Chapter Text
On the bright side, Clint finally teaches Kate how to get out of some of the more complicated restraints. Many of them involve a degree of upper body strength that Kate — well, she’s working on it, she’s probably at a solid sixty percent right now, but it’s important to have room to grow, anyway, the point is nobody is getting the better of Kate like that again. She will also be abandoning her lifelong loyalty to Spring Garden, even though it turns out they got duped by Ski Mask and it wasn’t really their fault. Still, once is enough to make Kate go in search of different Chinese takeout places that will not put narcotics in her lo mein.
Actually, she’s planning to hold off on lo mein for a while.
Clint stays in Manhattan for another week, which he calls an abundance of caution and she calls “wow, you really did miss me, you know, you can still come visit even when I haven’t been kidnapped and nobody wants to kill you!” He does express a gruff, begrudging sort of gratitude towards Spider-Man, whom he’s apparently fought before, but whose role in saving Kate’s life was instrumental enough this time that Clint declares it water under the bridge.
Spider-Man, as promised, gives Kate a phone number, which Kate immediately texts under the presumption that it’s a fake.
Kate: finish the lyric: spider man, spider man…
Allegedly Spider-Boy: 1 song about spiderman > 0 songs about hawkeye
Kate: HEY
Kate: not my fault, how many times did i tell clint his problem was no branding
Allegedly Spider-Boy: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The intervening weeks are unremarkable. Kate goes back to school, a thing so mundane she’s on the cusp of deciding not to go, but in the end it would be a waste to bail with only one semester remaining, so Columbia it is. She keeps her head down in class, trying to call as little attention to herself as possible. As exciting as it is to get recognized by strangers on the street, she knows better than to try and make a local celebrity of herself here on campus. Any classmate she befriends is another person she endangers. It’s better this way.
The archery team offers her old spot back once they find out she’s the new Hawkeye, but Kate turns them down. It’s hard to say why. Maybe because when she got kicked off the team, not one person reached out to ask how she was doing. Maybe the fact that after the most life-altering winter break of probably anyone’s life ever, a college archery team feels like child’s play. She’s been kidnapped and beaten within an inch of her life. Competitive athletics just don’t give her the rush they once did.
She still texts Clint every day, which he stopped complaining about and started requiring after Ski-Mask-Gate — see, kids, sometimes getting kidnapped can be a win — even if he only ever replies once a day to say something like “Ok 👍🏻” because he’s a dick. Sometimes she checks in with Spider-Man, mostly to see if he needs superhero help with anything, but he never does.
Of course not. No one ever wants to put Kate in danger. God forbid she risk what little she has left.
She gets the impression Spider-Man doesn’t have much left either. He has that lonely sad boy vibe that Kate also gets from the guys sitting alone in the dining hall, watching anime with their AirPods in as they house a cheeseburger. Kate’s not really in a position to judge, given how many cheeseburgers she packs away in front of the TV herself, but that’s kind of the point. Whoever Spider-Man is in his real life, maybe he and Kate could be friends. They could bond over dead parents or convicted-felon parents or whatever Spider-Man’s damage is. And Kate wouldn’t have to worry about him, because he can clearly handle himself.
Whenever she gets close to asking him, though, she remembers every time he shot her down. If he wanted to be friends, the door’s open. The door’s been blasted off its hinges. Not like he couldn’t make half an effort.
He gave Kate his phone number in case of emergencies. Nothing else.
Life drags on, and Kate, like a corpse in a body bag, gets dragged with it.
She’s zoning out of a Corporate Finance lecture when her phone buzzes in her bag. Kate startles back to Earth and reaches for it, checking her texts discreetly under the fold-out desk.
Allegedly Spider-Boy: SOS
Allegedly Spider-Boy: [location]
She's out of the building so quickly she leaves a cartoonish cloud of dust in her wake.
Kate: u okay????
No answer. She calls; no response.
The address is an hour by train or twenty minutes by cab. “I’ll pay you double if you can get there in fifteen,” she tells the cabbie, and spends the whole harrowing drive cursing herself for not bringing any of her gear to campus, and wondering what the hell got Spider-Man so outmatched that he finally called on Kate.
Out on Shore Boulevard, property damage draws a path straight to the bad guys. Kate follows the yellow brick road of smashed cars and crumpled chain-link fences to its end, where, to put it delicately, shit has hit the fan.
What once must have been a tall, stately high-rise has collapsed at one end, and Kate figures the people running and screaming have it better than whatever unlucky people were still inside when the building got an unscheduled renovation. She’s suddenly very aware of being unarmed and in civilian clothing.
“Spider-Man?” she calls out. She grabs one of the screaming runners. “Hey, is Spider-Man here?”
The screamer just screams something semi-coherent about a weapon that fires blue light, gesturing unhelpfully in the direction of the ruins. Then she breaks free and continues running.
“Okay then,” Kate says. She glances around herself for literally anything to use as a weapon. Seriously, this is the last time she leaves home without her suit and bow. She’s going to die from stupidly forgetting her weapons, and then she’ll posthumously win the Stupidest Superhero Award, and Clint will have to accept it on her behalf because she’ll be dead on account of stupidity and won’t be available to make the ceremony.
One of the smashed cars has its doors ripped off. Kate digs around in its glove compartment and finds an ice scraper, then climbs into the trunk and relieves the vehicle of its jumper cables. With the cables hoisted up on her shoulder and the scraper in hand, she feels about six percent better.
Well. Once more unto the breach and all that.
The sound of a high-tech weapon firing draws Kate around the wreckage. Crouching behind a Kate-sized chunk of brick and mortar, she counts three hostiles — all in all, not as much as she anticipated, and definitely less than she’s taken on at once before. Two of the guys have weapons of unidentified origin. One of them fires a burst of blue energy at the rubble, vaporizing a pillar the size of a semi, and Kate revises her assessment: definitely alien origin, and super lethal.
Worryingly, she does not see Spider-Man anywhere. If he got hit by one of those tractor beams…
Focus.
Right. If Spider-Man is dead, well. There’s nothing Kate can do about it now. But she can stop these bad guys. She can be a hero. She can do her damn job.
“What are you doing!” Guy 1 snaps at Guy 2, the one who just fired and is taking aim as if to fire again.
Guy 2 moves away and continues to line up his shot. “He could still be alive.”
Spider-Man. He was here.
“Even if he’s alive, he won’t last long under there,” Guy 1 says, smacking Guy 2. “Stop wasting time and let’s get out of here before the cops come.”
Kate looks in horror at the pile of detritus that was once a condominium. If Spider-Man is really under there, Guy 1 is right that he won’t last long. If he wasn’t flattened on impact, the weight could crush him any minute now.
“We can’t go anywhere until TJ is out,” Guy 3 says. “If we leave without the payload, then this was all for nothing.”
Not to mention, if this trigger-happy motherfucker keeps firing, odds are he’ll hit Spider-Man sooner than later. On the off chance he is still alive, Kate has to protect him.
Which means she has to distract them. Which means drawing their attention, and potentially their fire. Their alien fire. Right at her extremely human and vulnerable body.
Serves her right for running headfirst into this without her bow or any semblance of armor. But being unarmed doesn't mean she's defenseless, she reminds herself. She's still better in a physical fight than your average evil lackey; it's just a matter of getting close enough. These jokers may have alien guns, but Kate has…her wits or whatever.
Now to do something with them.
She creeps around the ruins as the three guys continue to bicker. The condo is right on the water. An idea starts to form, or at least the broadest strokes of a brainstorm which could, with time and nurturing, turn into an idea. Unfortunately, time and nurturing are two things Kate does not have right now. The brainstorm will have to cut it.
She sets the jumper cables at her feet. Then she rears back with the ice scraper and congratulates herself on a perfect overhand throw as it splashes into the East River.
“The hell?”
Guys 1 and 3 turn toward the sound. Excellent. Kate pries a brick free and launches it at Guy 2’s head, where it strikes true, knocking him and his gun to the pavement with a thud and a clatter.
Kate leaps into action just as the two other guys make a 180 at the sound. They’re closer, but she’s quicker, and she tucks and rolls to snatch up the alien gun just as Guy 1 fires on her. It flies so close that the heat sears her arm, but she comes out unharmed and on her feet.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she says, drawing her new weapon on Guy 1. “Easy, buddy. We want the same thing.”
“I doubt it,” Guy 1 snarls, lifting his weapon.
“Ah-ah-ah, the payload?” Kate says, sending up a prayer to whatever God may or may not exist whom she may or may not believe in. “TJ called me separately. Said he needed someone he could trust.”
God, please let this work.
“You took Eric out,” Guy 3 says. He’s the burliest of the three, which is probably why he’s the only one without an alien weapon. Kate does not look forward to when she inevitably ends up fighting him.
“He was working against you. He sold you out. Wanted the payload for himself.” Confidence, Kate. You’re a great liar. “How do you think Spider-Man found you so quickly?”
The two guys chew on this, and to Kate’s great surprise and even greater relief, they seem to buy it.
“I knew it,” Guy 1 says irritably. He kicks Eric’s body, which seems unnecessarily harsh. “That jerkwad was always trying to get ahead of us.”
“If you work with TJ, then how come we've never heard of you?” Guy 3 demands.
Great question, Guy 3.
“TJ has a lot of secrets,” Kate says. “Look, is this really what you're worried about right now? The cops could be here any minute, and if they get here before he's out, then this op is dead in the water. We need to work together. Did you set up a lookout?”
Guy 3 and Guy 1 exchange an embarrassed look.
“You didn't set up a lookout?” Kate says incredulously, and whistles. “Wow. No wonder TJ called me.”
“If Spider-Man hadn't shown up, we wouldn't have needed one,” Guy 1 protests. “It was supposed to be a quick smash-and-grab.”
“What the hell is taking so long?” Guy 3 mutters. “He should be out by now.”
“Can’t believe I’m being forced to work with these noobs,” Kate mutters.
“Travis, go,” Guy 1 says, pointing a finger toward the front of the building. “Keep the cops off our scent.”
“Why me? You go!”
“It’s my plan!”
“Just like it was your plan to bring Eric along?”
“Which one of us has a Chitauri weapon right now?”
Travis grunts like a dispossessed pig. “Fine. But next time, you’re the lookout.”
He lumbers away. Kate hopes she didn’t just subject a few NYPD officers to Death By Beefy Thug. That’s two down, one to go.
Guy 1, whom Kate has decided to call Steven for lack of an actual name, eyes Kate with distrust. “If you’re really on our side,” he says, “why are you still pointing a weapon at me?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Kate says. “And like I said, I’m not here for you. I’m working with TJ.”
“TJ,” Steven says. “Right, right. And how do you know TJ again?”
Kate swallows. “You know. Crime stuff. Other crimes we’ve done. It’s none of your business.”
She sees the exact moment her cover is blown.
They move at the same time, both firing and dodging simultaneously. The good news is that he misses; the bad news is that she misses, too. Shit. Also fuck. Steven immediately fires again, and it’s all Kate can do to dive out of the way. She runs for her old hiding spot, firing blindly over her shoulder to cover her back.
“Okay, Kate,” she says under her breath. “You divided them. Time to conquer.”
The circumstances are less than ideal. Guns are really not her weapon of choice, and she’d love to avoid killing these guys, by alien-incineration or otherwise, but Steven clearly has no such hangups. He fires in her direction, and the hunk of brick protecting her explodes into tiny (but vicious) shrapnel. Then he immediately fires again, forcing Kate into a sloppy duck and roll.
Another sucky part of an alien-tech shootout: unlimited firepower.
“Wait wait wait, stop!” she shouts, grabbing the jumper cables. “Okay yes, I lied before, but I really do have to tell you something important about the payload! This time I mean it!”
Steven falters.
Kate blinks. “Wow, you fell for that?”
Then she lassoes his legs.
It goes about as poorly as anyone’s first time lassoing someone’s legs can go, but it does distract Steven enough for Kate to get up close and personal. She gives him the old one-two, grappling the alien weapon before he can get off another shot on her. It fires into the sky. Kate introduces her knee to Steven’s sensitive area, and he folds like origami.
“You really shouldn’t rely so much on firearms,” she says conversationally. “You’re neglecting your hand-to-hand combat skills.”
Steven tries to tackle her, but Kate throws him forward with his own momentum, and he crashes into the ground, the alien gun skidding several feet out of reach.
“Wow,” she says. “TJ will be so disappointed.”
She punches him in the head, then retrieves his alien gun as he’s struggling to get to his feet.
“You insolent—”
One well-placed hit from the butt of the weapon, and he’s out like a light.
“What is it with people calling me rude names?” she wonders aloud.
She uses the jumper cable to tie his wrists together around a fencepost overlooking the water, then gives unconscious Eric the same treatment, taking care to separate them by a few yards. She figures she only has a minute or two before Travis wonders about the sound of gunfire and comes running, but that’s going to have to be a problem for later.
Kate throws Steven’s alien gun into the river, then rushes over to the mountain of collapsed condominium, peering through the cracks.
“Spider-Man?” she calls quietly. “Are you under there?”
She strains her ears. Nothing.
“Uh, okay, look, I don’t know if you’re alive in there, but I’m gonna try my best to get you out,” Kate says. “I’m gonna blast the top of the rubble to lighten the load. Don’t move around too much.”
If Spider-Man is there, he’s being awfully quiet about it.
“Okay then,” Kate says. “Here goes nothing.”
She fires, atomizing a car-sized hunk of drywall. She fires again. Building materials are no match for this gun. Again, and again, and again, until what started as two dozen stories has been reduced to maybe five.
Then she hears, “What the hell did you do?”
Kate whirls around and fires her gun off to Travis’s left. It’s supposed to be a warning shot, but it goes so wide that even she wouldn’t be scared of her. Travis advances, every inch the stampeding bull.
“Travis, hey!” Kate backs away. “Would you believe they both betrayed you?”
“No!”
Decision time: Kate launches the gun over her shoulder. She’s not going to shoot him, but if he got ahold of it, he would definitely shoot her, and that’s not a risk Kate is willing to take.
“Look, this doesn't need to be a fight!” she says loudly. “You and I want the same thing!”
“You tied up my crew,” Travis growls. “You jeopardized my operation. What I want is your head.”
“Ah, well.” Kate grimaces as Travis breaks into a full-on run. “Sorry, but you can’t have that. I’m kind of attached to—”
The end of her hilarious quip is a garbled mess of syllables, from her failed attempt to dodge Travis’s bodyslam. She lands hard on the concrete, tasting blood.
Travis lifts her up off the ground. He lands a punch, then another. The old one-two, Kate thinks dimly. That’s supposed to be my move. She swings her legs up around his neck, trying to unbalance him. The man is like a fucking tank. He just pries her off and throws her to the ground again.
“Ow,” Kate says, blinking dizziness away. “How much protein powder do you go through, dude?”
“No one is ruining this for me,” Travis snarls, grabbing Kate’s shirtfront and socking her in the jaw. Light bursts across her visual field. “Especially not annoying” — punch — “little” — punch — “girls."
He rears back to punch again, and his fist seems to get caught in midair.
“You just had to bring gender into it,” says a cracking voice, and it might be the most beautiful sound Kate has ever heard.
Travis goes flying backwards. He hits the wall of debris and crumples like a soda can. Flanking him, limping in Kate’s direction, is Spider-Man, his suit in tatters, his mask half-ripped. Blood, dust, and dirt cover every inch of him. He looks like he went through the wringer, then went through it again just for the hell of it.
But he’s alive.
And he just saved Kate’s bacon. Again.
At the moment, Kate’s too damn relieved to care.
“Spider-Man,” Kate breathes. It takes her two tries to stand, but she makes it to her feet. “Thank God you’re okay.”
For a certain definition of okay, anyway. This is the worst Kate’s ever seen Spider-Man, maybe the worst anyone has ever seen Spider-Man.
“Thanks for coming,” he says weakly. “You… Kate, where's your bow and arrow?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kate says, like she’s only just realizing she doesn't have them. “Guess I left them at home. You ever do that? Just walk out without your gear? So weird. Good thing I know karate, right?”
“You're— you don't even have your suit!”
“I came from class,” Kate says defensively. “And I had it handled.”
Spider-Man scrubs his face. “The cops are almost here. We need to get out of sight.”
“There’s a guy inside. TJ. And some payload—”
“I dealt with him already. Before they buried me.”
“Guess they didn’t get the message.” Kate looks at the river, then immediately dismisses that as a terrible idea. “You know a good escape route?”
“I don’t think I’d make it far in this state,” Spider-Man admits. “But if we can’t get out, we can always go up.”
Kate tips her eyes up to the undemolished top of the condo.
“I might need a lift,” she says.
The breeze on the roof is a cool salve on Kate’s new constellation of cuts and bruises. She peels off her flannel to let the cold air embrace her, then looks over at Spider-Man, who hasn’t moved since he collapsed with his back to the parapet.
“Hey,” she says, cautiously coming closer. “You good?”
Spider-Man slowly shakes his head.
“I thought I was gonna die down there,” he says hoarsely. “If not for you, I would have.”
“Ah, don’t mention it,” Kate says. “We superheroes gotta look out for each other.”
Spider-Man doesn’t respond. He looks like a rag doll at the end of its lifespan. Kate doesn’t envy his being buried alive, but she can’t quite understand why he doesn’t seem more…triumphant. They won. They beat the bad guys. Yet Spider-Man is still acting like something was lost.
“Besides, you saved me,” Kate points out. “Again.”
“You saved me first,” Spider-Man says. He tugs at the end of his mask. “If you hadn’t been there— if you didn’t come—”
“Well, I did,” Kate says. “It’s over. No more worrying.”
Spider-Man is upright so abruptly that Kate worries he’ll tip over the edge. “You need to go.”
“What?” Kate says, incredulous. “No way, man, we’re in this together. I took out half of those guys myself.”
“Not that,” Spider-Man says, still yanking on the mask, “I just— I need—” He grabs his head. “I can’t—”
Oh, Kate thinks, watching as Spider-Man wrestles with himself, gasping for air. He can’t breathe. And he won’t take off the mask while she’s watching.
Sympathy follows frustration as Kate takes him in. She came when he called; she fought his battles; she saved his life. What more can she do? They’re supposed to be allies. How can they protect each other if Kate doesn’t even know who she’s protecting?
But in the end, Spider-Man is still a man. Or maybe a boy. Whoever he is, he’s visibly having a panic attack, and ally or friend or whatever, Kate’s goal isn’t to hurt him. She doesn’t want him to hurt at all.
“Look, I can't leave, but I’ll look away,” she says gently. “I promise not to look if you take off the mask, just don’t freak out, okay? Take deep breaths.”
And she does. She turns away. A moment later, the sound of gasping is louder, unmuffled by a fabric barrier, and every bone in Kate’s body fights the urge to break her promise. With one turn of the head, she could know. It would be so easy.
She fixes her gaze on the distant horizon. Kate is and isn’t a lot of things, but she’s a woman of her word.
“Deep breaths,” she says, letting the wind carry her words. “Try to name five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.”
“Wh— what?”
“Five things you can see,” Kate repeats. “Just— name five things, any five things you see right now.” More uneven breathing. “Out loud,” she adds.
“The, uh, the roof.”
“Good, four more.”
“Trees. Cars. River. You.”
“Nice job,” Kate says. “Now four things you can hear.”
“I can name four hundred,” Spider-Man says tightly. “I can name four thousand.”
“Just four is good. Tune out all the other stuff and focus on four.”
He sounds a little better as he says, “The cops. Taking statements. More sirens. Your heartbeat. And my heartbeat, too, I guess.”
“You can hear my heartbeat?”
“Yes. It’s loud.”
“Um, thank you, I think?” Kate frowns. “That’s gotta be better than a quiet heartbeat, right?”
“It’s better than no heartbeat,” Spider-Man says. He definitely sounds calmer. “What’s the next one?”
It takes Kate a moment to remember what they were doing. “Three things you can feel.”
“One hundred bruises. The roof — the gravel. And there’s blood in my suit. It's sticking to me. Not a fun feeling.”
Kate pauses to listen. His hyperventilating has turned to measured breathing, and his speech is less halting — both indicators that the panic has abated. Still, she says, “Two things you can smell.”
“Blood,” Spider-Man says. “And the East River, though I wish I couldn’t.”
She chuckles. Cracking jokes: definitely a good sign. “I’d ask for one thing you can taste, but I have a pretty good guess it’s gonna be blood again.”
“Got it in one,” says Spider-Man. There’s a moment of quiet. “That’s a neat trick.”
“Not bad, right?” Kate idly contemplates the horizon. “I used to get them all the time. Panic attacks, I mean. Common symptom of having your dad die in an alien invasion, or at least that’s what my therapist Anita used to say. I was nine, so I thought I was dying every time it happened, but the 5-4-3-2-1 thing was more helpful than any of her other cheap tactics. Which was a super low bar, but, you know. There's not really a good way to deal with aliens killing your dad at age nine. All things considered, I think I turned out okay.”
Spider-Man exhales. “Can’t argue with that.”
It’s quiet for another long moment. Kate fills the silence imagining what her finance class is doing right now. It’s been about half an hour; class should be wrapping up in the next fifteen minutes, which means they’re probably doing group work. Kate almost prefers to be here, nursing her wounds on a riverside rooftop, than stuck behind a desk in that miserable class.
She doesn’t even like finance. She never wanted to study business. It was her mom’s idea, of course — if you’re going to take over for me at Bishop Security, you need to have these skills, hey, still want me to follow in your footsteps, mother? — and Kate’s motivation for completing her degree has been spiraling down the drain since she stopped being Kate Bishop and started being Hawkeye.
How many superheroes have a college degree, anyway? Okay, Dr. Banner had like seven, but he's a special circumstance, what with the whole genius thing. Tony Stark was MIT’s golden boy, but again — supergenius, plus that was the 80s. Did Clint go to college? Not likely.
She wonders if Spider-Man is in college. Her mouth is open, about to ask, when he beats her to speaking.
“You can turn around.”
The question evaporates on her tongue. It’s quickly replaced by a new one:
“Is your mask back on?”
“No,” Spider-Man says.
As much as Kate has waited for this moment, she feels uncomfortable now that it’s here.
“Are you sure?”
“No.” Spider-Man sighs. “But…you weren’t wrong. Someone should know. In case something happens.”
Kate counts to five, in case he changes his mind. Then she turns. And almost falls into the East River.
“Peter?”
Peter who shared a cab with her on his way to Hell’s Kitchen not two months ago. Peter who showed up at Rockefeller Center, just after the fight with the Kingpin, looking for all the world like a lost civilian. He was nobody, some random New Yorker, but hindsight is 20/20, and in hindsight, of fucking course it’s him. She remembers his enigmatic and unsolicited advice on how to be a superhero; she remembers when he saw Clint Barton and froze like he was seeing a ghost. God, she even remembers his sad smile, the way it was too deeply haunted for a guy his age, and she wrote him off as a kid with a complex, but —
“Yeah,” Peter says, clutching the remains of his mask in his gloved hand. He’s either smiling or grimacing, possibly both. "Uh, hi."
Kate’s not sure what’s more surprising: that she actually knows the man under the mask, or that it’s the one guy she's accidentally encountered on multiple occasions.
Wait a minute.
“So all those times we ran into each other,” Kate says suspiciously.
Peter shakes his head. His hair is a matted mess, and his face looks like a rejected draft of Jackson Pollock’s. He has blood smeared from temple to jaw, a split and swollen lip, and one eye doesn’t quite open all the way. If all that is from the building, it’s no wonder he had a panic attack.
“Those times were just chance,” Peter says. “I swear, I didn’t know you were involved with the Rockefeller Center thing until I got there. And by that time it was already over.”
“Wait a minute — you came as Spider-Man?”
“I heard the call,” Peter says. “Police scanner.”
Damn, she needs him to hook her up with one of those.
“You caught me as I was leaving.”
Something dawns on Kate. “And you blew me off. You said you didn’t have a phone!”
Peter has the audacity to look sheepish. “In my defense, the first time I said that it was true. And I’m still pretty much broke.”
“Peter, I’m literally rich,” Kate says. “And it’s all my mom’s blood money, so I’d feel no remorse about spending it to get you a phone, or anything else you need. I could have helped you.”
There’s an edge in Peter’s voice. “I don’t need your charity.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” Kate says. “It’s not charity to help out a friend.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Like you took care of yourself down there?”
Peter has no retort. Too far, maybe.
Nice, Kate. Alienate the guy just as he’s starting to trust you. Stellar decision. Really solid move.
“The first bad guy I took on by myself was this guy called The Vulture,” Peter says quietly. With his knees to his chest, curled up in the corner of the roof, he looks unimaginably small. He’s young for a superhero, and that’s coming from Kate.
She hums to encourage him to continue, so he does.
“It was my, uh, my girlfriend’s dad, actually.” He breathes a strained laugh. “That tells you what kind of luck I have. Anyway, I… I went after him by myself. I cornered him in this big warehouse, and I really thought I had him. I was such an overconfident kid. And then…”
Peter’s eyes close. He breathes deeply.
“He took out the support beams and flew away. I didn’t realize what was happening until— the whole building fell on me.”
Kate can’t help her intake of breath. “Jesus.”
“The worst thing about it wasn’t that I was trapped under a building,” Peter says. “I mean, that part sucked. Like a lot. But it was the fact that I failed. I tried to stop him, and I failed. A bad guy was going to get away, and a lot of innocent people were going to die, because I wasn’t good enough.”
Kate, hesitantly, takes a cross-legged seat on the roof, a respectable distance from Peter. “What happened?”
Peter props his chin onto his knees and winces like something hurts. “I got myself out. Sheer force of will. I did stop him, so I guess it was a win, but… I almost died, and then my girlfriend moved to Oregon, and…it felt like I lost more than I won that day.”
“I know the feeling,” Kate murmurs.
“Yeah, so…I don’t do great in small spaces, is my point, I guess.”
“Even if you did, I don’t think anyone does well when they’re buried underneath a building,” Kate says. “Much less two buildings.”
“Yeah. Fair enough.”
A cold wind whisks across the roof, sending a shiver down Kate’s spine. She wraps her flannel back around her, and doesn’t miss the full-body shudder Peter does. Where does he go when the hero workday is done? Does he even have a home? How broke is ‘pretty broke’?
“Hey,” she says. “I have an idea, and before you say no, just…really think about it, okay?”
Peter’s lips twitch. “Okay.”
“Step one. We get the hell off this roof. Step two, Uber back to my apartment. Ah-ah-ah, no interrupting. Step three, hot showers, hot pizza, and hot chocolate. Optional step four: watch a bad movie while we cuddle with my dog.”
“I should—”
“Being a superhero doesn’t mean you have to be alone,” Kate interrupts. She has a vague feeling that this is one of those times you learn the lesson you teach. “I promise you don’t have to stop being a self-sacrificing martyr just because you made a friend. And we are friends, by the way, whether you like it or not.”
Peter huffs. “I— I know that.”
“So…” Kate wheedles. “You did say next time I could buy you pizza.”
Peter rubs the back of his neck. “I guess I can’t say no.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Kate says. “Friendship with me is kind of like a black hole made of chocolate. You can’t escape, but do you really want to?”
A laugh. A real one, even. Score one, Kate Bishop.
“Okay,” Peter says. “But I get to pick the movie.”
“Deal,” Kate says. “But no aliens.”
“No aliens,” Peter agrees. “I’ve had enough of aliens for a hundred lifetimes.”