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(15)
“So,” Some hero-dude that Peter's never seen before says into his communication line, “That spider guy just landed on my roof.”
The guy attempts to ignore Peter even as he side-eyes him suspiciously, but Peter just continues to tap his foot impatiently as he waits, his stare level and even. Peter is not backing down from this one. He's worse than angry: he's annoyed and inconvenienced.
“And?” The tinny voice of Iron Man asks through bow-guy’s earpiece, which Peter can’t help but pick up on, “Ask him to leave your roof if that bothers you so much? C’mon Hawkeye, use your big boy words.”
Peter is so glad his suit includes a mask, because his face jumps through a series of increasingly incredulous expressions. This is Hawkeye? As in, don’t-let-Hawkeye-die Hawkeye?
…
Huh. Peter thought he would be… younger.
Hawkeye sighs. Rubs a hand against his forehead. Leaves the communication line open as he turns to Peter and asks, voice heavy with exasperation, “Will you leave my roof?”
(All of the sudden, things make a lot more sense.)
Peter can hear Iron Man’s laughter and Black Widow’s snort over the comm line. He ignores them. In any other situation he might have had an embarrassing fan-boy-freakout over being this close to Tony-freaking-Stark for the first time (sort of? does this count as his first meeting when–?) and making him laugh, but in (most of) his fantasies, New York wasn’t in the process of getting invaded by aliens. That sort of puts a damper on any excitement Peter might have normally felt.
Plus, the aforementioned annoyance at Hawkeye and his whole team does a remarkable job of keeping Peter's head clear and fan-boy-free.
“No,” Peter repeats, like he said the first few times Hawkeye asked, “Just give me your comm, dude. It’ll take a second.”
“He says he wants my comm,” Hawkeye reports.
“So give him the damn thing,” Tony answers casually, and Peter can almost picture the guy’s shrug… if he wasn’t encased in a suit of metal armor, making messy flying patterns around Peter’s city with a trail of aliens following behind him, crashing into buildings that were still not evacuated.
Hawkeye referred to the aliens as the Chitauri, right before Peter had started nagging the guy for his comm, even though Big Ugly Annoying Lizard-Thingies seems as though it might be a more apt name. But what does Peter know about invading alien armies?
(He has a suspicious and sinking hunch that he knows about the same amount as Hawkeye’s boy band group, but that is neither here nor there, mostly because that thought is not reassuring at all, especially when there is a hole in the freaking sky.)
There is a moment when Captain America (Peter can’t find it within himself to be surprised as the guy’s sudden arrival into the modern day, but he is a bit surprised as how young he sounds, even though he can still recognize the voice) starts protesting–something, something, confidential secrets and the security of the line, blah blah blah–but Hawkeye just hands over the earpiece with a resigned expression.
Peter holds it up to the ear that doesn’t currently have his own earpiece in it, and says, in his most exhausted and fed up ‘Aunt May when Peter forgot to defrost the chicken’ voice, “Hey jerkwads. Did you forget that there are more than six people in New York who are willing to fight alien invaders? Stop being egotistical pricks and get off of your bougie private channel and onto the emergency comm line that I definitely emailed half of you about like forty million times, because there are about five groups of people whose plans of corralling and minimizing damages to the city are being fucked over because of Mister Let’s take the aliens for a joyride– yes I’m talking about you, Stark–so. Yeah.”
For a moment, there is a blissful stretch of silence.
Then: “Wait, you were the one who hacked into my personal servers and found my email account?”
That was actually Ned, but they don’t need to know that.
And from Hawkeye: “You were the one who was emailing Fury???”
Fury.
Huh.
Peter knew that there was some organization trying to, well, organize things from the shadows, but he hadn’t expected the head-boss-man to have such a cartoony name. He’d been able to find them through digging into who was behind Tony Stark’s “I am Iron Man” press conference, but he hadn’t been able to actually pinpoint anyone down for sure.
“I literally signed them ‘from Spider-Man.’ What did you expect?”
A longer pause.
“There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’ fellas. But there is an ‘I’ in ‘Spider-Man,’ so maybe you should listen to what I have to say and get your asses on the emergency frequency, get organized, and stop screwing up our plans. Okaythanksbye, I have things to do now that don’t include increasing civilian casualties.” Peter tosses the comm back to a surprised looking Hawkeye, salutes him, and then dives off the building in quick succession.
About two minutes later, the stilted voice of Captain America joins the emergency line, asking where the other teams are and where the Avengers– Peter silently notes that there is no ‘I’ in ‘Avengers’ either–would be of the most assistance. Peter stays out of it: Mister Fantastic is more than willing to share his strategy.
After all, all Peter did was create a secure radio frequency, find a good portion of New York City’s numerous superheroes and vigilantes, convince them that he wasn’t insane and that he definitely wasn’t trying to track them down for nefarious reasons–turns out vigilantes are some of the most paranoid people out there, but Peter is one of those paranoid bastards too, so he can’t judge them too harshly–and bada-bing, bada-boom: massively interconnected movement of people who can and will pummel some alien douchebags.
Simple, really.
(16)
Eventually, it had to happen.
He’d had a solid streak: he’d been doing really well, even, but alas, Peter had to (almost) run out of webs at some point while on patrol. It was an inevitable fact when working with finite tools: at some point, they run out.
Only this wasn’t exactly patrol: it was a proper wide-scale attack on the city by someone (?) or something (?). The whole theme of this attack, in contrast to last year’s alien invasion, was more along the lines of what Peter imagines the zombie apocalypse will be like, seeing as the greater civilian population was currently chasing him (along with other heroes and vigilantes, of course, Peter wasn’t a big enough name to warrant this from his enemies) down.
Joy.
Point being: Peter was out of webs, he couldn’t exactly full force pummel civilians with his full strength, nor did he feel comfortable using enough strength to even knock them out, and–
“Spider-Man, Widow, where are you? We needed you at Avengers Tower, uh, yesterday.”
–and he’s more than a couple blocks away.
Ever since Peter shamed the Avengers into getting off of their high horse (high tower?), they’ve been… more willing to communicate with other vigilantes. (Sort of. They communicated more with Peter, at least, when it was applicable to New York City stuff and not some mission in Canada.)
The Avengers, at their core, were not on-the-ground heroes. They do big stuff as a team, smaller stuff on little soul-searching-solo-adventures, and if everyone (AKA: Peter) is lucky, then they don’t do any of their stuff in New York City.
But, as it turns out, the zombie apocalypse began in New York City, which meant that the Avengers were on the scene. Peter had been pleasantly surprised to hear Good Ol’ (Or, rather, Young) Cap’s voice through the emergency communications line asking for reinforcements on the ground, while the Avengers took care of the Big Bad.
Oddly enough, apparently by ‘the Avengers,’ Captain America meant the Avengers and Peter, because THE Black Widow had directed Peter to meet her at some half-destroyed sandwich shop, which was the ground-zero for this whole problem. She’d needed to do some investigating and Peter–with his webs–was the person best suited for handling large groups of zombified-civilians without hurting them.
So that was sort of cool.
But now Peter barely has enough webs to get himself to the Tower, and he has a feeling that it might be important to save those webs for the actual–and probably inevitable–fight.
Plus, there was about a zero percent chance that Black Widow would ever agree to take a piggy-back ride across the city.
Even more joy.
“Spider-Man, time to go.” Peter would hesitate to call Black Widow’s voice urgent, because that would insinuate that she was anything less than perfectly controlled, which feels like a real disservice to how badass she is, but it certainly is something.
However, Peter’s hesitation only lasts for a minute as his enhanced hearing picks up the sound of multiple cars. “Cars are coming. Maybe five? What happened?”
“Time to go is what happened. They’re onto us.”
Yeah. There is definitely a sense of urgency in her voice now.
(And who the hell is they?)
“Can you hotwire a car? I don’t have enough webs.”
“Can I–?” She starts, offended, before cutting herself off, “Yes. Got a plan?”
More or less, Peter doesn’t say, because he has a feeling that uncertainty won’t exactly fly with the Black Widow.
Once Black Widow gets someone’s commandeered car up and running, she calls Peter over as she slides into the passenger seat.
Peter definitely does not panic.
“Uhm?” He asks, very eloquently, “Aren’t you going to drive?”
Black Widow doesn’t even designate him with a look, which is motivation enough for Peter to get into the driver’s seat, “If there are people chasing us in cars, then we are definitely allowed to shoot them. And you don’t have any webs. So drive.”
(Peter does still have webs, but that seems like a weird point for him to get hung up on.)
Peter sends a mental thank you–to Thor, to God, to cable television–for Zack & Cody, which at the very least taught Peter what the hell the PRINDL was, because he’s never driven a car in his life. May doesn’t have a car, and Peter is–haha, funny story–just barely old enough to get a driver’s license (which he does not have, obviously), but he has a feeling that legality is the very least of Black Widow’s concerns right now.
This seems like one of those moments where Peter is supposed to trust his gut.
“You’re my navigator,” Peter grumbles as he shifts the car into drive and floors it. Black Widow’s head jerks against the headrest at the sudden acceleration, and he’s pretty sure she’s glaring at him, but Peter is currently dodging innocent zombies, abandoned cars, and also some people with guns and decidedly not-abandoned-cars, who just turned the corner onto their street, so he can’t really be bothered by the fact that he’s disappointing an Avenger.
Peter realizes, about three minutes into the drive, that this is both easier and more difficult than Mario Kart at the same time.
On one hand: he cannot fall off the road, nor are there bananas or turtle shells attempting to screw him over.
On the other hand: making right angle turns is apparently very hard when he’s going eighty miles per hour.
On the third, vaguely ambiguous hand, Peter is interested to note that while Mario Kart does not constitute a real emergency to his sixth sense, driving a vehicle does, so his sharp and jolty dodging manages to save them from far too many close calls than Peter really feels comfortable with.
But going back to the turn thing–
“Turn left!” Black Widow suddenly shouts, “Left, left!”
“When?”
“Now!”
Black Widow is a sucky navigator.
Peter doesn’t even think before using his elbow to smash out his window and shoot a line of his precious webs, attaching it to the building at the corner of the street they need to turn down. The car spins around dangerously, turning onto its two outside wheels as it rotates around the fixed point in a perfect arc, but Peter keeps a tight grip on the line and only lets it go only when they are aligned with the road again. The cars following them continue going straight, entirely missing the turn, and Peter can hear their wheels screeching as they slam to a halt.
Meanwhile, their car hardly loses any speed, instantly taking off at eighty once more.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter can see Black Widow staring at him with an open mouth, “What the…?” She starts, and Peter shrugs. He trusts his gut.
He can definitely be casual about this.
“You pick things up, after a while.”
(What the hell Parker, that is so freaking vague and cryptic??)
He’s seen that sort of move in a cartoon, sure, but never did Peter think it would actually work.
“Yeah,” Black Widow agrees after a pause, “Okay, sure. I can work with that. Call me Natasha.”
(20)
“Oh, hey Spidey,” Tony greeted Peter as if it were any other normal Tuesday and not the day before the end of the world. “Good of you to show up. How’ve you been?”
“Good, good,” Peter responds absentmindedly, attaching a web onto one of the numerous robots flooding the sky like a dense swarm of flies gathering around a pile of dog shit. He then swings the web wide, planting his feet in place, destroying a dozen or so of the damn things in one devastating arc, “Y’know how it is. My girlfriend has an important meeting and I forgot to wish her good luck beforehand–it’s a tradition–so she’s probably going to eviscerate me later.”
Tony makes a sympathetic sound through the comm as Peter launches himself into the air, trying to gain some altitude and see how much of a shitstorm he just dropped himself into, “Yeah. I’m in the same boat. There’s a meeting, and of course I’m missing the meeting, so Pepper is also going to have my hide after all of this is over.”
“Screw world-ending catastrophes,” Peter mumbles. He isn’t exactly expecting Steve to mutter back an Amen, but it’s nice to know he isn’t alone is his annoyance.
Peter isn’t being entirely fair. The world probably isn’t ending, it just feels like it is, what with all the robots and the looming ship in the sky that rivals the size of a SHIELD Helicarrier.
On top of the world actually-maybe-ending, Peter went ahead and missed out on wishing MJ good luck on her final meeting for their shared Research Ethics class… and he’s pretty sure that he’s going to miss his own time slot for his meeting, so that is… absolutely wonderful.
Because, of course, the final meeting is worth fifty-percent of Peter’s grade.
(And he really doesn’t want to retake the damn class.)
Seriously: screw world-ending catastrophes.
The problem isn’t really that bad–there has been worse (See: zombie apocalypse and alien invasion)–but Peter has a tendency to exaggerate.
Sue him. It makes him feel better about the shitty situations he constantly finds himself in.
And even if the world was ending, that is, unfortunately, sort of a normal-ish Tuesday occurrence. It’s enough of a normal occurrence that Peter can’t even bank on classes being canceled.
It’s like snow days.
(Bear with him for a moment.)
Some southern states might get one inch of snow, and it’s like the whole world is ending. School is canceled, roads pile up, the shelves are cleared of milk and bread–for some weird reason, considering both of those are perishables, but whatever–and people panic. Then New York will be freaking negative fifty-million degrees with record level snow, and not a single school will cancel and everyone goes about their normal day.
Same thing goes with world-ending catastrophes. Bum-freaking-nowhere Arkansas will cancel school for an alien invasion, but in New York City? Practically par for the course.
Sure, there is screaming and yelling and panic down on the streets below, mobs of people fleeing the apparent robot invasion, but this is Midtown Manhattan. Not Morningside Heights. Not anywhere near(ish) Columbia University, where MJ, Peter, and Ned all attend college.
(Which means the chances of Peter’s meeting being canceled is slim to none. Maybe MJ will stall for him?)
“The meeting at the Tower?” At Tony’s hum, Peter nods his head reasonably, “Maybe you’ll have a snow day.”
They are, after all, right above Avengers Tower.
Tony makes some surprised sound, but Peter ignores him, switching the topic entirely, “Wait, can someone get me up to that ship? I think I might be able to stop this stupid thing from releasing more robots.”
And, well. No one can really complain about less robots, so snow days and meetings and college presentations are (somewhat) forgotten.
(Peter gets a nice shiner after a robot slams into his face, and it really says something about himself that his first thought is, “Well, guess I just got mugged. Sorry I’m late, Professor.”)
(22)
Somehow, Peter gets roped into going to Sokovia.
It wasn’t his idea to mess with any sort of rocks from space, suits of armor around the world, or artificial intelligence. He wasn’t even there when Ultron–Peter hates that the name is actually really cool, since it makes it that much harder to be annoyed over the whole situation–was first unleashed, for Pete’s (haha) sake.
(Okay, so the one about not messing with artificial intelligence may be a lie, but at least Peter wasn’t working on integrating aforementioned spooky rocks from space into artificial intelligence. And if that is only the case because Peter is definitely not in the sort of tax bracket that allows for messing with spooky rocks from space, well… Ultron still isn’t Peter’s fault.)
Still, Peter does his thing: he swings, he barely avoids getting shot, he listens to his gut when it starts setting off the red-alarm, he notices the plane gunning down a strip of already destroyed road, with Clint and a kid right smack-dab in its path of destruction… which is, to put it lightly, very, very bad.
Webs wouldn’t be fast enough to pull them out of the way, trying to stop the plane might result in it swinging wide and shooting elsewhere, and Peter has no way to shield them.
But Peter has this funny thing called super strength–something that folks tend to forget about, since Peter normally refrains from exercising his full strength on his (mostly) organic enemies–and as it turns out, swinging up to attach himself to the bottom of the plane as it passes by and ripping out its weaponry a second later is also very, very easy.
Letting go of the underside of the plane, Peter drops down to the ground, coincidentally landing near one of the twins that were at some point their enemies. Or something. Peter was picked up late to this awful party, okay?
Blue-silver-speed-guy (Pietro, Peter tells himself, and it’s nice to finally put a name to a face) looks at him with an expression caught somewhere between surprise, relief, awe, and raw fear. It’s an expression Peter knows that he himself has made many times underneath his mask, so he feels a pang of sympathy for the guy.
(Kid? No. Not kid. Peter would have chafed at being called a kid after seeing what he saw on a daily basis. They’re young, sure, but they aren’t naive. Peter won’t do them the disservice of acting all high and mighty when they are just barely younger than him.)
The fear probably doesn’t have anything to do with Peter, and moreso with the fact that Pietro had nearly been the world's most perforated shield, having been moving in place to body-block some bullets.
Peter pats him on the shoulder, not really knowing what else to do. “You did good,” He offers, “But maybe next time, think of a plan beyond catching all the bullets with your body. Who knows? It might lead to a longer future as a hero.”
“I-” Pietro starts, then stops, before drawing himself up to his full height and visibly beating back his fear. The awe creeps more towards the forefront of his expression, “You didn’t– You– how did you move so fast?”
“I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been alive, dude. You’ll get quicker with time, don’t worry,” Peter reassures, the familiar words spilling out of him without a second thought, before looking up at the green arc that the Hulk was cutting against the sky as he leapt after the plane. “Well. I better go. Stay safe, okay? You’ve been doing a good job staying alive: let’s keep that going. Maybe I can give you some tips, after this is all over.”
As Peter swings away, he hears Clint mutter under his breath, “What am I? Chopped Avenger?”
Now, seeing as Peter has never claimed to be professional, he thinks it’s pretty impressive that he manages to hold in his laughter until he’s (almost) out of earshot.
(25)
“After this glorious battle,” Thor proclaims, “You should join us for a meal and drink!”
By “glorious battle,” Thor is referring to the fact that the world is ending. Again. And that Peter is once again joining up with the Avengers (for some reason) to fight the Big Bad while the other vigilantes of New York City manage the ground..
(Is it bad that Peter is starting to get really blasé about this?)
Anyway. Partying it up with the Avengers actually might be the worst thing Peter can imagine, so thinking fast, he shrugs, “Raincheck this time around. My kids are stressed about their research projects, so I promised to Zoom them and help out where I can. I’m already going to be late because of the…” Peter trails off, gesturing at the chaos around them, “...Yeah.”
“Oh?” Thor sounds excited, for some reason, but a flash of color in Peter’s peripheral catches his attention, and he springs up from his surveying crouch.
“Gotta go, man, my ride's here.”
And by “ride,” Peter, of course, means the Iron Man armor.
While Peter is by no means part of the Avengers, he’s fought enough wide-scale threats with them over the years to have a sort of groove going on, so he attaches a web onto Tony’s foot and drops off the side of the building.
Immediately, Tony’s voice is screeching in Peter’s ear, “Holy shit–!” The armor swerves, nearly crushing Peter into the side of a building.
Nearly being the key word.
“Jesus, Tony, it’s me! Chill out!” One would think after ten years of Peter pulling stunts like this, Tony would be used to it.
“Spidey what the–?” The suit levels off, and now there is the easy flight Peter had been anticipating, “Warn a guy next time! I almost crushed you against that building trying to shake a tail.”
“Sure, sure,” Peter rolls his eyes, even though no one would be able to see it with his mask, “You definitely had me worried there. Really fearing for my life.”
“I am sensing some sarcasm.”
“What?” Peter gasps in faux surprise, “Really? Sarcasm? Me? Never! I definitely wouldn’t have just… stuck to the wall or dropped the web… for sure.”
“Asshole.”
“Of course!”
Letting go of his web, Peter drops down, then makes a sharp turn around the corner of a building. His gut was tugging him in a seemingly random direction, but Peter had long learned to trust his instincts for stuff like this.
“I wish you luck with your children!” Thor booms, when all is said and done and the cleanup was well on the way to being finished (thankfully, this time around, there was no huge amounts of mass destruction!! It truly is the little things in life), and really, Peter did not think they would still be talking about this.
“You have kids?” Tony’s voice is incredulous, and Peter realizes that he made a mistake far, far too late, because no, Peter does not have kids.
At least, not in the manner that Tony and the rest of the Avengers, who are now staring at him with an odd intensity, are thinking. Peter had been the (utterly beloved, according to MJ, but decently tolerated, according to himself) president of his college’s biology club before he’d graduated, and the gaggle of little underclassmen he’d taken under his wings were graduating this year.
(They grow up so fast!)
He’d started calling them his kids in response to them calling him an old man, and the term was so instinctively ingrained in Peter that he hadn’t even thought twice about using it. Now he is left to face the (hilarious) consequences.
“Uh. Yes?” Peter says, slowly, because even though he’s never directly lied to anyone about his age under the mask, he’s also never made it easy for anyone to guess. He knows what awaits him in about five years, and he isn’t about to ruin his future self’s fun.
Still, he’d thought that the Avengers–with their team that consists of two super-spies and a guy with far too many resources–would have realized that he wasn’t old enough to have kids, even if they didn’t know how young he actually was.
(Peter can even remember talking about his final projects in college? And he’s definitely babbled on about Star Wars or other pop culture things before. Do they really not know?)
Clint, oddly enough, looks the most bewildered, and is the one to ask how old Peter’s (fake) children are.
Now, Peter has a choice. He can go all in, or he can avoid the question.
“They’re graduating college this year,” Peter says, because he’s a fool who has decided to go all in, nevermind that he’s only about three years older than the supposed “kids” in question, “My darling… little… geniuses.”
(Very convincing Parker. Next time tell them that you’re the President of the United States! That’ll be more believable than that mess, holy crap.)
For a while, there is a long, pregnant pause where no one says anything: they just continue to stare at Peter.
Then, Steve asks, stiltedly, the most damning question. “How many?”
“...Seven.”
Of course, Peter answers it honestly.
“Seven?!?” Tony repeats, voice tight with disbelief.
Now. Peter may not have meant for this to happen, but he’s gotten this far, so Peter doubles down, “Hey! Now, I know it may not be as impressive as other spiders’ clutches, but seven is a respectable number and I won’t hear any criticism or snarky comments about them!”
“Yes, Metal Man! Do not dishonor the Man of Spiders’ impressive number of children! All of whom are pursuing an education, too! Which, in your odd, mortal manners, must have cost many arms and legs! ‘Tis truly an impressive feat,” Thor booms, and Peter nods along hard enough to make his neck hurt.
“See? Thor gets it. Thanks, Thor.”
Tony’s mouth opens and shuts repeatedly, but no sound comes out. Clint looks both confused and a little bit pained, and Steve’s face is nearly entirely red, although he looks more embarrassed than angry.
In all honesty? Peter does not want to know why.
(He’s just glad Pietro and Wanda aren’t here. Pietro has this sort of hero-worship thing going on while Wanda thinks that Peter is borderline cool, and this would totally ruin that for him.)
(27)
“Hey, Spidey, do you have any interest in going to Germany?”
“Fuck no– No, shush, I don’t want to hear it. I saw that whole mess in Romania and I’m not touching any of that with a ten foot pole. Also, there is no way that I’m going to defend a piece of legislation that would make me document my existence and permit the government to track me. That’s shady as hell.”
“Spider-Man– wait, hold up, it’s me. The Falcon.”
“...”
“Look, there’s been a whole mess with the Avengers, and Cap would really–”
“Yeah, hard pass. Look, I’m proposing to my girlfriend tonight and she would break up with me if I jumped head first into a conflict that I know practically nothing about. And don’t say it’s about the Accords. We both know that’s not the case anymore.”
(29)
Now, Peter has a tendency to exaggerate things.
What can he say: he’s a hyperbolic web-slinging vigilante with a masters degree, a dream, and a list of advice that he has internalized the hell out of.
But when Peter says that the world nearly ended? He’s not exaggerating this time around.
Half of the Earth’s population–and maybe the universe’s, too–had nearly disappeared–been utterly destroyed without a trace–and Peter… Peter does not know how to handle that concept. Doesn’t know how to begin to sum up what was almost lost.
Doesn’t think he even can.
Doesn’t think he should.
Putting a label–a quantifying marker–on human life feels wrong. Half the population includes someone’s parent. Someone’s child. A partner, a grandparent, a best friend, a mentor. It includes doctors and lawyers and good people and bad people and those that are not quite good or bad, but all of whom still deserve to exist.
Peter doesn’t know how to handle the fact that if it wasn’t for Wanda being absolutely terrifying(ly powerful), that he–and half the freaking world– would not be alive.
The whole situation had shaken him enough that Peter almost feels like adding a tally to the “Survived A World-Ending Disaster” scoresheet he’s been keeping with MJ and Ned for nearly two decades would be disrespectful.
The key word being almost, because the world didn’t end and Peter had fought the purple loser head on in Wakanda–which, side note, was the coolest place Peter has ever seen–after Tony and some wizard had fought the guy in space with some space pirates.
(Again. Probably one of the coolest things Peter can imagine, barring the fact that they were trying to stop a genocidal maniac from doing genocidal-maniac-things.)
At least, that’s what Tony had summed up the fight as being, after he and the aforementioned wizard stepped through a sparkly portal and onto the post-battle field.
So. Peter thinks he’s close enough the epicenter of the disaster to warrent him having his own, and definitely inappropriate, response.
Speaking of inappropriate responses:
“Do you–and the rest of the team–wanna come to my birthday party? It’s in about two months.”
Tony halts in his tracks. Scrubs a harsh, metal-clad hand over his face. Winces, because he just scrubbed a harsh, metal-clad hand over his face. Then he looks at Peter–really, truly looks at him–and says, “Half the world almost just got obliterated by a purple alien, and this is when you decide to send out the birthday invitations?”
Everyone then felt inclined to look at the place where Thanos’ body was still… resting.
“Technically,” Peter answers, looking away from the grim scene, “I was supposed to send them out a week ago, but I’ve been trying to figure out the dates.”
That was a lie. He’d had the date set for seventeen years.
And resting was really far too nice of a word, but calling Thanos’ body thoroughly dismantled and strewn around the place was a bit too crude, even for Peter’s taste. Turns out Wanda was fucking terrifying–not new news, but still warrants a reminder–especially after witnessing Pietro being tossed through the air like a ragdoll by the bastard. He was caught by Vision–Thanos’ target–before he hit the ground, which was the only reason Pietro was still alive and not a crumpled pile of broken bones.
The sight of Vision on the battlefield–with the stupid spooky space rock still firmly in his forehead–and her brother unconscious had been enough to stir up something powerful inside of Wanda.
(Sort of. It had been almost enough. Peter may or may not have had a hand in convincing her to take action, but that power? All Wanda.)
~
“Wanda,” Peter had said in a low voice, to let her know that he was approaching. Despite the chaos around them, he knew that she could hear him. Thor and Vision were buying them time, but they would only be able to hold out for so long, and having Vision near Thanos was a recipe for disaster. His hand hovered over Wanda’s shoulder for a moment before landing, giving it a squeeze that probably bordered on too strong.
Normally, Peter had an iron-tight control over his strength, but the sight of Pietro–not moving, far too still, breathing far too shallowly–had his control wavering.
(When had he gone and gotten so attached? Not just to Pietro, but to Wanda, too. And the rest of the Avengers (along with those who were technically not Avengers anymore, like Steve), too, even with their ever-rotating roster.)
“No,” She had said, sharply, although the word was pleading rather than cruel, “No, no. I- I can’t. He’s my brother. I can’t.”
Peter could have said a lot of things. He could have given her some patented Steve Rogers pep-talk, could have mentioned that she has a duty as a hero to get back up and fight, even though it might mean missing her brother’s final moments.
Instead, Peter told her, in no uncertain terms, that Pietro will make it. That he’s going to survive and be on his feet again in no time. That she can do this: that she is capable of bringing about the Mad Titan’s fall.
It was only after Wanda had gotten up and looked at his masked face with a searching, desperate expression, given him a tight hug, and left, that Peter realized how much trust she had just placed in him. She’d placed her brother’s life in his hands, placed her faith in his hands, and she hadn’t even used her magic to probe into his mind and see if he was telling the truth.
So when Peter had crouched down next to Pietro, he’d urgently whispered at the younger hero’s prone form as he prepared him for travel.
“Don’t you dare make me a liar.”
~
Sure, there was a lot of cleanup to do, and sure, Peter was going to have a new set of nightmares to add to the rotation, probably featuring the predominant sight of all of his loved ones fading away while Wanda screamed over Vision and Pietro’s dead bodies and blamed Peter for it, but it was that very image of them fading away that had finally convinced Peter to invite the team to the party, considering their faces were among the ones that Peter saw turning to dust in his mind’s eye.
“I believe this to be a wonderful time for a celebration of one’s birth!” Thor says agreeably, “To celebrate life amidst a near-dreary end.”
“That’s real poetic, Thor.”
“Thank you, Man of Spiders!”
“So,” Natasha interrupts, eyeing Shuri’s robots as they start to collect the scattered stones and body parts, “How do you plan to explain our presence at your party?”
A little bit of inappropriately-timed laughter escapes Peter, “Oh, there’s no way that I would be explaining this to anyone. We–me and MJ, my fiancée, I’ve talked about her before–are just inviting the people that know–hence, you guys–to the party, and then are gonna have a small dinner get-together with the people that don’t know. Which is mainly just MJ’s family.”
Wanda finally tears her eyes away from Thanos’ very dead body, and Peter is so relieved that it feels like he can finally breathe again. After checking to make sure that Pietro would be okay–he would be, they were in the land of miracles, after all–Wanda hadn’t left the site where she’d killed Thanos. Peter would be worried about her feeling guilty if the look in her eyes wasn’t so triumphant. Vision was a firm fixture by Wanda’s side, but Peter made sure to stick by her, too, just in case she needed something. “Wait, people know your secret identity?” She sounds more than a little afronted by the concept.
“Duh,” Peter starts ticking people off of his fingers, “My aunt, MJ, my best friend, my best friend’s ex-girlfriend from high school, most of my vigilante friends, my ex-bully from high school–”
“Other vigilantes know?” Natasha asks, somewhat stiffly, and Peter shrugs.
(He thinks that Tony would have been the one to ask if he hadn’t immediately been rushed to the emergency medical station after arriving back on Earth. Maybe that’s why Natasha’s voice sounded so stilted: she was asking a question she would never normally need to ask. Tony would have taken care of it.)
“Well. I’ve nearly bled out on half of their couches, and the other half has almost bled out on mine. Secret identities kinda go to the wayside when that happens..”
Natasha seems like she might say something else–and maybe Wanda was gearing up to say something, too, based on the look of faint hurt on her face–but they’re interrupted when one of the robots explodes after accidentally jostling one of the stones. Peter’s danger sense doesn’t go off, so he doesn’t bother flinching, but everyone else’s hackles are on high guard, so the conversation dies out.
(30)
(13)
One moment Peter is playing video games with Ned in his bedroom–minding his own business–and the next he’s strapped down on some table, staring up at a spooky concrete ceiling, his stomach reeling and a headache blooming behind his right eye.
And he quite literally means ‘one moment,’ because between one blink and the next–not even that long, really, so in less than a blink of time–the entire world had shifted, like a scene in a movie without a transition.
“What the hell?” A voice exclaims from somewhere past Peter’s feet.
Peter cranes his head to see where the voice is coming from and–
“Oh my gosh! You’re–!” The words start to burst out of Peter’s mouth, his eyes wide and surprised, before he’s interrupted.
“Wearing a metal suit of armor, yeah. Look, I know this must be strange for you, seeing as you are from the past, but–”
“That’s not it,” This time Peter is the one interrupting, although he can hardly find it in himself to care, “You’re just… old. Unless you’ve aged a lot since the last time you were on the news? When am I?”
The Tony Stark does a double take. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, shoot, sorry, that’s probably rude, my ba–ACK!” A figure swarms into Peter’s peripheral vision and along with them comes a swell of the puke-y feeling in his gut that Peter still isn’t used to, even though he’s had these powers for a few months already. On some instinct that isn’t totally his, Peter’s arm snaps out, breaking the flimsy bindings that are keeping him down, and smacking the figure directly in the gut.
The person goes soaring, and might have accidentally gotten super injured in the process if a blurry-blue figure hadn’t sped over to catch them before they crashed into a wall. The blur then makes short work of binding the figure–who, Peter realizes, must have kidnapped him, for some reason–up, and it’s all so professional and well-done that Peter knows he has stars in his eyes.
Words explode out of him, unbidden and unfiltered, “Oh my God, I nearly just killed someone!! And-! And-! Super speed!” The hand that was still bound down breaks the other straps easily as Peter then points at Captain America with a furiously fast finger, “And you’re alive!” Then, “Oops. Didn’t mean to break that. Sorry.”
The Old Tony Stark looks like he’s still reeling from being called old, so Peter looks over at the now-less-blurry blue-silver person, “Thanks for not making me a murderer. You’re super fast and that’s, like, really cool. I hope I’m fast like you one day–not that I’ll ever be that fast because that’s your, uh, who enhancement? I dunno what else to call it–cause that was really. Uhm,” Peter racks his brain for any descriptor that isn’t cool, “Neat?”
The blue-silver-speed-guy looks a little shocked himself–what’s up with these heroes and being stunned into silence?–but still manages to say, “You’ll get faster with time.”
Peter beams at him.
Blue-silver-speed-guy looks at red-terrifying-lady (who is the fourth, and last, member of what must have been Peter’s impromptu rescue team, even though he doesn’t remember needing to be rescued) like he’s a deer in the headlights as he furtively mutters in her direction, “Help! He’s so…” Blue-silver-speed-guy trails off with a helpless expression.
Peter isn’t sure if he should let them know he has super hearing, but based on the way red-terrifying-lady shushes blue-silver-speed-guy with a glance in Peter’s direction, he has a funny feeling that they already know.
(How would they know? Unless this goes back to Peter not being in the right time… because he would have definitely remembered Tony Stark suddenly being old and the magical (re)appearance of Captain America if this was his time.)
“How– How old are you?” Captain America asks, and Peter is going to freak out because Captain America should totally be dead but he’s alive and asking how old Peter is and.
And Peter sits up so fast that he breaks more of the straps. He feels bad for a moment, then remembers that he was kidnapped, so he feels less bad about breaking the rest of the bindings and hopping to his feet. “Uhm. Twel– wait. No. I’m thirteen! It’s my birthday today, actually, so that’s pretty cool. Also, aren't you dead? Or is that insensitive. Shoot I was just insensitive to Captain America, and you’re! You’re Captain America! And you’re Iron Man!” Peter points to The Old Tony Stark, “And I dunno who blue-silver-speed guy and red-” Peter carefully omits the terrifying part, “Lady are, but. But I bet you’re heroes too, oh my gosh, this is so cool! What’s it like? How long have you been heroes? Why does Captain America look like he’s a lumberjack? And you never answered why you were old, either.”
Distantly, Peter realizes that he’s babbling.
Actually, it’s not a very distant realization at all, but he still can’t stop his mouth from moving. Peter isn’t sure if he’s freaking out or fan-boying, but neither one of them is going to make him look cool, so Peter snaps his mouth shut mid-thought.
Old Tony Stark looks frazzled. Captain America is rubbing his beard, probably because Peter just called him a lumberjack, and the other two strangers look caught between amused and confused.
Then: “I was kidnapped, right? Are you, like, saving me? And when am I? You never answered.”
Red-terrifying-lady takes a calming breath, then thankfully starts explaining, “Yes, you were… sort of kidnapped. Or, your future self was. The person who kidnapped you used a machine to swap you with a younger version of yourself. It’s 2027 here… When is it for you?”
“Oh,” Peter says, shoving down the instinctive panic, “Oh. Okay. Why was I kidnapped?”
There shouldn’t be any reason to kidnap Peter: he’s just some random kid, after all! Maybe his IQ is a little high, but that’s not kidnapping-worthy.
Peter blinks. His eyes flit over to where blue-silver-speed-guy had kept Peter’s apparent kidnapper from becoming a pancake on the wall, and oh yeah.
There’s the whole ‘bitten by a spider and now he’s all weird’ thing, which.
Isn’t great.
Peter tries to remain calm.
He can do that, right? He can stay calm.
…
Peter can absolutely… NOT stay calm, and a frantic edge creeps into his voice, “Crap, did Hammer Industries find out? Did they come to take me back?” Old Tony Stark’s jaw drops and the others look equally surprised, but Peter is way too lost in his own theories to notice. He starts pacing and murmuring to himself.
“Maybe they needed my younger self before the spider-stuff gets too integrated, but that doesn’t make sense because the venom and powers kicked in practically overnight… but maybe they wear off? They shouldn’t, I’ve examined my blood and the spider is pretty well-integrated with my DNA so that doesn’t make sense…”
Or maybe his powers manifested into something more–maybe he’s a dangerous criminal who is on a rampage and the only way to stop him was to kill his younger version!!!
(That would mean red-terrifying-lady was lying, though, and Peter didn’t… think? She was lying? But he’s been wrong about the puke-y feeling before.)
“Spider-Man!”
Peter’s head snaps up at the loud interjection and the world is upside down.
Or, more accurately, he’s upside down and standing on the ceiling.
Whoops.
“Whoops?”
Blue-silver-speed-guy seems to be the most concerned about him sticking to the ceiling, seeing as he’s directly underneath Peter as if Peter might fall any minute, but no one else appears surprised. Do they know about his powers?
“Who is Spider-Man?” Peter asks, frowning a little. He’s technically a spider man (man might be a bit of an exaggeration, but whatever), but Spider-Man sounds like a title, and not a description.
“You are?” Blue-silver-speed-guy says, although he sounds unsure.
That gives Peter a little bit of a pause.
“Uhh… why?”
Old Tony Stark seems to have finally shaken himself out of his first funk and into another, meaner funk, because he points an accusatory finger at Peter, “Wait! So you aren’t immortal?”
Peter’s eyes bug out of his head, “I’m what?”
Captain America elbows Old Tony Stark, “You’re freaking him out!”
“No!” Old Tony Stark counters, “You are freaking him out. Since when has ‘Captain America’ ever looked like a lumberjack?!”
“Why do you think I’m immortal???” Peter presses, interrupting them both. If red-terrifying-lady said it was 2027, then there should be no way to prove that he’s immortal.
(Yet.)
Thirty is a reasonable age, right?
Captain America and Old Tony Stark glare at each other one last time before Old Tony Stark turns his attention back to Peter.
“Well, uh. There are. Theories?”
Theories.
Why the hell are there theories about him being immortal?
“It’s 2010 for me?” Peter’s voice is incredulous and confused, “Future me is thirty? Unless there’s been a sudden thing where everyone over thirty is dead, in which case you should definitely be dead, cause you’re waaay over thirty. So I should just be normal, right? Or normal-ish?”
“Holy shit,” Old Tony Stark swears, “You aren’t immortal! And you’ve always been a dick!”
“Stark!” Blue-silver-speed-guy and red-terrifying-lady snap in sync. Blue-silver-speed-guy glances over at red-terrifying-lady, and in some truly impressive silent communication, lets her take the lead.
“Don’t call little Spider-Man a dick,” she scolds, for some reason, as if that was the strangest part of what Old Tony Stark said, “You are just unfunny.”
“Uh, rewind a little guys,” Peter says, even though part of him really wants to laugh at Old Tony Stark being called unfunny, of all things, “Why would I be immortal? Cause I’m not, as far as I’m aware. Should I be immortal??”
Old Tony Stark starts pacing, too. The technology of his suit is so far advanced from what it used to be: gone was the clunky (but cool and iconic) design. Instead, the suit was all smooth lines, mimicking the shape of an actual body. Peter glances over at Captain America, and wonders if Old Tony Stark was trying to mimic his body type.
The thing was, frankly, a little too sleek for Peter’s taste.
But he’s never been into minimalism or sleek designs, so maybe he’s biased.
“Steve,” Old Tony Stark finally says, near desperate, “The Chitauri Invasion was in 2012.”
Captain America lets out a strangled sound. “Yep.”
“He’s thirteen right now.”
“Tony… fuck. Yeah. That’s not… great.”
“And there was the zombie apocalypse a year later, when Nat brought up the theory that Spider-Man was a government experiment or an agent-turned-hero. And he must have only been…” Old Tony Stark trails off, the wrinkles in his forehead deepened by concern.
But more importantly: someone thought Peter was a what?
And there was an invasion? And a zombie apocalypse?
What the heck was the future???
Blue-silver-speed-guy, between keeping a careful eye on Peter and glancing over to red-terrifying-lady, adds in, “There was Sokovia, too. When he said that he’d been a hero since longer than we were alive.”
Now, even without context, that does sound like something Peter would say. “I have a tendency to be hyperbolic?” Peter offers, and blue-silver-speed-guy groans.
“You’re barely older than me!” He complains, “I thought you were some sage immortal guy… or at least Stark’s age!”
“Sorry?”
Red-terrifying-lady snorts, “Don’t apologize, Spider-Man. Based on my understanding, you would have already been a vigilante for eight or nine years by then, which, compared to our half a day of not being wanted criminals, is basically a lifetime.”
It was so weird to hear himself referred to as ‘Spider-Man.’
“Call me Peter,” Peter says, because it sounds like he’s known some of these people for half his life and it feels really weird that they apparently don’t know his real identity… and are so far removed from it that the possibility of him being a government experiment turned hero was somehow more possible than Peter just being, well, thirteen. Or some guy.
Then, a thought occurs to Peter, “Is my older self really that much of a stickler about keeping his secret identity?” Whoops, if so.
(Sorry Future-Self!)
Old Tony Stark groans, seemingly not hearing Peter. Or perhaps no longer paying attention to him. “We’ve been working with a kid. I thought Spider-Man was at least my age, or a little bit older. Or immortal. Or even a spider turned into a human. Not… not just some kid!”
“Hey!” Peter defends, “Future me hasn’t been a kid in forever. And even then, does it matter? As long as I got the job done, then I’m good. So, like, back off, old man. I… uh… future me? Yeah! Future-me probably didn’t tell you because he knew you wouldn’t take him seriously! It seems like I’ve been doing just fine, too.”
Peter glances quickly over at red-terrifying-lady, lowering his voice a little, “I have been doing just fine, right?”
Red-terrifying-lady snickers, “I’d say you’re better than Stark by a large margin.”
“Well that’s subjective–!”
“And correct.”
Apparently, whoever made the initial invention that brought Peter to the future (oh my God he’s in the future and also apparently he’s a hero!!!!) must have been really bad at inventing, because right in the middle of Tony Stark’s exasperated hand toss, Peter is back in his bedroom.
“–engaged?!” Ned’s voice shrieks in Peter’s ear, and he winces at the loud volume.
Then he winces for an entirely different reason, because Ned totally just saw the future version of Peter, who was probably in his own hero suit, given the contexts of his rescuers(ish) knowing he was Spider-Man (Really? Is that really the name Peter lands on? It feels a little… on the nose. Maybe he can change that?), and holy crap Peter does not know how to explain that.
(He also realizes, quite suddenly, that he has no clue why or how he was kidnapped.
So that’s something to look forward to.)
“Oh, Peter!” Ned exclaims happily, “You’re back! Old Peter was just telling me about the future. He left you a note, by the way.” Without further adieu, Ned hands over a piece of paper with Peter’s own chicken scratch on it.
To answer your question:
I never told them my identity because we realized, right about now, that time travel is the funniest way to disprove the team’s theories about being an immortal/super spy/government agent/ that may be on the run/spider turned human. Also to answer the next question you have, yes: I remember this happening to me when I was your age. How many people can say that they inspired themselves to be a hero?
Some notes for the future:
- Funny story: other people are going to start becoming vigilantes (yeah, vigilantes, not heroes. Sorry little-me for bursting that bubble) because of you in about a year. You inspired them, apparently. I know that’s a terrifying concept. It still scares me to this day, if that makes you feel any better. (It didn’t for me, but I thought I’d give it a try.) Anyway. Make sure to meet them. Become allies. Your clumsy butt is going to need the backup often. Make sure that you figure out a way to connect everyone together in case of emergencies. Also bother Hawkeye as much as you can for me. Just trust me on that one.
- Trust your gut. Even if you aren’t entirely sure how to do something, trust that you can figure it out. That nauseous throw-up feeling is going to be your best friend (besides Ned) and worst enemy at the same time.
- Do NOT fuck up with MJ. You don’t know who MJ is right now, that’s fine, but when you meet her? Just know that she knows way more than you, and always will. Don’t lie to her. (On a separate note: if you ever really need an excuse (not to MJ or Ned), just say you got mugged. Don’t do it too often, but people normally don’t question getting mugged, especially if you have an injury to show for it (and you normally will).)
- Stay hyperbolic. It leads to some really hilarious assumptions. Also when in doubt: super-strength it up. Do NOT let Hawkeye die. Or Pietro. You’ll figure out who they are, don’t worry.
- Join Biology Club in college. You make a lot of great friends. It’s a pretty good decision.
- NEVER GO TO GERMANY. NEVER. ESPECIALLY IF ASKED BY SOMEONE NAMED THE FALCON OR BY TONY STARK.
- If you delay your 30th birthday party by about a week then the Avengers can be invited. Take that how you will. Also, tell Wanda what you know, when the time is right. I’m sorry in advance.
Ned’s there for us for everything, don’t worry. He’s going to freak out and ask fifty million questions when you are done reading this (I tried to answer some of them, but I remember how this night went when I was you), and he might accidentally almost spill some secrets at times, but he’s also saved your life more times than you’ll ever realize.
(Also, make sure our suit looks cool, and really lean into your Queens accent. No one is going to take a thirteen/fourteen year old seriously. Protect all the other fourteen year olds you do see become vigilantes. I know I can’t stop you from doing anything, because I couldn’t be stopped–and before you even think to ask, no, I don’t regret it–so even though life is going to suck for a while, things DO get better. Eventually. Still. Try not to let people become like us.)
Stay alive,
Old Peter
(Happy Birthday! Don’t die.)
After Peter finishes reading the letter, he has just enough time to think 'Oh. That's when Future-Me gets kidnapped,' before Ned metaphorically and verbally punches him in the gut.
"Old Peter said you stole Flash's car and wrecked it, and can I just say, I'm already a huge fan of Spider-Man's work!"
Crap. The name was totally going to stick, wasn't it?