He wasn't picking up the phone. He knows he can't do this.
May slowly set the phone beside her thigh on the coffee-colored couch and nervously rubbed her hands together. She had a peculiar gaze on her face, eyes seemingly staring through the television instead of at the chaotic news report. The sounds of "breaking news" and chaos through the windows almost drowned out the sound of her rapid, shallowed inhales.
Almost.
It would take a deeply inquisitive look to notice the tremor that was slowly overcoming her body.
He knows he can't do this.
It's been a year. A whole year since she walked in on her nephew's monumental secret. He was that charming little vigilante on the YouTube. May's mind drifts back to memories of the weeks that followed her discovery. There were so many silent mornings in the kitchen. He would always throw these conflicted, but otherwise deeply guilty brown eyes in her direction and she would pretend her cheerios were the most interesting texture she'd ever seen.
She glanced over at the kitchen, hoping he was standing there this whole time. Her eyes searched against her better judgement, but they came across nothing that mattered. Of course, she thought.
Suddenly, the sounds of the new channel began to flood her ears. She turned abruptly to the footage of a battered and smoky Times Square, searching for the familiar blur of red that often swings through the corner of any incident but after ten minutes of the same three Snapchat videos, she concluded that Spider-Man was not helping to contain the wreckage.
To say she was on edge was an understatement.
She was downright frantic.
She lifted her phone and began re-dialing the number of the seventh police station on her tear-stained list.
It's been six hours.
Six hours since all the Midtown High sophomore-year parents and guardians were phoned with the recording of a nervous voice urging everybody to pick up their kids and get to safety. She waited in a current of buzzing kids and parents in the parking lot for 45 minutes until a slightly dented yellow school bus sped in and parked across four spots. Around twenty kids poured out, two being MJ and Ned, Peter's closest and only friends.
She bolted to them, pushing away the thought that they'd rather be looking for their moms than talking to her.
"Where's Peter?" she asked, looking over their shoulders.
MJ immediately turned her head toward Ned, with a look of fury on her face that made even May lean away.
Ned stammers through his response. "H-he told me to create a distraction and then I looked outside the window and there was this, like, gigantic ring-ship thing and so I freaked out and like ten minutes later I looked around and couldn't find him."
May flipped out. "WHAT?" she shrieked.
"Did he fall out? Did you see him get out? Is this a S-" She cuts herself off before he yells out the alter-ego of her missing kid.
Missing. She didn't want to think about that M word.
Both teenagers understood exactly what she was asking however, and shrugged in response.
She immediately pulls out her cellphone and dials his number.
She dials 67 more times.
"Hi, this is Peter. Uh- Parker. Peter Parker. I'm unavailable at the moment, sorry, but um you can totally leave me a voicemail or text and I- BEEP."
His voice is slightly higher in the voice recording than it has been for the past couple of months but May can only see the face of her little boy at the moment so it didn't sound unnatural.
Where is he?
Why isn't Tony responding to me? I never liked him. I wish I asked Pepper for her number the last time we met over dinner.
Peter, come home please.
Baby, just shoot me a text. Anything. I won't make you stop saving the city.
It's been over six hours. And not even a text.
May didn't understand where he could possibly be. There was no superhero in Times Square.
Every horrible, awful scenario was cycling through her brain at the moment.
And then the dust began appearing.
A reporter seemingly dissolved into a pile of ash before her very eyes, with not even his blue necktie surviving the accident. And then, the people on the sidewalks, in the cars.
And when she ran toward the window and pulled apart the curtains in an act to reveal the streets a couple floors beneath hers, she noticed the people there were disappearing too. She backed away, disoriented.
Those people, they can't possibly be dying just outside her apartment.
Hyperventilation had fully set in for her and she seemed to have stopped breathing entirely.
Peter was missing.
Tony Stark was missing.
Peter was missing.
Peter was missing.
Peter was missing.
Peter was missing.
Peter was missing.
He could be anywhere in New York. He could be trapped. Her child, her bright, charismatic, talkative little boy is gone.
What if he turned to d-
No.
Stop.
Peter is too strong to die. He's too smart to get stuck in a dangerous situation.
He would never leave her, too.
She wrapped her arms around her body as if she was trying to keep herself together as she strode across the living room and down the hallway. She moved until she came to face the slightly crooked picture frame that hung on the wall across from her bedroom door. It was pretty dim in the hallway; the sun had already begun to set for the day. But she could still clearly see the photo a foot away from her twisted expression.
She first looked at the date in red on the bottom-right, OCTOBER 9, 2005, and then her hazel orbs shifted directly to her smiling, youthful face. Her arms had been wrapped around the giddy body of a pale three-year old with the curliest brown hair she had ever seen. He was so excited to explore Central Park with his favorite and only aunt and uncle.
Ben.
Ben was just radiant.
He was focused on Peter, with the biggest smile on his face and his arms outstretched, braced to capture in him in case he wormed his way out of May's grasp. He probably didn't even notice that the stranger snapped the photo.
Ben.
Our boy is missing and I don't know what else to do and-
Ben, I need you here. I've needed you here for years.
I know you look over him. Just, make sure he's okay.
I can't live without him.
I can barely live without you.
Protect him for me, wherever he m-
A familiar song slices through the tense atmosphere.
Her cellphone is ringing.
Her cellphone is ringing.
Without thinking, she scrambled back to the pleather couch and snatched it up to her face, fingers fumbling to press ANSWER.
"Hello?" she yelped.
"May."
Tony Stark's voice tumbled through the speaker and immediately her mind flooded with thousands of questions she had but then she registered the sound. Her mind heard the way his voice broke within that one syllable. The labored breathing. The palpable dread.
And her gut knew.
Her heart stopped beating.
She knew exactly what he was going to tell her.