knees. The air went a weird purple-green color when he got himself upright, and he gagged on the empty, helium-filled feeling in his head, a mouthful of his own blood staining the basin of the sink.

He dragged a cold, wet cloth over his face and down his neck before yanking a clean, loose shirt over his head, trying in vain to feel a little human again (not that Peter was a human anymore, but still). He could hear Jean turn over in her sleep, mattress creaking, and held his breath until he was sure she wasn’t waking up. Peter had no idea how long he’d been on the floor like that, but Frank could be back any second, and if he saw Peter standing around even slightly out of breath, he’d probably tie him down to the couch. Literally.

He crashed unceremoniously into the cushions, exhaling shakily through split lips. Was he going to die? It sort of felt like it, and he would know, seeing as he’d done it a few times now. Still, at least the headache was going away, for now, and maybe he’d be able to sleep through most of the healing process, and maybe, if he was really lucky, Frank wouldn’t be too loud about it when he got back. Peter forced his breathing to even out, shoulders relaxing slightly, and closed his eyes. Yeah, that didn’t sound so bad…

Thunk thunk thunk.

Peter’s eyes opened. He waited, trying to listen without letting his senses overwhelm him again. He thought he could hear heartbeats…but it was probably just at the neighbor’s door, or maybe he’d imagined the knocking. No way Frank would ever knock that gently. He closed his eyes again, sighing.

Thunk thunk thunk.

His eyes flew open again. Jean shifted again in her room, and Peter held his breath. Should he go check the door? If they knocked like that one more time, they’d have Jean to contend with, but he really, really didn’t want to get up and—

Thunk thunk thunk.

Peter groaned, fumbling for a grip on the arm of the couch as he tried to pull himself upright without ripping any of his stitches loose. Just when he got his feet under him, fingers still scrambling for purchase on the cracked leather of his cheap furniture, the lock clicked and the door opened all on its own.

“Really? Under the doormat, kid?”

Peter’s shoulders tensed, hands clenching into fists as the door swung fully open. He braced himself for guns in his face, for swords or a bomb or a bunch of Damage Control jerks out to get Jean. The familiarity of the voice hit him way too late.

“Seriously,” Natasha said when she clapped eyes on him, holding his spare key lazily in one hand. “What were you thinking?”

“Um,” Peter coughed. “What?”

Natasha let herself in, followed by the rest of the Avengers (what the fuck were the Avengers doing here?!) and Happy and, God, Pepper too, and—

Ned and MJ.

Oh God. Oh, fuck, he was in so much trouble. He’d done something as Spider-Man, he must have, and he’d pissed off the Avengers so bad they’d tracked down his secret identity and—oh, he’d gotten Ned and MJ wrapped up in all this too. What if they found out about Jean? What if they already knew? Could he fight them all off at once if they came for her? Did he want to? They may not know him, but he still saw their faces in his dreams. He still remembered long drives with Happy and longer, lazy nights with Tony in the lab, working themselves to the bone until Pepper made them take a break. He still…

Peter’s lungs seized. “Look, uh, I don’t know what’s going on here, but,” he stumbled back a few steps, one hand held out like he could keep them at bay that easily. “I haven’t done anything. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

MJ looked at him with those deep eyes, that same look that meant she was sketching him in her head, memorizing the curve of his nose, tracing the lines of his mouth and the shape of his eyes. “Peter,” she said quietly. He sucked in a breath; she hadn’t said his name like that yesterday. Like it was more than a word. What had changed? What had he screwed up so badly that she pronounced every letter of his name with intention and meaning? (Could it be so bad if it meant she spoke to him like that again?).

“Whatever this is,” he breathed shakily. “Whatever you think I did, Ned and MJ have nothing to do with it. I,” he swallowed thickly. “I’m alone. There’s no one else.” He pleaded in his mind that they didn’t know about Jean. He’d messed things up enough by helping Damage Control—if he failed her now, if someone got their hands on her, Peter didn’t know what he’d do.

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed. “Relax, Peter.” Oh God, they knew his name. How did they know his name?! Was it because he’d told the Hulk at Damage Control? Man, he knew he shouldn’t have done that, but he’d thought Hulk and Banner were almost separate entities, with their own memories and thoughts and feelings, and Peter was so stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. “You aren’t in any trouble.”

“Or should we say, Ned?” Dr. Banner raised an eyebrow, looking almost amused, and his heart leapt up into his throat. So this was about the inhibitors. Oh great. Now he looked like some kind of evil genius trying to erase genetic mutations or something. And all that “you aren’t in any trouble” stuff? That was bullshit. He’d probably already been pronounced a war criminal. Would Frank help sneak him out of the country?

He glanced at Ned, eyes wide, then back at Dr. Banner. He forced a nervous laugh. “Haha, you got me. I’m not a student at your school,” he admitted, rubbing his neck sheepishly. “I just didn’t think you’d talk to me otherwise, ya know? I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“What did you want to know all that for anyways?” Clint asked, eyes narrowed, and Peter couldn’t tell what that look on his face was, but he guessed it was suspicion.

“It was just a hypothetical, sir,” he fidgeted with his own fingers, trying not to look too guilty. Did they know he’d helped Damage Control? Did they know he was Spider-Man? Had they threatened it out of MJ? That didn’t sound like something they would do, and he really hoped they hadn’t, because MJ had always idolized Pepper, and he’d hate to have that screwed up over him. But if not that, what could they want with him?

“That’s not important,” Happy redirected firmly, and his familiar, irritated voice warmed something in Peter’s chest. “Kid, listen—”

“Look, it’s late,” Peter burst out. “Um, I don’t know what’s going on right now,” he laughed again, almost shaking. “But I have work tomorrow, so. Sorry.”

“Oh, work, huh?” Mr. Stark spoke for the first time, and Peter sucked in a breath, looking away. Suddenly Ned’s beat-up sneakers were very interesting to look at. “Yeah, I bet you need lots of sleep, being Spider-Man and all.”

Ice surged through Peter’s veins, and he was pretty sure his effort to keep his smile from wavering probably looked like a facial spasm. “I don’t know what you mean by that, man. I’m a bartender.”

“A bar—?” Mr. Stark actually laughed at that, and Peter’s eyes lifted to him before he could control himself. He choked on his breath; Mr. Stark was looking right back, no humor on his face. His eyes were dark and hard and…sad? No, that didn’t make any sense. Peter didn’t, couldn’t look away, taking in every new line on his face. He looked the same and different all at once, and it hurt so bad, even after four years. Of course, Peter had avoided every article and news report about him, trying his best not to think of the life he’d had to leave behind, the room that used to be his at the tower, probably vacant now, or converted into another lab, or a storage closet. “Kid, cut the crap.”

“I am a bartender,” he insisted, shuffling further back like that would make a difference if the Avengers were really after him. How far he had fallen, really. “I have no clue where you got this whole Spider-Man idea from, but—”

“Peter, just listen to him,” MJ sighed, almost exasperated.

“I’m not Spider-Man. I mean, I’m just some random guy, you know. Spider-Man, he’s like some kind of hero or something. He’s got, like, superpowers, so. And he’s out all the time so he obviously doesn’t have time to be a bartender too, which I am. A bartender, I mean. I am a bartender, not Spider-Man,” he rambled lamely, feeling like a dumb fifteen-year-old again, trying to explain himself to a bunch of veteran heroes while he swung around Queens, desperately looking for someone who would take him seriously. A part of Peter missed the days before anyone thought anything of him at all.

“Dude,” Ned snorted, smiling, and it knocked the air out of his lungs. “Really?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he shrugged forcefully, wishing Frank would just get back already. He’d always had a knack for getting people to want to leave his presence as soon as possible, and no matter how hard he tried, Peter just couldn’t replicate that level of unpleasantness.

“Peter,” Tony stepped closer to him, and Peter stepped back, his legs smacking into the back of the couch. Mr. Stark eyed him with something like confusion, hands held up like Peter was a startled rabbit, before taking another more deliberate step forward.

“Mr. Stark—”

“Peter,” Tony repeated, catching him by the shoulders, and he flinched. He didn’t know what to expect, harsh fingers or firm hands, but instead he got heavy, grounding weight and a loose grip he could’ve escaped easily if he wanted to. Peter didn’t move, melting into his old mentor’s hands even though he knew better than to let himself get comfortable. “We remember, kid.”

For a minute, Peter didn’t even process what he’d said. “You…what?”

“We remember you, Pete. You’re not in any trouble, I swear. Now would you look at me?” He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs had forgotten how to do it on their own, and he thought of MJ, of Jean, on that rooftop, and he—oh God.

Peter tore himself out of Tony’s hold, catching his legs on the couch again and stumbling. He almost hit the floor, and he heard somebody gasp, saw somebody’s hands jolt towards him in his peripherals. Peter caught himself on the table, pulling himself further back. Anything to put space between them. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, oh no, he couldn’t breathe.

“Peter, hey,” Ned whispered.

“You’re not Ned,” he choked out, clawing at his throat. “I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re not my—” He wheezed, and his ears were ringing so loudly again, shrill like a whistle, and the tears escaped his eyes against his will. “I can’t fucking breathe,” he sobbed.

“Hey, kid,” Tony rushed to him, he got too close again, too close to Peter, and he wasn’t Tony, because Mr. Stark didn’t know who he was, and even if he did, he’d never speak that gently to someone who’d screwed everything up so, so badly.

“Get out!” He cried, still clawing at his throat. The room was going dark, and it only sent him panicking again—he was trapped in here with them, whoever they were, and now he couldn’t see and he couldn’t breathe and somebody help him, please.

His knees hit the uneven floorboards, warped with water damage and rock solid when they connected with his bones, sending shockwaves through him that almost knocked him out of whatever fever was clouding over him, but then “Tony” got hold of him again, his hands firmer now on Peter’s shoulders. “Snap out of it, Pete,” he said, far away and warbling, shaking Peter by the shoulders.

He tried to pull himself free again, but Tony had a firm grip, and Peter was exhausted, and a part of him was afraid to use his full strength; what if he hurt Mr. Stark? ‘This isn’t Mr. Stark,’ he hissed to himself. But they had the same face, and Peter wasn’t hardwired to hurt anyone who looked so much like somebody he loved. That moment on the roof, when Jean was in MJ’s head…that was a low he never wanted to hit again. If these imposters were after him, fine, they could have him. What was the use in fighting anyways? Peter was so tired…

“Peter,” somebody else knelt next to him, and he covered his ears, pressing his forehead hard into the floor.

“Leave me alone,” his voice cracked.

“Peter,” Natasha said, firmly. “We’re telling the truth, okay? Ask me something only I would know.” He couldn’t think enough to formulate a question, still hyperventilating like a child on the floor, and he clenched his hands into fists, smacking his head into the ground again.

“Knock that off,” Tony growled, wedging his hand between Peter’s head and the floor, and he sobbed; Tony’s hands were so warm. He couldn’t even care if the hands on him were real or not, if they belonged to Mr. Stark or to a stranger wearing his face, he just let himself pretend for a minute. He didn’t know what would hurt worse, if they were lying, or if they really were telling the truth, and he’d only get a few minutes with them before he’d have to send them away again, to protect them from his train wreck. Either way, he just let it happen to him, just for a second. Let himself be fooled by the easy option, let it soothe his aches and pains.

He didn’t want to ask them anything. That would break the illusion too quick. Why not let the whole thing play out? What did he have to lose anymore? Jean was asleep; maybe it would all be over before she ever woke up, and then Frank could take care of her once he was gone…

“Is he okay?” Ned whispered from across all the space and time between them.

“I think he’s having a panic attack,” Natasha said back, and it was distantly embarrassing to know he had such a big audience for this little show, but really, he didn’t have the energy to care much yet; he still couldn’t really drag in a full breath, and Tony’s hands were on him, and he still smelled just like motor oil and leather, like he used to, a familiar smell that Peter couldn’t have replicated even in his dreams (something hopeful and dreadful in equal parts twisted in his heart at the thought).

“What do we do?”

“Give him some space!”

“Tony, maybe—”

“Give me a minute!” Tony snapped, before his voice went all soft and strange again, insistent but not forceful. “Kid, I need you to breathe with me. Can you do that?” Peter shook his head, and his heart sounded like a train in his ears. Roaring closer down the tracks, smoke billowing in a dark sky, one wide eye like a searchlight powering ever forward in an abyss, and—

“What the hell is going on?” Jean. ‘Go back to sleep!’ He tried to scream in his foggy mind, even though it was too late; they’d seen her. MJ knew her, too, and what she could do, if that was even really MJ. He fought harder against Tony’s hands, feeling Nat grab at him too, and he could almost sense the moment the commotion caught Jean’s full attention. “Peter?” Her voice turned afraid, defensive, like a cornered dog. He wanted to tell her it was okay, wanted to tell her to run until she found Frank, wanted to tell her to put him out of her mind and forget about him, now wasn’t the time to play hero—but Peter couldn’t speak, or breathe, or get his arms to stop shaking long enough to hold his weight.

‘Jean,’ he tried to say, mouth carving the name soundlessly, the split in his bottom lip his teeth had left behind stinging and tearing open again. Hot, smooth glass snaked into his mind, crinkling like crystals and searing like a chemical fire, white-hot and blinding until all he could see was Jean.

“Get your hands off of him,” she snarled.

“Look, kid—”

“He needs space, not you pinning him down like some kind of animal,” she spat, and he could feel her in his lungs again. She was his air once more, like oxygen to the fire she’d set in his head, and the pin-hole his throat had become wider. He gasped, his hands falling away from his neck in relief as that first desperate breath forced itself in and out of his lungs. It felt so good it hurt.

“What…” somebody else asked slowly, but Peter didn’t know the voice anymore. All that existed was him and Jean, his lungs and hers. He could hear every deliberate breath Jean took, taking her time with every manual inhale and exhale like she was carefully crafting something beautiful. He could feel it, how she took something that should’ve been second nature and made it simple and softer and easier until he could manage it himself again.

‘Jean,’ he thought, and in his mind, they were on the couch. Some nights, he’d wake up and she’d be curled up there with him, letting the weight of him next to her press the grief out of her body until she could sleep again. And in his head, that’s where they were, by Jean’s design. It had the same shimmery, dream-like quality of that moment with Aunt May he’d shared—like he was watching it all through an old camera. Somebody was moving around in the kitchen, the oven beeping loudly as May cursed, and somebody else was laughing, warm and messy and loud. Sara. Frank’s boots were by the door, and MJ’s old favorite sweater was on the back of the couch. She and Ned were arguing over what movie they should put on, and Ned was trying to get Peter to agree to Star Wars, of course, and thunder boomed, low and comforting, somewhere outside. It rattled the whole apartment until it soothed the ache in his lungs again. The door opened and closed again, and somebody shook an umbrella out. “Whoa, it’s really coming down out there,” Uncle Ben laughed, smiling at Peter like he was sharing a secret. He winked. “Hey, Jean, how was school?” And he couldn’t hear her answer, her words fading and smoothing out into a wave of orange heat that crawled from his chest through to his freezing fingers and down into the numbness in his legs…

Peter took a slow, deep breath in, holding it in his lungs and savoring the feeling for as long as he could bear, before releasing it slowly, his muscles relaxing. He blinked away the tears in his eyes and squinted up at Jean, a silent orange shadow in the dim light. When he breathed in again, she did too, and there wasn’t a word spoken between them, but it was a language in itself. Finally, when he took a breath in, she didn’t follow until a few seconds after, and he felt the warmth drain from him slowly, hesitantly, ready to jump back if he faltered.

They were on their knees, her in front of him and filling his vision, and he was aware that they weren’t alone, but it felt like they were on an island together, an ocean keeping all of the danger away from their quiet shore. “Jean,” he breathed, pressing a hand to his chest. It felt so good to breathe again.

“Better?” She asked, not touching him, but so close, so comforting, all the same.

“Yeah,” he almost smiled, wiping at his face.

“How did you do that?” Someone whispered, and Dr. Banner coalesced in his eyesight again, looking mystified. That viper pit of horror sprang to life in his chest again, realizing what Jean had done, and who had seen. He leapt to his feet, dragging her up with him, and put his body sturdily between her and them.

“Whoa there, Underoos.” Peter flinched at the nickname, and thankfully, Tony didn’t try to come any closer this time. “Why don’t you take it easy?”

“Stay back,” Peter warned, keeping his voice steely. He couldn’t let himself panic again, not with Jean here. Not now that they’d seen what she could do. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but keep Jean out of it.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea, son,” the Cap said. Yeah, right.

“Jean,” he whispered to her, his eyes never straying from the strangers wearing the faces of his family. “When I say so, I want you to run. Go find Frank. Don’t come back here, no matter what. Don’t even look in my head. Just go. Do you understand?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she growled, and she sounded so much stronger than he ever had.

“I can handle this myself,” he insisted. “Frank’s probably on his way back, if you just—”

“Okay, clearly we are not on the same page right now,” Pepper huffed, looking harried. “Why don’t we all just take a deep breath and talk things out before we start throwing punches. Alright?” Peter didn’t move, but Jean slowly stepped out from behind him.

He clenched his jaw. “Fine.” He waved them over to his couch, and there was an awkward moment where the Avengers all tried to fit onto the sofa together, until Steve just gave up and stood, and Dr. Banner ended up halfway in Natasha’s lap.

“Real nice apartment you’ve got here, Pete,” Tony said sarcastically, gesturing around loosely. “I love what you’ve done with the place. Where’s this couch from, Five Below?”

Peter rolled his eyes, and Jean made a face. “So this is the famous Iron Man,” she muttered under her breath, but it was loud enough for the others to hear, and MJ snorted.

“No,” Peter said. “I don’t know who these people are, but—”

“What can we say that will prove it to you?” MJ interrupted, and he thought of the roof again. Jean had known everything she needed to know to convince him—was that because it was just that easy to fake a person’s memories, or had he just been that desperate to believe it was really her? He couldn’t risk it.

“Nothing,” he answered, refusing to meet her eyes. He looked at Pepper instead, until that sad, motherly look on her face made his skin start to crawl.

Jean frowned, and something in the air shifted; Peter could feel it on the back of his neck. If this had been before his second mutation, or maybe before Jean had become so much more comfortable in her powers, he might’ve seen the bodies of his friends jerk and contort when she slid into their minds, but now it was seamless. He only knew for certain what she’d done when she brought her head closer to his, lips barely moving because she knew how good his hearing had gotten. “I don’t think they’re lying, Peter. Their minds…I can’t feel anyone else in there.”

Peter nodded once, straightening back up as the thought sunk in. He guessed it made sense—it would’ve been difficult to control so many different people at once and for so long, even for Jean, but Peter didn’t want to think about what that meant. If this was really his family…if they really remembered him again…

How had this happened? Why now? And what was Peter supposed to do? If this put the whole multiverse in danger again, he didn’t know if he could stomach making them all forget again; making Jean and Frank forget him too.

“Tell me something only you would know,” he sighed, even though he knew Jean wouldn’t have lied. He wanted to delay the inevitable…let himself believe for a moment this was all some big misunderstanding, and he could go back to the half-life he’d been living, slowly gluing the image of Peter Parker back together again.

He directed the command to all of them, and he could see them deliberating over it, trying to pick something that would convince him without a doubt, but in the end, it was Ned who stepped forward. He didn’t say anything, just held out his hand, and Peter sucked in a breath.

Ned’s hand hung there, waiting. When Peter took it in his own, it was warm like it used to be, and the motions of their old handshake came to them easily, like second nature. Simpler than breathing. MJ sat up straighter, and Ned started to cry, grabbing Peter in a hug so tight, he thought one of his fractured ribs had maybe just snapped in half, but Peter stifled the pain. He just returned the action, because this was Ned. It was really him.

It was the kid who’d picked him off the floor more times than he could count, glaring daggers at Flash’s retreating back every time he’d tripped Peter or called him names. Ned, who’d been friends with him even when he had glasses and asthma and no one else wanted to talk to him. This was the person Peter had spent a million Friday nights with marathoning Star Wars in his old apartment, sharing popcorn and one liter of Pepsi between them, laughing when they ordered pizza in different voices. And when Peter had collapsed at school the day after he got bit by the spider, Ned was the one who carried him to the office, yelling for help the whole way.

Ned was the one he’d said goodbye to four years ago, but couldn’t help but shadow after across subway cars and coffee shops, listening to Ned’s conversations like he was a part of them, imagining he was. “Ned,” he gasped, like a punch to the stomach. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me,” he promised, gripping onto Peter’s shirt like he might disappear from beneath his hands.

“I missed you so much,” he said, eyes wet, and then he started to laugh, and he couldn’t stop, clutching his ribs when the feeling rattled his wounds.

Ned pulled away to rub his eyes. “I missed you too,” his voice cracked. “But why didn’t you come find me after? You promised, Peter.” Guilt cut at his insides like acid, eating holes through the softer parts of him. “You were my only friend. I thought I was alone for so long,” he confessed, shaking his head. “And you promised me you’d find me. Why’d you lie?”

“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Mr. Stark cut in, peering at Peter through his glasses with clear disapproval, ignoring the elbow Natasha jabbed him with for interrupting. And oh—it was Mr. Stark. It was really him! And Happy, and Nat, and—

Wow.

Peter almost started sobbing again.

“Well?” His mentor pushed. “Why’d you do it, Pete? I’m dying to know.”

“Tony,” Pepper warned.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, not letting himself shy away from their eyes anymore, no matter how badly he wanted to hide from the hurt there, the betrayal. “I thought I was protecting you.” Tony scoffed loudly, and MJ had a look on her face that belonged in her ‘distressed people’ sketchbook. “After May,” and it hurt so much more to say her name to people that had known her, that had known him. “Everyone that gets close to me dies, so.” He cleared his throat, shoving his hands in his pockets so nobody would see them shake. “I thought it was safer to keep myself away.”

“You were protecting me?” Tony shoved himself to his feet, pushing Clint out of his way. “No. No. I call bullshit. That’s not how this works. I’m the adult, you’re the kid, I’m the one who’s supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”

“I’m twenty-two,” Peter corrected dumbly.

“Shut up,” Tony snapped. “Jeez, you never learn, do you? You don’t just go charging off taking care of things by yourself. You need backup. You need people.”

“But, I—”

“I don’t care! Do you think my life was so much better with you gone, kid? What, we were all just out having a great time once we forgot you? Newsflash, Peter, bad things didn’t just stop happening.”

Peter looked at his shoes, feeling like a chastised little kid. “You don’t think I know that?”

“Do you know that? Because it doesn’t seem like it. So just cut this self-sacrificial act. Really. It’s beneath you.”

“It’s beneath me?” Peter echoed, starting to get a little angry too.

Tony stared at him without saying anything, and for a second Peter thought he was going to say something real, without sarcasm or wit or anything else. Something raw. But then he remembered himself, remembered their audience, and he turned away from Peter like he couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Nice, Tony,” Clint coughed, looking uncomfortable.

“Pack your stuff!” Tony went on like he hadn’t heard. “You’re coming with us.”

“Wha—where?!” Peter whined.

“The Tower.” Tony turned and pointed a finger at him. “And don’t even think about trying to run. I mean it, Parker. If I see you even think about grabbing one of your web-shooters and trying to jump out the window, I’ll have Nat lay you out.” Peter allowed himself to entertain the idea of making a run for it anyways. Tony didn’t know he stopped needing his web-shooters, so he’d have the element of surprise on his side, but he couldn’t leave Jean and—well, Peter didn’t want to run. Even if he could only let himself have this for a few days, he wanted to soak in it for a little. Let things feel like they used to. (And for that to happen, Tony couldn’t find out about the organic webs, none of them could. They didn’t know he was a monster now. Only Jean knew that, and he trusted her to keep his secrets. But if they found out that Peter wasn’t human anymore…he wasn’t prepared to see the disgust on their faces).

“Fine,” he sighed, moving to grab his backpack from the kitchen. He shoved his phone charger and his suit in there, grimacing at the dried blood flaking off the fabric onto his fingers. He zipped all his junk up and tried not to hold his ribs too much as he came back; Natasha might as well have had eight eyes for how hard it was to sneak anything past her.

“You ready? Good. Happy, the car,” Tony was saying, leaving him no time to plot some devious escape; Peter almost rolled his eyes, but then he noticed Jean hanging back.

She had the sleeves of her sweater pulled down over her hands, and she didn’t meet his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold down the fort for you,” she said. “Just, uh, give me a call if you’re not coming back, cuz I don’t really want to be the one explaining that hole Frank put in the drywall to your super, so.”

“What are you talking about?” He stopped. “You aren’t coming?”

“You’re with your,” she shrugged and sort of nodded her head at the Avengers. “Your family now. I don’t mind.” But she did. He knew she did. Or maybe he was reading into it too much, these last few weeks they’d lived through together. Maybe she’d really thought it was just a cover story when he’d told Ned and MJ she was his sister. But Peter didn’t want to believe that.

“Jean, you’re my family,” he said, and he didn’t care who heard him say it or what they thought about it. Maybe it had only been three weeks, but she had breathed for him. She’d brought him back from the dead. She’d…he’d shared May with her. This was different. “Grab your stuff.”

She stared at him, then rolled her eyes like they weren’t shiny. “Whatever, dork.” He shoved her head lightly as she brushed past him on her way to her room, and he sighed, relieved. Whichever way this all went, he needed to believe he’d come out of all of this with Jean. Right now, she was just about all he had, unless he counted—

“Why’s your door unlocked, punk?” Frank kicked the door open like he owned the place, lip curled. “It’s like you’re asking for it or something. Where do you think you live, fuckin’ Candyland?” He slammed the door behind him so hard it blew a few of the candles out, smoke swirling lazily in the air. He glanced around, eyes skimming over the Avengers without even a twitch of his face, before landing on Peter. “And what are you doing up, huh? You’re supposed to be resting, you little monster.”

“Resting? Why, what happened?” MJ demanded immediately, the only one who didn’t look completely confused by Frank’s presence.

“Nothing,” Peter lied quickly.

“Oh,” Frank mocked. “Now you’re lying to your girlfriend. Real nice, daffodil.”

“Do not call me that,” he bit out. “And I’m not lying. Now did you get everything cleaned up? Because Jean and I are leaving.”

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“He’s coming with us,” Natasha interrupted, looking curious. Frank had changed into normal clothes to get Peter’s blood off of him, but he wasn’t exactly private about his identity; Peter would bet Nat knew exactly who he was.

“Absolutely not,” Frank snorted.

“I’m sorry, you’re here, why?” Tony asked. He turned to Peter without waiting for an answer. “Peter, why is this man in your apartment?”

“Um, he’s Frank,” Peter coughed.

“He’s the Punisher,” Natasha corrected, and Tony raised his eyebrows at Peter heatedly. Bruce blanched.

“What kind of name is the Punisher?”

“We’re work friends,” he tried.

“I can’t believe we’re in the same room as the Punisher,” Ned hissed to MJ.

“We’re not friends,” Frank snapped. “And what kind of name is the Hulk?” He shot back. “Yeah, I know you, big guy. I was at Damage Control, remember? The kid ain’t going nowhere with you. End of story.”

“Frank, I am begging you,” Peter pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Leave me alone. Just this once.”

“Leave you alone?” He echoed, looking peeved. “I carried you here on my back while you whined the whole way, and now you want me to leave you alone? I see how it is.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he groaned. “I’m very grateful, now will you please just—”

“You don’t sound very grateful to me!”

“Well, I am, so can you—”

“If you think I’m letting you run off with Captain Grandpa and the rest of the retired spandex-wearing freaks, you’re out of your mind—”

“You owe me!” He yelled finally (Peter was so getting a noise complaint over this).

“Oh, don’t start with that Staten Island shit again.”

“Why not?”

“Even if I did owe you, which I didn’t, I paid that off when you and your little girlfriend stayed in my house,” he flicked a finger at MJ, who almost smirked. “So stop holding that bull over my head.”

“Here we go,” she muttered, because this wasn’t the first time she’d heard this fight. Jean came out of her room with a bag over her shoulder, snuffing out candles as went.

“Oh, great. You’re back,” she grumbled, and he jabbed a finger at her next.

“Put that bag down, you’re not going anywhere with this people.” Then he turned back to Peter, arms crossed.

“Okay, fine, you’re right.” Peter threw his hands up. “Consider Staten Island paid off.”

Frank narrowed his eyes. “Good.”

“But let’s not forget—”

“Ah, jeez. What now?”

“Who put me in the hospital three weeks ago?” Peter asked smugly, and Frank’s face dropped.

“What?!” Pepper yelped.

“That was an accident,” Frank groused. “I was aiming for the witch!”

“Nice,” Jean snarked.

“You got in my way, so,” Frank shrugged. “I’d say that’s on you, kid.”

“Oh, really? That’s what you’re going with? Face it, Frank. You owe me for the rest of your fricken life.”

“Alright, fine,” he snapped. “Have it your way. Because I owe you such a steep debt, I’ll be accompanying you this evening, to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. How’s that, princess?”

“That’s not happening,” Peter laughed.

“Mm. Okay. Either I stay here, and you and the little witch stay with me, or I come with, and I carry you there, kicking and screaming. Your choice.”

He groaned into his hands, long and dramatic, before finally turning to Tony. “Do you mind?”

“Don’t ask him. You don’t need his permission!”

“Shut up, Frank!”

“Whatever,” Tony rolled his eyes. “The more the merrier, right?” His tone sounded anything but merry, and Peter sighed, exhausted already.

“Let’s get this over with,” Jean patted his shoulder in commiseration, and Frank got between them and the others, giving Bruce especially a nasty look.

“I got my eye on you, Jolly Green. Remember that.”

This was going to be a long night.

———

Tony didn’t know what to do with himself. When he’d woken up in the middle of the night, bombarded with memories of Peter, his kid that he’d forgotten, he’d been torn between succumbing to the traitorous tears in his eyes and throwing the nearest heavy, fragile thing at the wall. Pepper woke up already crying, burying her face beneath her hands, and he knew she was thinking of May. How for the last four years she’d only been Happy’s girlfriend who’d died tragically in the arms of Queens’ very own masked vigilante, and now she’d been redefined. She’d been a woman they’d both spoken to before, had gotten along with, even. A woman who’d sent them a Christmas card every year since Tony had taken Peter under his wing, and even when it was just the two of them, and sometimes Ned, the glossy pictures had always seemed so full of life. Tony had kept them in the desk drawer of his nightstand so he could see the kid’s face whenever he wanted. Like some kind of sad, absentee father.

Now May was dead. Tony hadn’t gone to her funeral. Hadn’t thought anything of it at all, besides making sure Happy had the day to himself.

And Peter had been all alone since then.

The boy who had followed him to Germany, and to outer space, who had made him so damn proud, had been all by himself for four years, and Tony had never had in his mind what he needed to give a fuck. Like Peter was just some faceless stranger, instead of his kid. He was Tony’s fucking kid.

He watched footage of Spider-Man the whole drive to Peter’s apartment. He burned that stupid costume into his eyes until he saw it when he blinked, trying to see something familiar through the fabric. He watched the tilt of this hero’s head, the cocky insults and quips and the blank white stare of those goggles. It didn’t look like Peter.

Even the way he swung between buildings seemed different now. Not just because he was so much more experienced, though Tony could see the new confidence in the pattern of his movements, how he twisted and turned through the air. No, it was more than that. There was something distinctly less human about how he flung himself around. Like Spider-Man had been slowly eating away at Peter Parker until there was no separate identity between them.

He shot each web out like a lifeline he didn’t care to have; if it held or if it didn’t made no difference to Spider-Man. If he died, who would mourn?

The suit wasn’t the one Tony had made for him. None of the protections and protocols he’d put in were there to keep Peter safe anymore. There was no special alert that Tony would get whenever his kid’s vitals changed dramatically. Even if Peter’s new suit had some kind of built-in distress signal, who did he have waiting on the other end to answer it? The new suit wasn’t metal, or bulletproof, or painstakingly designed with Peter in mind. It was fabric, thin and stretchy, and so obnoxiously colored, he’d stand out like a traffic light on a stealth mission.

Tony was pretty sure he’d had at least three mini heart attacks since waking up, with no end in sight.

When they got to the apartment, Tony let Brucie do the knocking, because he was about twenty seconds away from just getting his suit on and blasting a hole in the door himself, or better yet, knocking the whole thing off its hinges. And of course, Peter didn’t answer the door no matter how much they harassed him, which did nothing to help his nerves, and Nat had to let him in with the key she found under the doormat (seriously, kid?).

So Tony got his first real look at the kid’s face in four years. There was no mask covering him, no screen between them. But there was age there, now, where it hadn’t been. The kid was only twenty-two. At Tony’s age, that was still basically a child, but on Peter? Peter was still supposed to be seventeen and getting ready to graduate and go off to college. Peter was still just a little kid with big puppy eyes and a head full of bright ideas. And the kid, the man that Tony was looking at now was so…not that.

It wasn’t that he was completely different. He still had that look about him that screamed shy, science nerd, and though that innocent, excitable spark was gone from his eyes, there was still an inherent kindness that hadn’t been carved out of him by the years. He had the same gentle hands that Tony’s Peter had. But he was almost like a stranger in other ways. He was taller, bigger, a long red scratch down his face. He wasn’t some tiny kid anymore.

He looked strong. And defensive. Like Tony wanted to hurt him. He held his whole body like everyone was out to get him—like there was no ‘off’ mode to Spider-Man. Mask on or off, there was no real switch to Peter Parker anymore. He didn’t mean to let it make him so angry. He wasn’t even really angry, not at the kid. At that nosy, pretentious wizard, yes, but not at Peter.

But Tony had let his brain get ahead of him, and he’d expected the kid to be happy to see him, but even when they assured him their memories were back, he refused to relax. He put himself between them and the girl like they were a threat, then had the audacity to say he’d been protecting them by staying away. Tony had invented time travel for that kid, and Peter had it in his head that somehow Tony was better off without him?! There was no hug between them, not for any of the team—except Ned, who brought out the first real glimpse of their Peter with that nerdy little handshake—no apologies or promises to never leave again.

Peter had collapsed to his knees, panicking like how Tony used to. The girl, Jean, had needed to put herself onto the floor and into his mind to make his lungs work so he didn’t pass out. He’d scratched bloody lines down his own throat while clawing for air. And still he thought everyone was better without him. It was a fucking joke.

Maybe Peter still called him ‘Mr. Stark’ in that innocent voice, but there was Frank now too, stomping around like he belonged there. Acting like Tony was the one who couldn’t be trusted with the kid, when he was the one who’d supposedly put Peter in the hospital. Inviting himself along to the Tower. Well, Tony would say one thing: he was going to make things right with Peter. He’d talk to him alone, and he’d make the kid trust him again, make him swear he wouldn’t pull shit like this again, and then he’d grab onto him and he wouldn’t let go.

And after that Tony would kill Frank.

When they got back up to the penthouse, Tony watched Peter take it all in as if it was the first time—like the kid was the one who’d forgotten everything. But then again, four years was a long time, and to Tony, it had passed so quickly, an ache in his chest over a loss he couldn’t name. Tony didn’t have to spend four years missing anybody; the feeling came and went, impossible to focus on for too long, which was probably also the workings of the spell. Peter spent four years mourning everyone, all by himself.

Was this how Peter had felt, waking up from the blip? Like five years had passed when he hadn’t been paying attention?

“Whoa,” Jean spoke up. “You’re like, rich rich.” That might’ve made him laugh, normally.

“Well, I am a billionaire,” he responded flatly, grabbing a cold bottle of water from the fridge beneath the bar and tossing it to Peter without thought. He caught it out of the air before noticing what Tony had done, and he watched the surprise register on Peter’s face when he noticed what he’d caught. “Drink. You look like you’re about to pass out,” he said, fighting to keep the worry out of his voice. That was another thing; the kid looked so sickly, it was practically heart-wrenching. Seriously, he looked starved; had he eaten at all in the last four years? Judging by the state of his apartment, Tony doubted he’d been able to afford as much food as he needed to keep up with his metabolism.

Peter didn’t even argue, which used to be a sign that doomsday had arrived; he just quietly cracked the cap off and took a small sip. When Frank made himself comfortable on the couch across from the rest of the team—effectively pitting himself against them—Peter didn’t even hesitate before sitting down next to him, and Jean followed.

Tony leaned against the back of the chair Pepper was occupying and tried not to picture himself incinerating Frank with his suit. Bruce spoke up first, looking guilty and uncomfortable.

“Peter, I owe you an apology,” he said tiredly. “I don’t normally remember anything when the other guy’s in control, but I do have pieces of that day at Damage Control. I could’ve hurt you really bad, and…I just, I mean—”

“It’s fine, Dr. Banner.” Peter didn’t look fazed. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“What you said up there,” Bruce went on, still looking torn up. “You asked me…him…to stop. You said we were friends.” It was always hard to listen to Bruce feel guilty over things he hadn’t really done. The Hulk was like a separate person, a crazy roommate Bruce had to share a body with, but when it came to damages, someone had to take the blame, and by then, the green guy had always left.

“I didn’t expect you to remember me. I’m surprised that worked at all.” Tony wanted to use that comment to change topics—if the Hulk managed to hold onto his memories of Peter, even a little bit, or if he’d broken through the spell somehow, did that have anything to do with what had happened this morning? Tony wanted answers. He wanted to know why suddenly he remembered his kid, but the whole rest of the world was still conveniently in the dark.

“That’s actually my fault,” the girl, Jean, said before he could formulate a response. “I’m the one who broke your inhibitor and got in your head.” She looked sorry, she did, but not as much as Tony would expect from a teenage girl. He remembered what MJ had said about the girl possessing the city, and something about Metzger being a liar.

Bruce gave her an appraising look. “I recognize you,” he said, without any accusation, though he definitely looked confused.

“I needed to get to Metzger,” she admitted slowly. “He knew…he knew where my sister was, and you were the only thing I could think of that could bust through that safe.” Her sister, huh? Well, something told Tony that hadn’t ended happily.

“You did what you thought was right,” Peter assured her. “It’s not like I’m winning any awards for that day either.” Ah, right. Peter had been the one to help capture her. So how did they end up here, playing house together with the Punisher?

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Brucie mused aloud to Peter. “About the inhibitor you used on Jean.” Peter flinched, looking sick at the mention, and something twinged in Tony’s chest. He didn’t like where this was going at all. “You showed up to my class, asking about if it would work.”

“I told you, sir, it was just a hypothetical,” he laughed nervously.

“But you applied it at Damage Control,” Bruce pushed, not unkindly. “You clearly were experimenting with the technology, but the questions you asked me after my lecture…” he trailed off. “It didn’t sound like you were talking about Jean at all. You said something about keeping only the “good” parts of someone’s DNA, not the “bad.” I don’t understand how that could apply to a telepath, even one of Jean’s caliber.”

Peter winced again, dragging a hand through his disheveled curls. “I just wanted to know if it was possible.”

“But why?” Clint joined in, and Peter’s hand slid to the back of his neck, nails biting into the skin there like he was trying to rip something out at the root.

“Why not?” Jean said waspishly, one hand clenched defensively on Peter’s wrist. “Is it a crime?”

“Of course not,” Bruce denied quickly. “But, like I told Peter before, an inhibitor like that would only really have ethical use on a monster.” Peter’s flinch was more subtle that time, but Tony saw it. Was it because he felt guilty? Was he worried Jean thought he viewed her as a monster? No, it was more than that, and Tony was going to figure out what was upsetting his kid so bad, just as soon as he got through with everything else going on.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Peter said thickly. “It was just a hypothetical,” he repeated.

“Hm.” Bruce didn’t look convinced, but he dropped it. Finally. Jeez, he was like a dog with a bone. It put Tony on edge, probably more than it should’ve. He should be on the same page as Bruce, wholeheartedly aiming to get to the bottom of whatever things Peter was avoiding saying. But it made the kid look uncomfortable, and Tony wanted to see him smile again. Not in that sheepish, awkward, “stop asking me questions,” way or that little forced one he did when he wanted to be left alone, but the real way he used to when they’d work in the lab together. Sandwiches on the table between them, the plates scattered with crumbs and pieces of half-finished projects, a pencil wedged behind the kid’s ear and that excitable glow in his eyes whenever he got to help Tony make something new.

He was tempted to go buy the biggest Star Wars LEGO set he could find, toss the pieces out on the floor, and let Peter and Ned go wild. Maybe then he’d start looking like a kid again.

“I need a drink,” Clint sighed, knees popping comically as he pulled himself up, groaning, from the deep couch. “Anyone else?” Natasha and Happy both rambled off their answers, and Ned and Peter both looked considering.

“Do you have any energy drinks?”

“Ned, no,” MJ said firmly.

“I’ll have what Happy’s having,” Peter answered, and Clint snorted.

“Nice try, kid.”

The kid threw his hands up in exasperation. “I’m twenty-two! I work in a bar.” Frank wheezed a laugh at his misfortune.

“Aw, they know you can’t hold your liquor, princess.” Peter gave him a nasty side-eye that Tony had never seen him direct at anyone before.

“Don’t start with that, Frank. I mean it.” Clint made a face but put a glass down in front of Peter, shaking his head like he was doing something against his own better judgement; Clint was a father too, and despite his chronic immaturity, he’d always sort of taken the younger heroes under his wing. To see Peter casually drinking alcohol and talking about his day job…it had to feel like whiplash. (Tony knew that was what it felt like, because he felt it too).

“Speaking of which,” Hawkeye took his seat back. “What’s up with that? I mean, I don’t recall ‘bartending’ being one of the passions you were pursuing at that fancy genius school of yours.”

Frank’s eyebrows raised. “Genius school?” There was a sick level of satisfaction that Tony got off of knowing something about Peter that Frank didn’t. Maybe the man had wedged himself into Peter’s life now, but Tony had been there before, when the world needed a Spider-Man and the Spider-Man needed a new suit and a mentor.

Peter ignored the question. “I needed to pay my rent. Simple as that,” he admitted, rubbing at his neck again.

“I thought May had money set aside for you,” Happy said quietly.

“I can’t exactly access it when I don’t exist, can I?” He shot back flatly, and MJ sucked in a breath.

“I didn’t even think of that. Is that why you didn’t come to school with us?”

“My school records didn’t really exist anymore either,” he intoned emotionlessly, like he didn’t care one way or another, but Tony knew he did. He could taste Peter’s bitter loneliness, and watched him swallow it down with a swig of the poison in his glass. The effect was ruined when his nose scrunched up at the taste, and Tony had to cover his mouth with his hand so he didn’t smile.

All that, and the kid couldn’t stomach liquor.

“Do you think Flash remembers you?” Ned blurted out so suddenly the kid actually jumped a little. “Dude, that would be so random. Like he wakes up and he knows you all the sudden?” His eyes got wider. “Do you think he’d remember you being Spider-Man too?” He fumbled to get his phone out of his pocket.

“If Flash knew who Spider-Man was, he’d probably have already sold Peter’s name to the Daily Bugle for like three hundred bucks,” MJ retorted dryly, and Peter snorted.

“Of all the people to remember, I doubt Flash would be one of them.”

“What are you talking about? You were such close friends,” MJ teased, and that first real smile broke across Peter’s face. It was like if the sky suddenly cracked in half and the sun poured out of it in a torrent.

“He’s the one I missed the most,” Peter joked back. “You wouldn’t believe how lonely it’s been without my close friend, Flash.” Ned started to laugh, and then the other two joined in, and they probably laughed harder than the joke really called for, but Tony wasn’t going to be the one to say something. They all looked dangerously close to bursting into tears at the drop of a hat, so Tony figured it was safest anyways to just let them have at it. Ned was laughing into MJ’s shoulder, the two of them red-faced, and the kid was gasping for air like it hurt to breathe, watching the two of them like seeing his friends happy was all he needed.

“I don’t understand,” Peter said finally, wiping his eyes as the laughter died down. “Why now?” The mood sobered a little. “The spell held for four years without a problem. MJ saw my face a few weeks ago and she still didn’t remember. So what changed?”

Tony sighed. “Unfortunately, that sounds like a question for the wizard.” MJ’s face darkened slightly, and Tony had a feeling they were on the same page about what needed to be done with Strange. Clearly someone needed to teach him a lesson about meddling.

“There’s a wizard now?” Frank interrupted, and Tony clenched his jaw.

“Ah…” Peter cringed. “Yeah. Long story short, he’s kinda the one who erased me from everybody’s memory in the first place.”

“Which I didn’t know about until like an hour ago when these knuckleheads showed up,” the man grunted, and yeah, join the club, tough guy. “Why the hell did he do that?”

“It was either that or the multiverse would collide with itself and we’d all, you know, die. So.” Peter took another sip of his drink, looking no less disgusted than before, and Frank stared at him like he was crazy.

“Your life sucks, kid,” he said finally, and Peter huffed.

“Yeah. No kidding.”

“Don’t worry, Queens,” Steve said with an annoying smile. “We’ll get Strange down here and he’ll sort everything out.” That didn’t seem to make Peter feel any better, actually, if the paper-white color of his skin was anything to go by, but he nodded politely anyways.

Tony cleared his throat. “Great. You have fun with that, Spangles. I have a very important project that demands my attention.”

“Tony,” Steve looked aghast, and Tony rolled his eyes beckoning the kid with one finger.

“Come on, Pete. I need an extra set of hands.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “Me?” He asked softly, and Tony lost track of his breathing for a flash. Suddenly he was fifteen again, with those big eyes innocent and creative—the starving dog was a kicked puppy once more, and it was all Tony had wanted, to see the dregs of his kid at the bottom of this stranger’s body, but it hurt so much worse than he thought it would. He was confronted with what he’d been missing these last four years, that hollow spot in his chest he tried to attribute to boredom, or maybe a longing to go back out as Iron Man again, put his team back together. It had been Peter all along, and now that he had him back, he was so afraid he was going to lose him again, it felt like someone had a vice grip around his heart.

“No, the other Peter who interned with my company. Yes, you.” Peter stood quickly, that familiar curiosity alight in his eyes, and Tony pressed the barely-touched water bottle back into his hand. “Drink that, I mean it. If you pass out in my lab, I’m putting you on house arrest in the med bay.” He noticed Frank starting to rise from the couch too, and planted him with a firm look. “You stay. I don’t let just anybody into my lab, you know.”

“You think I’m letting the kid go off by himself?” Frank scoffed, like Tony was the threat to Peter in this scenario. Fucking unbelievable.

“You don’t have a choice. My tower, my rules,” he challenged carelessly.

“Ha!” Frank barked a laugh. “You wanna go, you—”

“Frank, it’s fine,” Peter groaned, and Tony smirked at the irritation on Frank’s face as he fell back into his seat.

“Sit. Stay. Good boy,” he mocked, and he heard Pepper sigh behind him, which was the only thing that kept him from sticking his tongue out at the nuisance acting all high and mighty on Tony’s couch. He wrapped his arm around Peter’s shoulders and guided him off without another word, feeling ridiculously smug over his victory.

Peter didn’t say anything until they got in the elevator headed down to the labs, rolling his water bottle between his hands but not drinking it. “Sorry about Frank,” he said finally. “He just likes to give people a hard time.” Tony thought it had a little more to do with laying some protective claim over Tony’s kid, but he wouldn’t say that. The less time Peter spent thinking about Frank, the better.

“Don’t worry about it, Pete,” Tony squeezed his shoulder. He resolved to put Frank out of his own mind as well, because his kid was home, and he was alive, and he was safe now. He didn’t want to think about anything else at all. The lights came up on their own when they stepped into the lab, and Tony clapped his hands, calling out to FRIDAY to put his music on. AC/DC came on full blast as he turned to watch Peter look around, taking a deep breath like he’d even forgotten the smell of the place—oil and steel and cleaner.

Tony pushed the kid into his old seat, slipping his glasses back on. “So, what did you need help with, Mr. Stark? Something with your old suit?” He asked, practically vibrating in his chair, and Tony almost felt bad to burst his bubble. What he wouldn’t give to sit down and wile away the hours with Peter again, working on projects side-by-side for as long as Pepper would allow, or looking over the kid’s schoolwork while a movie played in the background. “Or is it a new project?”

“You’re the project, kid,” he smirked, coming to stand next to him.

“What?”

“Hold still. I want FRIDAY to get a good look at your vitals.” He wanted a scan especially over that scratch on his face, which was already basically scarred over, but still.

“Ah, no, no thanks.” Peter was up and out of his chair like somebody had yelled ‘fire’, and Tony sighed. Where did the kid think he was going to go? Tony owned the entire building.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Pete. I really don’t even need your cooperation for this, but hey, I was feeling nice. Don’t make me regret it.”

“I’m really fine, Mr. Stark,” Peter scrambled back a few steps, and Tony rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to check on me, I promise.”

“Oh, yeah? If you have nothing to hide, then you should have no problem letting FRIDAY pull up your vitals.” He raised an eyebrow. “You got something to hide, Underoos?” He could see the moment the nickname started to weaken Peter’s resolve, his shoulders sinking until he was almost smaller. Like he could take back all the height and muscle that made him so strange to them now.

“Why is this such a big deal?” Peter delayed, still keeping an unhealthy distance between them, and it was starting to tick Tony off.

“No, why is this such a big deal to you?” He shot back. “I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need help!” But he let Frank help him. The Punisher. The guy who landed him in the hospital. He let that guy help him. And he let the girl help him too. She’d terrorized half the city and gotten Bruce put in a psych ward for a few days, but he’d let her breathe for him.

“I see how it is,” he said tensely. “That’s why you didn’t come find anybody after the spell. You don’t think you need us anymore?”

Peter’s eyes widened. “No! I was trying to pr—”

“Yeah, yeah, you were trying to protect me.” Tony forced himself to put his glasses back on instead of crushing them to dust in his hands and letting the glass slice through his skin. It would hurt so good, but he didn’t want to scare the kid. “Well, I never asked you to do that,” he bit out. “Okay? You can run yourself ragged across this city telling yourself we’re all so much safer, so much better off without you, but we weren’t!” He tried not to lose his cool, he really did, but nobody could get him mad quite like Peter—mad, because he scared the hell out of him. Because he was so much like Tony. He didn’t take care of himself at all, and if saving the world meant sacrificing himself, Peter would do it without thought. “I was miserable, do you know that? I could never quite put my finger on why, but there was a giant fucking hole in the middle of my life, and nothing fixed it.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter whispered, almost pleading.

“I’m not finished. Do you know I would sit in this lab for hours, trying to get shit done, and all I could focus on was how quiet it was?” He laughed, a little crazed. “I thought I was losing it, Pepper probably did too, but I felt like this whole fucking tower was haunted by somebody that I couldn’t even name. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, blinking away tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I just…I really thought nobody would even…”

There was a chunk of ice where his stomach was supposed to be, dread thawing around his insides and seeping in deep. “What? You thought nobody would notice? Or care?” Peter shrugged, looking up at the ceiling and into the bright lights so he didn’t have to meet Tony’s eyes, and Tony was possessed with the sudden urge to shake the kid by his shoulders until he had some sense knocked into him. “Peter,” he said slowly. “For a kid so smart, you can be real fucking stupid,” he sighed. “You know that? Let’s pretend for just a moment that your little friends don’t exist and the Avengers are who cares where. Just picture that, okay? Even then, somebody would care. Somebody would notice. Do you know why?”

“Mr. Stark, I—“

“Do you know why?” He repeated, slower. “Because I’d still be here. And I know you can’t possibly be implying that I wouldn’t notice or care—brainwashing spell aside—if you ceased to exist.” The kid shifted his feet nervously, and Tony scoffed. “Do you think I just take anyone on as an intern? Kid, you were in high school. Do you think I just like hanging around teenagers all the time? And there are a hundred small-time superheroes out there. I don’t just go building suits for them and taking them to Germany.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“But you did,” he interrupted. “Somehow you got it through your thick skull that I don’t care about you, and I have to be honest, Peter. I’m a bit insulted,” he snarked, but he knew he was letting too much vulnerability show through. Too much feeling. See what this dumb kid did to him? “I mean, I could’ve told those clowns to beat it when they showed up at my door asking me to risk the entire world to invent time travel. I did, actually. I told them I wouldn’t do it, and they could shove that stupid idea right up America’s ass. Do you know what changed my mind, though, Peter?”

Peter shook his head, looking defeated. “No, sir.”

“I found a picture of you in my house. I told Captain America no, because I didn’t see the point in risking what was left of the world to save a bunch of people that were already grieved and gone. But then I looked at a picture of a stupid sixteen-year-old kid that did nothing but give me a headache, and I changed my mind. Does that sound like somebody who doesn’t care about you? Huh? Do you think I’d do that for just anybody?”

Peter pressed his hand into his mouth, hard, but Tony heard the broken cry leave his lips anyways, tears thick in the waterline of his eyes, and he almost felt bad for making the kid cry so much, but this was something he needed to hear.

“I saved the world for you,” he finished lamely, taking an experimental step closer. He didn’t want to throw the kid into another panic attack or crowd him, but Peter was just standing there by himself, shaking like a leaf, and that was Tony’s kid.

“I’m sorry,” Peter sobbed into his hands. “I’m sorry, it’s all my fault!”

“Hey, hey,” he closed the distance between them, grabbing his wrists and trying to pull him in close, but the kid dug his heels in.

“It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault. Ben and-and May. It’s all my fault! They’re dead because of me and I can’t fix it, and I’m sorry.” He sounded just like a kid; just like he had the last time Tony had seen him before the spell. Peter had stopped by the lab the day before he left for his school trip to Europe, dark circles under his eyes. They’d worked in silence for four hours, breaking only to share the pizza Pepper had brought up—she insisted they all eat together in the penthouse ‘like civilized people’—and though they’d barely said anything to each other, Tony recalled thinking now to himself that Peter was what he and Pepper had been missing all this time. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Look at me, kid,” he grabbed Peter’s shoulders and made him return his stare; jeez, when had the kid gotten to be the same height as him? “Hey—look at me. None of this is your fault. You’re a hero, Peter.”

He hadn’t stopped shaking. “Couldn’t save May,” he whispered.

“Oh, Roo,” he sighed. “That’s not on you. Not even a little. And May, she would be so proud of you.”

Peter’s lips trembled. “How do you know?”

“Because I’m proud of you, kid. Come here.” This time, Peter folded into his arms easily, and even though he wasn’t so small anymore, he fit against Tony the same way he had after the Snap. Like the kid was always meant to be there. He buried his fingers in Peter’s messy curls and held him the way he should’ve after Germany, after the Vulture. When he found out the stupid kid had stowed away with him on an alien spaceship. When he left Tony’s lab that day, for the last time, before he had his face splashed all over the news and then erased from Tony’s memory entirely.

Peter cried into his shoulder, and he didn’t let go. “You’re okay,” he told him, as softly as somebody like Anthony Stark could manage. “And hey.” He pulled away just long enough to make the kid meet his eyes again. “If you even think about pulling this shit again, you’ll be grounded. Until you die,” he said, and Peter choked on a laugh, burying his face in Tony’s shoulder again. And he let the kid stay there, minutes dragging on. He didn’t get tired of the feeling, even though he was too old now to be standing with his knees locked for so long. If he had to stand there for the next four years, it still wouldn’t make up for the time that he’d lost. And he didn’t care if that sounded sappy as hell—protecting himself, sheltering his emotions, didn’t feel so important anymore after his kid had turned to ash in his hands.

When Peter was finally ready to pull away, he’d calmed down, wiping his bloodshot eyes as his breathing evened out again.

“Feeling better?” He asked, and Peter nodded sheepishly, his face burning. “Good. FRIDAY, be a dear and scan the kid for me.” His eyes widened like he’d been betrayed, and Tony didn’t bother suppressing a smirk as information started scrolling across his computer.

“Seriously?” He was gaping at Tony, and it was comical, that expression paired with his puffy face.

“Shh, I’m trying to focus, kid,” he teased, squinting at the numbers scrolling across the screen, at the spots on Peter that were highlighting in red over hidden injuries. He clenched his jaw, eyes flicking up to the kid and then back down. “Hm,” he said shortly. “Well, well, you were hiding something from me, Underoos. I’m hurt,” he gave the kid a flat look.

Peter had gone pale again, and his fingers were worrying over each other again. “Mr. Stark, I can explain—”

“About how you got those busted ribs? Or whatever wound you have on your side you’re trying to keep me from noticing?”

Peter cringed, but his shoulders dropped a little. Almost…relieved? “Oh. Right. That.”

“What did you think I was talking about?” He narrowed his eyes.

“Nothing,” Peter backtracked, and Tony sighed to himself. Great. Another thing to grill the kid about. Who knew it was so exhausting to be a parent? “Uh, I got kinda banged up on patrol this morning. It’s no big deal.”

“Right,” Tony said, because that was totally believable. “Well, your scan was showing some pretty severe blood loss, kid. You wanna explain that?”

“Not really,” he laughed nervously. “I promise I’m fine, Mr. Stark.” A knock on the door cut off whatever fight Tony was about to tackle, and they both looked up like kids caught sneaking into the candy jar.

“You boys done with your project?” Pepper asked, glancing between them like she knew what they’d been talking about.

“No, not yet—”

“Yep, all good,” Peter interrupted with a grin, and Tony only sighed. He didn’t want to argue with the kid again; Peter could keep his secrets, for now, but he’d never been a good liar, and clearly that was one thing that hadn’t changed. All he had to do was figure out the right questions to ask and the answers would fall into his lap.

“Okay,” Pepper snuck a glance at Tony, almost amused. “Come on back then.” She gave Peter a sly nudge when he reached the door. “I think Michelle’s looking for you.”

Peter blushed, and Tony supposed he’d come a long way from the kid who’d had to arrest his homecoming date’s dad. Kids grew up so fast, especially when you couldn’t remember them for four straight years.

“I see how it is,” he gasped dramatically. “You’re abandoning me over a girl? Fine. Be that way.”

Peter smiled, and it was smaller than it had been when he was Tony’s nerdy little intern, but it was a smile nonetheless, and a true hero knew to accept even the small victories when they could manage to come across them. “Sorry, Mr. Stark.”

“Haven’t I told you a hundred times to call me Tony?” He tried, even though he knew it was in vain.

Peter slipped out the door, calling out one last thing over his shoulder. “Sure thing, Mr. Stark!”

———

Back in the penthouse, Ned was talking Dr. Banner’s ear off about computers and any other science-related topic he could come up with, including a few fairly invasive questions about what it felt like to “Hulk out.” MJ was sketching something down on a napkin, looking as relaxed as if she were in her own house. He hesitated a moment in front of the elevator, wondering how mad she’d be if he tried to take the spot next to her—he glanced at Jean, and she raised her eyebrows, waving her hands at him like ‘go on, get over there,’ and his face burned as he shuffled across the room.

MJ didn’t look up when he sat down, but she didn’t try to kill him either, so he’d take the small victory. They sat together for a while, forearms brushing, MJ focused on her drawing and Peter trying not to breathe too loudly or accidentally yank out any of his stitches or stare her down until she got uncomfortable. Somewhere in the background, Natasha was beating Frank at arm-wrestling, Tony was talking loudly on the phone to somebody, and Ned was roping Clint into his questions. Jean was letting it all happen around her, and he wondered if she was poking around in their minds, maybe trying to figure out what had torn the spell apart. Why these specific people remembered him out of the blue.

The pads of MJ’s fingers, featherlight and slightly calloused from clutching pencils so tightly, brushed against Peter’s hand. He sucked in a breath, startled, eyes flying back to her, and she drew away slightly. “Sorry.”

“No,” he shook his head quickly. “No, it’s fine. You just,” he laughed. “You scared me.”

She raised an eyebrow, but her fingers slowly returned to his skin, and sparks raced up his arms at her touch. “What happened to your whole tingle thing?”

He cringed. “I really wish you wouldn’t call it that,” he grinned. “And, um, you know that really only works for things that are dangerous to me. So.” He didn’t say that he knew MJ would never hurt him, at least not intentionally, not physically. Not like that moment at Frank’s when he’d forced her hand with that letter and she’d had to look him in his stranger’s eyes and tell him she didn’t love him. Her eyes were that same rich, dark brown he saw in his dreams, hazel and golden in some spots, but so deep and dark that they matched the pit in his stomach when he looked into them. Was this what people meant when they said they could drown in somebody’s eyes? He felt that if he looked for too long, he’d ensnare himself in amber and dark chocolate and sink into it until it ate away at skin and bone and memory. Peter could die in her eyes, and he wouldn’t even care if it meant she’d keep him there forever in her eyes.

“Where’d you get all these scars?” She whispered, and he didn’t process the question at first, dragging himself up and out of her irises. Her fingers danced along raised lines on his fingers, on the back of his hand, disappearing into the sleeve of the jacket he’d thrown on over his t-shirt. Pale white and pink and ugly, they were all jagged reminders of every broken finger and mistreated cut he’d told himself would heal fine on their own, because he was Spider-Man and he didn’t need help, couldn’t have it even if he did. At least the scars sort of reminded him that the things he did existed, even if only to him.

“Oh, you know.” He swallowed around the ball of loneliness waiting in his throat to choke him up. “Spider-Man.”

She stared at him with her lips pulling downwards, and he traced their descent with his eyes, remembering what it had felt like to kiss her for the last time that day that Strange cast the spell. She’d tasted like salt and something young that Peter was too old now to get to know the name of.

“Spider-Man,” she repeated, and she didn’t say it like it was his name, or like it was a headline in the papers. She said it like it was secondary to him, and Spider-Man was just this piece of red and black fabric he pulled over his face sometimes. It was funny how four years could muddy the lines between which identity was more real; some nights he’d looked in the mirror and he hadn’t even seen Peter anymore. He would run his fingers through his own hair, drag his nails down the skin below his eyes because maybe the mask would peel off if he could get a good enough grip on it. Peter Parker had been made of straw, and he’d torn into himself and ripped the stitches open more times than he could count, digging around for the red and blue beneath all the hay. MJ unraveled all of that with one touch of her fingers, her hands ghosting up to his cheeks, tracing the line of his jaw, the curve of his nose, smoothing his hair back like it was blocking her view. He held his breath and let her make him real again.

He could almost be human when she put her hands on him like that.

“You look tired,” she said finally, fingers stalling beneath his eyes. He closed them.

“I haven’t slept yet today,” he said, because that was the acceptable answer over admitting he hadn’t slept much at all the last few weeks, the last few years. When he opened them again, her lips were thinned, and he knew she could see right through him, but he let the lie rest between them anyways.

“Are you okay?” She asked, and something sad slid onto her face that he couldn’t explain. He hated that he had put that look onto her, hated it so much it almost made his eyes start to sting again. “Frank said something about how you were supposed to be resting.” Damnit, Frank.

“He’s dramatic,” Peter cleared his throat. “I’ve been out of the hospital for three weeks, but,” he shrugged. “I don’t know, he feels bad or something.” If Frank overheard any of this, Peter would be paying for it until the end of time.

He’d forgotten how hard it was to pull things over MJ’s eyes, though, because she looked not only unconvinced, but entirely unimpressed. “Why’d he say he had to carry you home, then?” How did she even remember that?! Frank was so dead for this.

“Ah,” he rubbed the back of his neck, refusing to look at her. “Did he say that? I don’t know, he likes to mess around—”

“Peter.” She pinched lightly at the corner of his eye, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to trick him into looking at her again. Her eyes said, ‘please don’t lie to me,’ and he was weak to it. “Be honest. Are you hurt?”

He pressed his hand to the spot where Frank had stitched him closed, fingers protectively curling around his bruised and broken ribs. Those, at least, would probably heal up by tomorrow morning, faint as the cut on his face—the gash from the shrapnel, though, he had a feeling that one would linger long enough to make patrol really annoying for the next week or so, and he had no doubt it would leave an ugly scar. “I’m okay,” he said, voice wavering. It was technically true; the wound still hurt, but he’d gotten good at tuning out things like that by now. As long as he didn’t go and do anything crazy for the next twenty-four hours, he could probably be back out and patrolling in no time (which was for the best, because any time Frank offered to “cover his shifts,” when he was down, there was always a new headliner in the newspaper the next day about why Spider-Man wasn’t doing more to curb the Punisher’s less desirable actions).

“Peter—”

“I’m okay. I am,” he nodded. He prayed she’d just drop it, but he knew in his heart she wouldn’t. MJ only let things slide if she didn’t care—she’d known he was Spider-Man for probably a lot longer than he even knew, and she’d kept it to herself because she had other things going on—but when it came to her friends keeping secrets that she thought would hurt them, she was like a character in an Agatha Christie novel.

“I missed you,” she admitted, and all the activity in Peter’s brain died off. She’d hit the kill switch in his mind.

“I—” It hurt to breathe. “I missed you too. So much. I still think of you every day,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you come find me?” She whispered, even though he’d told her why. Maybe she wanted to make him say it again, as penance for breaking her heart. Peter would take that over losing her any day. “I waited for you. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but I knew something was missing.” She shook her head. “Everything felt so pointless. I kept asking myself why I was bothering with job interviews and college exams, because I felt like I was meant for so much more. Now I know it’s because I was helping you and Ned try to save the multiverse when I was still in high school,” she sort of laughed. “It’s so weird trying to go back to normal life after that, even without your memories, you know?”

“No,” he admitted. He hadn’t had anything close to a normal life in a long time, but he didn’t want to say that to MJ. He didn’t want to guilt her by saying that nothing had felt normal since she and Ned had been gone, his last two links to humanity. She looked at him and he looked back and it wasn’t romantic at all, the wide-eyed, desperate way they watched each other. But he and MJ had rarely had many opportunities to do actual romantic things together; their relationship had been shaped around tragedy and adrenaline and the little moments they’d managed to steal in between. That was part of what had made them so real. Now this thing between them was gone, and he mourned her like she’d died, because she’d spent four years growing into herself and now he worried he’d never know her again. He’d never steal another second of her time.

“I broke up with my boyfriend,” she blurted out, then sucked in a breath like she hadn’t meant to say it. “Sorry, I just…” she made a face. “I had a lot to think about, and…I’d been thinking about it for a while now, so.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I know I didn’t help. I can’t imagine how confusing it must have been to find my letter.”

“Don’t apologize,” she picked at one of her fingernails. “He was kind of an asshole. And when I kissed him, I…I always expected it to feel different. Like you.” His heart twisted in his chest, threatening to explode, his mouth like sandpaper.

“Me,” he repeated oddly.

“Yeah,” she started to lean in closer, or maybe he did, tentative but almost magnetized, and Peter held his breath; was he dreaming? Would it finally be real this time, the silk-soft brush of her lips against his, the—

“Ey, daffodil,” Frank called loudly, and whatever was between them shattered, the two of them pulling apart too quickly to be innocent. “If you’re not too busy smooching over there, you can come defend your title.”

“What are you talking about?” He snapped, maybe a little too harshly, but man, Frank had the worst timing in history.

Frank was discreetly rubbing his arm where Natasha had, without a doubt, destroyed him, and Peter might’ve laughed if he hadn’t just missed his opportunity to hold MJ again, when it was really her. “You’re Mr. Tough Guy, right? Think you’re so much stronger than me? Come prove it.”

“Seriously?” This was what he’d interrupted them over? Arm-wrestling? “Frank, I can stop a bus with my bare hands.”

“I’ve yet to see it,” he denied stubbornly, and Peter clenched his jaw. He should know better than to let this get to him, but Frank was just so good at pissing people off. And he didn’t know, maybe this was Frank’s weird way of trying to make Peter feel better by distracting him from everything that was going on or something. Or maybe he just saw that he was about to kiss MJ and decided it would be hilarious to ruin it.

“You really wanna do this?”

“Put your money where your mouth is, bug boy.”

Peter’s eyes flashed, and he pushed off the couch. “Spiders aren’t bugs. They’re arachnids.” Frank laughed at him mockingly as he made his way over.

“Either way I’ll squash you, kid.” He held one arm out, elbow up on the table he and Natasha had been using, and Peter rolled his eyes before matching his stance.

“Ha!” Clint laughed, amused. “I can’t believe you let him goad you that easy, kid.”

“What can I say?” He answered, almost bored. “I’m a stickler about my spider facts.” Clint called the start, and he planted his feet, letting Frank put his whole weight onto their arms, trying to force him down. Frank was strong, obviously, but he was still a human being. Peter hadn’t been plain old human for a long time, but especially these last few weeks. He was more monster than man these days; maybe that was why he had such a hard time recognizing his own face when he looked in the mirror. Because in the glassy surface of his eyes, something lurked beneath that gave him away.

After a second, he got bored. He slammed Frank’s arm down without breaking a sweat, and it wasn’t something to brag about. He wasn’t showing off. Spider-Man could redirect a Stark Industries plane with his webs. He could survive a building being dropped on his head, and he could lift it off of him after that. He could do a lot of things with his own bare hands and shoulders and legs, things that no regular person could dream of doing even with an inhuman amount of adrenaline pumping through their body. He was almost embarrassed by how easy it was to beat Frank.

It just further showed how different he was now.

Peter Parker was supposed to have glasses and asthma.

(Peter Parker had been dead for longer than he was ready to admit).

“Damn,” Clint muttered, not laughing anymore, and Peter released Frank’s hand, shoving his own into his pockets again. Had MJ been watching? He hoped not. “You used to be like a stickbug, kid. When the hell did this happen?” He gestured at Peter’s arms, like he could see the muscle that had been carved into him even through the sleeves of his jacket.

“Last time you saw me, I was like sixteen,” he defended weakly. “And I’ve had the strength since I got my powers, I just usually don’t mess around with it,” he shot Frank a look. The guy gave him a sour one back, but he didn’t look all that mad, which affirmed the suspicion he had that Frank had been trying to distract him. “Spider-Man’s not a toy.”

“I get it, I get it,” Clint waved him off, looking a little sheepish. “I didn’t mean to offend, Pete. You’ve just come a long way since then, huh?” He jabbed Peter with his elbow jokingly, the hard edge of his bone catching right into his stitches, and Peter’s vision went purple and staticky. He choked, grabbing his side as he half-fell onto the table to keep himself upright.

“Shit,” Frank spat, and Peter heard the stomping of his boots a hundred lightyears away.

“Pete?” He heard Happy ask. “What happened?!” He knew he should stand up straight, stop leaning on the table for support and making everyone worry. Clint had barely nudged him, probably not even hard enough to pull his stitches out. He shouldn’t be so dramatic. But it hurt. Clint might as well have shot him clean through with an arrow for how it felt, fire racing through him. He was hot all over again, gritting his teeth as he kept his hand pressed to his side, protecting it from any more sharp blows.

Frank’s hands were on him, and he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, and that hot, sticky feeling was back, soaking into the fibers of his shirt; good thing he’d picked dark clothing, or he’d probably look a mess right now. “I’m fine, I'm fine,” he managed to force out of heavy, uncooperative lips, anything to make all this noise stop (if everyone didn’t stop screaming in a minute, he would probably get another migraine, and that was the last thing he wanted).

“Shut up, kid,” Frank growled. “I knew it, I knew you’d pull something like this—”

“What’s going on?” Ned yelped.

“—You need a constant babysitter or something. Move your hand!”

“Frank, I’m fine, okay? I don’t need you to—”

“Let me look—” Frank’s hand closed around his wrist, trying to yank his fingers free of the gash on his side, and Peter jerked, vision blacking out again.

“—OFF ME! Get the fuck off!” He could barely hear the yelling over the ringing in his ears, so loud it took him too long to realize he was the one yelling.

“I’m trying to help you!” Frank bellowed back, and Peter wished he could just web up his wound again and be done with this before Frank tied him down and got the needle and thread, but then inevitably someone would notice he didn’t have his web-shooters on, and they’d wonder how he had done it, and…

Peter was in enough pain as it was. He didn’t need to see the horror on their faces when they realized he wasn’t human anymore, that he was some thing wearing their Peter’s face and carrying his grief and losing his mind. This skin that was bruised and marred with cuts looked like that of Peter Parker, the boy they had only now remembered to miss, but underneath, under all the muscle and bone and hot blood, all that was left of their boy were the broken fragments of DNA strands and his stolen name. Ned was the only person left alive who’d known Peter Parker entirely as he was, stupid and nerdy and weak, but human. MJ had seen whispers of him in hallways around school freshman year, had sat in front of him in calculus (and he’d stared at her hair for months on end, watched over her shoulder as she doodled in blue ink the same bones on the back of her hand, over and over again, with increasing skill and attention to detail) but never looked his way. He wondered how Ned could stand it, doing their handshake with a stranger. Or did he not even know? Had he consumed Peter so wholly and seamlessly that this was just who they all thought he’d become naturally?

“Kid? You even listening?” Frank was shaking him, hard, and Peter’s eyes fluttered as he fought the black spots dancing in front of his eyes. “Hey, you gotta work with me here so I can stitch you up, yeah?” Through failing vision, Peter found he was on the couch, and MJ’s fingers were buried in his hair, and Ned was fretting a foot away, and Frank and Tony were both watching him with their trying-to-be-aloof faces full of anxiety, and Jean was beside him, her grip on his hands white-knuckled and her expression like flint.

“I’m okay,” he sighed when he came to, bringing a hand up to clutch his pounding head, but his palm slipped against his skin, and it took him a second to catch the scent of iron to realize he’d just painted himself with his own blood.

“You wanna try again?” Tony sneered, but Peter tried to tune him out, wiping at the blood with his sleeve. These clothes were beyond ruined anyways.

“Give him a break, Tony,” he heard Nat sigh from a few feet off, just outside his line of sight, which was still slightly fuzzy and discolored. Like a movie filmed with a cold kind of filter over it, washed out and dim and hard to define. “I think the lecture can wait for when nobody’s actively bleeding.”

“It’s really nothing,” he insisted, almost slurring, and he thought he saw Ned twitch with alarm, but it was only because he was so exhausted, and MJ’s fingers were soft and soothing in his hair, and…

Smack. “Nice try, sleeping beauty.”

“Did you hit me?” Frank ignored his weak yell, and started yanking at one of Peter’s jacket sleeves.

“This ain’t a good time to crash, kid. At least wait till we’re away from Mr. Moneybags here,” he quipped, and Peter rolled his eyes so hard, it made his head throb. “Don’t gimme that. Come on, jacket off.” He groaned, but yanked the fabric off of his arms, keeping his face impassive when his jacket peeled away from his shirt with a wet squelch, blood having melted them together. “Shirt too. Don’t make this hard.” Somebody’s hands, firm and gentle all at once, helped him pull his shirt all the way over his head without pulling his stitches worse, and he was almost certain it was MJ. His spider sense could maybe only detect danger, but there was something else in Peter that could always feel her nearby.

His clothes fell in a pile on the probably-expensive rug—good thing they were already sort of the same color as bloodstains were, not that that would stop Tony from forgoing the cleaning process and buying even more expensive replacements—and Peter winced at the look on Tony and Ned’s faces when they and everyone else got a good look at the bandages around his ribs, soaked through now and more scarlet than white, purple-black bruises peeking over the top of them. “You,” Mr. Stark said, and his voice was frighteningly calm. “Are so dead, Parker.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Steve cut in from somewhere else; Peter’s head hurt too much to track the sound, and he sighed.

“I mean, I told Jean,” he tried weakly, and she snorted.

“More like she figured it out herself after I had to carry you home like a fucking baby,” Frank growled, and Peter rolled his eyes.

“Well, I didn’t ask you to do that, Frank, God—”

“Are you seriously sassing me right now? Unbelievable.”

“How did this happen?” Bruce interrupted, stepping carefully into view as he nudged his way between Frank and Tony to get a look at the wound. Peter was pretty sure he wasn’t that kind of doctor, but he guessed there really wasn’t anyone else more qualified if he wanted to keep Mr. Stark from bothering Dr. Cho. (Was she even still around? Man, Peter really needed to catch up on some stuff).

“Ah,” Peter cleared his throat. “Funny story, actually.”

“He caught some shrapnel from a bomb.” Of course, Frank snitched on him without missing a beat.

“What?” Pepper breathed. “Oh my God, and you didn’t tell anyone? What the hell is wrong with you?!” Now she was starting to sound like Aunt May when he’d really pushed her to her limits with the whole Spider-Man thing. He probably should’ve been annoyed, but it made his chest feel warm, and it was hard not to smile.

“Kid’s fucking stupid, that’s what,” Frank offered, and Peter remembered to be angry again.

“Yeah, and who’s ass was I saving when this happened, huh? You’d be fried right now if it weren’t for me.”

“I woulda been fine,” he dismissed. “You need to learn to stop throwing yourself in the way all the time!” Peter just rolled his eyes again.

“No, you wouldn’t have been fine. You don’t heal, Frank. You’re human. I’m a lot harder to kill.” He heard MJ suck in a breath, like he’d said something egregious, and the expression on Ned’s face shifted. Almost…afraid. Was it because he’d reminded them that Frank was human, that he wasn’t? What did they see when they looked at him?

“Don’t say that,” Ned blurted, and he flinched. “Don’t…don’t act like it doesn’t matter what happens to you, just because you can heal faster than us.” What? “You still bleed the same.” He wanted to deny it, to confess that just because his blood was red, it didn’t mean he was a person. But Peter was selfish in his stomach and in his chest and in his head, all the deepest and poisoned parts of him, and if Ned wanted to believe that he was normal, then Peter would let him. He didn’t want to lose this, not yet, when he’d just gotten them all back.

“It’s not like that, Ned,” he lied, watching as Jean muttered to herself, digging through her bag for the needle and thread she kept in an old lip balm tin that still smelled faintly like green apples. “I’m Spider-Man. It’s my job.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you were a bartender.”

“Yeah, well, Spider-Man does a lot of things, but he doesn’t pay the bills.”

“Thanks, witch.” Frank took the tin from Jean and threaded the needle with ease, fingers dexterous with the tiny knot, calm as if he was tying the line off to go fishing. “Alright, kid. You were a real pain in the ass about this last time, so try not to take a chunk out of your hand again.” So fucking dramatic. That was Peter’s last coherent thought before the needle was prodded through his skin like it was made of candle wax, and he sucked in a breath so sharply through his teeth that he felt the pain all the way into his chest, all his muscles pulled tight enough to snap. MJ’s fingers lost their grip on his hair when he threw his head back.

Frank tied off the first broken stitch, and Peter chanced a glance at the wound, ugly and red at the edges, his skin shredded and jagged where the metal had taken a bite of him. There were still at least three more popped stitches, and he groaned, sweat already starting to bead on his temples. When Frank started on the next one, Peter almost kicked him in the face trying to get away from the feeling, and the familiar gruff swearing was starting to go in and out, waves of radio static in his ears.

Jean’s nails bit into his bicep, and he squeezed his eyes shut, grounding himself on the pain as much as he could. “Do you want me to…?”

“Hold him still,” Frank agreed readily, and it was followed by the brush of an iridescent phoenix wing against his mind, made of copper fire and shiny glass, twining like coils of so much wire around the functioning parts of him and inching its way in. Settle, it whispered. Relax your body. It’ll be over soon…

He was tired of making Jean share his pain; she was too young to try to carry it for him, but she kept pushing her way into his mind and grabbing at fistfuls of the concrete rubble and trying to make sandcastles out of them. Another stitch passed through his skin, and Peter still felt it, but it was muted, shrouded in a soft grey fog that had been pulled over his eyes…Jean’s touch was so warm, even where her nails gnawed at him like fangs. It almost reminded him of May…fresh and somehow cool at the same time, like the first rain of spring, sinking into the earth and reviving the soil…May had been the end of winter, and Peter would never be made new again that way, but Jean came so close.

He curled his claws around the glass wires in his mind and dug them out by their roots, shoving them out before he could start to wish they’d never leave. ‘Get out, Jean,” he thought sharply. ‘Get out!’ Jean gasped in his ear, shock turning to anger. “He pushed me out again!” The next stitch hurt like the thread was woven with hellfire, but Peter bore the pain by himself, biting at the still-healing split in his lip. She tried to get in again, and he visualized himself in the warehouse again, buried under tons of concrete and twisted rebar, wedged into a small, painful place she couldn’t reach him. It didn’t feel like sitting on the couch with her in Queens, May in the kitchen and Ben at the door, but that was only a dream anyways, and all dreams ended eventually.

“Stubborn asshole,” Frank grumbled, tying off the last new stitch as he eyed the seething look in Jean’s eyes. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

MJ smoothed his hair back, and he took a minute to collect himself. “Sorry, Jean,” he panted, and she refused to look at him.

“Are you sure that’ll hold?” Clint worried, and Peter hoped he didn’t feel too guilty about popping his stitches open.

“As long as the kid stays off the streets for a day or two,” Frank shrugged. “Don’t ask me how it works.” But he looked worried too. Maybe Tony or Steve wouldn’t be able to see it in his face, but somebody like Natasha, who knew how to read whole books off a person’s body language, or Peter and Jean, who knew Frank about as well as he let himself be known, could see the ghosts of it in the set of his jaw and the edge in his eyes.

“Thanks, Frank,” he sighed, almost ashamed for fighting with him again over the explosion earlier. He hadn’t meant to hold it over Frank that he’d pushed him out of the way; it was Peter’s job to pull stunts like that. He was New York City’s expendable guardian, and no matter how many people rallied outside his hospital room in support, it didn’t change the fact that he would only ever be loved as long as he lived for them before anything else. But hey. That was what Spider-Man was for.

Frank grabbed him roughly by the face. “Ey, don’t start that shit with me. You’re lucky you aren’t dead right now. If Jean hadn’t brought you back, you’d be cut open in the morgue right now, Webs. Even you can’t walk away from everything.” The shame settled in full force, confident and demanding as it took its seat in the fractures of his ribcage, barely held together by cobwebs and tape.

“What does he mean, Peter?” MJ asked quietly, darkly. “Jean ‘brought you back.’ What does that mean?” Something frantic crept into her voice, and he wished he had an answer that would assuage her fears. But anything comforting would be a lie, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t lie to her.

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” Jean snapped tensely, swiveling sharp eyes between her and Ned. “That shrapnel, or maybe the shock of it, killed Peter.” Then she looked at him, angry and hurt, and he didn’t try to apologize again. Not when they both knew he wasn’t sorry. “He was lying dead, right there in the middle of the fucking street.” The room was thick with silence, except for Peter’s heavy breathing, and he didn’t look at anybody. Just Jean. He made himself sit with her feelings because he deserved it for making her look after him when he was the adult between the two of them.

“Pete.” Happy was the one to find himself first. “Peter, is that true?” It was a plead for Peter to say that it was a lie, or an exaggeration, and he really was so sorry to disappoint.

He swallowed his regrets and tasted the bitter aftertaste in his mouth. “It was only for a minute or two,” he mumbled, and Jean’s lip curled in disbelief.

“Fuck,” Tony breathed, dropping his head into his hands.

“I tried to help you and you wouldn’t let me,” she snarled. “You pushed me out and I had to feel you die from Frank.” The wince that cut through him was like a blunt blade—somehow he’d fooled himself into believing, in the moment that he’d felt himself fading again, that pushing her out would keep her away. He’d forgotten to factor how stubborn Jean was into the equation. “I didn’t know if I’d even be able to bring you back.” Hairline fractures trembled in the air when she spoke, and she was a kid, practically just a little girl—he didn’t care what she was capable of, if she held the whole fucking world in her hands. She never should’ve been in that position. And guilt tasted like ashes on a strange planet in outer space, tasted like a ferry ride and clothes that weren’t his. Tasted like the press of his lips against May’s head, one last time.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Dr. Banner interrupted gently. “Jean, you brought Peter back from the dead?” She nodded. “You’re sure he was dead? No pulse and everything?”

“Jesus, Bruce,” Pepper cringed. Jean nodded again.

“How?” He prodded.

“Bruce, this isn’t the time to get field notes on her powers,” Mr. Stark bit out, face still buried in his hands. He dragged them down his face as he sat up, eyes aimed skyward.

“I,” Jean swallowed thickly, some of the anger draining from her at the question. “I don’t know, exactly. I couldn’t get into Peter’s head like I could last time, when he got shot…”

“You got shot?” Ned sounded like he was about to start bawling, and Peter was such a fucking waste of space, he didn’t even answer.

“I could only reach Frank, so I had to jump myself off of his brain, like,” she struggled to describe it, and he wished he could help, even though he knew she wouldn’t want it from him. “Like switching planes at one airport to catch a flight to a different one. But Peter,” she gave him that look again, and he drowned himself in it, his lungs filling with saltwater as he sunk into blues that darkened into blacks, until he couldn’t see his own hands in front of his face anymore. “He wouldn’t let me get in, so I had to do it from outside.” That gave him pause. He’d assumed she’d gotten in once he’d stopped breathing and forced his heart to start beating again.

“And what do you mean by that?” Bruce adjusted his glasses. “What does that mean? ‘Do it from the outside?’”

She looked almost uncomfortable now, and he had half a mind to tell Bruce to mind his own business. “I couldn’t get a hold on his head to control his body, which is the only direct way to do it. So I sort of focused on his identity, or something. I don’t know. I just thought of Peter and what he’s like and I got in from there. After that, I just had to make his body start working again.” She shrugged like it meant nothing, the physical, manual labor of operating another body simultaneously to her own. “Frank was already doing compressions anyways, so.”

“Incredible,” Bruce whispered. Ned looked less mystified.

“Dude,” he gasped. “You were dead?! You needed chest compressions?!”

He laughed thinly. “Yeah. Frank broke my ribs an’ everything.”

“Ungrateful brat,” Frank grumbled back without any heat.

But Ned didn’t find it funny. He just kept staring at Peter like he was a ghost. “I can’t believe you were gone,” he choked out, and MJ pulled away. He didn’t turn to look at her; he was too much of a coward to see how he’d hurt her again.

“And, what? You were just never going to tell us?” She hissed.

“Didn’t seem important,” he coughed.

“Not important?” Bruce pulled his glasses off, scoffing in disbelief. “Peter, you do realize this is why Strange’s spell unraveled for us specifically, right?”

Peter sighed, sitting forward to let Frank start to bandage him up again, looking almost irritated at all of the arguing and revelations being had around him while he worked. “Because I died?”

“No,” Bruce shook his head. “No, if the spell had a loophole like that, the whole world would’ve been thrown into chaos, remembering you, remembering Mysterio, wondering why they suddenly forgot about you. If you’d just died and come back, or even stayed dead, I don’t think it would’ve affected Strange’s spell at all.”

Ned’s eyes watered. “You mean that Peter would’ve been dead and I wouldn’t have even known?”

“You would’ve known,” he said, a little desperate to cheer Ned up. “I’m sure Jameson would’ve had my mask off and my picture in the paper before my body was even cold.” He realized right when the words left his mouth it didn’t sound very comforting.

Frank actually laughed at that, and Jean covered her hand with her mouth (little sneak, he knew she was trying to hide a smile).

“Oh my God,” Tony groaned. “What is wrong with you?!” It sounded like he actually wanted Peter to answer, but frankly, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that.

“Blame the wizard,” Frank said, like he had any clue who the wizard even was. If Strange was slightly less reclusive and happened to come across Frank when he was in one of his moods, he probably would’ve been shot just for being a smartass.

“No, the kid’s been fucked since way before the wizard,” Happy said snidely, and Peter made a face at him.

“Wow. Really?”

“Your powers are incredibly impressive,” Bruce insisted, still looking way too invested in the circumstances of Peter’s death. “Dying alone couldn’t break through the spell. It was you, Jean,” he told her, almost excitedly. “When you focused on Peter as a person, as an identity and name that was distinct to Spider-Man, and used it to pull him back, I think you also pulled him back into the minds of anyone with significant connection to his real identity.” Huh. That was certainly a better theory than Peter had come up with on his limited information (that being that maybe the Parker Luck had finally turned it around).

“That is impressive,” Natasha put in. “Were you born with your powers?”

“Mm-hm. My sister too. We didn’t really get them though until we were older.” Jean left it at that. She’d never gone much into detail about what it was like, getting her powers, or about her mother. She talked about Sara, sometimes, at night when neither of them could sleep. But even then she never said much. He liked to think she was just keeping some special things to herself, untarnished and perfect; he did the same with May and Ben. Even though he knew she could read his mind and see whatever she wanted, he kept what he actually told her vague enough that some memories still felt like they only belonged to him.

“So cool,” Ned breathed, though his eyes were still red-rimmed. “I’d definitely rather be born with awesome superpowers than have to get bitten by a spider,” he said brightly.

“What,” Frank said flatly, done bandaging Peter up, now looking at him like he was crazy.

“Um, yeah. I was bitten by a radioactive spider on, like, a school field trip. It wasn’t very fun,” he laughed breathlessly.

“How old were you?” Jean asked, begrudgingly interested. He guessed she hadn’t looked at everything when she’d been in his mind.

“Fourteen,” he confessed, and she winced a little.

“You’re kidding,” Frank scoffed.

“Uh, no. I was sick for like a week. Passed out at school and everything. My Uncle Ben was about to take me to the hospital when I got better. Suddenly I woke up and my asthma was gone. I didn’t even need glasses anymore.”

Jean laughed loudly. “You used to wear glasses?” She mocked.

“They were huge,” Ned sniffled a laugh. “I mean, like,” he mimed the shape of them with his hands around his eyes.

“The lenses were so thick they could’ve stopped a bullet,” MJ added, and Jean laughed harder; Peter didn’t care that it was at his expense. It was nice to see her having fun for once. “Forget sticking to walls. That was probably the biggest favor that spider ever did for him.” Her voice was so warm, he knew she didn’t mean it. He was actually a little surprised she even remembered what he looked like back then. He hadn’t even been on her radar—him, the nerdy kid who wheezed when he ran, and her, the mysterious cool girl who seemed so unapproachable.

“If only it could’ve given you the magical ability of self-preservation,” Tony said sarcastically, and Peter groaned.

“You deserve that,” Jean told him, but he could see her softening towards him slightly, at least for now. He’d probably get an earful later, when she could corner him alone, but deep down, he thought Jean knew that he’d never let her help him without a fight. She was just a kid, no matter what she tried to argue, and all the power in the world wouldn’t change where Peter stood on using her. He refused to be Damage Control, “repurposing” things to their own need.

“I know,” he sighed, and when she stuck her hand out to smack him on the back of his head, she just ended up ruffling his hair instead. He bit the cut on his lip so he didn’t smile too wide and ruin the moment.

“I want pictures of you with those glasses,” she added on, and he laughed.

“Good luck with that. There aren’t a whole lot of pictures of me left.” He’d managed to keep the ones May had, bound in a beat-up scrapbook that he kept under the bed back at the apartment, but most other pictures that had been taken of him had either “mysteriously disappeared” or featured him with his face blurred out or blocked by something. “I don’t exist, remember?”

She rolled her eyes, even as Peter noticed Ned’s face fall at the reminder. “Oh please,” Frank scoffed. “There’s plenty of videos of you swinging around the city in your little swimsuit.”

Peter’s face dropped. “Swimsuit? You’re kidding me. My suit is extremely—”

“Blah blah blah,” he waved him off like a gnat.

“I made it myself!”

“Oh, Mr. DIY, I’m so impressed.”

“What, did you make yours, Frank? Did you paint that white skull on your vest all by yourself?” He jeered, and Pepper sighed.

“Okay, you two. Clearly you can do this for hours, but let’s just,” she moved her hands like she was lowering the volume on a radio. Peter felt like he was being chastised by a kindergarten teacher, but he guessed he should be grateful. When Pepper yelled at Tony for doing annoying stuff, it was usually a lot louder. “Not.”

“Sorry, Pepper,” Peter mumbled.

“Whatever, lady,” Frank said, ignoring the look Tony gave him. Peter didn’t know why, but for some reason, he’d thought for sure that the two of them would get along. They weren’t exactly similar—Mr. Stark liked being witty and fought just as much with his mind as he did with one of his suits. Frank preferred to shoot first and ask questions later; that wasn’t to say he wasn’t smart, but he didn’t enjoy flaunting it the way Mr. Stark did. Still, he’d imagined that everyone would see what he saw in Frank, an inherent desire to protect the city, and how he looked out for Peter and Jean, even though he really didn’t have to. He was gruff, and he didn’t show his emotions very often, but that coldness was like a shield. And Mr. Stark used it too. On second thought, maybe they were too similar.

———

Frank was helping himself to a drink at the bar, Tony’s bar, in Tony’s tower. This random guy off the streets who wasn’t quite a hero, wasn’t quite a vigilante, but enacted his own sense of justice anyways, his face on broad display. This random guy who thought he had some claim over Tony’s bar and Tony’s couch and Tony’s kid.

It shouldn’t have pissed him off so much.

But Frank had gotten to be there when Tony hadn’t even been able to remember he had a kid in the first place. He’d been there for whatever had gone down a few weeks ago, and for the long months before that. He had a history with Peter now, a story about Staten Island and free entry to Peter’s apartment whenever he wanted, it seemed. And the worse part was that Tony had seen him in some of the footage of Spider-Man he’d watched. Frank and Peter rarely agreed or worked together; his kid had to do the extra work of keeping Frank from killing whoever Peter was trying to stop. He had hit Peter with his van.

And apparently he’d put him in the hospital too.

“What d’you want?” Frank sighed into his drink when Tony sidled up next to him. The audacity to ask what Tony wanted in his own damn house.

“I want to talk to you, Rambo,” he said, glancing back at the couch to make sure Peter was still distracted talking to Jean, Ned, and MJ.

“Great.”

“I’d lose the attitude if I were you. I wanna know why you put my kid in the hospital.”

Frank sighed like Tony had exhausted him. “Look, it wasn’t on purpose. I was aiming for the girl; she’d frozen half the city and I thought taking her out would take care of the problem. The kid sensed the bullet coming and put himself in her way. She kept him breathing, and I got him to the hospital. End of story.” End of story?! That was really all he had to say for himself?

“Mm. Let me tell you something,” he began, trying to rein in his temper. “That kid has been on his own for a long time. He lost his parents in a plane crash when he was four, maybe five. His uncle got murdered in a mugging right in front of him when he was fourteen. Then he lost his aunt and everyone else in his life before he was even old enough to drink.”

Frank gave him a hard look. “What are you playing at?”

“The kid’s been through a lot. I know you think you’re some kind of role model to him or whatever pedestal you’ve put yourself on in your twisted mind. But the last thing Peter needs is someone who’s more likely to put him in the hospital than keep him out of it.” His voice shook a little, and he breathed through his nose.

“Oh, is that what you think?” The ice in Frank’s glass clinked when he put it down, hard enough for whatever strong-smelling alcohol he’d poured himself to slosh up the sides. Tony didn’t even know what was behind the bartop anymore—he didn’t drink any of it, and he’d gone a long time without touching a drop. Instead he reached for one of the cans of high-end cold brew he kept stocked for when Rhodey stopped by, so they could drink together. “Peter’s a good kid, you know,” he said gruffly.

Tony barked a short laugh, humorless. “You don’t need to tell me that.”

“I think I do,” he bit out. “The kid was fourteen when he got bit. Less than a year after that, he’s already mixed up with you,” he growled. “I mean, I’ve heard a couple stories. You took him to fight the Avengers before he was old enough to drive.”

“It’s not like I kidnapped him,” Tony defended.

“Doesn’t matter whether the kid agreed to go or not, he was fourteen. When you figured out who he was, you should’ve made him stop, not given him some fancy suit and sent him out of the country.”

“If I hadn’t given him that suit, he could be dead,” Tony hissed. “Nothing is ever going to stop that kid from being Spider-Man. He was going to go out, with or without me, so I made it safer for him. Full stop. Don’t lecture me about what I should’ve done when you’re the one putting him in danger.”

“Whatever,” he carped in that thick, grizzled growl of his. “But I’ve got my eye on you, Stark. The last thing the kid needs is more disappointment. You step one foot outta line with him and I won’t hesitate to put you down like a dog.”

Tony clenched his fists so hard he thought his knuckles actually cracked. “You better stay away from my kid.”

“Your kid? Funny. Last I checked his name wasn’t Stark.” ‘It might as well be,’ he thought, but intentionally or not, he’d just missed four years of Peter’s life, and he wasn’t sure he had the right to take any kind of responsibility for him anymore. Still. He wouldn’t let “Frank” hear that from him.

Frank downed his drink in one go and stomped off, back over to the girl and to Tony’s kid, like some kind of fucked up sentinel keeping watch over them.

“What was that?” Pepper hissed as she hurried up to him, looking confused and concerned. Her brow furrowed when she caught his expression. “You’re angry. What happened?”

“Nothing much,” he cracked open his can of coffee. “I just got threatened by that deranged criminal in my own tower.”

“He threatened you?” She whipped back around to glare at the back of Frank’s head, not that the man would notice. He was standing with his arms crossed behind Peter like the fucking grim reaper while the kid talked emphatically with his hands about something nerdy with his friends. “About what?”

“Peter,” Tony said drily, lifting his coffee but not actually drinking any of it.

Her eyebrows lifted. “He threatened you about Peter?” She looked genuinely startled, as if she hadn’t noticed Frank trying to not-so-subtly replace Tony (not that he’d had much competition these past four years, but Tony digressed).

“He thinks I’m going to let him down. I told him that Peter’s my kid, not his, but,” he threw his hands up in defeat. “I guess he thinks I’m the problem.” Tony didn’t mention that he’d technically been the one to come up to Frank, to question him about how Pete had ended up in the hospital a few weeks ago. But that wasn’t really important when Tony hadn’t been throwing around threats, hadn’t made things turn heated.

“Oh my God,” Pepper shook her head, looking exhausted. He didn’t tell her about Frank threatening to put him down like a dog either; some finer details were best kept to himself. “Are you going to tell Peter?”

“No,” he said, sighing. He didn’t even have to think about it. Pepper’s shoulders dropped, and he knew she was almost relieved, not that she’d admit it unless he pushed her. “The kid likes him, for whatever reason. I’ll let it be.” Something in his chest felt hollow. “Besides, I don’t really get to decide who Peter hangs around with.” He almost regretted picking a fight with Frank, thinking of the probably very disappointed look Peter would sport if he knew. “Four years of his life, Pep,” he whispered. “I missed all of it.”

He’d missed so many birthdays, and Peter had probably spent them all alone in that shitty apartment, surveying over a city that only loved the mask he used to protect himself. He’d had all these ideas on what he could do for Peter’s eighteenth birthday, plans he’d been talking out with May over the phone, because it had felt so important then. He’d wanted the kid to know how much he meant to Tony, wanted to celebrate him for getting through everything—Germany, the Blip, the final battle—and still keeping good grades and a shy smile on his face.

But then Peter had turned eighteen, and Tony hadn’t been there. Hadn’t even known.

He wondered if Frank had been around even then.

“Oh, Tony.” She put her arm around his shoulders and held herself close to him, her touch like a weighted blanket over him, suffocating the guilt and shame uncurling like thorny vines in his chest. “That’s not your fault.”

“I know,” he said numbly, not sure if he really did know. He should’ve been there after Mysterio. The minute he saw the news, he should’ve rushed home, but he’d been across the country on Stark Industries business, and he’d figured it would die down eventually. Tony and the other Avengers had done plenty of shitty things, and they’d done it with their faces out for the world to see. The Accords had happened, sort of, and some people would probably never see them as heroes again, but so many others remembered Thanos and half the world returning. He’d figured the kid would be fine. Everyone loved the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

If he’d been there, would Peter have come to him for help instead of Strange? Maybe not, but he still could’ve put a stop to all that multiverse bullshit, and if he’d heard the kid so much as whisper about erasing himself…

Tony never would’ve let that happen.

“Peter doesn’t blame you,” she insisted, because of course she knew he wasn’t convinced. “That kid worships the ground you walk on, Tony. Things may be different, but that has never changed. I can’t imagine how hard these last few years have been on him, but he knows you never would’ve forgotten him willingly.”

“But maybe I should’ve tried harder. With Spider-Man, I mean.” Even admitting it felt like his throat was full of glass and barbed wire. “I knew something was off; why would I give some random hero a suit when I didn’t even know anything about them? I should’ve reached out, gotten to know the kid again.”

“Tony…”

“I wasn’t there. May died in his arms, and I wasn’t there for him.” He gazed across the room at his kid again, laughing himself red in the face as he slumped over onto Ned’s shoulder, wearing an old hoodie he remembered the kid wearing to the Tower a few times, back when. It was Ben’s, he’d said, dark green and worn around the cuffs. It used to look so big on him, the sleeves rolled back to his elbows and the excess fabric threatening to eat him. Now it fit like a glove, almost too tight across his shoulders. The sight of him burned Tony’s eyes. “But Frank was. I don’t know for how long, but clearly they’ve got history now.”

“Tony,” Pepper repeated, firmer. “Frank couldn’t replace you if he wanted to. When Peter had no one but May, no positive, fatherly figure in his life, you were there. You didn’t have to be. You didn’t have to help him, you didn’t even really need him for Germany—“

“The kid was a big help,” he defended.

“But I know you didn’t need a fourteen-year-old boy,” she interrupted sharply. “And I think, deep down, Peter knew it too. But you made him feel needed. Wanted. When he had no one, he had you.”

“And when I wasn’t there, he had Frank.”

She rolled her eyes, shooting a lazy glance at the man in question, stoic and soldierly, even now. “Well, he’s no Tony Stark, is he?”

He cracked a smile. “No. I guess not.”

———

By the time the sun had risen over the skyline of the city, Ned and MJ had both crashed hard, and Peter was almost jealous, watching the peaceful rise and fall of their chests. He couldn’t sleep, no matter how long he laid there with his eyes closed, trying not to think of anything but darkness. It was one of those nights.

Frank was up too, feet kicked up on the table and eyes trained on the door (though occasionally Peter caught his eyes sneaking over to Pepper’s fancy coffeemaker in the corner of the room; Frank was kind of insanely obsessed with caffeine, and he’d drink three to four cups a day of straight black coffee, over-brewed and under-sweetened). Jean was curled up with her head in his lap, occasionally shuddering fitfully, and he’d play with her long red hair until she relaxed again.

The others had gone off back to their rooms for some real sleep, and Peter knew he could’ve easily found his old room, next to where Wanda used to stay, see what Tony had done with the place. Maybe he’d forgotten about his room too, and all the posters and books and pictures he’d left behind would still be waiting there, collecting dust like some kind of sad shrine. Or maybe it had been turned into a home gym, or a computer room, or an office for some college intern who’d wrinkled their nose up at his childish junk and had it boxed up and put out on the curb first chance they got.

Peter didn’t really want to know, so he stayed on the couch.

Golden light filtered in through the expensive shades over the floor-to-ceiling windows, and Peter stared out into the sky, pink and orange and blue, like sherbet. He used to love this view. On nights when he’d stay over at the Tower after wiling away the hours with Mr. Stark in the lab, he’d wake up too early to watch the new day dawn, and most mornings, Pepper would be there too, and she’d make hot tea, and they’d sit together without talking. Peter would drink the view like it was new every time, imagining himself swinging through the metal fingers of the skyscrapers below them, and squinting out as if he’d be able to see Aunt May leaving for work all the way across the city.

Now the sky just made him think of that last morning, Ned’s tears, the blood drying on Peter’s face, how warm MJ had felt in his arms. It had been the start of the day, a beginning for all of them, and yet when Peter thought back, it had only been a death. And walking into that coffee shop after with that stupid note had only been Peter showing up late to his own funeral, eulogy in hand.

He’d never gotten to tell MJ he loved her, not until they’d been at Frank’s together, and she’d looked into the face she’d once held in her hands and she hadn’t seen somebody she had ever loved. It wasn’t her fault, he knew she’d been as gentle as she could, but it had felt like cracking into pieces. For a moment, he’d wished the spell had worked on him like it had on them, purging him from their minds like a bloodstain washing away.

If everyone was so much better off without Peter Parker, he’d thought to himself, why couldn’t he have forgotten him too?

After a bit, he slipped out from under Jean and padded across the floor to sit cross-legged in front of the same windows he’d sat in front of at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. He tried to see his old apartment in the distance, and pictured May coming down the stairs with her purse under her arm. Uncle Ben was in the upstairs window, sitting at his old desk and yawning into a mug of hot coffee. And Peter was still in bed, because it was the weekend, so he didn’t have any school. There was no sign of Spider-Man anywhere in his room.

Glass clicked lightly on the marble floor, and Peter saw a chipped blue mug being nudged gently towards him. He took it carefully, the hot tea inside burning the pads of his fingertips. He remembered this old mug; it had been his first real piece of merch, and Ned had seen it at the store and bought it for him right away. When it got hot, a little red spider melted out of the blue. He must have left it at the Tower the last time he’d been by.

“Found it in the back of the cabinet,” Pepper said softly, so not to wake anybody.

Peter ran his thumb over the scratches and chips in the mug and breathed in the warm, steamy scent of English Breakfast with too much honey, just how he’d always liked it. It warmed him all the way through, and Peter smiled.

Pepper’s fingers smoothed his curls back, and he looked up at her. His eyes were shining, and hers were too. She had her own mug in hand, the sun reflecting golden and pink on her face. It was just like before. “It’s good to have you back, Pete,” she said with only the slightest quaver in her voice.

“Thanks,” he whispered, and she ruffled his hair one last time before slipping off. He almost wished she could’ve stayed a moment longer, but Pepper had always been a steady, yet fleeting presence. She had so much to do, he couldn’t believe she managed to make time for him at all.

The day finished dawning, for Peter alone.

———

Everyone else was still stumbling around with bleary eyes, yawning, once mid-morning rolled around, but Peter was about as wide awake as a person could get after going over twenty-four hours without sleep.

“Morning, Frank,” he said brightly, and the man groaned loudly.

“Do not speak to me like that,” he growled. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet. Jeez.”

“Because you’re so much more receptive to joy after having coffee,” Jean smirked, before returning her attention to the task of figuring out Mr. Stark’s overcomplicated stovetop so she and Peter could have their hot chocolate.

“Hey, can I get a cup of that?” Clint asked, rubbing his eyes as he found a seat, probably having spotted the box of chocolate mix on the counter.

“No,” Jean answered without turning around. Natasha snorted. “It’s just for me and Peter.”

“Why does he get some?” Clint grumbled, and Peter ambled over to help Jean with the stove, setting his mug down next to her borrowed one, which was red and sparkly and definitely Wanda’s old one.

“It’s tradition,” she said blandly, while he fiddled with knobs and buttons that felt entirely unnecessary for what should be a very simple appliance. He finally got it working, though it took him what felt like a million years, and personally he didn’t think it should be this hard to heat up milk, but he wouldn’t mention it to Mr. Stark. Chances were, Tony didn’t know how to use the stove either, because he’d blown up the last one in some crazy experiment, and Pepper hadn’t let him anywhere near the new one. That was what had happened to the microwave (and also the blender, but Peter had been the one at fault that time).

By the time their drinks were done and they’d taken their seats at the table again, knees brushing, Happy had come back with breakfast—he must’ve snuck out, because Peter hadn’t even seen him leave. He had a stack of white and orange boxes in his arms, looking miserable, and Clint perked up the minute he saw him.

“Hi, Happy,” Peter said conversationally, sipping his hot chocolate.

“Shut up,” Happy said automatically. “I got enough donuts to feed an army, so you’d better be grateful.” He dropped the boxes with a thud on the counter, sighing dramatically.

“Thanks—”

“Whatever. Eat your damn breakfast.”

“Happy, you shouldn’t have,” Tony said loftily, already unstacking the boxes and digging through them.

“You told me to go,” Happy rolled his eyes.

“Hey!” Steve called from down the hall. “I want the one with the—”

“The red, white, and blue sprinkles. Yeah.” It was Tony’s turn to roll his eyes. “We know.” Peter let everyone else dig in first, arguing over their favorites and complaining about napkins and pulling up chairs; he always went last and just ate whatever was left because he usually needed so much more food than everyone else. Once he’d eaten at least five, but he’d stopped counting after a while, and the strawberry-filled ones counted more as a fruit, if he thought about it. Of course, the last few years, he hadn’t eaten as much as he used to, and though he wasn’t starving, he’d gone to sleep more than a few times with a gnawing ache in his stomach, remembering how hard May used to have to work just to sustain him.

“I haven’t seen this much food in months,” Jean told him, almost awed, when she returned with a plate full of long johns.

“Me neither,” he huffed a laugh, and she eyed him up as if she’d be able to see bone poking through his hoodie.

“Where’s your plate?” She interrogated. He explained how he usually waited until everyone else had gotten their food, and she just rolled her eyes. “Everything will be gone by then. Do you need me to hold your hand and walk you over to the boxes?” She mocked lightly.

“Ha ha,” he sighed, letting her drag him to his feet and walk him over to the counter. “I just wanted to wait my turn…” and he just trailed off when she shoved a paper plate into his hand and started stacking whatever she could get her hands on onto it.

“That’s stupid,” she told him, and he thought he overheard MJ laughing at his misfortune in the background.

“How old are you, Jean?” Natasha asked kindly when they rejoined the rest of the group.

“I’m sixteen,” she answered, not rudely, but looking uncomfortable. Peter knew she didn’t trust them; if she hadn’t seen into his mind, she wouldn’t even trust him, and she and Frank were barely beginning to grow on each other now, weeks later. She gave out her trust sparingly, and who could blame her, after what had happened to Sara?

“Wow. You’re very powerful for your age,” she complimented. Natasha had always been sympathetic to kids, especially to ones that hadn’t actually gotten to be kids for long before they’d had their childhoods stolen from them. When Wanda was still around, she’d been the same, and Jean was like Wanda in a way. Young and powerful and taken advantage of. (None of them had mentioned to Peter what had happened to her, and he didn’t ask).

“My sister taught me,” was all Jean said, ignoring all the parts about the torture she’d experienced at the hands of Damage Control, and how her rage and her grief had exploded and stopped the city in its tracks.

“Mm. You know, I have a sister too. Are you close?” He had a feeling she knew the answer already, and Peter almost wanted to snap at her to mind her business, but he shoved the inclination down. Jean could protect herself, and he doubted she’d like him hovering over her.

“Yeah. We were,” she answered, and Peter felt the shift in the air when everyone else realized their misstep. It almost made him laugh; that was what they got for being nosy bastards. He took a huge bite of the strawberry-frosted donut Jean had grabbed him. “Peter and I are close too,” she added, and she didn’t have to say that; nobody had asked her to say it. He had a feeling she’d said it for him.

“How did that happen?” Steve asked curiously. “I can’t imagine there was much time to socialize in between everything else.” Peter looked at Jean, and she looked back. She didn’t speak to him in his mind, and he didn’t feel her presence there at all, but something passed between them anyway.

“She’s been in my head,” Peter said softly. “She probably knows me better than anyone.” He hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud, not to MJ and Ned, but it was true. He loved his friends to death, but nobody could understand him quite as well as somebody who could peer into his thoughts and study them like a textbook.

“And Frank,” Jean added.

Frank made a face. “Don’t finish that sentence.”

“It’s such a bonding experience. He tried to shoot me, and he did shoot Peter. We’re basically family now.” He snorted loudly, and she grinned right back.

“I hate you fucking kids,” he growled. “Why do I keep you around?!”

“Because someone has to eat that chili you make,” Peter shot back, and he and Jean laughed together, shooting smug looks at Frank while he pretended to look irritated. “Aw, come on, Frank,” he added. “If you hate us so much, why do you follow me around the city at night?”

“I gotta make sure you aren’t causing any trouble,” he said, lips pressed flat and thin.

“Mm. That must be why you stop by with groceries too,” Jean pretended to realize.

“Well, you’re a kid,” he defended to her. “And I know Webs ain’t feeding you. He’s got like two dollars to his name.” Jean laughed harder. “He ain’t even feeding himself. Amazing Spider-Man,” he mocked. “More like Dehydrated Spider-Man. Or Emaciated Spider-Man.”

“Wow,” Peter rolled his eyes. “Genius. Really, I can see how you came up with “The Punisher.” Creativity just flows out of you.”

“Lose that tone with me,” he scoffed. “It’s a lot better than a fourteen-year-old calling himself Spider-Man. What’s next?” He turned to Jean. “You gonna start goin’ by Mind-Woman?”

“Madwoman,” Peter corrected, and Jean lit up.

“Ooh, I like that one.” Frank threw his hands up, rolling his eyes.

“You both need mental help.”

“That is so interesting to hear, coming from you,” Jean quipped. “Just saying. I’ve been in that head and,” she made a face. “Yikes.”

Frank cuffed Peter on the back of the head, and he yelped dramatically. “Ow! What was that for?”

“You’re a bad influence,” he shrugged.

“Oh please. We’re your favorites,” Peter said. “You love us.”

“No.”

“That’s why you cried at my bedside.”

“No.”

“Oh my God, he cried?!” Jean exclaimed gleefully.

“I did not.”

“He did. Like a baby.”

Frank wagged a warning finger at him. “You know, I’m pretty sick of you. This whole city’s all ‘ooh Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he’s so pure of heart, he’s my hero. I love you, marry me!’ If they knew even half of what an asshole you are, you’d be getting the same treatment as me.”

“The same—? Frank, you threaten people. With guns. You hit me with your van!” Peter laughed.

“You got in my way.”

“Oh, that is such bull—”

“Wow,” Natasha coughed. “You two really can argue forever.”

“The kid started it,” Frank teased, and Peter swore he heard Tony mutter something sounding like ‘childish’ under his breath, but then the conversation moved on, and he didn’t have time to think about it.

———

After breakfast, MJ insisted he have the gash in his side checked on again, just to make sure it was healing right, though she was less than happy when he complied and found out he was healing so well he was considering getting back out on patrol again that night.

“Ned, tell him he’s an idiot,” she insisted when they rejoined the others, and he sighed. He didn’t want to fight with her; he’d only just gotten her back. Not to mention, he was starting to get a killer headache. But he doubted saying ‘can we not argue? I feel super miserable right now, but don’t worry I’ll be fine later to go fight criminals’ would go over well with her.

“Um…why?” Ned asked slowly, completely engrossed with Dr. Banner, still. MJ gave him a look, and they both glanced over at Peter in unison. Something in Ned’s face shifted. “Fine. You’re an idiot,” he said cheerfully.

“You don’t even know what this is about!” He complained, throwing his hands up.

“I know you look terrible, and that probably has something to do with it. I thought you were going to get checked out just now?”

“I did,” he confirmed, digging his palm into one of his eyes as the throbbing got harder to ignore. “I’m pretty much good to go.” Good thing he’d thought to bring his suit with, though he’d have to ask Mr. Stark about cleaning it off and sewing up the tear in the front. Spider-Man couldn’t go out on the streets looking like an easy target, especially not after it had been all over the news that he’d been in the hospital a couple of weeks ago.

“No,” MJ said firmly. “The scans said you were healing well, not that you could go swinging around in your underwear.”

“It’s not under—“ he cut himself off. “Why does everybody say that?”

“Because your little costume looks like a pair of footsie pajamas,” Frank called from where he and Natasha were sparring. Peter huffed, but chose not to dignify that with a response.

“Peter, you can’t go patrolling,” Ned said, wide-eyed. “You almost died last night. You have to let yourself rest!”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” He mumbled, rubbing a bit harder at his eye.

“Have you even slept?” MJ asked, ignoring him. He debated whether or not it was worth it to try to lie to her; she’d see right through him, but admitting it outright might as well have been admitting defeat, and Peter hated to do that.

“I’m Spider-Man,” he sighed instead. “I don’t need sleep.”

Ned tilted his head in consideration. “No, that sounds like you just made that up. Like, right now.”

“Ned, come on,” he begged. “You know I’ve gone out way worse than this!”

“That doesn’t help your case the way you think it does,” his best friend told him, almost pitying. Peter dropped his head into his hands and tried to breathe through the steady hammering of his skull, like a drumbeat getting louder and louder. Why did these headaches have to sneak up on him like this? Now he was trapped with Ned and MJ and he couldn’t alert them that anything was wrong, but jeez, his head hurt.

“You can’t stop me,” he said finally. “If Spider-Man doesn’t show, then everything that happens when I’m not there to stop it is on me.” He couldn’t see MJ’s face with his hands over his eyes, but he could tell she wasn’t happy. Her heartbeat picked up slightly, and he heard the aggravation in the pattern of her breathing.

“You can’t really believe that, Peter.” It was so odd to hear her call him that again. He didn’t feel like Peter, not so much anymore. She should call him Spider-Man. That made more sense.

“I do,” he whispered, and the admission throbbed behind his eyes like the root of all his problems. ‘I just wanted to be like you.’

“Peter.” Ned said his name like his own heart had just broken.

‘And I wanted you to be better.’

The thing is, Peter was better, now. Spider-Man did more good than ever before, without school or friends getting in the way. Even Tony had said that May would be proud of him. But that didn’t change that she was dead. And Ben was dead. Ben…who had died under his hands, blood pooling between them. Ben had been afraid when he died; Peter could see it in how wide his eyes had gotten. But it hadn’t made sense then, because Peter had still been a kid, and the only other time he’d seen Ben afraid had been when the spider bite had made him so sick they’d almost taken him to the hospital.

But Peter had seen it on his face then, and he hadn’t known what to do with it. He didn’t know how to smooth it away or make it better. He just sat there crying out for help that wasn’t coming while Ben’s eyes went glassy and cold, and his chest stopped moving. He wailed like a child, as if he hadn’t had all the power to save Ben right there in his hands, and he’d stayed until a police officer pulled him away so they could take their pictures and take their time and take Uncle Ben.

When they’d driven him back home to Aunt May to deliver the news, Ben’s blood had dried all over him, even under his fingernails.

His head screamed at him for relief, and he wondered distantly if Tony still had any of the pain medication he’d had synthesized for him lying around anywhere. With his luck, it was probably expired.

“…Are you feeling okay?” Ned added after a moment, his voice warbling and muffled.

“I’m fine.” His tongue didn’t want to work anymore. “Just a little headache.” It actually felt like someone was swinging a baseball bat into his head repeatedly, but saying something like that after years of insistently downplaying injuries would probably give his friends a heart attack.

Ned’s cool hand found the back of his neck, and he shuddered before he could stop himself, some of the pressure starting to ease from the muscles down into his shoulders. “I’m okay,” he blew out a slow, shaky breath; he wished he was capable of anything other than making his friends worry over him all the time. “This just happens sometimes. It’ll pass.”

“You never used to get headaches like this,” Ned pointed out gently.

“Guess I’m just getting old,” he tried to joke, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t land, not with Ned and MJ. Four years without them or not, they still knew him so well. He felt so different than he had when he was seventeen and living with May, but to them, he imagined he hadn’t changed at all. Same old Peter, just…less going on in his life outside of Spider-Man. But they’d always known both of those sides of him; there’d been no hiding from them, ever.

MJ settled on his other side, her fingers twining carefully with his, and he wondered if she’d ever laid awake at night in her apartment and felt it was so cold and empty she could hardly stand it. Probably not. She’d still had her family and Ned and Betty and a new boyfriend. Peter had only Spider-Man and phone calls with DeWolff—who didn’t even know his real name—and Frank when he was lucky. Them, and the asbestos he shared his house with, but even that wasn’t alive either. It was just Peter, his shoes lonely by the front door, his mug by itself in an empty sink, and when the light came through the old window from a sunrise he watched alone, the only shadow cast on the floor was his. It was almost better that he couldn’t afford more furniture, because all those open spaces did was remind him of the spots that should’ve been filled by people who couldn’t picture his face if they were asked. Until Jean had come along, Peter Parker was the name of an unremarkable, unmissable boy that had outstayed his welcome in the body of a vigilante.

“You should take something,” she told him, long after Ned’s skin had grown warm and comfortable against his.

“Yeah,” he agreed weakly because it still hurt too much to think of doing anything else. Peter let them keep their hands on him when he stumbled to his feet (when had he gotten on the floor?!), and he was sure he was squeezing the hell out of MJ’s fingers, but she didn’t complain for a second. She’d always been so strong…he wondered if she’d been afraid when she’d been blipped, like he had been…he’d cried like a kid in Mr. Stark’s arms…

“Thanks,” he said, when the room settled to only a slight sway of the floor, and he let MJ’s hand drop. She and Ned both lingered nervously, and he waved them off as politely as he could manage, squinting at them through strained eyes and pulling off a grimace that could maybe pass as a smile. “I gotta talk to Tony,” he stumbled out.

Walking felt strange, like every time he lifted his foot to take a step, he might fall off the ground and plummet into a nameless, faceless abyss waiting to swallow him up, and a paranoid kind of anxiousness swirled in his stomach. He thought of Jean, how she’d never let him go tumbling off into deep space without her, and that sort of got his legs moving again.

Mr. Stark wasn’t in the training gym, which frankly, Peter hadn’t even known that was where he was, though he guessed that made a little more sense as to why Natasha and Frank had been sparring. He’d just followed MJ on the way back from the med bay where Bruce gave him a once-over. Come to think of it, Peter had actually zero idea where Tony was right now. Maybe he shouldn’t have insisted he didn’t need help anymore…

Everything was going kind of purple and weird around the edges when he stumbled out into the hallway, the expensive floor pitching from side to side and running away from him as he tried to walk. “Mr. St’rk?” Who was he talking to? He was by himself, the hallway was empty…and stretching longer and longer and getting so dark…someone should tell Pepper that Tony hadn’t been paying the electric bill…

The whirling colors and swirling room only served to make the screaming in his head worse, so he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to rely on his better senses to guide him. Tuning into the sound of his own footfalls, how the noise echoed different when he was too close to a wall, how the heat from a vent nearby flowed a certain way…

His better senses were the thing making his brain try to melt out of his ears, but it was fine. Peter would be fine. He was always fine.

“Kid?”

“Mr. Stark?” His eyes flew open, relieved, and light hit him hard right in the face. The older man was at the other end of the ridiculously long hall, but he was blurry around the edges, and his hands were doubling and tripling and rainbowy, like Peter was looking at him through a giant prism. He smiled as his knees went out from under him.

“Hey, whoa!” Suddenly Tony was there, cold hands grabbing at Peter, and oh, the floor was so cool on his face. He pressed his forehead hard into the ground until the feeling whited out everything else. It was ten times better than Ned. Was there a freezer anywhere around the Tower? Peter would kill to stick his head in a freezer right now. “Talk to me, kid. What’s wrong?”

“My head hurts, Mr. Stark,” he mumbled to the floor, shivering despite the sweat beading on the back of his neck and on his forehead.

“This seems a little worse than that, Pete,” Tony responded, giving up on trying to get him back on his feet. “Do you have a concussion? Be honest. I’ll only be mad later that you’re an idiot and you tried to keep it a secret.”

“No,” he groaned. “Migraine.” The world felt weird in his mouth, long and stretchy and full of molasses.

“Migraine?” Tony echoed dumbly. “Since when do you get those?”

“Long time,” he said shortly. All this talking wasn’t helping the pulsing in his head; was someone having a party? It felt like the loudest bass music was being blasted through a giant speaker. “D’you have m’pills?” He asked, the letters coming out of his mouth all scrambled and misshapen.

“What?”

“The stuff you made me,” he forced himself to annunciate as much as he could with his brain on fire and his face flat on the tile. “For the pain.” He’d almost bawled his eyes out the first time he’d limped into the Tower after school, body aching from still-healing wounds, and found that Tony only had to take one look at him before whipping out new medicine made with Peter’s specific metabolism in mind. Nobody had asked him to do it, but he’d seen what Peter needed and he’d gotten it done. With his own two hands (and some help from Bruce and Dr. Cho), he’d soothed Peter’s ailments and turned them into faraway dreams.

“Oh. Oh. Kid, I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”

“C’n you check?” He sighed, closing his eyes again as the light lanced in sharper, and Peter’s eyes threatened to catch fire and melt out of his skull.

“I’m not leaving you here, Pete. You think you can walk?” Peter didn’t bother answering, trying to get his legs to move again and get his feet under him. The sudden, clumsy movement made a bolt of pain strike through him like lightning, webbing into veins and spreading through his brain until it was all electrified, and he was screaming through gritted teeth, his mouth tasting like metal, his—

“Pete!” Tony hands were on him, and they didn’t feel soothing or grounding anymore. His skin crawled in revulsion at the feeling of being touched, and his skin was so hot and everything hurt so bad, it was like his nerve endings were on fire. Even the slightest brush of fingertips on skin was like someone was raking razor wire over him, and all the sights and smells and sounds flooded him until he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t feel, he couldn’t—

“Natasha!” Someone was yelling. Why did they have to yell so loudly? He felt like his eardrums were about to explode, oh no—

His eyes were burning again, and it hit him in a distant, pain-dazed part of his mind that it wasn’t from tears. His eyes, squeezed tightly shut against way too much sensory input to handle, were turning shiny black and distinctly not human, and Peter couldn’t control himself.

“Pete, stay awake, alright? Just keep your eyes on me.” The hands shaking his shoulders belonged to Tony, he remembered, and Tony couldn’t see him like this. None of them could. Not any of the Avengers, not even MJ or Ned—if they realized how far from the Peter they knew he’d become, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

He gasped for breath, panic digging its fingers into his heart, and his ears were ringing, and he could taste his own blood, and he must have bitten his tongue again, somewhere between all the screaming, and Tony couldn’t see him like this. Footsteps pounded closer, voices clamoring over each other asking what was wrong and what they could do and was he alright, and Peter couldn’t trust a single one of them, not right now. No, he needed someone cold and sturdy and familiar, someone who knew him to be a little ruthless, without the shadow of the smiley boy he’d been before haunting over him.

“Pete, look at me, bud, come on—” Tony prodded gently, and through bloody, gritted teeth, a decision burst from his mouth. It was too callous for him to stop, a half-formed plea he couldn’t justify later when he was in his right mind, not without exposing everything.

“FRANK!” Tony’s hands finally left him, shuddering and shaking on his knees, forehead pressed to the floor, hands shoved against his ears.

“Move it!” Somebody barked, rough but not loud—actually, even a whisper felt loud to him right then, but in the face of everyone else’s panic, the sound was almost an oasis—and Peter’s shoulders dropped slightly.

Footsteps shuffled to the side like muffled fireworks going off right next to his head, and he heard someone else kneel next to him. Not touching. But unmistakably Frank.

“Peter,” someone else, not Tony, tried, and Frank scoffed dismissively.

“The kid call for you? Didn’t think so.”

“But, he—”

“Beat it.” When Peter didn’t weigh in to protest, the excess heartbeats shuffled off back into the other room, just him and Frank alone together, and the pain didn’t go away, but at least the sound had. “What’s the problem, kid?” Frank asked, as close to whispering as he ever got.

“Couldn’t let them see me like this,” he slurred, still shaking all over, like he was cold.

“Like what? Hurt? Don’t be stupid.”

“No.” He’d never shown anyone these eyes, not really. Jean had caught a glimpse of them a few times, and he was grateful she’d gone out of her way to pretend it had never happened, because despite what he’d said at Damage Control, she knew he still didn’t love the monstrous side of himself, not how things were now. The Hand had seen them, when Jean had been in their minds, but to anyone else, he was still the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. He couldn’t ever show this side of him to his family, to his friends, from his life before. But Frank was different. He didn’t give a damn what somebody’s DNA looked like as long as they didn’t get on his bad side—and he could claim to only tolerate Peter, but they both knew better.

Peter opened his eyes slowly, trying to shield himself from the scorching brightness, and Frank was silent for a long second. Then, “whoa.” Peter’s heart dropped; had he miscalculated? “You sick or something, daffodil?”

“No.” His chest was heaving. “They just. Do that sometimes.”

“Huh.” And that was all Frank said on the matter. When Peter risked a glance up at his face, he didn’t look disgusted or bothered or even confused. He just sat next to Peter on the floor, standing guard like somebody might spring an attack from any angle.

A little more of the tension drained out of his shoulders, and he slumped off his knees, flat back onto the floor.

“You good now?” Frank asked, and Peter shook his head, which felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. Frank sighed, his hand coming to rest on the back of Peter’s neck. The action was awkward and stilted, like he expected to be shrugged off or pushed away, but Peter was in too much pain to move, and he didn’t really mind anyway. The pain building behind his face spiked again, and he felt blood start to drip down his face. Great. Now he was smearing his blood all over Tony’s floor.

“Hey, is he okay?” Jean asked, slipping out into the hall, and he squinted at her dirty green shoes; when they’d met, she’d been in too-small Doc Martens that were scuffed and frayed and full of holes, and he couldn’t afford her any new ones, so he gave her his old ones. She liked them, even though she had to tie the laces around her ankles to keep them on her feet. She’d written her name on the side of the sole, and he could almost make out the blurry letters now that he was eye-level with them.

“He’s face-down on the floor. What does this look like to you?”

The green Converse sighed and came to sit, legs criss-crossed, right beside him. He closed his eyes again, trying to focus on the weight of Frank’s hand on his neck to ground him. “What—” the rubber sole of Jean’s shoe squeaked when she moved, and Peter flinched. “Is that blood?”

Her fingers tangled in his curls and lifted his head. Blood dripped down his face and onto the floor in a little puddle, crimson and smudged; it trailed down his throat too, leaving bloody tracks over the healed claw marks he’d left there himself the day before. “Frank, did you hit him?!”

“Hit—?! Why the fuck would I hit him?” The yelling pierced his ears, and he groaned. “Kid,” Frank barked. “Why’s your face bleeding?!”

“Headache,” he croaked. “Just happens.”

“What?” Jean hissed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He knew she wouldn’t like his answer before he even said it. “It’s not your job to worry over me.” He wiped at the blood drying on his face weakly with his hand.

“You kidding me, kid? You should be in a hospital, you little menace!”

“I’m Spider-Man.” Blood bubbled on his lips, sticking to the back of his throat and lining his mouth. “I’ll be okay.” His throat seized, and he had no choice but to let the mouthful that had collected on his tongue spill out onto the floor.

“This is so not normal,” Jean spat, but he knew she could see on his face how miserable he was, and she heaved a sigh. A minute later, her mind melted into his, glittery and hot, and it surrounded him until the pain could only bounce dully off of her protective bubble. He sighed, the muscles in his back slowly relaxing. It still hurt, but the sharpness of it had softened out. Just this once, he let her help without fighting it.

“Thank you,” he breathed.

“Whatever,” Jean grumbled.

When the pain was in the background enough for him to breathe through it, he sat up, pressing his back against the cold wall. It was the three of them in a row—black and white and red and blue and yellow and green. Blood still trailed slowly down his face. “Thanks,” he said again, almost uncomfortable now, fidgeting with the sleeve of Ben’s old hoodie.

“Why’d you call for me, anyway?” Frank asked gruffly, though the anger that usually shadowed everything he said had taken its leave.

“Because I can trust you,” he admitted. Oh, look at that; he’d gotten blood under his fingernails. He picked at them mindlessly.

“You can’t trust them?” Frank prodded.

“Not with this,” he gestured loosely at his face. “Last time they all saw me and, like, knew who I was, I was…” he swallowed thickly. “Still almost human.”

Jean’s head snapped to look at him. “You are human.”

He actually almost laughed at that. “Jean, my DNA isn’t even remotely normal. Everything about me, my hearing, my sight, my metabolism, it’s all faster and stronger,” he scoffed, rolling up his sleeves so they could see the barely-there slits in his wrists. “I can shoot webs out of my arms. Does that sound human to you?”

Frank leaned in closer, peering at the holes. “Oh, shit.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Jean insisted. “You’re still Peter Parker.” Then why didn’t he feel like it?

He shook his head, almost nauseous. “I’m a monster.”

Frank sat back. “What are you talking about, kid?”

“What do you mean, what am I talking about?! Can you stick to walls, Frank? Can you stop a car with your bare hands? I’m not like you. I’m not human!” Would it be better if he’d never been bitten? He’d still be that sickly, nerdy boy with blurry vision that stood no chance at saving Ben, but it would’ve spared May. And MJ and Ned, they could’ve gone on like normal without him, no danger, no gaping hole in their lives even when he wasn’t there to mess things up.

“If you’re a monster,” Jean seethed. “Then what am I?”

His stomach dropped. “That’s different.”

“How?!” She demanded.

“Because you were born like this, Jean!” He snapped. “This is who you’re supposed to be. And there’s nothing monstrous about you, either. Your powers don’t define anything about you, your choices do.”

“How are you any different?” She snipped back.

“Because I…” he pressed his hand to his chest, nails biting over the skin of his chest. “I wasn’t born like this. This happened to me. To Peter,” he corrected hollowly. “Your powers are a part of you, of your DNA. Mine was altered until I couldn’t recognize myself.” He still couldn’t; if anything, it had only gotten worse. His reflection that leered at him and mocked him for hiding behind such a disarming face, the beast lurking underneath. “And then it happened again. Don’t you get it? I’m barely Peter anymore.” More spider than man.

“Jeez,” Frank whispered, looking away, and Jean just stared at him, eyes swimming with a million things she didn’t say.

“Sorry,” he cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed, and brushed at the drying smudge of blood still left on his face. At least his headache had mostly retreated. Jean’s long fingers caught his hand before it could fall back into his lap, and he froze. “Jean?”

“Don’t be sorry.” She wove their fingers together, like she’d finally discovered him at the other end of her string of yarn, and found they were inextricably tied together. She didn’t recoil from him in disgust; she never had. His hands were bloody, and sometimes his eyes weren’t human, but Jean didn’t run. He couldn’t find it in himself to wish she would, even if that meant she was stuck with him forever.

“You’re just a kid, Jean. I shouldn’t have put this all on you. I—“

“I understand,” she interrupted, and her lips trembled.

“…What?”

“My mother. She…she didn’t want anything to do with me or Sara when she saw what we could do. For so long, I tried to rationalize it. I told myself it wasn’t her fault, she hadn’t asked for daughters like us. But I missed her so much,” her voice didn’t break. “I wanted to know why I wasn’t good enough anymore.”

“Oh, Jean,” he choked out. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she repeated, steely. “Sara had things right. She knew a real mother wouldn’t have cared. She should’ve loved us anyway, I know that now. I was never the monster.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s the same for you. You aren’t any less of a human, any less Peter Parker than you were before the bite. And if they can’t see that, then fuck them. You’ve gone four years without their help. Why is it so different now?”

“Because this time it would be their choice to leave me.” He said it like a secret, and it left his lips like something mangled and flightless, falling onto the floor between them, dead.

“Ah, jeez,” Frank muttered again. “Look, kid. I ain’t exactly a saint, either. Maybe I can’t do the things you can. Fine. But I’m not the one you should be holding yourself against as the model of humanity. I’ve done plenty of monstrous things. I’m still human,” he bit out. “Just not a very good one.”

“Frank…”

“I don’t wanna hear it, kid.”

“I think you’re good,” he pushed. Frank rolled his eyes, but Peter knew better by now than to take it personally.

“Look at us,” Jean said, resting her head on Peter’s shoulder. “A bunch of monsters.” She held Peter’s hands in both of hers, not letting him run, and he rested his chin on the top of her head. He used to wonder sometimes if she pretended he was Sara. If he was being a good replacement. Peter wasn’t wondering that right now.

“Ugh, jeez,” Frank huffed. “Cut it out with the sappy shit.”

“Don’t be like that, Frank,” she wheedled, all big eyes and the lanky frame of a kid. He stared resolutely in the other direction, and it started to make Peter smile, eyes wet. “Come on, Frank.” Like he would ever sit close to them and be big and monstrous with them. At least any more than he already did.

Frank bumped Peter’s knee with his.

“Aw,” he teased, sniffling. “That’s sweet, Frank, you big softie.”

“Shut up!” He snapped, but he didn’t yank his knee away. “I’m not soft.”

“Are you crying?” Peter asked, pretending to lean in and try to look.

“Don’t start with that again.” He kicked Peter’s shoe with the toe of his boot. “And hey,” he said, sharper all the sudden. “If any of them give you any trouble, let me know,” he said, staring Peter dead in the eye.

“…Are you offering to kill them for me?”

“Stark? Definitely. Jury’s out on everyone else for now.”

Jean snorted.

———

Tony wasn’t moping.

Okay, he was.

Peter had looked awful. Really. His skin had been almost gray, his eyes wild and unseeing, sweat sticking his hair to his forehead. There had been a moment, when his knees had first gone out from under him, that he had worried Peter might be dying. Maybe he’d hidden an injury from Tony and from FRIDAY’s scans somehow, and his body couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe—

It should’ve been a relief, then, to hear it was just a headache. Peter had never gotten headaches like that before, but a lot could change in four years, whether he liked it or not. Yet it only served to freak Tony out more, because then Peter had asked—no, begged—for Tony to still have the medicine that would work with his metabolism, which was faster than the average super soldier’s, and Tony…

Didn’t have it.

He knew he didn’t. In fact, he had a hazy memory of coming across an expired bottle in the med bay a year or so ago and throwing it out without thought, because he didn’t know anyone who would need anything that strong, and frankly, they were old anyways. Still, he told the kid he’d go look, because maybe he’d missed some. Maybe, maybe Tony could still fix this for his kid. He’d yelled for the others, he’d panicked—Tony rarely panicked—and he was running through the fastest route to the med bay in his mind, and…

Peter yelled for Frank.

Frank Castle. The Punisher. The guy who put Peter in the hospital. That Frank. Peter yelled to him for help when he was collapsed on the floor. He didn’t call for Tony, or MJ, or Ned. Not for Bruce, who could maybe actually do something to help, or Natasha, who was always calm and comforting under pressure.

He called for Frank. Not Tony.

Frank. The guy who’d been there when Tony hadn’t even known Peter’s name. The guy who’d carried Peter, bloody, into the hospital and, according to the news, sat outside his room for days. The guy who’d told Tony he’d put him down if Peter ever got hurt because of him.

Tony couldn’t get Peter to call him by his first name in all the years of them knowing and fighting together. It was always ‘Mr. Stark’ this, and ‘Mr. Stark’ that, and after a bit, he’d grown to like it. The kid called him Mr. Starkthe kid. It was what they did.

But then Peter called him Frank. Not ‘Mr. Castle,’ or ‘Mr. Punisher, sir,’ in that awkward way of his. He called out for Frank with easy familiarity, somebody he trusted to come running when he did. And Frank did. For such a coarse, careless man, he didn’t hesitate the slightest to shove them all aside when some scrappy kid from Queens asked him for help.

So Tony was moping.

He knew it wasn’t fair of him. Really, he should feel better to know that Peter had people looking out for him while he was otherwise alone and uncared for on the streets of New York City. And he did. He did feel better. Except, he didn’t, at the same time. Because after Ben and after the bite, Tony was the one who’d been there. Maybe he’d slacked off a little on the whole mentoring thing at first, but after the Vulture, the internship had barely been a lie, and…

Peter had felt less like the kid and more like his kid.

He waited anxiously in the penthouse where MJ had somehow managed to corral all of them off to (despite more than one of them being either genetically modified or specially trained), pacing and trying not to worry the longer Peter didn’t appear. After a while, Jean slipped out of the room, sending them a look that promised painful things if they tried to stop her. She didn’t return either.

Tony was this close to hacking Tower security (was it really ‘hacking’ if it was his security anyway?) and spying them on, because Peter had been in rough shape when Tony had left and now…nothing. Not a word from anybody. Natasha and Clint had started up some asinine card game of theirs, and Ned was rambling nervously to MJ by the door, and Tony couldn’t stand it any longer.

Finally, the three returned, and his tense muscles eased and—

Was that blood on Peter’s face?!

———

“What happened? Are you okay?” MJ fired off quickly, narrow eyes sending suspicious looks at Frank before he even fully had a foot through the door.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” he assured her. “I just get nosebleeds sometimes.”

“First headaches, now nosebleeds?” Tony asked, and he was clearly suggesting something, dancing around it in that witty, sarcastic way of his. “What have you been doing these last four years, selling off parts of your brain to science?”

“Ha ha,” Peter laughed nervously. “No, um, actually, it’s sort of a sensory thing. My hearing and stuff, it’s all a lot better than it was before. Pretty recent, so. Yeah.”

Bruce tilted his head in consideration. “Recently?” He echoed. Peter nodded. “I can’t think of any reason your senses would suddenly improve so much when you were bit so many years ago,” he reasoned out slowly. “Unless you underwent a second mutation.”

“Ah. Yes. Yep. That’s about right,” Peter answered awkwardly.

“What, it just happened out of nowhere?” Happy frowned.

He shrugged forcefully. “I don’t really know. I’m not much of a biologist. Hey, Ned, you okay, buddy?” Nobody spoke for a second, and Peter was almost positive his anxious rambling had given him away for sure.

But then Ned, pale and shifty, let out a breath. “Yeah, man. You just freaked me out for a minute. I thought I was gonna lose you again.”

“Oh,” Peter whispered. Jean’s fingers dug into his, tighter, and he knew she was giving him that ‘told you so,’ look that meant his friends really did care about him so much, but Peter already knew they did. He just…he worried they wouldn’t anymore if they knew the whole truth. Maybe he wasn’t giving them enough credit—MJ had never minded odd, mildly disturbing things, and Ned had once asked if he could summon an army of spiders—but he was just so scared maybe he had crossed the line of no return that meant Peter was officially not human enough to be the boy they knew anymore.

It was…whatever.

“Sorry, Ned,” he cleared his throat. Peter knew what Jean was thinking, that this was the perfect time to tell everyone what exactly had happened to him in the aftermath of that secondary mutation. But he didn’t know how to say it…and he just wasn’t sure if he even wanted to.

“Hold on,” Bruce started to cut in again, not looking satisfied with Peter’s answers.

“Frank,” Jean interrupted. “I’m starving.”

“The hell am I supposed to do about that?” He groused. Peter sighed in relief, because he recognized a clumsy topic change when he saw one.

“You were just complaining Peter’s broke,” she pushed. “So aren’t you supposed to be feeding me?”

“Aw, for the love of—!”

“Relax,” Tony snarked, giving Frank a hostile look that Peter didn’t have the energy to read into. “We’ll order pizza or something.” Bruce’s eyes were still on him, and Peter smiled awkwardly.

“We can, uh, talk later?”

“Sure,” Bruce nodded slowly, something in his face scrutinizing Peter’s, as though he had x-rays behind the glasses on his face. But then Tony was taking orders and MJ was taking his hand, asking if they could talk, and Peter couldn’t focus on that anymore.

He let MJ lead him out onto a balcony he hadn’t even noticed, her hands so warm in his. “Hey,” she said, smiling nervously.

“Hi,” he said back. ‘Please don’t let me screw this up,’ he begged mentally.

“I just,” she took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you. Alone. Since we got interrupted before.”

“Okay,” he swallowed, resisting the urge to run. “Whatever you need to say, I’m…I’m listening.”

“I’m angry at you,” she said. “So angry. You broke your promise, and I don’t know what to do with that. I can’t just be angry at you either, because I know why you did it.”

“You can be angry,” he said quickly. “You have every right.”

She shook her head, almost defeated. “I don’t want to be angry, Peter. I miss you, and I’m angry that you made me have to miss you. But I don’t have to anymore, and…” Somewhere along the lines, she’d gotten much closer to him, her hands gently framing his face. He was holding his breath without even realizing it until his lungs started to burn. “I know it’s messy and it’s been so long, but I love you, Peter, I do.”

“I love you too,” he gasped out, forced to take in a breath. Her lips were pressed against his, then, desperate and aching, and it opened up a pit in his chest that he thought had maybe always been there. Her hands on his face, her lips on his lips…

She tangled her fingers in his hair, one hand moving to the back of his neck to pull him closer, and he savored every second of their closeness, of the feeling of being so connected, so desired again. He couldn’t think of anything else right then. Just her. MJ. All along, every moment, it had been her.

When they pulled away, he felt so dizzy like he might dissolve into stars and spiral out of his own body. Her fingers were still tangled on the back of his neck. “Where did you get this scar?” She whispered, her lips still so close to his; he could see the faintest reddish stain left behind from lipstick the day or so before. Her fingers traced a scar that made him shudder.

“Hm?” He asked. He could hardly remember his own name, let alone what marks he had on his skin.

Her eyes widened, and she pulled away. “The inhibitor,” she realized. Her fingers were on the scar left by the inhibitor; Peter’s eyes widened too. “I helped you make that,” she said, like she was just remembering it. He guessed her more recent memories of him had been lost in the haze when the dam on everything else broke out. “And it was for you.”

He winced. “MJ…”

“Oh my God.” When she stepped back and her hands left him, he felt an empty sort of cold wash back over him, and that gaping pit in his chest that her touch had reminded him of felt so apparent. It was spreading, eating him, carving away at him like acid. “You treated yourself like a monster that had to be leashed, and I fucking helped you.”

“MJ, please,” he sucked in a breath. His eyes were burning.

“Was this because you mutated again?” She asked, and why did she have to be so damn smart? “No. You wouldn’t do this over that.” It was only because MJ knew him so well, and because the only context she had was that his senses had been dialed up from eleven to one hundred—otherwise she wouldn’t have doubted her own theory. If she knew the whole story, knew how monstrous he’d been, how he couldn’t control himself…

She’d understand then.

“It was because of the mutation,” he cut her off. Everything hurt. “I just, I couldn’t control myself, and I can’t ever be a risk to my city. To you. I had to do it.” Her eyes were filled with tears, and he hated that he’d been the one to put that look on her face again. “But I don’t need it anymore!” He said quickly. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry. Just please don’t be upset with me,” he choked out.

She kissed him again, fingers curled around his ears. He hadn’t expected it, but he didn’t complain, letting her draw him in, the black hole swirling in his chest filling up with the weight of her touch, the taste of the cherry cola mints Ned always used to carry around to share with them still in her mouth, and Peter breathed her in. When she pulled away this time she didn’t go far, their foreheads pressed together tight enough to bruise. “Don’t ever do that to yourself again,” she said, eyes like diamonds, impossible to cut, but sharp enough to break him like glass. “I know there’s something you aren’t telling me, so I want you to promise, and I want you to mean it this time, Peter. I don’t care if you can spit venom out of your teeth, you’re still Peter.” Could she feel that he was crying? Or were their tears running together between them like blood? “Say you swear.”

“I swear,” he promised, and he promised himself he’d really mean it. He wouldn’t back out again, words shoved in his pocket on crinkling paper, left to crease and yellow in an old coffee cup. He wouldn’t wait four years to hold her again. It wasn’t fair to her, no matter how badly he wanted to protect her, to steal her right to choose what she did and didn’t know about her own life. At the time, it had seemed so simple, a choice of respecting her wishes or saving her life, but now…

He would be so selfish now. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to hurt her again. He wanted to hold her forever.

So many times he’d reflected back on their last stolen moment together, that final sunrise, and he’d almost cursed the sun for going on its way, for not freezing itself in that second, so he could keep himself there, safe, forever. Now, if he had the choice, he’d let any infinite number of rising and falling suns and moons and stars pass him by as long as she was there with him to bear witness to it. He didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it was what he felt.

“God,” she breathed, smiling as she wiped his tears away with her thumbs. “You better be telling the truth this time.”

“I am,” he gasped out. “I’m not…I’m so afraid, MJ. I’m scared I could get you killed just for knowing me. But I know I can’t keep myself away; if you know my name, then,” he choked on his words, but forced himself to keep going. “Then you know the risks. You know Peter Parker doesn’t get a happy ending.” She’d met the other two versions of him, had heard all of the names of the dead, familiar and not, and she knew what it meant to know Peter Parker, Spider-Man. “I can’t stop being Peter, I’ve tried. And New York needs Spider-Man, meaning you’ll always be in danger if you’re near me. But I have to trust you to choose.”

She was gripping him so tight it almost hurt, and he drank in the pain. Reveled in it. It meant this was real. “You know,” she said softly. “Anyone can Spider-Man. Anyone could’ve been bitten by that spider, and maybe they even would’ve made the same choices you did. That never had to be you, I don’t care what the multiverse says.”

“I don’t…”

“I didn’t fall in love with Spider-Man. I fell in love with you. Whether or not you’re a hero…it doesn’t make a difference to me. As long as I’m with you.”

“Why?” He hissed, eyes burning again. “Why would you risk your life over this?” Did she even remember what the other Peter had said about his Gwen? This was so, so dangerous for her, and he knew if he didn’t want to lose her, he shouldn’t try to convince her to leave, but if he got her to stay—

If he got her to stay, and he couldn’t save her, that was on him. And he’d lose her forever.

“Because not anyone can be Peter Parker,” she said simply, as though it made perfect sense. “I can’t find anyone like you. And I don’t want to. Nobody else I’ve met would go to the lengths you tried to just to ask me out. There was never a second where I doubted if you knew me, you’ve known me, and I know you. You can pretend to be all dark and brooding, but I saw you with Ned. Even when I didn’t remember you, I knew you. How could I run from that?”

“I don’t want you to,” he admitted, almost ashamed. “I still dream of you all the time. Of talking to you, and sitting with you on the roof, and—”

“You’re such an idiot.” She kissed him as punctuation, and it tasted like giving in. He could feel the innate selfishness in the action, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. She’d made her choice, and he would respect it. Even if she’d pushed him away again and told him her memories had changed nothing in the face of those four, eternal years, if she’d told him to get out of her life, then he would. He belonged to her; if she wanted him, she could have him. There was no fight left in him.

Someone knocked on the glass balcony door, and they sprang apart. Ned stood there, grinning mischievously even though his face burned with embarrassment. “Hey, you two,” he coughed. “Pizza’s almost here. So.”

“Right,” MJ cleared her throat, smoothing her shirt out.

“Also…this whole tower is literally made of glass, so we could all totally see you guys, like, making out this whole time,” he admitted sheepishly, and Peter sighed, dragging his hands down his face. “Just thought you should know.”

“Thanks, Ned.”

“Anytime.” He held the door out. “After you?”

———

Tony still remembered the kind of pizza Peter liked to eat from the nights they’d order in while they worked in the lab together. Somehow that wasn’t something he had expected Tony to recover when all the memories came back. It just seemed so trivial…easily forgettable even without the magic spell.

But Tony had remembered that he liked a million topics and stuffed crust and just about as much food as he could possibly get his hands on, which maybe wasn’t the most complicated thing in history to commit to memory, but still. It meant something to Peter then, and it meant so much more now, when the memories people had of him—or didn’t have—had begun to define everything he was outside of that red and blue costume.

He sat down to eat with MJ and Ned on either side of him, letting Jean have a bit of a break from being glued to his side like an inhaler in case he forgot to breathe again; she sat with Natasha and Clint, joking and slowly, reluctantly sharing stories of Sara. He tried not to watch, because if she noticed, she’d get all shy, but he couldn’t help but sneak a few glances. She just looked so young, and he wanted to see her smile like that all the time.

“Oh, good,” Pepper came clicking back into the penthouse in her shiny work shoes, and he wondered if MJ noticed how her own shoulders straightened. “You ordered food. I’m starving!” Sometimes Peter forgot Stark Industries was actually an incredibly important, very involved business to run. Mr. Stark had little to nothing to do with actually running it anymore, and Pepper made everything look so easy despite how much time and effort he knew she put into every little thing that it almost seemed like the place ran itself. Still, her coming in now for lunch (because she knew how to take breaks from her work) was a reminder that she’d been gone all morning for a reason. “Hope you saved me some.”

“Just barely,” Tony responded without skipping a beat. “The kid’s already polished off an entire pizza by himself.”

Peter froze, face burning with the last slice already jammed halfway in his mouth. “Hey!”

Pepper just laughed, unfazed, as she made her way over. Steve moved his legs for her, trying to make room for her to squeeze by, and her hip bumped into the table, jarring its contents. Somebody’s glass, empty, overturned and rolled off the table, about to break into jagged little pieces all over the floor, and Peter didn’t think.

A web shot out of his wrist, catching the glass and retracting it right back into his hand with a light smack.

Pepper blinked, still processing what had happened, and everyone else was equally silent, until Ned smacked Peter hard on the shoulder. “Dude! Nice save!”

“Ah ha,” he laughed nervously, putting the glass back down on the table. “Don’t mention it.” No, really. He was begging them to stop thinking about what had just happened, because anyone with too much attention to detail (say, a couple of spies, or somebody with multiple PhDs, or anyone who liked to sketch from memory, like MJ) could easily pick out what was wrong with this picture.

“You’ve gotten faster, Pete,” Tony snorted. “I’ll give you that.”

“Do you just wear your web-shooters all the time?” Happy rolled his eyes fondly. “You know, I always thought that looked stupid, right? It’s only a secret identity if you don’t flaunt it around on your wrists like a million dollar watch.”

Peter suppressed a flinch. “Yeah, you’re probably right, Happy.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What, no witty remark? No annoying attitude?”

“I’m not a kid anymore, man,” he huffed. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Where are your web-shooters anyways?” Ned was the one to ask. Of course. “I can’t see them anywhere.” He peered at Peter’s arms—which were stupidly exposed because he’d unconsciously rolled up his sleeves to eat—like the tech might be hiding there out of sight. “You must have streamlined them like crazy!”

“Yeah, took forever,” he mumbled. “How was work, Pepper?”

“Oh! It was—”

“You’re not wearing web-shooters,” Natasha interrupted calmly. Jean was rigid never to her, like she was debating whether or not to try to jump into the ex-spy’s mind and take control before she could say something crazy. Was it bad that he was kind of hoping she would?

“What?” He asked, trying to play dumb, even though that never worked with people like MJ or Natasha. Peter liked to think he was an okay liar, but there were some people in this world that just couldn’t be fooled, or at least not easily.

“Come on, Peter,” she sighed. “What, are they invisible?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jean cut in, a little too smoothly to be natural. “Maybe he’s worried Stark will try to rip off his cool invisibility tech if he shows it off too much.” She tried to stage it like a joke, which worked on a few of them to cut the tension, like Happy and Steve, who knew Peter well enough to know he wouldn’t hide something like that from Mr. Stark.

Natasha glanced between Tony and Bruce like they were all communicating telepathically. Fuck. Clint was smirking; why was he smirking?!

“I’m confused,” Tony said slowly. “Are you saying,” he asked Natasha. “That he just did that without web-shooters? That would be—”

“Impossible,” Bruce finished. “Unless he had found another place to store cartridges of web fluid.” Peter saw the moment the lightbulb flashed behind his eyes, and panic welled up in his throat. “Or maybe—!”

Peter didn’t do well when he panicked, okay? Sometimes he made stupid choices. Like webbing over Bruce’s mouth before he could finish his sentence. Just as an example. You know. Of what he might do in a stressful situation. Hypothetically.

“Shit,” Jean muttered under her breath.

“Really?” Natasha arched a brow at him.

“Dude,” Ned gasped, eyes huge. “You just gagged the Incredible Hulk!”

“Uh,” he coughed. “I’m so sorry, I did not mean to do that, must’ve been a glitch in the mechanism. Um—”

Bruce peeled the web off his mouth, making a face in disgust. “Tell me about it,” Frank grumbled, shooting Peter a look.

“Okay, just let me explain,” he said quickly, before Bruce could spill his secrets. MJ had a look on her face like she’d figured everything out already, but she didn’t move away from him in disgust, and the look in her eyes, hot with knowing him, never changed. “It’s actually kind of interesting if you think about it,” he rambled, glancing between Tony’s furrowed brow and Natasha’s smirk and Ned’s slowly dawning understanding and Frank’s eye roll. “Okay, so yeah, the funny thing is I don’t really need web-shooters anymore.”

“Dude,” Ned breathed. “What does that even mean? You can shoot your own webs?”

“Uh.” He awkwardly shot one at Frank, catching around his wrist and yanking his arm above his head like a puppet.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Frank snapped.

“Yeah,” Peter finished lamely. “So.” He let Frank’s arm drop. “That’s a thing now.”

“That’s crazy!” Ned burst out. “Why didn’t you tell me, man?! That’s so sick!”

“Nobody really knew,” he cleared his throat. “Except Jean, because she was in my head.” He still remembered the way she’d called him a monster too, how’d she had used MJ against him. He didn’t blame her anymore, barely even thought about it; it was so strange now to acknowledge that the monster he’d been fighting and had made him feel so outmatched had been nothing but a scared girl, lashing out at him so he wouldn’t get in her way.

“Yeah,” she seemed to be thinking along the same lines, her eyes shifting to MJ. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

“It’s fine,” MJ said, looking a little uncomfortable. He wondered if she was thinking of a kiss on a rooftop that she wouldn’t ever remember, because it wasn’t her brain in the front seat.

“I’m sorry, wait,” Tony cut in. “Not to interrupt all the amends being made or whatever, but can we circle back to the part where you suddenly developed the means to make your own web fluid and then just…” he gestured randomly with his hands. “Didn’t tell anybody?”

He bared his wrists out uncomfortably. “Yeah, well, I can produce the fluid in my wrists now. It makes things a lot easier.” He didn’t mention the water towers he’d crashed into or the pigeons he’d had to wrestle off of him. Some things were better kept to himself.

“But you didn’t tell anyone when we were discussing the second mutation,” Clint drawled. “Why is that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just…didn’t seem relevant.” MJ’s nails bit into the skin of his wrist, and he wasn’t sure if she was doing it on purpose or not. “I mean, does it matter either way?”

“It matters,” Bruce interjected, surprisingly firm. “That’s why you came to me about the inhibitor.” Shit. “You asked if it was possible to target “only the bad parts.” You wanted to remove all the newest parts of your mutation.” He said it like it was some horrific thing—like Peter had been wrong to try to fix the parts of himself that weren’t complying. Maybe he had everything under control now, but then, he could hardly protect himself, let alone New York City.

“Oh God,” Tony rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. “Kid, tell me that’s not true.”

“What do you want me to say?” He didn’t mean to sound so defensive, he really didn’t. “I needed to be able to trust myself. And I can’t do that if my senses, my instincts, are getting the better of me. Or if I can’t use these webs the same way. Anything that prevents me from being able to be Spider-Man is a threat.”

“I don’t believe that,” Steve said slowly. “And I don’t think you believe that either, Peter.” Why did he have to sound so disappointed? What right did he have, anyways? He wasn’t Uncle Ben.

“So, what?” He snapped. “I did what I had to do, and it doesn’t even fucking matter anymore. I’m not using it now!”

“Why would you use it in the first place?” Tony was starting to raise his voice too. “What, you think you’re some kind of monster?” Peter should’ve answered. He should’ve denied it, vehemently. But Peter was an idiot, and he didn’t do that, eyes flitting guiltily over to Jean and Frank to try to read the way forward off of their expressions.

Frank made a ‘go on’ motion with his hand, looking almost impatient, and Jean just looked uncertain. He knew they were so similar, and he couldn’t imagine the war between the guilt and the rage in her body, over what she’d done to the people of New York…and over what some of those people had done to her sister. He didn’t know what it was like to be in her shoes, but Peter did know what it felt like to stop and wonder if something was the right choice only after it had already been made.

His lack of answer was answer enough, and Tony’s face shifted. He stood, knees knocking into the table, and everyone scrambled to keep their cups from upending this time. “Come here,” he said stonily.

Peter hesitated, even when MJ’s nails released him, Ned’s hands nudging his lower back where he stood. What was Tony going to do? He hadn’t expected this reaction from them. Anger about the organic web fluid, sure, but about the inhibitor? Not even MJ’s speech on the balcony had prepared him for that. He didn’t understand—were they not angry about his second mutation?

Peter took a slow step forward. “Uh, look, I’m sorry, I—”

Tony crushed him in a hug. Peter was pretty sure his spine actually cracked in a few places. “Mr. Stark, what…?”

“You’re not a monster, Pete,” he sighed. “You never have been.”

He wasn’t sure he was capable of crying anymore, but his eyes did their best to make it happen. “But I’m not human anymore,” he whispered, a confession for just the two of them.

“So?” Tony pulled away so Peter had to look at him. “I used to be more metal than man. The Capsicle was on ice for seventy years, and he’s still kicking, which doesn’t exactly scream human to me. Brucie over there shares a body with a giant green alter-ego. Believe me, you aren’t winning any awards for Funkiest Avenger anytime soon.”

That almost made him laugh. “Told you,” Jean coughed, and he rolled his eyes.

“I’m kinda disappointed,” Frank admitted, though Peter at least, could tell he was joking. Mostly. “I was hoping I’d finally get to shoot Stark.”

“What?” Pepper asked sharply, hands on her hips.

He held up his arms in surrender. “Nothing. Jeez. Can’t say nothing around here,” he griped.

“Your aunt would be so proud of you,” Happy said, and it felt different coming from him. “Whether or not you can make your own webs. Alright, kid?”

“Yeah, alright,” he sniffed.

Natasha’s smirk didn’t seem as smug anymore, softened into her features—though Clint still seemed plenty smug. “If anything, it just makes you cooler, Pete,” she said. “The spider thing isn’t as literal for me. I’m almost jealous.” She winked.

He took his seat back by his friends, and Ned’s arm was around his shoulders before he could blink. “Dude, you get cooler, like, everyday. You’re Spider-Man, you’re an Avenger, and now you can make your own webs, like, in your body?!”

“Thanks, Ned.” He should’ve known Ned of all people would be unbothered by how human he was or wasn’t. He had only ever really cared that he and his friends were together, on a field trip or at MIT or saving the world.

“Alright, alright, wrap it up,” Frank waved him off. “Your pizza’s getting cold.”

“Sorry, Frank,” he rolled his eyes. But he was relieved. They’d all found out his secret, or at least the worst of it, and they hadn’t cared. And he’d cried so much this last day or so, but he’d gone from having almost nobody, to getting his family back. May was gone forever, nothing would change that, but Tony was back, with his wit and his too-tight hugs that Peter never got used to. There was Natasha with her cleverness and Bruce with his genius. MJ, dry and sarcastic and yet always gentle when he needed it. Ned, unbelievably positive no matter what, and he never gave up on Peter for a second. He had all of them back, along with Jean and Frank, and suddenly things didn’t feel as heavy as before. They didn’t even care that he wasn’t their Peter anymore.

Maybe to them, he was still their Peter.

“You’re just like Peter Two!” Ned carried on, ignoring Frank’s public service announcement about the pizza.

“Peter Two?” Pepper echoed, sighing like she didn’t even want to hear the answer.

“Oh yeah. That whole multiverse thing,” Peter cleared his throat. “I actually met two other versions of me. It was totally weird.” He couldn’t describe how it felt like meeting his own brothers, and how he truly missed them sometimes, which was so strange because it was like missing himself, technically? Maybe he did miss himself sometimes…

“And I had magic!” Ned gasped.

“Oh, I totally forgot about that,” MJ remarked, sounding only mildly interested, while Ned dragged his hands through his hair, looking shellshocked.

“Oh my God!” He loosely made the same circular summoning motion Dr. Strange always did, though no showering orange sparks appeared this time. “I have got to get one of those rings from the wizard.”

“That reminds me,” Tony snapped his fingers, smirking. “I still have a wizard to kill. Hey kid,” he told Ned brightly. “You can have his ring after he’s gone. How bout that?”

“Is he serious?” Ned whispered too loudly in Peter’s ear.

“No,” he said, then winced. “Maybe. Please don’t kill anybody.”

Tony ignored him. “After the wizard, I’ll be taking care of Rambo over here,” he nodded his head at Frank, who scoffed.

“You can try, tin can.”

“Would you two stop fighting already?” Jean rolled his eyes. “God, you’re both so petty.”

“What are you even fighting about?” Peter sighed.

“Nothing,” Tony said, at the same time that Frank spoke.

“Mind your business, kid!” He held his hands up in surrender and let the subject drop, settling between Ned and MJ like the world had been shifted right side up again. Before it had been resting on his shoulders like the weight of all of New York City splayed across him, but now, he wasn’t a pillar holding up on the roof alone. They were holding it up with him.

———

“So this is your old room?” Jean looked around, tracing the Star Wars posters and the pictures of May and Ben on the wall.

“Yeah,” he swallowed thickly. “I can’t believe it’s still here.” MJ was curled up on his bed, flipping through a notebook she’d found on his nightstand, while Ned bounced around like he’d never been in there before.

“Hey! Obi-Wan!” Plastic clicked on wood when Ned’s fingers knocked into the little LEGO figurine sitting there, lightsaber still in hand. “You know, I still have my Emperor,” Ned said, holding Obi-Wan out like an olive branch over some imaginary sleight, and Peter took it, carefully.

“I know. I saw him when I came to your house party.”

“Oh yeah,” he chuckled. “Maynard. I forgot.”

“Shut up,” Peter’s face flushed.

“Wow,” Jean put in from where she was eyeing up his photos. “You were so tiny.” He peered over her shoulder at the picture she was looking at, and found Uncle Ben and Aunt May, with him in the middle, glasses too big for his face and sliding down his nose. He looked thirteen there, standing at the aquarium with the people who had raised him and left him alone. He really did look small.

Peter didn’t remember ever being that small. He wondered if these pictures had only survived because they’d been forgotten here, just like him.

“Yikes,” he forced a laugh. “What a dork.”

“Be nice,” MJ chided without looking up from the notebook.

“I see you found your old room.” Happy stepped in slowly, hands in his pockets.

“Hey, Happy,” he grinned. “Yeah, I can’t believe my stuff didn’t end up thrown out.”

Happy glanced around at all the posters and notebooks and the old clothes still shoved in the closet. “I guess without you here, nobody had any reason to come into your room in the first place. Good thing too, huh?” His eyes traced over May, flitting away again a second later. With Ben all over the walls, no wonder he didn’t let himself linger for too long.

“Do you need something?” Peter asked. He sort of hoped Tony had asked for him, maybe to work on something in the labs together, for real this time, or maybe Spider-Man was needed out in the city. Peter could have his suit on in under five minutes if he could get moving before Jean figured out what he was up to—

“I wanted to ask you something.” His voice tensed slightly, and Peter’s shoulders followed suit. MJ put the notebook down without a word. He was still holding onto the Obi-Wan figure like an idiot.

“What?” He asked blankly. He put the figure down in front of a framed picture of him, Ned, and MJ together not long after the Washington trip.

“I, uh, I was just wondering if,” he heaved a sigh. “Jeez. Do you wanna go with me to see May?” The words rushed out of his mouth and crowded up the room, standing like silent spectators as Peter suddenly floundered for words.

“Yes,” he burst out, so emphatically he almost made himself jump. Happy really wanted to go see May with him, after years of running into him there and being treated like a stranger or a colleague. To go there together…

“Good.” Happy looked relieved, like he’d expected Peter to say no. He guessed it was sort of weird, going to see your ex-girlfriend’s grave with her nephew you forgot existed for four years. But nothing in their lives had ever been normal.

Jean caught his wrist. “Do you want to go alone or…?”

“No,” he shook his head without needing to think. “I think we should all go.” He glanced at Happy. “May didn’t get the funeral she deserved.” Had anyone shown up except for Happy and some of her coworkers? Had the people who used to ask about how Peter was doing gone to lay May to rest thinking Spider-Man had killed her?

Happy smiled. “I think you’re right, Pete.” He looked at him like he had that day on the jet, designing a new suit to go against Beck, that look that he’d never explained.

MJ stood, grabbing her coat. “We owe it to her,” she agreed. “May looked after all of us, and when I think about all these years that she was alone…” MJ swallowed, looking away, and guilt flashed in his chest. He should’ve told her. He should’ve told her. She and Ned had deserved better from him, and so had May. When the world had forgotten him, so many of them had forgotten her too.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed.

MJ rolled her eyes. “I know why you did it, Peter. I’m not happy, but I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

“I probably wouldn’t have,” Ned blushed. “You know I can’t keep a secret.” Peter laughed.

“Yeah, believe me, I know.”

“Come on, you kids,” Happy jingled his keys. “If we hurry, we can get back before Tony notices I took Peter and throws a hissy fit.”

“We aren’t rushing, Happy,” Peter rolled his eyes. “And I need to stop to grab May’s flowers. I’m sure Mr. Stark won’t care if I’m gone for an hour.”

“Kid. He’s already called Rhodey and put him on standby to snatch you if you try to sneak out and go patrolling.” Right. Colonel Rhodes. He almost felt bad that he hadn’t even thought of the guy during this whole debacle, when the last time they’d seen each other Peter had been told to call him ‘Uncle Rhodey’ and call him if he ever needed anything. He hadn’t stopped to consider anyone outside the Tower remembering him too.

“I’ll be with you guys,” he argued weakly, trying not to smile. “He knows MJ would never let me patrol right now.”

“True,” she nodded immediately.

“Let’s just go,” Happy snapped, and Peter lost his fight with the grin on his face. There was the Happy he remembered. “Bunch of twenty-somethings and I’m still a babysitter,” he grumbled as he stomped out of the room, and Peter let Jean cling to him as they followed him out.

“Aww,” MJ teased. “Hear that, Ned? We’re his babies.” Peter laughed maybe harder than he should’ve.

“One more peep outta you, kid, and I’m telling that Flash punk you’re Spider-Man.”

“What?! I didn’t even say anything, it was MJ—”

“Do you hear yourself right now? You’re like a five-year-old!”

“Where are you all going so loudly?” Natasha asked, sidling up to them at the end of the hallway.

“Out,” Happy said nervously, as if she’d bite him. “Please don’t tell Tony I’m jailbreaking the kid.”

She smirked. “Depends. You taking him out to swing around the city?” Her eyes flicked across the rest of them, settling on Ned and MJ. “Nah. Didn’t think so. I won’t tell Tony, but he’s going to notice eventually.”

“Thank you,” Happy breathed.

“He’s not going to be very,” she quirked an eyebrow. “Happy when he finds out you took the Spiderling,” she warned, still quite amused.

“I’m an adult,” Peter interrupted heatedly, and Happy and Natasha snorted in unison.

“Whatever, Webs. Just try not to be out too long, okay? Tony does have a heart condition,” she teased.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, dead serious. “I’ll be back.”

“You’d better be.”

———

They did get back, eventually, after bullying Happy into stopping for lunch on their way.

“May would’ve wanted us fed,” Ned had assured him, and he’d rolled his eyes and just let it happen. Peter had kept an eye on his phone the whole time, just in case Tony called asking where the hell he was, or in case there were reports of War Machine rocketing across the New York skyline.

There was nothing, so Peter didn’t expect any trouble when they got back to the Tower, but when he stepped out of the elevator, his senses picked up, the hair on his arms standing on end, and blaring alarms screaming danger went off in his head all at once. “Guys—” He tried to warn them, but before he could get a word out, Tony appeared, hands held out appeasingly.

“Relax. I can see you sweating from here, kid. It’s just the wizard.” Peter didn’t relax.

“Strange is here?” MJ perked up, something dark alight in her eyes.

“Wow!” Ned looked excited for an entirely different reason, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Do you think he has a spare ring?”

“Let’s go and see,” Happy said quickly, catching a look from Tony and making to usher the two of them off. Jean lingered at his side without him needing to ask her to, but Peter glanced back at Mr. Stark, and something in him felt so small and childish just to have the eyes of his mentor on him again.

“It’s okay, Jean. I’ll be there in a minute,” he said gently, and she gave him a look before slipping off too, probably to find Frank so they could come back and eavesdrop on him and Tony. “So,” he swallowed thickly once they were alone. “I guess it’s time, huh?”

“Time?” Tony echoed.

“He’s gonna say the spell needs to be redone, right?” Peter blurted out, forcing his breathing not to hitch or buckle; he’d forced Tony to take care of him way too much the last few days already. “That you all need to forget me again.” He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready yet. He’d told himself that if that was truly the case, he’d just enjoy having them all back while he could, but he lied. He couldn’t let them go again. He didn’t give a damn if there were holes in the spell, he couldn’t go back to where he’d been before.

And if he lost Jean and Frank too?!

“Kid, slow down,” Tony said carefully.

“I don’t wanna go,” he whispered, aware of exactly how he sounded, how sick and pathetic that was, and Tony sucked in a breath.

“Pete, it’s okay. He’s not recasting the spell.”

“What?” He asked slowly, glancing down the hall anxiously. As if the doctor, or his magical cape, might be lurking around the corner waiting to erase him again. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Tony rolled his eyes. “It’s been a few days since it broke. Dr. Narcissist is, like, ninety percent sure the multiverse is gonna hold out. Okay? Take a breath, Roo.”

“But what if he changes his mind?” Peter asked, a little frantically. The alarms in his head wouldn’t turn off, and he couldn’t relax until his body stopped perceiving danger to be hiding in every shadow and space. “How will I make sure you remember me again? I won’t even be able to get past security to get up here, not without Happy, and he won’t remember me either, and—”

“Hey, hey,” his mentor shushed gently. “That isn’t going to happen.”

“But—”

“And if it did,” he forged over Peter’s nervousness. “You could just go to Strange, and get him to call me. Say it’s an emergency. Say the multiverse is gonna explode if you don’t get to speak to me right away.”

“Okay…” he trailed off, nodding to himself and trying to get it to sink in. “Okay, yeah. I could do that.”

“It won’t get to that point, Peter, trust me,” Tony insisted. “If the wizard proposes anything like wiping all of our memories just to be on the safe side, believe me, there are about a dozen people here who aren’t going to let that happen without a fight.”

“Come on, Mr. Stark,” he sort of laughed. “You can’t fight the Doctor. He’s just doing his job.” Tony rolled his eyes. “Besides, he’s like, super hard to beat. He’s, you know, magical and all.”

“What, you think Dumbledore over there can beat me? Or the Avengers?” He scoffed. “Kid, we have Hulk.” Then he shot Peter a sly look. “Not to mention, your little buddy Frank. If he was threatening to kill me, I don’t think the wizard’s making it very far.”

“He threatened to kill you?” Peter gasped.

“Only if I didn’t live up to his expectations for you.” Peter wasn’t sure he was hearing Mr. Stark right at all.

“For…for me?”

“Pretty sure if I let you down, I’m getting assassinated and replaced as your father, Pete.” Peter’s chest seized, because they’d never addressed what was there between them, to the point that Peter had told himself he must have imagined it. He was Mr. Stark’s intern, not his son. It didn’t matter how much he missed Ben, he couldn’t just find a new father figure whenever he left the house.

“Really?” He whispered, teary-eyed like an idiot, because he hadn’t cried this much in four years and then suddenly, all of this at once? He guessed that was what he got for shoving everything down and trying to ignore it.

“Oh, he’s dead serious. He will definitely shoot me.”

“Not about that,” he stumbled getting his words out. “The other thing.”

“Oh,” Tony said casually. “Well, yeah. Didn’t I tell you, I invented time travel for you? You think I do that for other people’s kids?” He wrapped Peter in a hug, and it felt like relief, like relaxing for the first time in a hundred years.

For the first time since Uncle Ben had looked at him scared, since a spider had sunk its teeth into the back of his neck.

Peter sunk into him until he felt he could barely hold himself up, and when they finally pulled away, Tony kept his hands on Pete’s shoulders, either to keep him upright, or to keep him nearby. “Now,” he said, unbothered. “We’re off to see the wizard.” Peter smiled, and he clapped him on the shoulder. “Pick up your feet, kid, or he might turn Cap back into a popsicle. Don’t wanna be late, do we?”