Chapter 2

"You're the Black Widow," Peter couldn't help but gape at the shadow slinking out between the buildings. Despite the blond hair, it was obvious that is was her with the way she smoothly strolled up to him, as if she was the predator and she knew it.

"So I've heard," Black Widow said amusedly. "Call me Natasha."

"Nuh-uh, Spidey here has a hard time using real names," Sam called from above, already swooping away. The smirk was still apparent in his voice, even though his words were faint. Peter pretended not to hear him, and instead opted to keep staring at the live-version of the person he'd watched on television when he was younger.

"You're so cool," he breathed out. "I mean, I've seen you fighting in that airport, and you were awesome then too, but I can't believe I'm-"

He quickly trailed off, embarrassed. Yeah, sure Falcon was an Avenger, but Black Widow was one of the Avengers, with the Hulk and Thor and all. It was almost as cool as when he first saw Mr. Stark trying to flirt with his aunt, which was also weird but still.

"You done?" Natasha asked, her face still expressionless despite the slight upward quirk in her mouth.

"Yeah, yeah, Ms. Natasha, sorry," Peter sheepishly bounced on his toes. "How did you find me?"

"I was there when Stark tried to recruit you," she said. "Wasn't too hard to connect the pieces."

She glanced around the wall. Peter followed her gaze to a large building, separate from the rest of the apartment complexes. The building was made with the same red brick as the rest of the surroundings, allowing it to blend in. What was creepy were the shadows that seemed to cling to every surface of the building.

"This was an old warehouse from an obscure company," Natasha whispered. "It's been abandoned for a while now, and I've tracked the thieves here."

"What do we do?" Peter whispered back, watching as two normal-looking guys strolled out of the building, carrying huge cardboard boxes.

"Destroy all the weapons," Natasha said. "And if possible, disarm any thug you see, but you can leave those up to me also. Let's go."

She silently faded into the shadows of the buildings. Peter quickly climbed up the side of the buildings and swung near the central warehouse. As he approached, he spotted Natasha suddenly appear behind the two men that were walking out. He took that as the cue to attack.

Immediately he swung into a window, and shattered the glass. Inside, a person was shoving in glowy-looking tech into a box. She looked up, startled, before pulling out a pair of fancy-looking guns and shooting.

Peter couldn't help but yelp as he quickly dodged the familiar purple flame spraying out of the gun. "You have really bad aim," he called out, flipping to avoid another blast of purpleness. "Maybe you can put that down and let me web you up? It'll be fun."

"Shut up," the woman snarled, her brown hair curled up on her face like demented branches on a dead tree. "You have no idea what you're dealing with."

"You're no fun," he sighed, before knocking the gun out of her hand and webbing her up. "That's just what the typical bad guy says. At least you could try some new catchphrases." Quickly, he crushed the gun before hopping down the stairs.

Already, Natasha was kicking ass, doing complicated-looking acrobatics and shooting people in the head. Dozens of fallen thugs lay around her, like a complicated needlework of corpses and death. He stared at one body too long, noticing how much fear the dead man's expression held and the strange way his neck was twisted to one side.

He shivered, and looked away, choosing to web up the other criminals dancing around Natasha with daggers covered in bright blue symbols. She didn't stop to thank them, already spinning around to catch another person's dagger aiming straight for her back.

"This is a small mission?" Peter couldn't help but call disbelievingly across the room.

Natasha knocked out the other person who was behind her, before yelling back, "Wasn't supposed to be this much people. Stay back, or Stark will have my head."

"Roger that," he answered back, flipping across the rooms.

Peter ended up swinging from ceiling to ceiling, providing backup whenever Natasha needed it (which wasn't often). He listened to Karen's advice to web up the weakening structures in the building, supporting falling beams with mountains of web until he almost believed that the whole building was 70% made up of webs at that point.

Every time he saw a the vacant look of a dead body gazing at the ceiling with glassy eyes, he averted his attention to another more troublesome person charging at him. Who was alive, and very un-dead. He had no idea how Natasha could kill so efficiently, with so little thought to what she was doing.

Another bullet flew through the air, catching the person in front of him dead center in the forehead. Peter couldn't hold back a strangled cry of horror as the man toppled backwards, eyes still captured in that snarling glare that didn't end.

It was a bloodbath, and he wasn't ready for all the blood, which was probably stupid of him, but he just couldn't stand to see the life drain out of a person's face, like water swirling down the sewers.

He knocked out another person unconscious, still slightly distracted from watching the former man die in front of his eyes, so he didn't notice another person sneaking up behind him. His spider-sense buzzed, and he could hear Natasha roar, "Your back, Spiderman." But before he could turn around, something stabbed him through the suit.

He twisted around, catching the woman on the jaw and watched her fly through the air until she hit the wall with a sickening crack, but the damage was already done. He hazily lifted up his arm to see a needle sticking out of it, long and shiny, and so very menacing. It was just like the needles from the movies that doctors used on dying patients to inject something.

Fear enveloped him as he frantically pulled out the thing from his arm. Darkness started to spot his vision, and he couldn't help but collapse to his knees as his spider-sense went haywire. It was like pinpricks were everywhere, and he couldn't focus, couldn't breathe without smelling the thick scent of blood.

He could only feel terror and the need to get out, please someone GET ME OUT as the colors swam before his face. The last thing he saw was Natasha's unusually horrified face among sea of fallen bodies until even that blurred into unrecognizable shapes.

He felt someone pull him roughly across the floor and that was it, because the buzz swallowed him up and he felt nothing more.


He woke up to the sound of dripping water, and thick metal chains wrapping around his body. On the floor, his mask lay, crumpled. It was so cliche that he couldn't help but snort hysterically at the sight of rusted metal bars and a damp cell. Because of course he was kidnapped, it was like every other "bad guy versus good guy" scene that movies tended to have.

The chains were strong, almost unnaturally so. He couldn't tug them off, and he almost began hysterically laughing again because of course they couldn't. It would be too easy if they could.

"Peter Parker."

A voice emerged from the depths of the stupid dungeon, and he couldn't help the fear that swamped him because seeing the person would make it so very real. He didn't know what to do in situations like this, and he wanted to live and see MJ and Ned and May again but he didn't know and the person was coming-

"Spiderman. Tony Stark's intern. So much interesting aliases you got there.'

The voice was smooth, almost mockingly so. His spider-sense rang in warning, a fire alarm in a fire that he couldn't run from.

"You weren't our main target," the voice came close, aided by the falling steps on the stone dungeon. "We were hoping we could get our hands on the Black Widow, because she obviously knows more information than you. But you were enough, and I know when to cut my losses."

Peter was so screwed. If they were planning on doing whatever they were doing to Natasha, there was no way he could get out of this. Natasha had ages more experience, and mountains of badassery that he didn't have, and he couldn't do this, he couldn't calmly sit there hearing the voice come closer without any control.

The man finally appeared from the shadows, with a strangely familiar face that Peter knew, from the past when Mr. Stark appeared in the news arguing about helping world peace against Justin Hammer. The video was on the internet everywhere for a couple of weeks, as a flood of conspiracies were made about the congressmen.

"Are you that senator dude?" he gasped, staring at the thinning blond hair atop his head and the cold scowl he was wearing.

The guy's face was so annoyingly smug as he drawled, "Yes, I'm Senator Stern."

"I don't understand," Peter said quietly. "You're a congressman, you're supposed to want to protect the country not, not kidnap random people and-"

Vaguely, he remembered another news article that appeared after the chaos caused by top secret agent files being revealed to the public. Something about a congressman being arrested for treason.

"-and wait, you decided to be part of HYDRA? Why?"

His eyes drew to the strange device in the man's hand, two loops on a stick. Faintly, he heard Senator Stern's response.

"People are out of control. You can see that with Stark, and his blatant disrespect for the government," Stern spat out. "It's too lax nowadays. People have too much freedom, too much liberty to do whatever they want to do. It's a disaster, and HYDRA's trying to fix it."

He was standing by Peter now, so close that if Peter kicked his foot out, he could touch him. He tried to shrink into his seat, but he couldn't move, and another wave of fear swept over him as Stern held up the device.

"This is TMS," Stern gloated, his face so triumphant that it stank of self-entitlement. "It's the new version of mind control. I learn about your secrets, and you die. Simple."

"That's Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation?" Peter stopped struggling, and confusedly tilted his head towards Stern. "Do you know how it even works?"

"And you do?" Stern frowned, the device still hovering in the air.

"It's a machine that uses magnetic pulses to control the electrical impulses of the brain. It's not really mind control, per se, because they haven't really discovered to make it that powerful yet, and I'm pretty sure HYDRA doesn't have the tech for that yet. But I mean, if you want to use it to activate certain parts of my brain and try to cure my nonexistent depression and stuff, that's fine with me."

If possible, Stern's frown got even deeper, "How do you even know this?"

"There was this video by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who's a really smart science guy, and he made a documentary on mind stuff. I kind of watched that," Peter mumbled sheepishly.

A pause. Strangely, Stern didn't put down the device.

"Maybe you can put the wand-stick thing down and we can go on our merry way?" Peter asked hopefully.

"You're correct in that it doesn't directly control minds," Stern conceded. "But this device isn't supposed to control minds directly. It's used to increase fear, overstimulate parts of the brain like the amygdala. All your fears? It's magnified."

His head flashed back to the scene on the hallway floor, seemingly so long ago, but just from this morning. But this time, MJ's hand wasn't here to guide him out of his panic.

No one was here.

Peter eyed the machine warily. Softly, he said, "It's supposed to convince me."

"Exactly." The smug tone was back into Stern's voice. "You know what's even better about this machine? It doesn't just create fear, it emphasizes all your pre-existing issues and turns them into something bigger."

"So?" Peter couldn't help the slight quiver in his voice, but he held his head up high. From the irritated glance that Stern gave him, he didn't like that too much.

"So? Parker, that makes all the difference. You'll be broken by your personal issues, something that targets you intimately. It's not just fear, it's also you."

"Well luckily, I don't know anything." Now Peter was just rambling, but Stern was getting that device way too close to his head for his liking. "There's no point in this, I'm not even part of the Avenger. Could you just let me go or something?"

"You think this is just for information?" Stern drawled. "You're Stark's intern. Even if I don't get information, do you know how satisfying it'll be to watch you wither before my eyes? I'll destroy him, like he ruined me."

Before he could stop himself, Peter muttered, "Why don't you just kill me then?" He quickly backtracked. "I mean, you don't have to kill me, because that would be pointless and stupid. But why go through all of this?"

Stern smirked, "I need to record you screaming so I can then send it to Stark, along with your dead body."

"You're insane," Peter hissed.

"Kid, it's called revenge," Stern said, smiling. "Face it, you're not getting out of this alive."

He lowered the device, and pressed the button. The device started to click, a strangely menacing sound in the echoey silence of the room.

At first, Peter didn't feel anything. But slowly, he could feel the fear start to trickle through his body, like a pattering of raindrops. It started to grow, turning from a drizzle to a downpour that he could hardly breathe under.

"You don't have to do this," Peter gasped, trying to twist out of the way. But the chains kept him to his chair, and Stern looked down at him with a calm face, still smiling.

"Of course I don't," he said calmly. "But I am, because revenge is a dish best served cold."

And that was all he heard, until the rush of guilt, fear, and horror flooded his body, a hurricane swirling through his head until all he could think of was the terror. He wasn't getting out of this and he was just a high schooler, he shouldn't be doing this but he was and it was too much.

He wasn't getting out of this alive, and there was so much he wanted to do in his life, to fix things and make things right. But he was so scared, scared of the darkness in the room that reminded him of the twisted pipes with the green glowing eyes of the Vulture. Scared of the fear that was overwhelming him until everything in his head was pushed aside to make way for the guilt and the terror that wouldn't go away.

Liz's disappointed face swam before his eyes, the tears on her cheeks reminding him of the broken things he could never fix. Mr. Stark's accusing voice blended in with the clicks of the device, reminding him that he could have killed people on the ferry, and it was only because of pure luck that they were saved.

In a last ditch attempt, he tried to think how he was Spiderman, and he could do anything. Which included fighting off the stupid TMS machine that was messing with his mind.

Do you think death cares if you're Spiderman or not? A little voice inside his head whispered.

No.

He was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to die.

Something broke inside of him, and he screamed.

Then the concrete burst into rubble, as a red and gold suit flew into the darkened prison, repulsors lit up with a ghastly blue light.

The voice inside the suit roared, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

The fear quickly disappeared, and Peter collapsed in his seat, trying to breathe. The sudden lack of terror was almost as disconcerting as the terror itself as he hazily watched Mr. Stark land in front of him.

Stern backed up, his face paling suddenly. The device fell from his hands, and Ironman crushed it under his feet.

"You don't touch my things," he snarled, smashing through the walls. Stern was backed into a corner, looking like a mouse in front of a very red cat. In the distance, he watched as Natasha gracefully fell down the hole made in the ceiling, with a pair of keys in her hand. She leapt over, and gently unlocked the chains that were wrapped around him.

"These are vibranium," she narrowed her eyebrows at the chains. "They must have been from the prototypes in the box."

"M' fine," Peter rasped, as he tried to get up, but collapsed on the ground. Natasha quietly tutted at him, before lifting him up.

"You were supposed to stay back," she hissed to him.

"Sorry," he weakly mumbled back. Natasha just sighed, and shifted him on her back.

"Hang on, we're getting out," she said quietly.

Mr. Stark's helmet was down when he looked back, and his face of absolute fury and coldness burned into Peter's mind as he watched Ironman lift up a gauntlet to Stern's terrified face. Blue washed over Stern's face, revealing every wrinkle and crevice, and before he could see the repulsor go off, Natasha skidded out a hole in the wall.

He let his head drop on her shoulder, and everything went dark for the second time of the day.


Another chapter, woo! Thank you all who faved, followed, and reviewed, I hope you like this chapter also! I really appreciate seeing comments on what you guys enjoyed, or what maybe to improve on. How do you guys like the character interactions here?

TMS was something I actually had to research for a project for school, and yes, I did chance upon TMS from a video made by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. At first, I was originally going to write about something else (denaturing proteins) but that wasn't as clear cut as this idea, so I switched. Senator Stern was also another thing that I improvised from the original story idea, but it worked well with the plot, so I added him in.

Is anyone else waiting for the Far From Home trailer to finally come out? I know I definitely am, and it's driving me insane.