A/N: Saw Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse three hours ago and I had to write something for the blonde-haired blue-eyed Peter, and the New York that so loved him.
Red-Blue, Red-Black
Eirian Erisdar
It was supposed to be just like any other early-morning start.
Despite the rumoured dimension-warping event that shook New York to its core barely a few hours ago (there was a light pole somewhere that now looked more like a Christmas tree) Henry got up at his usual time. Slipped on his uniform, went down to the refuse station. Said hello to the other guys coming in, grabbed his keys, started up his garbage truck.
A 4 a.m. start, six days a week, as he had been doing for forty years. He couldn't afford not to. He had a grandchild on the way, unplanned. His daughter was going to need all the help she could get.
Frost had grown on the streets even in the three hours since they had warped and reverberated back to normal again. Henry took his time, started his usual route down along 12th avenue, the Hudson a dark shimmer between the riverside buildings. His first stop was an industrial warehouse right on the edge of the Hudson; the usual security guard that waved him to the riverside warehouse proper didn't come out of his little hut to greet him, so Henry, grumbling a little, got out of the truck and jogged along the wharf towards the gate.
And then he saw it.
The body was floating face-down in the Hudson, a shock of blond hair bobbing in the slick water where the garbage truck headlights lanced into the murk.
But that wasn't what made Henry gasp in a breath of winter air so cold it seemed to strike all the air out of him instead.
It was that red spider insignia, a sanguine image surrounded by blue - like the body in the river, this cold winter morning before sunrise.
The spider that was hope, for so many New Yorkers - had been for over ten years.
Before he was aware of what he was doing, Henry had shed his coat and dove in.
He wasn't a good swimmer, and he knew it - his mother had always said the family's swimming genes were all inherited by his brother. But Henry cut through the freezing water with desperation in his lungs - grabbed the body by one arm, dragged it through the seeping cold towards the stairs leading up to the wharf, water stinging his eyes.
A flashlight, far above.
The security guard.
"Hey, man, what're you-"
Henry heaved the body up the stairs by its armpits, his own arms strong and steady through years of hefting heavy garbage bags - and it was only when the body is up on the wharf, with the harsh white lights of the truck illuminating the broken bones and the bruises and the too-pale features of a the man with the torn spider on his shattered chest, did Henry begin to shake.
"Oh." the security guard was saying behind him. The flashlight had fallen to the ground - the crack of plastic on concrete horribly like a snap of breaking bone. "Oh. Oh no. Please, no."
Spider-Man's eyes were still open, blue as the colour of a New York summer sky - an endless open arch that New Yorkers would look up to, smiling, whenever they heard the swish-snap of webbing and an exhilarated whoop above.
He's so young, Henry thought, numbly, as snow began to fall in earnest - feather-light touches against the bruised cheekbone of the young man on the wharf. My daughter isn't much younger.
Henry was shuddering badly, now - the security guard was holding out Henry's earlier-shed coat at him, telling him to warm up before he froze - and Henry took it, stared down at its high-visiblity stripes in his brown-skinned hands, then back at the young man's face.
Spider-Man's face.
The spider-suit was torn, rent in places where blood had no time to flow.
Henry was gratified to know it must at least have been quick.
He reached over with a shaking hand, closed Spider-man's eyes - shutting away the blue irises forever.
The coat Henry placed over him like a shroud - the only shroud Henry could afford, a high-visibility jacket with the letters DSNY on the back.
"Yeah, send- send someone quick. Spider-man's...Spider-Man's dead."
The security guard lowered his mobile, and Henry looked up.
They shared a single stare that encapsulated all the words that surrounded their mutual understanding.
The security guard nodded once, shed the jacket off his own back and wrapped it around Henry's shoulders.
"I-I'm s-sorry," Henry gasped, the transferred warmth hitting him like a blow - a blow that thawed the shock in his chest and moisture to his eyes, melting away the cold river water with warm, salty tears.
The security guard shook his head, one arm still slung across Henry's shoulders.
They stood like that - two half-strangers bonded with surprised grief, staring down at the covered body of their city's hero - until the police came with their flashing lights, and the body on the wharf was once more and for the last time illuminated in red and blue.
MJ had known before the knock on the door.
Peter had a vitals tracker in his suit that fed right into his workshop below the shed in May's backyard. When the screen displaying his vitals had suddenly snapped to SIGNAL LOST May had called MJ immediately.
MJ had held on to the hope that the vitals tracker had simply been destroyed in some particularly rough fighting. It was the only possibility she could accept.
But hours passed, and Peter didn't call.
Her Peter always called the first chance he got, if the vitals tracker was shot. It was a promise he had made to her years ago.
And so when it was the doorbell that rang instead of her phone, MJ stood up - she was fully dressed, and had been the entire night - grabbed her coat, and opened the door.
The Police Commissioner stood on her doorstep.
His hat was in his hands.
It was this fact, and that he was looking at her with such heartfelt respect in his eyes - that MJ knew for certain.
"He's gone, isn't he," she said. There was nothing in her voice at all. It shocked her. She had wondered in the past hours what would happen if the worst came to pass - how her own body would react.
It appeared her body had decided not to react at all. Perhaps to do so would be her utter ending.
"I'm afraid so, ma'am," the Commissioner said. His eyes were shiny in the faint light of sunrise, a film of moisture held back by years of experience. "I'm so sorry."
MJ swallowed. "Do I- do I need to-"
The Commissioner nodded. "I'm sorry." He took a breath. "We have a car that can take you to the morgue. Do you need a little time? Is there anyone else you need with you?"
"I-" MJ began. Stopped. Her vision was darkening at the corners. Something like horror was slowly clawing its way up her throat. I need my husband, she wanted to say. My husband is supposed to be with me- Peter-
Eye-blink. Automatic motions.
Her coat was on and her keys in her hand the next moment, and the Commisoner's steady hand on her arm as he helped her down the stairs to the street.
Did she need to be helped?
Were those her knees that were shaking?
"Mrs. Parker," the doorman said. "I'm so sorry."
MJ jarred. Looked up.
Beyond the frosted panes of the apartment building doors, it was snowing.
Christmas lights, on the opposite side of the road.
Her - their, hers and peter's both - doorman was crying as he opened the door for her.
Mrs Parker.
The car door closed beside her, and MJ took a breath.
Then all too soon the car stopped and the morgue doors opened and the attendant led her inside and she saw the shape under the white sheet and the man said "Take all the time you need," and folded back the sheet and-
-MJ ceased to exist.
Her Peter. Peter Parker. Her husband.
She might have screamed, if the sobs didn't come first.
She cradled Peter's head and wept over the bruises and the broken bones and the cold, cold touch of his skin, her face buried in his hair, until the doors opened behind her and a warm, wrinkled hand wrapped around her shoulder.
May didn't say anything - just gathered MJ in one arm while her free hand ran through her nephew's hair.
They wept together over the nephew and husband they had both loved, until even the tears ran dry.
New York stopped.
People halted mid-step on their morning commute to work, coffee splashing across pavements and staining the stones. Times Square came to a standstill, every screen plastered with the same, horrible news.
It was Peter Parker, the people said.
Peter Parker, from Queens.
Our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man; our hero.
New York mourned.
The days that followed were strange imitations of Before.
People went to work. People ate, people walked, cars still moved and traffic still jammed. But the skies were empty; the last pieces of remaining webbing had dissolved off the buildings days ago, and though people stopped and looked up, there was never that familiar figure swinging through the skyscrapers along the boulevards and avenues of the city.
People still did the things they did before. It was just...subdued.
May had to ask for help from the Police to stop well-wishers from turning up at her door anymore.
MJ did the same.
Then, the crime rate started to climb - slowly at first as though the criminal underworld was testing the waters, and then climbing rapidly as it became obvious Spider-Man was no longer a threat.
So when the first reports of spider-people came, mere days after Peter Parker's funeral, nobody quite believed it - until suddenly, a shaky mobile-taken video surfaced from somewhere in Queens - a trench-coated spider-man in black grappling with a human scorpion, a robot and a pig decked out in webbed red and blue, a graceful, hooded spider-girl who slipped between these three like a lethal dancer - and a (slightly pudgy-waisted) spider-man that moved so much like New York's beloved Peter Parker that a hundred conspiracy theories popped up on social media in the same number of seconds.
And with them, a gangly-footed young Spider-Man (spider-child?) in what looked like store bought gear and high-tops.
New York saw. New York waited. And New York hoped.
Then the next night, downtown, a black-and-red suited form leapt out of the sky, accompanied by a laugh of sheer exhilaration.
It was not the same laugh, not the same form. This new Spider-Man had a the fresh-faced air of youth, and swung with the eager excitement of a first flight. There was something in the slight edge of mingled fear and exhilaration in those close-called movements that spoke of one yet untrained.
But it was enough - there, that slight red-black form was a new generation.
People screamed, first out of shock then out of delight. It did not erase Peter Parker from their hearts - Peter Parker was their first Spider-man, and there was none that could replace him - but Spider-man was back.
So even when New York warped again, worse this time, a hundred times worse than the last - people did their jobs. Helped those more in need to get to safety, protected those who could not protect themselves.
It was what Peter Parker would have done, Spider-Man or not.
And when new Spider-Man climbed out of the hole that was apparently once a secret inter-dimensional laboratory - people began to cheer.
Then Spider-man leapt into the sky and the thwip of web-shooters sounded again - and people cheered louder; a wave of joy that exploded outwards from an epicentre, like the force-wave from the exploding lab just minutes previous.
This Spider-Man sounded different, yes - an immature tilt to his voice that suggested he wasn't quite done becoming an adult yet - but he was Spider-man.
And he loved New York, as was plain to see.
New York saw this, and, collectively, decided he was theirs, too.
This was Spider-Man. And New York would love him and protect him with all its heart - even more so, for his predecessor.
When MJ got home from the function, she sat down in the dark living room - she didn't quite want to face the empty bedroom yet, as she did every night she returned and found the apartment empty - and thought.
She thought of the waiter.
The more she remembered, the more she was quite sure that he hadn't been a waiter at all - that awkward, dorky movement of the shoulders, the slight slouch and scratch at the back of his neck - that was her Peter, through and through.
But he had sounded so much older. And so much more tired, and sorry, and grieving.
Then the phone rang, and MJ picked up.
It was May, with instructions to turn on the TV; and with other news to tell, besides.
And MJ began to smile.
Henry took a day off work for the first time in almost ten years to be present at the birth of his grandson.
He was beautiful - had Henry's late wife's nose, which their daughter also shared.
"Have you thought of a name?" the nurse said, through the beeping of the instruments and the quiet, happy tears of Henry and his daughter.
"Go on, dad," his daughter said. "You always had a flair for bad poetry."
Henry laughed, breath hitching. "That I did."
He looked at the form in the nurse's hand, then back at the beautiful baby boy in his daughter's arms.
Then through the newly-opened hospital drapes and out the window - where the tell-tale silver of webs still hung. Spider-Man must have swung past barely an hour previous.
"Um," he said, swallowing against a bout of fresh tears. "I'm sure this has been a popular choice these past few weeks, but I thought- I've always thought Peter was a good name."
The nurse smiled at him. She didn't mention the dozens of newly-born Peters all across the city. This is this family's joy.
"I like it," Henry's daughter smiled.
"Hello, Peter," Henry said, leaning over her daughter's bedside. "Welcome to the world."
Outside, there was a flash of sable and crimson, into the azure sky.
END
A/N: I just had to write something for this movie - this groundbreaking paradigm shift of a movie for animation and cinematography. I think it might very well be the best animated movie we've seen in the past decade. For my regular readers, I'm about 5400 words into the next chapter of The Silent Song and should be able to post tomorrow or the day after. Thanks for reading!