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A/N: The spider was waiting for me on my wall tonight when I got home from work. Thanks to a vacuum it is now resting in the eternal web in the afterlife. So callous of me... -_- I will sleep easier tonight.
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AVENGERS FACILITY
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I sit back at the desk and skip ahead a few frames. I had passed out immediately after he broke my middle finger. My head stays completely limp and my body sags for several minutes. It's almost scarier watching this in fast-forward, seeing the man pace around the room, waiting for me to wake up. He replaces his badge back onto his vest, albeit its dirty and there's no recognition of the badge number from the system, it's too blurry.
I watch him re-cut open the same wounds on my chest while I'm unconscious, and then watches them bleed like some sort of creepy vampire who just happens to be hydrated already.
What's the point of that? I'm not going to tell him anything if I'm passed out! It was literally just to be a sadist. I flinch, and nothing more. I don't wake up. I can tell from his movements he's getting nervous - pacing more. He checks my pulse at my neck. He even leaves the line of vision for a moment, checking the base of the stairs. He has no idea that a tiny camera, undamaged by the knife, sits near my collarbone and is watching his every move. He has no idea that Karen is slowly coming back online, self-replicating repair at work where her own systems are attempting to override the damage done by the blast. My AI is busy searching for working circuits to bypass the crushed hardware to find another place within the suit to re-connect the audio. My AI is so smart... it's scary.
I steady my breathing. You're in the Avengers facility. You're safe. I press play again. Nearly finished.
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TUESDAY NIGHT
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He tosses water on me again, and I cough and my head jerks up. "You left me for a moment," the man shouts in my face. "Come back, come back. More to discuss."
I spit water out and let out a noise of anguish. Everything hurts.
"We'll table our last topic. Coming back full circle for a moment. I want your name, now."
My chest hurts so badly that I can't think straight.
"What's your name? Tell me your name."
My biggest mistake is not telling him no. I couldn't snark at him this time like I did before. The fight was gone. If I could just manage one, sarcastic little NO, I might have been able to hold out. But I didn't allow myself to think that far. I can't say it.
Which by default, it's somehow admitting to myself that I won't be able to keep my secret after all.
He grabs his screwdriver again and jams it against my cheek, not enough to break the skin, but enough to make panic flare up, spider-senses going off like strobe lights, so bright and confusing I can't concentrate. He slides it up my face and presses it into the corner of my eye, and slowly begins to press it in.
"No, no, no," I try to struggle, feeling the re-strain of my shoulders from too much movement. Shit. I'm pretty sure I could heal and maybe not get an infected eye-socket, but I don't think I can regrow an eye. I'm pretty damn sure that's something my super-healing could not do.
"You don't need an eye, do you?" he growls. "What happens if you lose them both? Think a blind hero can walk around doing the shit you do? The answer is definitely no."
I can't do this anymore.
"What happens if I shove this into your brain?" He says. My eyes are squeezed shut and I am still struggling, somehow, to try and pull my face away - but he's relentless - he presses harder. It's starting to hurt. I didn't think he'd break my fingers - what makes me think he'd stop at gouging out my eye and plunging this into my head?
"what happens, huh?" He screams.
I die, I think. My moment of shame, of cowardice. I'd rather give up my real name than die. And it's not just my name, it's Aunt May's name. And I fail her... here and now.
"Peter," I whisper, my voice so hoarse it barely comes out.
"Peter WHAT?"
"P-parker. Parker."
He drops my chin back to my chest and releases the pressure of the screwdriver. I heave slightly, and then puke on the cement floor. It splatters against his shoes and he lets out a yelp of surprise. He makes a disgusted face in my direction and tries to rub his shoe at an awkward angle on the ground to wipe it off.
"Great," he says sarcastically. "Spandex heroes blowing chunks and a name that I could've picked out of the top ten baby names of every decade. You might as well be John Smith." He pauses and laughs suddenly. "You'll at least be a John Doe. Maybe. Unless I get what I need."
My brain flickers in a tiny, blissful echo of hope. Unless what, though? Didn't he need my name?
"Let's try this," he rolls up his sleeves, puts his screwdriver away. He winds up and punches me hard in the face. My head snaps back at the neck, fresh blood pouring from both nostrils and the bridge of my nose swiftly turning dark red with bruising. Broken nose. Then he punches from both sides, left then right, my head snapping from side to side. The heat of bruising begins to throb, my head spinning with dizziness. Definitely a concussion at this point.
The guy packs a swift, and deadly punch. He could have been a boxer. He could have been...
I've already been through too much at this point, and I'd barely woken up to begin with. He delivers one final blow to the chin, and I'm knocked out cold.
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AVENGERS FACILITY
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I pressed through the next few frames - I was out for a much longer time. After the final knock out, as it were, he woke me up by waiting it out. This is when my memory is the clearest. I remember what happens at this point - too well.
He told me that he wasn't going to kill me even though I saw his face. It was relieving... in a way. But then he told me that there was nothing I could do to fight him. He would just out my secret identity. Then he broke my fourth, and final, finger, luckily left the thumb alone, and didn't break the fingers of my left hand like he threatened he would. And I spilled my guts on whatever I thought I knew about the Avengers facility... like a wuss.
And then Karen came back online... and he stomped off in search of the source, not realizing it was coming partially from my suit. He came back and stabbed me in between the ribs. Then he checked my phone, released me from the machines, mocked my healing ability, and then left me alone. Alone.
I sat back and left the video on pause. I just fast-forwarded through my clearest memories.
The whole sequence, with pauses and gaps and moments of unconsciousness and the times spend of me just crying and screaming while he stood by and waited for me to calm down... the whole thing had lasted through Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight. And that's when my memory grows fuzzy again.
The pain relievers are worn off, and I feel a flare of pain beginning in my ribs. I involuntarily press a hand to my side, lifting up my T-shirt to check the gauze covering the wound. I'm not connected to an IV anymore, so no spontaneous button-tapping drug to flood my system at this point. At least that stuff is strong enough to have an effect. At home, I have to take, like, eight or ten aspirin to have any positive results for something as simple as a headache. My tolerance is sorta high.
Suddenly, I feel homesick. Even homesick for school, to a point. Aside from being a sort of nerdy dweeb that gets picked on... I like learning. I like science, a lot. And I swore if I got out of this situation alive I'd try photography - isn't there a yearbook class I could try next year?
I'm homesick for my friends. I want to just go back to last month, things were simpler. No one knew my secret. Ned and I would binge Star Wars or Black Cape or something and eat junk food and hang out. Then after he'd go home I'd say g'night to Aunt May and sneak out my bedroom window to do a little old-fashioned crime fighting. Nothing... nothing followed me home, then. It was just me swinging around at night on the street stopping muggings and walking people home and catching hit'n'runs. Once I stopped a guy from speeding through a school zone. I webbed his car and pulled him back and made him drive through again at the right speed...
I chuckle. And make a decision. Either I can... put this away, now, and go back to sleep. Go home tomorrow. Go back to school later. Try to forget the whole thing, and let the memories come back naturally... or, not at all. And maybe if they don't it's meant to be.
After all, whatever happened, happened, already, right? The important thing is I ended up here and not dead in some underground garage.
Or I can stay up even later and keep watching. Once the officer heard Karen trying to send a distress call, he ran back to my mask and stomped the life out of it, again, in a panic. Still didn't discontinue the baby monitor program.
"I don't need this," I say out loud. I stand up from the desk and walk dejectedly towards the door. I don't. I'm okay with not knowing. I remember the feelings of being unconscious, I remember crawling out of the garage. I remember... talking. I think. Or calling for help. Something like that. But it doesn't matter...
"Who the hell am I kidding?" I whisper, turning around and marching right back to the computer.
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TUESDAY NIGHT
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"Great," he says sarcastically. "See ya around, Spider-Man."
He stomps off into the darkness of the garage. He aims for the stairs. After a few moments of agonizing silence of me being unable to move, I hear the whine of his car as he put it in reverse, the brakes letting out a painfully high-pitched squeal any time he taps them to slow down.
With a growl, the car is back in the street and disappearing into the darkness of the night - night? Or morning?
I have no sense of time at this point.
"Aunt May," I whisper brokenly. I think about how upset and worried she was going to be, and it just turned into a whimper of her name. Not that I ever wanted to know what it felt like, but apparently a few hours of torture and I just want to be comforted by a maternal figure who provides shelter and clothes and food and takes care of me and loves me more than life. So sue me.
I need to call for help - but the phone is fried. Karen, for all I know, is also fried, after a long fight. I'm alone. But I need help. I know I'm not okay.
To summarize the current situation; broken nose, four broken fingers, lacerations to the forearms, chest, and neck, stab wounds in the ribs and foot. On the mend: dislocated shoulders and broken wrists and...
broken web shooters?
The web shooters are a little closer to the palm of my hand than where the weird gauntlet-cuff magnets placed the most pressure. The vices had probably done the worst of it.
Curled up on the cement floor, still shivering, I hold my hand up to my face - the left hand, with all the working fingers.
I press the sensor with the two middle fingers per usual; nothing. Not even a spark or a sign of working technology.
Okay, have to do this the old fashioned way, then.
I roll over onto my side, crying aloud with the pain it pushes into my shoulders to do so. I brace myself on an elbow and slowly push myself to my knees.
For a moment I kneel there, the left hand holding myself from falling back onto the ground. Deep breaths - over and over. I had lost count as to how many times I had lost consciousness tonight. Five times? I don't know how bad that is - if were a type of situation if I had been drinking alcohol or were on drugs or something, that probably means my body is shutting down. But if it's from multiple concussions and just feeling dizzy with pain... maybe it's not deadly.
This is the first time tonight I managed to convince myself I might not die.
"All right, Spider-idiot," I whisper to myself. I slide my right hand out a few feet, reaching carefully for my discarded mask. I hook my uninjured thumb through the opening, dragging it towards me. My elbow gives out for a moment, and I rest my forehead on the cool floor.
"Get up. Get out. Get help. Come on." I sit up again, pushing myself all the way off the floor so that I'm sitting back on my heels. This hurts far too much for my blood-covered foot, so I bite the bullet and use my left hand on the vice to pull myself to my feet, shouting hoarsely with pain. I try to hold my arm with the broken fingers up tight to my chest, keeping the mask with me. Though that leaves the stab wound in the side without any pressure.
But I'm standing - which that in itself feels like a small miracle.
I limp towards the stairs. Or, not even limp. My feet would have to leave the ground. I shuffle, sliding each foot in front of the other, slowly but surely, till I reach the bottom. I look up and groan deeply. It looks like a million miles to the top.
I take each step one at a time, both feet per step. It's okay, I tell myself. Suddenly a random old Christmas song comes to mind, from a sort of creepy, puppet-oriented Rankin Bass film (you know, the Rudolph guys). The lyrics were oddly... fitting.
Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you'll be walkin' cross the flooOOOOooOOOOORRR! Put one foot in FRONT OooOOOF the other, and soon you'll be walkin' out the DoooOOOOORRR!
I hummed slightly, trying to pin my focus on something other than the pains it took for any jarring movement, definitely not limited to each damn step.
I know at this point the only thing keeping me going is adrenaline, but it will wear off. And then what? I pass out for like a sixth or seventh time and die in an alleyway?
I get to the top step and sag against the wall. I can do this.
Then I'm in the alley way, the cold of the night hitting me like a force. I can see my breath. I brace myself against the brick wall and slowly move towards the light of the streetlamp at the far end, lighting my way back to civilization.
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Author's note:
I have one more super-power story for you, and I definitely should have thought of this before but now it's TOO WEIRD not to take note of.
So I have always had this thing that I have a tendency to write stuff in my stories and then something happens later that mirrors it. One of my more... uh, "famous?" (but OLD) fan fictions "What Are You Gona Call Me? A Mary Sam?" was about a boy named Nathan "Nate" who was super clumsy and sandy haired and had ADHD and wore silly T-shirts and got into a crap ton of trouble (while bursting into song a lot) in Middle Earth. I started it when I was 15 I think. Then 4 years later I'm in college and I meet a boy named Nate. He's a friend of a friend. He has ADHD and he's sandy haired and incredibly clumsy and randomly bursts into song all the time.
One time he and I are just hanging out in a dorm lobby and we had this weird moment where I looked at him, and he looked at me, and he goes; "I feel like we've met before."
And I'm like "ME TOO."
"YOU TOO?"
"I have the SAME feeling! It's almost like... I don't know, like you're some lost cousin that I didn't know I had or something."
"Yeah, it's weird," he said. "I just have this feeling like we know each other."
About twenty minutes later the light bulb came on, and I'm like, "Hey, Nathan?"
"Yeah?"
"This might sound weird, but I figured out why I feel like I know you."
"OMG HOW?"
"About four or five years ago I wrote a story about a character exactly like you."
"How was he like me?!"
"Well, his name was Nathan. He, uh, had your hair and eye color. Came from a small town. Has ADHD. And... sings a lot. And he's really clumsy and falls over a lot. I just realized that you're like... everything I wrote come to life."
He flipped out. "AND HIS NAME WAS NATHAN TOO?"
"Yeah!"
"AND YOU WROTE THIS FOUR YEARS AGO?"
"YEAH!"
Anyways, we had a mini freak out over it. Then he told people I wrote all about him before I knew him and I was a psychic. It was hilarious.
When I was writing my best fan fiction self-insert Strange Things Happen I wrote about getting a job on the galley of the Dawn Treader, right? Well, THREE YEARS LATER I end up getting a job in a kitchen and my coworker Jose is EXACTLY like "Tusk" from my story.
I wrote that other one about Shawn Spencer in Psych breaking his knees and then for 2 days both of my knees hurt so, so badly for absolutely no reason whatsoever (I hadn't fallen or anything!) But it literally felt like I had gotten a mallet to the knees too. Haha.
Then I wrote the story "Give me the Words" about Fitz in Agent of Shield in a coma, then dealing with his disabilities and having speaking issues after his brain injury. Then I go and get myself cancer and have chemo treatments which injures my freaking brain and the same freaking shit happens to me (not the coma part, but definite reoccurring moments of unconsciousness where my brain went through the same weird head-space of crazy imagery and sounds while OUT) And further issues when I try to speak and make myself clear. (for those of you Marvel fans enjoying Spider-Man, you might like that story too. I got into a LOT more detail of the weird similarities in that one). But yeah a lot that has to do with memory lapses (short term) and getting the right words out and developing weird verbal tics or snaps to get the right ones out. Oy vey. I went from just making all that crap up with my imagination to living it and then I was like... huh... well that's frighteningly accurate.
Then I even made a joke earlier to you guys about how me getting a week-long cold was karma for being mean to Peter, right?
WELL IT GETS BETTER
SO MUCH BETTER
So I wrote this earlier part of the chapter Tuesday night where the police officer starts punching Peter in the face and breaks his nose. No big deal, right? It's part of the story. He gets kidnapped and tortured - obviously the nose has to go!
THE BIG FINALE... Wednesday evening... I'm browsing twitter and I see a new post from TOM HOLLAND... yeah... SPIDER MAN HIMSELF.
He posts a twitter status and it simply states
"I broke my nose again. #chaoswalking"
THIS IS TOO MUCH AND I CAN'T EVEN HANDLE what the heck guys!? Like I don't believe I'm actually psychic I don't believe in that stuff BUT THIS KEEPS HAPPENING!
TOM HOLLAND BROKE HIS NOSE 24 HOURS AFTER I WROTE ABOUT SPIDER MAN BREAKING HIS NOSE
I need to write more romantic comedies, I think? It's just getting too weird lol
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Anyways, more responses (and more quiz time!) further along, keep scrolling...
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REVIEW RESPONSES! WOOHOO!
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ThatCrazyDaughterofHecate - Cool username! Thanks so much for the reviews!
Shoyzz - Thank you so much for the longer reviews, they give me LIFE! We're going to definitely have some more protective!Tony and comforting!Tony in the future. I like them too!
Badguthrie - Good news is, the spidery bastard was waiting for me when I got home from work today. So I sucked it up with a vacuum. Eheheh.
GoTeamSkipper - Dude your super power moments are totally awesome and not minor. It's epic. I love it. Thanks so much for your ongoing support! You've been around for awhile, it's nice to have someone stick around for so long :) and that story about your grandpa was absolutely incredible. I agree with your grandpa ;) I think God also gives humans crazy adrenaline rushes to do amazing things ! Either way so cool! :)
Queen of Crystallopia - AAAHH your reviews are just perfection in word form. Thank you as ever. I was also so happy you updated your story, I can't get enough of it. Hopefully we have more soon? Or is it technically over? Anyway I hope you do more stories in general. You're a good writer. And I am sorry you skipped making your lunch lol, I would just die if I didn't make my lunch the night before so I truly appreciate your sacrifice! XD You're amazing!
Girlwith100names - You are so wonderful! Thank you for your kind words! can't wait to keep sharing with you. If you have any more suggestions let me know :) I wonder if I can try and sneak Bucky in somehow. I am not sure how I can do it, I'll have to do a little research to see just how much time passed exactly between the end of the final battle w/ Iron Man and when he gets all frozen up in Wakanda... :)
tune in next for:
HOW DOES PETER GET FROM THERE TO THE AVENGERS FACILITY?
DOES TONY FIND OUT HE HACKED THE COMPUTERS?
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HE AND MAY GO HOME?
Next Quiz Questions! These are so fun, I love feeling engaged with you guys. It's like a fun little community!
Quiz: What is one of your EARLIEST favorite fan fiction story? Like the earliest you can remember reading fan fiction and going... I LIKE this... ANOTHER! What was it called,if you can remember? Or who was it by, what was it about? Did it make you fall in love with fan fiction?
Mine has to be an old "Girl falls into Middle Earth and falls in love with Legolas" story I was reading when I was probably 13 or 14 and it was by a user named CaptainOblivious ... don't remember the title though lol. I just remember being totally obsessed with it. I also LOVED Serena Kenobi's Star Wars / X-Men crossovers. We're friends in real life now so I lucked out there :)
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ART LESSONS! INSTA!
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You can follow me on instagram pippin_strange. I'll be posting nerdy stuff (fan fiction, cosplay, writing, marvel, etc)
I am also going to start doing free drawing classes with my regular instagram, myapapaya_adventures, same sort of time, probably weeknights around 8:30 pm pacific standard time, I haven't picked a day yet but I wanted to offer free drawing lessons to anyone who is interested :) we should have drawing some fun things like: unicorns, horses, trees, leaves, mountains, Spider-Man, disney Princesses, other cartoon characters, that sort of thing!