erm-its the last chapter. and, no its still not a good fic
enjoy or dont, and thanks for reading! feel free to leave a review telling me how much u hated it bc tbh? me too
and, yes, i am aware the ending isnt what yall wanted? but this is what fit the tone so this is what we got
and im lazy
if it seems rushed thats bc it is
When Peter was twelve, he broke a vase. Aunt May's face had twisted up in a strange expression that Peter calls panic. She made sure he hadn't been cut, then cleaned up the mess. She had said it was her grandmother's vase, and it that it had been very special.
Now it was just painted black shards in the trash.
May said it was nothing to worry about. Things like that were of little consequence.
"So long as you aren't hurt," she smiled, "everything is okay."
Peter kills a man and no one finds out. He burns the body and talks to spiders.
Aunt May doesn't look for him. New York was too small for real consequence, and Peter is even smaller.
...
(New York was the world until it wasn't.)
A FOOLISH THOUGHT, LITTLE SPIDER. THE WORLD ISN'T ANYTHING BUT WHAT IT IS.
Peter's spine stiffened, feeling overheard and over-known. "The world is..?"
THE WORLD IS JUST THE WORLD, AND THIS IS HOW IT IS. EVERYTHING IS CHAOS AND DISORDER, The Dark World intoned, THAT'S WHERE THE REASON COMES FROM.
Incapable of countering the truth as he was, Peter simply nodded. He was nodding at an intern.
"Oh," the intern said, looking up from a pile of papers when she, presumably, noticed Peter moving toward her and nodding. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, thank you," his voice calm and cold, "I've been gone for a while. I just wanted to be sure my name was still in the system."
"Oh."
IT IS,
"Yes," Peter smiled something pleasant and flat, "It'll be there."
She frowned, but clicked her red nails over the keyboard anyway. A couple seconds passed. "Your name?"
"Peter Parker."
Smiling emptily at the girl while she typed, Peter wondered that he wasn't nervous at all. The air was cool on his neck and his hands were clean enough. There was no spider on his shoulder, just a dark comfort in his lungs.
"Oh!" She shot Peter was quick, wide-eyed look before apologizing weakly. "Y-yeah, you're still in here. Um... you have access to Alpha level floors?"
Peter wasn't worried about it. "Yes. Thank you."
"Would you like me to..." she looked a bit lost, "...to alert Mr. Stark that you're here?"
Seeing the screen's reflection in her eyes—seeing his status here reflected in wet optics not his own—Peter huffed out something of a sigh. She must have assumed his being so high-level meant Stark knew him. She wasn't really wrong, on some level. Then again...
"...Whatever works." Peter hummed instead, "Though I shouldn't think he'd want to be bothered with this." With me.
DOESN'T MATTER IF HE COMES NOW OR NOT, LITTLE PETER PARKER.
"It doesn't matter," he reiterated to the intern, thinking quite proudly, secrecy is for those with a sense of consequence and self-importance.
The Dark World chuckled heavily and dully, YOU'RE FINDING IMPORTANCE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES.
"Anyway," Peter told the intern, backing away towards the elevators, "I—uh, I've got something to do. On the upper floors. That's the Right Place to be. Thanks."
She watched him oddly for a second, and Peter didn't think she got the Capital of it all. Maybe that was the concern.
Peter got on the elevator, FRIDAY was silent. He started moving up.
(FRIDAY was silent, and everything must have been okay. The intern shrugs and gets back to work. By the time Peter reaches his floor, she has forgotten he was ever there.)
...
FRIDAY has not. They are a voice cold and self-pitying, somehow, in Tony's ear.
"He's what?!"
"Back in New York, sir," the AI reports haltingly.
"Back in New Y—" Tony starts and stops in the same breath, a metal hand moving to pinch the bridge of his nose before he realizes he's got the suit on. "How? Why?"
He's mostly to Baltimore when FRIDAY let's him know. Things have spiraled so terribly. Stark still doesn't even know why Peter's left, and now he's come back. He'd checked the alleyway and found nothing. He'd checked with May and found nothing. Watched the news and found nothing.
He can't even file Peter as a missing person, because Peter is Spider-Man. There is always more at stake than it seems.
(Tony thinks he hears it for a second in the brush of the wind on his suit—THERE ARE NO STAKES, JUST OBLIGATIONS AND MELODRAMA.)
And the suit is turned around and going faster than before. It's going faster and running on panic, confusion.
"Mr. Parker has just entered the Developmental Tech lab." the AI reports, "He seems to be going through a number of classified files. Would you like me to lock him out?"
(Tony doesn't care about that. He loves Peter Parker like a son, and that's enough. He doesn't need any more meaning than that.)
"Yeah," is what he says instead, "do that. And call May."
...
It's like stubbing your toe and expecting you'll need a cast. Peter killed a man and expected someone to care. While Aunt May was worrying over porcelain shards sticking out of the carpet like they were ebony peaks, Peter was becoming the vase.
He gets knocked over and broke in an alleyway filled with spiders.
(No one threw him away. Peter toed the line of respect.)
The spiders offer advice.
...
Peter is loading a file about clean energy onto a flash drive when the lights shut off, the doors lock, and the computer freezes up. He hears FRIDAY click to life above him.
"Mr. Parker," it says, "Boss has asked me to keep you here until he arrives."
"Uh. Okay."
(It doesn't mean a thing.)
Peter keeps typing. It only takes ten minutes to hack his way back into the system. He's loading more files onto the drive, and when he gets what Red asked for entirely, he steals even more. Peter is begging for confrontation.
Peter takes his time. FRIDAY's silent commentary seems vexed.
(His spidery blood is apple red. New York is a broken street lamp.)
...
He's coming back. He came back. For safety and love. Finally. A place where Tony could coddle him and protect him from whatever the hell happened all that time ago in an alleyway empty and a city distant and cold.
(He's coming back. He came back. For the sanity of the world itself. A place where people meant just as little as they did everywhere else, protected from hurt by whatever the hell Peter did to deserve so little consequence. Made sense by a Dark World—the only logical conclusion to all this useless chaos.)
He came back. It's too late.
Peter stubs his toe and his whole foot breaks. It doesn't actually hurt. New York spins him a cast of silken webs and anxious optimism.
When he's twelve, he breaks his Aunt May's favorite vase, and she's kind of upset. Once she's cleaned the mess up, she tells him that he's more important than the vase.
Peter is never sure why this makes his chest feel so very tight.
...
(He hears it in the unlock of the door.)
YOU'LL NEVER FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR
...
Mr. Stark is at the doorway with eyes sad and confused. Peter's not sure how long he had to wait, but it's maybe just worth it to see his mentor whole. He has so much on the drive, it's unnecessary. But Mr. Stark—Tony is here. Peter wants him to say something cruel.
(Stark's thinking he doesn't understand what's happening, but FRIDAY is private in his ears saying their being robbed, saying Peter's stolen everything.
Tony thinks he hears it for a second—just a second—and it's a voice he can't place. It's a voice that's not talking to him at all. He's looking at Peter's stiff frame and half-lidded, haunted eyes. It looks like the kid was crying.)
YOU'LL NEVER FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR, the voice hums like a thousand flies over a corpse, BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT LOOKING FOR ANYTHING AT ALL.
Peter slips the drive into his pocket to watch his mentor and look innocent, or something. The information is heavy in his jacket, but it doesn't mean anything at all. He'd be just the same if he never took it, and that's damning enough.
Mr. Stark doesn't get it. He's living for life, standing before Peter for love. Peter's living for meaning, stealing drives for the sake of doing something with his (dirty, dirty) hands.
No one quite gets it.
"Kid."
"Mr. Stark."
Tony's held his hands up, trying to look perhaps nonthreatening. He must see something in Peter's eyes to put him so on edge. (It's a sort of mania.)
"Peter," he corrects, "What are you doing?"
"..."
"I—We were looking for you all over the place. What in the hell happened?"
His eyes follow Peter's nervous shuffling to the pocket of damning things. Peter stops fidgeting. "What's going on, Pete? If you'd just let me know—"
"You have to do," Peter hummed, "what you have to do. To survive, Mr. Stark."
"That's not how the world works, kid. You—you have family to lean on." (You have me.)
But Peter was shaking his head. "No. No. That's not—the world isn't like that. It's... the world is really simple, but it isn't like that."
"Kid. Kid, please. What's going on?"
HE REALLY DOESN'T UNDERSTAND, IT'S—
"—It's a Dark World, Mr. Stark. And I just... I did something terrible. Only it wasn't that terrible, after all. I think that's a lot worse. I want more than this, Mr. Stark. I want some consequence."
(Whatever happened to New York, anyway?)
"Consequence? You disappeared?! Is that not consequence enough?"
Peter frowned and looked away. Mr. Stark doesn't hate him, he's just confused. This is infinitely worse. He wants to be told off and hurt. The air stills for a moment, halting at its own verbal poison. When Tony speaks next, his voice is pitched oddly to the tune of resignation.
"You have me. I—you have me to lean on. Please." (He thinks Peter isn't capable of evil things. He thinks it's just the stress. Peter shouldn't have started so young—it's the stress of things.)
Peter looked away, not from shame this time but from something else unnamable. "I don't think we've ever had anyone. Isn't that the point?"
EVERYONE FOR THEMSELVES The Dark World confirmed, WHAT A FOOL
"No, no, Peter, please—" Tony stuttered, looking lost, "I found you. Come home. Look—I called May on the way here. She's on her way, too. She just wants you to come home." He must see the gleam of (pure hatred) sadness in Peter's eyes, because he adds, "No questions asked."
(Normalcy—he just wants to go back to normal—)
WHAT A SELFISH MAN
"Don't be selfish," Peter said, His eyes thinned meanly. "Don't insult me."
"I don't understand."
"Me neither."
Stark fidgets a step closer, but Peter moves away. "You know I'm here for you, right?"
HE WANTS SOMETHING FROM YOU The Dark World droned
"I know."
Tony seemed to perk up. "You do? Good. Then... let's go. Let's go home." (Off his game, or something. There was this look in Peter's eyes. He couldn't place it.)
"No." There was so much emptiness in the world, "No, I can't do that." He didn't care. He didn't.
...HE'S AWFULLY STUPID. IS THIS LOVE OR MANIPULATION?
"You're manipulating me." Peter intoned, frown inky and black, "What do want from me? I'll just do it now... Is it an Avenger mission, or whatever? Because I don't do those anymore."
Tony's eyes were saucers. "What? What are you talking about? I just want things to go back to how they used to be, Peter." (He was trying to be open, honest, gentle. It wasn't something his character was usually met with, but Peter's words hurt more than he'd like to admit.)
Peter shook his head mutely. "No, no. What do you want from me? You don't have to pretend, Mr. Stark. I don't care about that."
"I'm not pretend—"
"But what do you want from me?"
Tony snapped. "Damnit, Peter! I just want you to come home! For fuck's sake, you left your aunt in tears and you left me to pick up the pieces! Is that what you want to hear? I just miss you! I want you to come home because you're a good kid and I want you to be safe and happy! Why does there have to be such a give and take to things? Can't there just be love?"
("So long as you aren't hurt, everything is okay." Aunt May's voice is liquid evil.)
BECAUSE SHE WAS LYING, the Dark World says with an air of vague delight.
"I wish everyone would stop being so selfish," Peter tells the big spider, and means it.
"I'm not—" Mr. Stark's expression falls flat when his voice falters. "I'm here for you, kid. Not me."
This time Peter recognizes the lie the second his chest grows heavy. Dark World watches with a muted amusement, and Tony sweeps away the shards of a vase he never knew. Peter's frown deepened, his heart was still (ached, ached, ached, he wanted to cry). The Dark World was abuzz with quiet, uncaring energy. There is no CONSEQUENCE to anything at all. Why would—
"Peter."
He looks away. The room is empty. (Time is irrelevant.) "What, Mr. Stark?" He doesn't get it. Why is Tony here? He doesn't stand to gain anything from seeing Peter again. No one does anymore. Why would he still—
"Why... won't you come home?" He sounds just as unsure as Peter feels. He doesn't get it either.
...WHAT ABOUT THE WORLD?
"The world is so terrible." Peter explains. "I'm so terrible. It doesn't matter, Mr. Stark. Sometimes things are just chaotic and bad." He finds it in himself to smile softly, sadly, at Tony. "That's where the reason comes from. That's where I come from."
He isn't sure if Tony gets it. Doesn't think he does. That's okay. Peter doesn't really get it, either. It doesn't have to mean anything to be true.
(Tony does get it, if only slightly. He thinks the world is a dark place, too. He thinks he found a light in it with Peter, but Peter doesn't see light in anything anymore. Something about that puts Tony in the darkness too. For a second, Tony thinks he sees a Big Spider orchestrating the world, sucking his blackened blood dry. But he doesn't actually see anything but Peter's sorry, tortured frame, shaking where it carries the weight of imagined worlds and knowledge.
A quiet part of Tony feels nothing but rage. He ignores the feeling. It seems spidery and strange.)
Peter carries on his shoulders the weight of terribly imagined things. But its better, he thinks, than carrying to monstrous, eternal, and dreadful weight of love. A love that defies consequence and persists always, always, always. Even when you do horrible things and run away from home. Even then. Aunt May still comes to get him. Mr. Starks still asks him to stay.
Uncle Ben dies in front of him and Aunt May cries. Peter wasn't hurt—everything is fine. He could have saved Ben if he were good, but May says she loves him even when she learns this. Peter stabs a man to death in an alleyway and panics. He tries to brush the shards underneath a rug but just cuts his feet up. There's evidence left over, it's just that no one cares.
Why would Mr. Stark still love something as horrible as Peter? There's no sense to it at all.
(Peter's got to feeling small. This is where the power comes from.)
...
"Boss?" FRIDAY chimes loud and hollow from above.
"FRI." Tony says it like a permission, but his voiced is pitched painfully up.
"Ms. Parker has arrived. Would you like me to let her up?"
"Ye—"
"No!"
He already knows what May has to say, and he doesn't want to hear it again. (Red payphone cords and tiny cars.) He can't bear to see her face so thankful. There's a knife sharp and red in Peter's eye when he hears the elevator doors bing open at the end of the hall outside the room. He knows it's May from the hurt of her shoes on the tile.
He knows this is all there ever was. It's love and forgiveness that Peter doesn't deserve.
WITH GREAT POWER
"Sorry," Peter says.
Tony takes a step forward, then another. He doesn't stop moving forward—he must see the PANIC is Peter's eyes looking like knives.
The door starts to open and Peter thinks, WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT POWER, AND THAT'S IT.
There's an obligation to everything in the dark, dark world, and Peter's had enough of forgiveness. He can see Aunt May's wrinkled fingers wrapped around the door and Tony's own reaching out to him. Peter gives up on seeming strange.
He pushes Tony back with all his might. Pushes him back with dirty hands and apple shaped intentions.
...
May walks in looking hesitant and unsure, but hopeful. But the room is devoid entirely of life. There's a Peter shaped hole in the room and a forceful kick to the wall that knocked it down into the hallway.
Tony Stark is sprawled on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. The room is devoid entirely of life. His blood is sweet and apple red just like New York.
(This web isn't one anyone can GET OUT of.)
...
Officers arrive thirty minutes later and start taping the place off.
"Did anyone suspicious come in earlier?"
The intern frowns and looks away from her work where it lies at reception. "I don't know." She says. After a second, she asks, "Will I lose my internship since Stark's dead? I'd hate to intern at Oscorp—I hear the programs a joke over there."