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Peter felt the danger seconds before he heard it - the panicked cry from someone in an alleyway sending him swinging towards wherever it’s coming from.
There’s two people from the sounds of it, hearts pounding and a shrill yell that tears at Peter’s insides as he rushes to get there in time.
Yet by the time he makes that final swing into the alleyway, he only finds the one - a shocked woman still on the floor, panting as if she’d just been in a fight.
She frantically looks up to Peter as he lands, backing up slightly as he puts his hands up. He can see her purse scattered across the floor, along with - curiously - a gun, though whoever held it was no longer there.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay,” he says, glad that Karen had read the situation properly and hadn’t used his voice modulator. “Can I come a little closer and help you up?”
Her chest heaves, Peter seeing the way her eyes dart around before she nods shakily - Peter slowly coming up to her and helping her up to her feet.
“What— how did you do that?”
Peter pauses, tilting his head. “Do what? What happened?”
The woman looks shaken, clearly going into shock for how she turns frantically around the alleyway.
“There was a guy. He was—“ she cuts herself off, Peter maintaining his sense of calm that he’s only gotten from years of being Spider-Man. “One minute he was there and then he was gone. I thought…” she looks off into the distance, Peter guessing that she must’ve hit her head as she fell when she says, “How did you do that?”
He’s not sure what had stopped her attacker but he’s immensely grateful for it, turning down the alleyway as his senses flare once more.
There’s… danger here. A danger that makes him feel as if someone is watching him though when he listens, he can’t hear anyone else’s heartbeat aside from the panicked young woman in front of him.
He turns back to her, gently bracing his hands on her shoulders as he asks, “What’s your name?”
“Denise.”
“Okay Denise,” Peter says with a gentle nod, “let’s get out of here okay? You mind if I walk you home?”
Denise blinks a few times before shaking her head, a timid smile on her face as she allows Peter to walk her out of the alleyway. Swinging would be easier but Denise in no shape to do so, Peter’s danger sense flaring once more as he looks over his shoulder.
“Is… is everything okay?” Denise asks, her voice shaking slightly in what Peter can only guess is both fear and adrenaline. Her heartbeat is still pounding so wildly that it almost drowns out anything else, so attuned to his location that the rest of the city noise fades away.
Peter standing up a little straighter as he turns back to the sidewalk.
“Yes,” he lies, getting the distinct impression that they’re still being watched yet still frustratingly hearing no one. The curious part of him wants to investigate, wishing he could ask Karen to set a reminder for him to do so later once he’s dropped Denise off at home but recognizing that this would just make her feel more unsafe than she already does.
Yet for as curious as he is, there’s a greater part of him that is telling him to leave - get out, go, MOVE - a sense for danger creeping all up and down his spine that he hasn’t felt since Titan.
He makes a mental note instead to swing back around later tonight, maybe pop by Doctor Strange’s place and ask if there had been anymore temporal displacement or chatter. Sam hadn’t shared any info during their last meeting about intergalactic trouble and Tony, for as much as he was supposed to be retired and still found himself meddling in superhero business, hadn’t mentioned anything abnormal.
It’s a sickening feeling, filling with dread and yet also… desire. Drawing him and repelling him to whatever the source of it is in equal measure.
It doesn’t make sense - Peter knows by now he shouldn’t question a good thing, whatever had stopped the man from whatever attack he was planning being good enough.
But it still itched in the back of his mind, forcing himself to look towards the sidewalk as he gently placed his arm across Denise’s shoulders.
“Come on, let’s head out of here.”
Michelle watches from the rooftop as Spider-Man walks the woman out of the alleyway, smiling wryly when he looks back over his shoulder for a third time.
Of all she knows of Spider-Man - from watching, listening, observing - she knows he must have some kind of… sense for danger. It must be blaring now as she watches, her very existence a threat to anyone human - super or not.
She uses her thumb to wipe the blood off the corner of her mouth before pulling herself to a stand, glancing down in disgust to Denise’s would-be attacker who served as her dinner.
The man had barely had a chance to scream when she rushed him away, already hearing Spider-Man on his way in the minuscule of a second it took to bring him to the rooftop.
In any other instance, she would’ve enjoyed it a little more - relish in the chance for some sad excuse of a man to beg for mercy, the kind that they wouldn’t have given to their victims.
Would-be victims , Michelle thinks to herself - glad that there could be more than one benefit to her existence.
She’d been obsessed with true crime when she was alive - observant, truthful, addicted to seeking the truth. It was almost inevitable considering the danger she found herself in that it led to her death, though the afterlife hadn’t been anything she could’ve anticipated.
An eternity stood before her now - to right wrongs, to find out who murdered her, to prevent the same thing from happening to anyone else.
Michelle has to dispose of the body. She’s always discreet, even though he doesn’t deserve it, if only to keep her secret. She knows there’s a vampire hunter that dips in and out of New York just as she knows there’s no shortage of heroes, watching as Spider-Man continues to make his way down the sidewalk, tension carried across his shoulders at the knowledge that he wasn’t alone.
She smiles once more, keeping her eye on him until he and Denise turn the corner before glancing up to the city skyline.
Spider-Man might be the hero of the city.
But she was it’s queen.
If only for the night.