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The yellow cab dropped them at the corner of Seventy-First Avenue just as the five o'clock light began to turn the wet brick of the apartment buildings a dull, bruised gray.
May paid the driver with two twenty-dollar bills from her purse and followed Peter across the slush in the gutter. She kept close beside him, shortening her stride to match his as they passed the closed flower shop and the dry cleaner's.
Peter carried his backpack over his right shoulder. His body felt light, the last traces of the HYDRA neuromuscular blocker gone from his thighs, but his hands were cold inside his windbreaker pockets. Every time his sneakers hit the pavement, he had to think about his feet—keeping his heel-to-toe roll soft so he didn't leave gray rubber smudges on the wet concrete.
They climbed the three flights of stairs in silence.
The building smelled of boiled cabbage from the second-floor apartment and the damp, woolly scent of May's coat. The green painted wood of the steps gave its familiar, dry squeak on the seventh stair of the second landing. Peter automatically stepped over the spot, his gym shoes making no sound at all.
May unlocked the deadbolt. The brass latch gave a sharp click, and she pushed the door open.
The apartment was cold. The heat hadn't kicked on yet for the evening, and the air smelled of stale toast, laundry detergent, and the cold water that had been sitting in the kitchen sink since Tuesday morning. It was the same modest home Peter had lived in since he was five years old, but walking through the doorway after two days in Manhattan felt like stepping into a photograph of a room he used to know.
May took off her coat and hung it on the peg near the entrance. She didn't take off her white nursing shoes. She walked straight into the kitchen, turned the brass knob on the cold water tap, and filled a blue ceramic mug. She didn't turn on the overhead light; the amber glow from the avenue streetlamps was already filtering through the kitchen window, casting long bars across the yellow linoleum.
Peter stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. His backpack felt heavy, the straps cutting into his shoulder, but he didn't set it down.
"You can put your bag in your room, Peter," May said. She took a sip of the water, her thumb tracing a thin crack in the mug's handle. Her voice was flat, stripped of the sharp efficiency she used at the hospital.
"Okay," Peter said.
He walked down the short hallway to his bedroom. He pushed the door open with his elbow, set his backpack on the floor beside the desk, and sat on the edge of his twin bed.
The yellow lined paper from Richard Parker's letter was still lying open on his desk, right where he'd left it on Tuesday afternoon before he went out to the rail yards. Beside it lay Ben's note from the red steel toolbox, the hard pencil marks dark against the blue lines.
Peter stared at the pages.
He could see the individual fibers in the paper from six feet away. He could see where Richard's fountain pen had blotted near the margin on page two, and he could see the small grease smudge on the corner of Ben's note where Ben's thumb had rested while he wrote it in the kitchen.
Peter stood up. He didn't want to look at the paper, but his feet moved anyway, bringing him to the edge of the desk.
I am his father, Richard had written in that cramped, hurried hand. Some other man contributed DNA. That is all I know about him, and it is all I ever needed to know. Please don't turn that man into Peter's father after I'm gone. I'm begging you.
Peter reached out. His index finger touched the yellow page. He didn't press down—he was terrified he'd tear the brittle paper—but his skin felt the cold, dry texture of the wood pulp.
He thought about Tony Stark standing by the window on the ninety-sixth floor, wearing a gray sweatshirt with grease on the shoulder, telling him that Richard Parker was a coward. He thought about Tony pointing at the wall display and explaining that Richard had modified an embryo in a lab, put a chemical lock on chromosome eleven, and then left a letter in a safe-deposit box on Austin Street instead of explaining the science to his own family.
Peter felt a sudden, hot prickle behind his eyes.
He turned on his heel, walked out of his bedroom, and went into the living room.
May was sitting at the small dining table, her hands flat on the worn wood. The amber light from the street reached far enough into the room to catch the empty space across from her where Ben used to leave his newspaper and his reading glasses.
"May," Peter said.
She turned her head slowly. The amber streetlamp light caught the pale skin beneath her eyes, highlighting the dark circles that fifteen hours in an emergency room and two days of sheer panic had left behind.
"Did you know?" Peter asked. His voice was thin, catching in his throat like he'd swallowed dry sand.
May looked at him. "Know what, Pete?"
"About the box," Peter said, gesturing back toward the hallway. "The safe-deposit box at the Chase. Ben's letter said you knew about the box, but you thought it was just insurance paperwork."
May let out a short, dry breath that wasn't a laugh. She looked down at her own hands on the table. "I knew Ben had a box. He set it up in 2006 after your parents' funeral. He told me it was for the house deed, the marriage certificate, and the life insurance policy from his company. He kept the key in his toolbox."
She paused, her fingers curling slightly against the wood. "I didn't know about the letter. And I didn't know your uncle was driving to a post office box in Queensboro once a year to pick up inhalers from a medical supplier."
Her voice didn't rise, but the flat, level cadence had a hard edge that made Peter's shoulders twitch.
"Eight years," May said softly. "Eight years he walked into this kitchen every morning, watched me hand you that plastic tube, and listened to me complain about your respiratory specialist's billing codes. He let me think you had a chronic lung condition. He let me worry every time you had a cold. He watched me check your breathing while you were sleeping."
She looked up at Peter, her eyes dark and clear in the dim room. "He knew. The whole time, he knew."
Peter walked over to the table. He didn't sit down; he stood beside the chair Ben used to sit in, his hands shoved deep into his windbreaker pockets. His fingers were clenched into tight, small fists inside the fabric, his knuckles pressing hard against his thighs.
"He was trying to protect us," Peter whispered. He felt like he had to say it. He'd spent four months reading Ben's letter, remembering the bench in the park, remembering Ben holding him while he cried about breaking the wood. "He thought... he thought if he told you, it would make everything worse. He didn't know what else to do."
"It didn't belong to Richard," May said, her voice dropping into a flat, quiet tone that carried more weight than a shout. "It belonged to you. It belonged to your life, your body, and your health. And it belonged to this house. We are a family, Peter. You don't build a family by deciding which truths your wife is allowed to handle."
May pushed herself away from the table and walked into the kitchen. She picked up her mug, stood there holding it for a moment, then put it down again.
"I don't understand what they were thinking." She looked toward the window. "They wanted a baby, so they... what? Changed you? Added somebody else's DNA and changed things before you were even born?"
Peter opened his mouth, but May kept going.
"And then it was too much. Or it was happening too fast, or you were too little—I don't even know." She rubbed both hands over her face. "So they gave you medicine to stop it. Every day. For years."
Her hands dropped.
"I gave you that inhaler, Peter."
Peter looked at her.
"I reminded you to take it. I worried when you wheezed, I worried when you forgot it, and Ben knew." Her voice caught on his name. "Ben knew it wasn't asthma."
She looked at Peter as if he might somehow have an answer she didn't.
"How could all of them know what was happening to you and I didn't?"
Peter stood beside the dining chair, listening to the refrigerator hum and the slow drip of the kitchen faucet.
"He loved me."
May looked at him.
"He did." Peter swallowed. "Dad loved me. I know he did."
"I know."
"I have the letter." His voice rose. "He wrote about when I was a baby. He remembered walking around with me when I wouldn't sleep, and he said—" Peter stopped and dragged the heel of his hand across his face. "He said he was my dad."
"He was."
"Then I don't understand!"
His hand struck the back of the chair hard enough to make it jump against the floor. Peter jerked away from it.
"Why would he do that to me?"
May started toward him.
"No." Peter backed away. "I spent months thinking the spider did this. I thought I was turning into some kind of freak, and it wasn't even the spider. It was him. It was already there."
His breath hitched.
"And then I found the letter and I tried—I tried to understand why they did it. I know they wanted me. I know they loved me. Ben said they loved me."
"They did, Peter."
"Then why am I the one who has to be okay with it?"
May went still.
Peter wiped angrily at his face. "Dad got to write a letter. Ben got to know. Everybody got to decide what I needed to know and when I needed to know it, and I'm just supposed to—"
His voice broke.
"I don't even know what I'm supposed to do."
May crossed the kitchen and caught him by the arms.
Peter pulled back. May tightened her grip.
"Don't you dare pull away from me, Peter Parker."
He stopped.
"I don't know if I'm allowed to be mad at him," Peter whispered.
May's face crumpled.
"He's dead."
"I know."
"I can't ask him why."
"I know."
Peter's shoulders shook. "And I love him."
May pulled him against her.
"I know, baby."
"And Ben knew." Peter's voice cracked. "He knew, May."
May's mouth tightened.
"He kept the key. He knew about the medicine, and he knew I was different, and then he—" Peter sucked in a broken breath. "He died. He just died and left me with all of it."
May moved toward him.
"I'm mad at him too." Peter stared at her, horrified by the words now that they were out. "I'm mad at Uncle Ben."
May pulled him.
She didn't ask permission, and she didn't offer a gentle hug. She dragged him three inches closer, wrapped her arms around his back, and buried his face against her shoulder.
Her blue scrubs smelled of laundry soap, cold rain, and the faint, bitter scent of hospital coffee, but beneath the fabric, her chest was solid and warm.
Peter tried to hold himself stiff. He kept his fingers curled into loose balls so his nails wouldn't catch her sweater, his feet planted wide on the linoleum so his weight wouldn't push her backward. He was terrified of his own strength, terrified that if he let himself collapse, he'd take them both down through the floorboards.
"Let go, Peter," May commanded into his hair.
"I'll hurt you," Peter choked out against her collarbone.
"You're not going to hurt me," May said, her arms tightening around his ribs with that same unyielding, practical nurse's grip. "You're thirteen years old, you're exhausted, and your heart is breaking. Let go."
Peter broke.
The stiff resistance in his spine collapsed all at once. He buried his face in her shoulder, his hands coming up to clutch the back of her sweater, his fingers digging into the wool with a desperate, heavy hold that he didn't try to measure or control. He cried with a deep, harsh, ugly sound—the tears soaking through her scrubs, his whole body shuddering against her.
May stood there in the middle of the dark kitchen, taking his weight, her hand resting on the back of his head, her fingers stroking his hair.
"You are allowed to be furious," May said into his hair. "You hear me? You can be angry with your dad. You can be angry with your mom."
She shifted her footing and braced herself against the counter.
"And you can damn well be angry with Ben, because I am."
Peter hitched a breath. "He... he was trying to protect me."
"I know he thought he was." May closed her eyes for a moment. "I loved that man for more than twenty years, Peter, and right now I would give anything to have him standing in this kitchen so I could yell at him."
A wet, startled sound escaped Peter that wasn't quite a laugh.
"I don't know why he thought keeping this from me was the right thing to do. Maybe he was scared. Maybe he waited too long and didn't know how to tell me. Maybe he really did think he was protecting us." Her hand moved slowly over Peter's hair. "I don't know. And I hate that I can't ask him."
Peter was quiet against her shoulder.
"But you don't have to forgive any of them tonight. You don't have to decide anything tonight."
She pulled back enough to look at him.
"They loved you. I know that. And you're still allowed to be angry about what they did."
Peter swallowed. "I don't want to throw Dad's letter away."
"Then don't."
"I don't know what I want to do with it."
"Then leave it on your desk until you do."
Peter looked at her face. The amber streetlamp light showed every line on her forehead, the red mark on her nose where her glasses usually sat, and the quiet, fierce determination that had kept her standing through fifteen years of trauma rotations and the worst week of her life.
"What about Mr. Stark?" Peter whispered.
May's expression didn't soften, but her eyes went thoughtful. "What about him?"
"He... he swabbed my pen," Peter said, looking down at his sneakers. "He spent three weeks looking at Flash because he thought Flash was his son. He didn't tell me until today."
"Mr. Stark is an arrogant, brilliant man who is used to getting answers by pushing buttons," May said, her tone practical. "He made a choice to look at your DNA without asking, and he's going to have to live with the fact that you know he did it. But he also flew to Virginia, stood in a room with armed men, and brought you home."
She smoothed Peter's hair back from his forehead.
"I like him," Peter said.
May's hand stopped.
"Mr. Stark." Peter stared at the front of her shirt. "I liked him before I knew. I like being at the Tower. I like working with him, and he listens when I talk about stuff and doesn't act like I'm a kid when I know what I'm talking about." He swallowed. "And now it feels like I'm not supposed to."
"Oh, Peter."
"Like Dad told me not to."
May put her hand against his cheek and made him look at her.
"Your dad asked Ben not to turn some man you'd never met into your father. He didn't tell you that you weren't allowed to know him someday. He couldn't have known what Mr. Stark would become to you."
Peter's eyes filled again.
"You are allowed to like Mr. Stark. You're allowed to care about him. You're allowed to be angry with your father and still love him. None of those things takes anything away from anybody."
Peter leaned into her hand.
"And if Mr. Stark becomes important to you," May said, "then he becomes important to you. We don't have to decide what to call it tonight."
Peter was quiet for several seconds.
Then his stomach growled.
May looked down.
Peter wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I'm hungry."
May let out a short, genuine laugh, her hands dropping from his face to pat his shoulder. "Of course you are. You've had a traumatic revelation and two days of HYDRA blockers. Go sit at the table. I'll make the eggs."
"Use the small pan," Peter said.
"I know which pan to use, Peter," May said, reaching for the carton in the refrigerator. "Go sit down."
Peter walked back into the dining area. He pulled out the chair across from Ben's empty spot and sat down.
The apartment was still cold, the kitchen sink was still dripping—ping, ping, ping—and the yellow pages of Richard Parker's letter were still lying on his bedroom desk. He still had modified DNA, he still had to figure out how to be Spider-Man without getting shot, and on Monday he was going to have to sit in class with Flash Thompson and somehow keep a straight face.