Just a warning: there are some mentions of suicide and Peter's thoughts on it.
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They were standing in Mr Delmar's bodega, scratching Murph's head and watching as Alfonso meticulously assembled their sandwiches, when abject glee lit up Ned's face. Before Peter even had the chance to get a bad feeling Ned had snatched a newspaper from the counter, furiously scanning a side article then shoving the paper under Peter's nose.
"There," said Ned, face radiant with suppressed laughter, "is going to be an Avengers musical."
"What?" Peter grabbed the paper from him and read the article with a sense of growing dead. "Oh, my God." They were really doing it. He lowered the paper to stare at Ned's grin. "This can't be authorized. Right? Can they do this without, like…permission?" This was a far leap from Ben and Jerry flavors.
"Does it fall under parody?" Ned thought for exactly half a second before evidently deciding he didn't care and let out a huge cackle that flattened Murph's ears. "Dude, you're gonna be in a musical!" he hissed. "You'll be on Broadway!"
Did Mr Stark know about this? He'd either sue or demand a producer's credit, thought Peter. "Oh, shit," he moaned, reading, "it's gonna be about the split."
"I hope you get a solo," wheezed Ned.
"This is so totally going to get blocked by PR," said Peter, more hopeful than confident. There was a list of performers rumored to be tapped for roles. He knew absolutely nothing about Broadway outside of school periodically dragging them to plays he mostly dozed through, but he scrutinized the names anyway. "'Insiders say Spider-Man will likely be portrayed by Morgan Thayer…'" He lowered the paper and stared at Ned. "Morgan…is that a girl or boy?"
"Huh?"
"This isn't like—a Peter Pan thing right?" Peter said a little desperately. "Where they cast a girl for the part?"
Ned looked like Christmas had come early. "Oh, my God. You wouldn't even be the first flying Peter in tights to be cast as a girl!"
He doubled over in breathless laughter until Peter had to smack him in the arm, praying his face would stop burning. No way would the Avengers allow this. Except, maybe they would—their PR had been awfully accommodating since the team's reconciliation. Peter read through the portion of the article on the front page and flipped back through the section to A5 where the article continued.
"That's gonna be a lot of beards on stage," giggled Ned, wiping away a tear. "Think Stark will slide some royalties your way? Hey—"
Here he cut off, seeing Peter's frozen stare locked on a section of the newspaper page. "I'm sure Morgan's not a girl," he said bracingly, patting Peter on the shoulder.
But something else entirely had stolen the color from Peter's face. The newspaper lowered in his hands and Ned craned his head for a look, following the direction of his friend's stunned gaze.
It was a moment before his eyes found the small, blocky headline: Rikers Inmate Dennis Carradine Commits Suicide Ahead of Sentencing.
Carradine's name had never been spoken aloud between them. Peter had only ever referred to him as the carjacker. May did not refer to him at all.
Ned read the few lines over Peter's shoulder, oblivious to the sandwiches Alfonso had placed on the glass countertop. Dennis Carradine had managed to hang himself with a bedsheet while waiting, as most of the Rikers population was, for the court system to unsnarl around his case. It was Peter's first and most painful lesson on how apprehension by a masked vigilante could affect the legal proceedings around a prosecution.
Carradine's guilt had been undeniable, however, and the case had eventually untangled. A jury of his peers had delivered the verdict. May had not been present, and Peter had been unwilling to leave her side.
The article sketched out a skeletal, pitiful history of the carjacker's instability and drug use, then briefly mentioned that the body had been claimed by unidentified family and would be shortly buried at a cemetery in Queens.
Ned had never pressed for details on the nature of Peter's apprehension of the man. What he knew had emerged through shaking hands that buried his friend's head the night it had happened.
Whatever Peter had done, it wasn't what he'd set out to do. For that, Ned was grateful.
"Hey, man," he murmured. "Sorry."
Peter was still for a long moment. "I don't get it," he said numbly.
"He was a troubled guy."
"But I—" Peter stopped short of saying he'd spared the man. It was too close of an admission of what he might have done instead. "He had a chance to turn it around. He could have…"
The carjacker's tear-streaked, pathetic face swam before his eyes, smeared with grime and lips drawn wide into some soundless howl. To know that someone as stalwart, and warm, and good as Uncle Ben could be struck down by such a wretch of a creature was worse than anything.
"He got another chance," Peter said in disbelief. And he'd thrown it away. Had life meant so little to this man, when it had taken everything in Peter's soul to be kind?
Alfonso rested his forearms on the glass counter. "You boys still want these or what?"
Ned scooped up the sandwiches and took them to the counter. After a moment Peter robotically returned the newspaper to the counter. It was warm out when they left the bodega. Even though they carried sandwiches, Ned stopped and bought some churros from a woman who had set up on the corner of the block.
Peter was pretty quiet on the train, but he did find a taste for the churros.
When Peter emerged from his building two days later, frowning against the weekend morning sun and tugging at his dress shirt collar, Ned was waiting for him by a bench. Peter stopped short at the sight of him dressed in the clothes he wore to honors functions at school.
"How did you…" Peter began, trailing off.
Ned shrugged. "Know you too well, dude." He got up and held out a danish, having correctly guessed Peter hadn't grabbed anything to eat before leaving.
Peter was at an uncharacteristic loss for words. After a moment, he took the pastry and swallowed the lump in his throat before swallowing a bite of the danish.
"Come on, the train's like super jacked-up this weekend," Ned said. They started off for the station, weaving around baby strollers and bleary-eyed people walking their French bulldogs. Peter hadn't felt hungry but when they got to the turnstile he was surprised to find he'd finished the whole danish.
The train was mercifully soon in coming. They had no trouble finding seats among dozing commuters and watched the stations pass by in blurs. Peter felt oddly suspended in time and emotion; like he'd been put on hold.
Finally they screeched to a halt at their stop and got out of the train. They didn't need to consult Google maps, because this was a route Peter already knew.
They didn't have far to walk; when they rounded the corner they saw the cemetery gates.
Most cemeteries were nice enough, final consolations to the bereaved. This one had a watchman. Ned spoke to him briefly while Peter scanned the crest of the hill. The watchman handed Ned a map with one spot circled and let them pass through the gate.
Their shoes crunched over gravel. Stone angels watched them pass, the grave markers they guarded bearing old-fashioned names and older dates. When their class had taken field trips to historic cemeteries, Peter and Ned had made games of searching out the oldest graves. Some residual habit made them scan the names and dates on these ones, even though Peter had come across them before.
Ned consulted the map and led the way down a path Peter had not walked down previously. It wound around a small mausoleum and stretched out a ways, past old tombs set in the ground and bearing family names.
At last they spotted a figure in a long robe, standing alone on the hill. Before it lay a dark, rectangular shape.
The man greeted them as they approached and introduced himself as the minister. He had a friendly, grandfatherly face that crinkled when he smiled.
"We can start whenever you like," he told them with a deep timbre that sounded straight from an old western.
"Aren't others coming?" asked Ned.
"No, I was only notified to expect you," said the minister.
Ned and Peter looked at each other. "He was claimed, though," said Peter. "Isn't that why he's being buried here? Someone claimed him."
"They must have," agreed the minister, "but perhaps only to save him from a burial on Hart's Island."
The potter's field. It was probably not such an awful sight as Peter's overactive imagination had always conjured up, but it was where the poor and unknown were laid to rest, or cremated. The thought made him indescribably sad.
If he was curious about their relationship to the man being buried, the minister did not ask. Perhaps he was just grateful someone was attending the burial. There had been no funeral services. The casket was cheap and plain. It looked bare without the flowers that accompanied most caskets and Peter felt suddenly guilty for coming empty-handed.
"We can start," Ned told the minister.
He nodded and cleared his throat before opening a well-worn Bible to a passage he must have known by heart. As he began, Peter stared glassily at the box. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel. Satisfaction? Closure?
He was startled when the minister said that the carjacker was survived by a daughter.
A daughter? Peter had never known he'd had one. Not once during the excruciating court process had that humanizing fact been mentioned. She must have been the one to claim him, but she had not shown up for the funeral. Rescuing Carradine from a potter's field had been the extent to which she'd been willing to get involved.
Strangely, Peter's thoughts went to Liz. She was in the process of rebuilding her life, doubtless keeping her father in the margins of the new identity a move out west afforded her. Adrian Toomes was no less responsible for the murders of many people. It didn't even occur to Peter to begrudge her any lasting loyalty or love Liz carried for her dad. He was her dad. When the day came, he would be claimed.
Before long the minister finished and closed his Bible, clasping it in front with both hands. "Is there anything you want to say?" he asked the boys.
In the weeks after Ben Parker's murder, Peter would have had a great deal to say. Now he was not even sure why he was there. Ned glanced at him and just said, "Rest in peace."
That was enough. The minister shook their hands kindly before moving down the hill. Peter wondered if he had other people to bury that day.
The boys remained, staring at the box not yet lowered into the ground. This was the closest Peter had been to Carradine since he had delivered the man to the police, in far better shape than the carjacker deserved. Carradine did not even have a bruise on him.
Here lay the worst night in Peter's life, and also the point around which his worldview revolved. He'd looked into the carjacker's face and made a choice, one that would uphold life and only that. It was well-known that Spider-Man did not kill; had Carradine never imagined it was because of him? The man's suicide felt like a betrayal.
The carjacker was the bedrock of Peter's commitment to life, and he was dead. A second chance revoked by its own hand.
Another creeping appraisal was blooming in the back of Peter's head, and it was like he was making the choice all over again. Now that his grace had been thrown back in his face by the carjacker, would he extend it again? Was there a limit to Peter's compassion? Or had the carjacker at last hit the brink of what he would offer?
Would Peter hate him for being laid to rest in the same cemetery where Ben Parker was buried?
Theoretically, the same choice could only be made so many times. How long would it take for apathy, and so many battles, to erode Peter's conviction? He was sure the Avengers wondered, at times.
They certainly thought he was too young to kill—despite Black Widow having done it at an earlier age—but perhaps did not quite understand his need to save.
He'd once overheard Banner wonder aloud whether they saved the world so much as they just stopped its end. Peter didn't know what he thought about that but he could sort of understand why someone who felt his contributions were only rooted in smashing might see it that way. But there was a big difference between doing good and stopping bad.
Maybe he'd take them on some field trips in Queens. And Brooklyn. They could treat them as team exercises. They would do what he did, patrol and protect, and maybe it would make them feel better. Peter certainly felt good after returning someone's cat or stopping a burglary or helping them move a piano.
The sinister thoughts began to fade away. There was no real substance to them to begin with. Ben Parker had laid the true foundation; the decency and strength he'd taught Peter had withstood the likes of David Carradine, Adrian Toomes, and Thanos. It could withstand Carradine again, and more.
Peter realized he hadn't spoken in a long time and opened his mouth to say something to Ned. Before the words could leave he had to clamp his jaw shut against the tears that suddenly sprang from his eyes.
"Shit," he mumbled, squashing at his cheeks with the heels of his hand.
Ned patted his back in a sort of half-hug. "It's okay, man."
The tears came only partially from grief. Peter was shocked by how much he pitied Carradine, who never had a Ben or May Parker, or a Ned, or any of the people who so solidly fixed Peter's moral compass. The carjacker had descended into a self-made hell that had ultimately led him to committing the act that Peter feared most.
After a minute of sniffling, Peter stepped forward without thinking and laid a hand on the casket for a moment. When he died, there would be tears and flowers and even some laughing. Carradine didn't deserve tears, but Peter cried for him a little anyway.
"Awright, let's go," he said, and turned to see Ned hurriedly wiping at his own eyes. "Can we stop by—?"
"Yeah man, sure," said Ned thickly.
Somehow seeing him made a tiny grin tug at Peter's face. He felt better when they walked down the hill and took the path that Peter knew better, from his periodic trips here with Aunt May.
Ben Parker had a simple, pretty headstone on the crest of another hill. It read: "Ben Parker, Beloved Husband, Uncle, and Father." He'd never had a child besides Peter, and he was the only father Peter remembered.
There were fresh flowers at the headstone. Daisies, a cheery flower. Aunt May, or Ben's own aged uncle, must have been here recently and pulled any weeds that had threatened to spring up. Ned audibly sniffled. He'd known Uncle Ben most of his life, too. They'd had an ongoing game of poker that was played with Chex Mix and popped up whenever Ned slept over at the Parkers'.
Peter felt a dawning sense of peace. The worries were still there; they just weren't winning the day. It was turning into a beautiful afternoon, Peter noticed. They should take Ned's mom's terrier to the dog park or something.
They were turning to go when Peter stopped short. "Hang on," he said, struck by an idea. He went back to Uncle Ben's headstone and stooped to pluck one of the flowers from the bundle.
Then he jogged back up the other hill. Since gaining his powers such a thing never winded him, yet he felt short of breath when he reached Carradine's plain casket. It looked even lonelier without the minister there, and the knowledge no daughter was coming.
It would be lowered into the ground when no one else was there, but it would have company. Peter tucked the daisy into a gap in the casket's hinges.
He stood up, looking at the casket a last time, then turned and trotted back down the hill to Ned.
"Okay, let's go," he said. "Bigley's probably driving your mom crazy. Let's take him to the dog park." Bigley was the terrier. Ever since Peter had gotten his powers Bigley sniffed at him curiously whenever he saw him.
"Yeah, cool," said Ned, whose eyes were still a little red but were dry. "Mom's making spicy papaya salad."
Hers was better than any place around. "Sweet." Peter was hungry all of a sudden.
While they walked, Ned was struck by a thought. "Oh, Morgan Thayer's a boy, by the way," he informed Peter as they approached the front gate.
"Thank God," Peter groaned.
"Yeah, he won a Tony or something at like, twelve."
"Really?" Peter was pleased. Then: "Wait—he's not still twelve, is he?"
Ned grinned viciously. "Dunno. Maybe."
"Seriously. Is he?"
"Man, I don't know. He sure doesn't look twenty. It's not like anyone knows how old you are. You should ask Stark to put the interrogation mode back in so you'll sound older."
Peter sputtered in indignation, and Ned started cracking up.
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this feels very brief to me but I didn't have a lot of time to write or edit it. Oop! I do think it'd be fun to write a comedy piece about the Avengers tagging along on one of Peter's patrols around Queens.