Miles is angry.
It starts way before the fight. It starts even before the collider—blistering heat and light and patches of darkness in between the light—but not like the dark of his room after hours, no, more like the pitless black of the abyss, more the void space in-between the stars, grinning, writhing outwards to eat and devour and destroy until absolutely everything was-
It starts in an unfamiliar hallway weeks back.
The school is new, the people are new, and maybe that wouldn't be all bad if they weren't all so different. Miles tries. It feels as though he is being thrown into a sea, naked and cold, strapped by the megaton chains of great expectations and expected not to drown. But he tries nonetheless, because he is Miles Morales. And in his mother's famous words: his family doesn't run from things.
Until he does.
Miles runs.
His peers see him, but he is still very unseen. He fails on purpose, and maybe yes, he is still trying after all, because god knows his teachers won't even let him flunk without all of his effort put into it. That's fine.
He falls, slowly.
(He'll figure it out, like he always does.)
And then he's plummeting at dead-neck speed, because if the mundane problems of his life weren't enough, suddenly the world is cracking open like an egg and there's power surging through his veins and reality as he knows it topsy turns over.
There is no introduction.
His body reminds him of that first morning he put on his new school outfit: a little too big, a little too foreign. It's a small price to pay for the superpowers but it's irritating nonetheless. And adjusting to it? The idea is laughable. Miles barely has the time to use the bathroom much less adjust to anything. Time must have broken along with the dimensions because seconds no longer exist; his life is suddenly ridiculously fast paced, danger after danger barreling into him with no buffer. It's scary and it's breathtaking and
it's exciting.
Well.
It's less exciting and more terrifying, because these people are actually trying to kill him. Not just injure him, or give him a broken bone that might really really hurt but actually sick him six feet under. Furthermore, he's expected to fight them back. Miles tries. As usual, it's not enough. He does, however, manage to stay alive.
Just long enough for terrifying to utterly collapse to anguish.
(What makes a hero a hero?)
Miles thinks he's seen a real hero about three times. The first is his dad. The second is unsurprisingly, his mom.
The third is Peter.
Not the Peter that tossed him off the top of a roof. The Peter that had saved him—had dove through the falling debris and caught him firm and secured milliseconds before he splintered on the ground. The one who breathed a mission into him, smiled at death's door like a champion and was Spider-man up until the very end.
Not the Peter who stands there in his bedroom with guilt in his eyes and dares to tell him that he won't be coming with them.
Miles is angry.
The others, they are his people, but he is not theirs. The great expectations are the same and the failure is the same and he is seen but unseen and, "Our family doesn't run from things," but he did. Miles ran. He ran from Peter Parker when he died, and he ran from his uncle when he died—god, god his uncle, left there in the alley in the dirt and the grime—and Miles still smells like garbage, plumes of exhaust in his head and something grey and rotting burning in his chest, and he will not run anymore.
"No!" He screams. He is the one that must do this.
There's a sigh.
Then Peter's a blur, eyes hard and disappointed and Miles is dangling, snapping his teeth and sobbing.
"You're not ready," he says, his voice is strained as though this is possibly somehow harder for him than it is for Miles. The worst part of it all is that Miles understands.
A leap of faith.
Fine.
That's all it is, Miles.
He understands and then his dad is there, so close but so so far and it's unfair how parents somehow always know exactly what to say, huh?
I see this spark in you, son, it's amazing.
He breathes.
You're the best of all of us.
His eyes blaze and the clouds and electricity in his lungs snap and flood him head to toe.
(IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou)
Leap?
Miles stands.
No. Miles is going to soar.