Autonomy Part 2

The officer's name was Layton. He was dressed crisp and clean, someone who took their job seriously. Worked the nine-to-five with a smile on their face. Peter could tell he had never been to Manhattan just by looking at him.

Layton stood upright and proud, an officer of the Houston Police Department. On his shoulder, because of the shiny badge, and in his eyes, because of the shine there too, Peter could see that he was a good person. But it was three in the morning and he was running on fumes. He really didn't care if he was or not. A warm bed to sleep in would do him good but instead, he got a bed of chairs at the HMC. The desk clerk gave him a strange look for that, one he didn't bother figuring out. If she had a problem, that was her problem.

Sleeping would have been easier if he wasn't being stared at. He had stormed in with the girl on his back, both of them stinking to high heaven. That had… garnered some attention. None of the bad kind, yet. Whatever her name was, and Peter didn't care enough to admit that he did wonder what her name was, she was being taken care of. The doctor that was taking care of her had told him his name, Donald, in hopes that the homeless looking teenager that smelled like corpses and was covered in blood would give his. It was polite, it was basic manners. May taught him that. Peter didn't say shit.

"I'm not leaving until I get a name, kid," Officer Layton said, and then he yawned. "Which is… pretty bad for me. It's past my bedtime too."

He smiled at Peter, who reclined on a set of chairs against the wall in the receptionist's area of the hospital. Peter couldn't help but snort at that. Months ago he would have been shorter than the officer, who stood at, if he had to guess, 6'1. Now he was far away from the meager 5'6 he had been before, to the point that his feet lazily hung off the bed of chairs. It sucked, but it wasn't the worst place he'd slept in the last few months.

"So…" Layton trailed off just as Peter closed his eyes again, gesturing with a pen and pad. He sounded tired, but not impatient. Peter almost felt sorry for him. "Care to make a statement?"

Peter cracked open a single eye and looked up at the man. He didn't mean to sneer but did anyway, though Layton didn't seem to hold that against him - why did he have to be so understanding? The police in Manhattan shot at him just to do it. He wasn't used to this.

"I told you. I found her by the docks. With the bodies," he said, holding back a yawn that made him look even bitterer than before. He closed his eyes and didn't open them again.

"I heard you the first time," Layton replied easily, "but I can't just accept a statement without a name, you know."

He quirked an eyebrow at that. Good cop, but a liar, even a little white lie. "That's patently untrue," he said, and smirked slightly. "Don't you have anything better to do besides pestering me for my name? Like checking out the container full of corpses? Down by the docks?"

Layton tapped the pad three times. "…I don't, but I'm sure the other officers would. I'm supposed to be off duty. I can call them, if you like."

Peter narrowed his eyes. The last thing he needed was a way for Fury to track him down. It wasn't as if the man couldn't already, but he really didn't need another guilt trip from the General. Two was enough for eight months. "Go ahead," he replied, and closed his eyes, relaxing. "See if I'm here by the time they get here."

A silence followed but he knew that wasn't the end of it. Layton, if his appearance suggested how strong his moral compass really was, was probably stubborn as hell. Peter could appreciate that, but not when it amounted to super sleuthing his identity. He held it extra close knowing any fucking telepath could just yank it out of his head.

"Kid…" Layton said, his tone seriously. "Come on, throw me a bone, here."

Peter cracked open an eye. "You have a husband for that, don't you?"

The officer's eyes widened before they narrowed, half in suspicion and half in defense. "How did you-"

"I didn't, but you two act like an old married couple I used to know."

Layton nodded slowly at the easy, inoffensive look on the teen's face. "Is that a problem?"

"Not really. The husband is dead and the wife disowned me. I-"

The words, slightly bitter and more flippant than anything else, erupted from Peter's mouth before he could catch them. At the same time he could see the receptionist looking on. He shut up. The last thing he wanted was a pity party.

He got it anyway. The officer's face melted into sympathy and the receptionist frowned. Peter looked down after that and refused to look up, knowing that Layton saw his disheveled appearance, his ragged jacket and shaggy hair, and the dirt that spotted bits and pieces of his skin, and the smell, and knew it was because he'd been disowned. He wasn't just a hobo.

Peter scowled, half intent to close his eyes and sleep the attention through and half intent on getting up and leaving. He did his civic duty, or whatever. He was done.

"Where do you live?" Layton asked, in what Peter assumed was the universal tone for speaking to homeless runaways everywhere.

He remained silent. Layton sighed. "Do you have any relati-"

Peter looked at him as if he were stupid, and Layton flinched. It was a dumb question. "No," Peter said. For just a second, he paused. Jessica. Layton looked at him closer at that. "I don't."

"Are you sure?" Layton asked, grinning weakly. It faded when Peter looked up at him, unamused.

"Dead and disowned, remember," He said and it wasn't a lie. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, disowned, and the last was just a technicality he supposed, and she was running around the country doing… something. With a vagina. While she looked like his twin sister.

She actually was his twin sister, he supposed. It didn't feel right calling her or the rest clones, so he thought of them as his twins… or triplets. And what a trifecta they were: one was a girl, one was fucking insane, and the other was a literal human spider with six eyes and arms.

And two of them were dead. The Parker family curse, as he had come to call it, was still in effect. Maybe Jessica would outlive him? Good for her.

"I do remember, thank you," Layton said. He motioned to one of the chairs. "You mind if I sit?"

"I wrote my name on them, so you'll have to pay me in Monopoly money," Peter said, his eyes closed. He opened them to smirk at the agog look on the officer's face. Yeah, he was a good person. "Kidding."

"I knew that. You don't have a marker."

Peter pulled out a dry erase marker he had nicked from a passing doctor an hour earlier and tossed it to the officer. Layton caught it soundly. "I meant about the monopoly money. Sitting is five dollars." The officer gave him a look. Peter shrugged. "I need the money, and-"

Layton dug into his wallet. He pulled out a twenty and held it out to the teen. "Keep the change."

"I don't want your money," he said, narrowing his eyes. "And I don't need it." He really didn't. Up on the rooftop of the hospital, hidden from sight and webbed up soundly were two bags of instant wealth with his name on it.

Layton pushed the twenty into his chest. "Do I look like I care?"

He sat down a chair away from the one that held Peter's legs and leaned against the wall, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and folded his hands over his lap. "…I'm not paying you back," Peter said.

Layton shrugged.

By now the area had thinned out. Whatever attention the tall teenager had garnered by barging into the hospital with a near dead girl in his arms had dispersed by the fact that he wasn't being apprehended by the local police officer. Peter scoffed to himself. Houston.

The girl popped into his mind again. He couldn't hear her voice. That was… good. He could hear her on the way here, in her sleep. It was… Aztec? Whatever it was, she was dreaming of spiders. One voice besides his own in his mind was enough already. Three was a crowd.

He thought about the corpses and their pale, dead, glassy eyes and rotting flesh. They had been alive and were trapped in the storage container like they were less than nothing, just objects. For money. For the money that was going to make him a rich man. Uncle Ben would be ashamed of him.

Peter scowled and pulled his jacket over himself. It was undersized and didn't fit him anymore, but was an improvement on how oversized it had been before. At 5'6 it had been gigantic, and now it was just a bit too tight. He couldn't catch a break, but now he wouldn't be broke. Uncle Ben would be so proud. He had better be. All of those rotting corpses would have made the inside of the container far hotter than it normally would have been. If the girl was normal, which she wasn't because she could read minds, she would have been baked alive just like the rest. But she wasn't, which meant she wasn't human, and the only person Peter knew of that could read minds and wasn't human was an admittedly attractive redhead who had serious problems with power abuse and personal space.

The girl was a mutant. Much like Layton having a husband, Peter didn't care about that. She could have four extra arms and Layton could have a harem of muscle men and he still wouldn't care. But she read his mind, called him Hombre Arana. That was a problem. It was his problem all because he had stuck his head where it didn't belong.

"…Layton?"

"Yeah, kid?"

Peter bit the inside of his cheek. "Is she gonna be alright?"

The officer paused so that he could gather the requisite amount of faith in himself. It was bullshit to Peter but he appreciated it nonetheless. "…Donny's working on her," the officer said. "He might not be able to make French toast worth a darn, but he's a darn good doctor."

Peter didn't say anything.

"You saved her life," Layton said in the silence that followed.

Peter twitched. "I was in the neighborhood."

"Yeah, go figure," Layton said, and with a soft smile he started to drift off. The only thing that Peter heard, aside from the ticking of the clock on the wall and the distant sound of activity in the hospital, was the sound of his heartbeat. The smell of the hospital, sterile and too similar to the dead bodies, ran up his nose.

He adjusted himself. All of the power, none of the responsibility. What a plan that had been. Maybe next time.

Hospital chairs made awful beds. Peter left.

He felt a little bad about leaving Layton like that, but if the man didn't want to fall asleep in a chair and wake up with back problems, he shouldn't have sat down. That was his fault.

Peter had given the money back.

As much as he wanted to lay low, he had probably done a bad job at it. He was tired, more prone to making mistakes, and the Four Seasons Hotel was open to everyone with the money to pay. Peter had that in spades, so much so that the only look on the receptionist's face was surprise as he handed over two larges in cash, and then another fifteen hundred to get the kitchens to open so he could eat like a pig. Fury would take notice of that. Peter didn't know how exactly, but he would. Still, it was worth it.

By a quarter to six in the morning he was in the most expensive suite that the hotel had, at the very top, luxuriating in the grotesque display of wealth. It was good, but the hot shower felt better. He didn't leave it until his skin was soggy and sterile of the shit that suffused to him last night. and then he had stayed five more minutes after that to scrub every last dead fleck of skin from his scalp. He couldn't remember the last time he had had a shower, but he was never going more than a couple of days without one again. Not with this money.

He stepped out of the shower, wrapped himself up in a towel, and stopped in front of the mirror. Seeing his reflection was something to get used to. He almost didn't recognize himself. He wiped the fog from the mirror and stared at the slightly frowning face that stared right back. Where was Peter Parker?

His face was familiar enough… but also matured. He didn't have any of the 'kiddishness' he had had before, though his youth was still obvious. His hair was long and chocolate brown, hanging to his shoulders and as wet as a fish, but the dissimilarities didn't end there.

He had gained almost a foot in height, and it was obvious from looking at his reflection that he had bulked up. Where before he had been spindly and corded with muscle, his body was cut with them and statuesque, intimidating and visible with a powerful looking physique. No one would look at him and see Peter Parker, sixteen year old. That was just the way he wanted it. No one would look at him and see the boy who got his family killed and endangered, his friend endangered and killed, his ex-girlfriend turned into a monster, and his innocent doubles killed twice over. The one that got disowned.

Well, one was innocent. Quesadamodo, bless his soul, was fucking insane.

He wanted to be someone else. He reached into the cabinet and found it stocked with amenities like hair care products and shaving cream and unopened packs of toothbrushes. He paused after he grabbed the scissors and looked one last time at his reflection. Peter Parker, the one who got Gwen Stacy, Ben Parker, dozens of innocent people, and even himself killed, stared back, scowling. Then, the first long lock of hair fell into the sink.