The first thing Peter noticed as he exited the apartment building was how quiet it was. While he had been used to the noise of the city for most of his life, it had taken his enhanced hearing some time and practice in order to control the input. Now, as he strolled down the street, it practically took his enhanced hearing to get much of anything. He occasionally saw an individual or two walking along, but they hardly said or did anything, bearing despondent and hopeless looks as they trudged along.
As he continued further into the city, Peter saw very few places of business that were open. Restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, even big business buildings appeared either to be completely empty or with only a few people on the inside. It made sense; after all, when you take away half of the population, you're going to struggle when you lack employees. Still, the whole thing felt unnatural to Peter, like how he had always imagined a dystopian or apocalyptic movie if it were real life.
What really got to Peter though was something he saw for the first time on a window: a missing person paper. It was only one or two here and there at first, but as he continued, he saw more and more grouped together. It soon started to seem as though almost all of Manhattan was looking for someone they cared about, be it a husband, wife, brother, sister, friend, etc.
In short, the city felt hopeless.
Peter stopped in his tracks, the effect of his surroundings starting to hit him. The empty buildings, the missing persons posters, and the silence of the few who were out and about like him were becoming too much. He could've prevented this; he should've prevented this...
He forced those thoughts as far back in his mind as he could. They were the same thoughts he had been dwelling on for weeks now, and he was getting sick of it. Peter had always been one to struggle with a guilty conscience; when he was just a little kid, it would only take one scolding look from May or Ben to get him to spill something he had done wrong, and it still didn't take very much. He tended to be acutely aware of his mistakes far more so than his accomplishments, but the magnitude of it this time was slowly killing him.
Doing his best to focus himself on something, Peter tried to think of places he could go specifically that might be of some comfort to him. He thought of going to Queens to see Mr. Delmar, but he was nervous of the prospect of going all the way there and then finding out that no one was there to greet him. He would check in another time, but not tonight.
His mind then shifted to the library in Midtown. It had been a common place for him to go to escape over the years, especially in the face of losing people. After both the loss of his parents and Ben, he had found himself venturing into the older building, burying himself in books that dealt with science, from basic chemistry to theoretical physics. Peter decided to try his luck again. He knew there was a decent chance it might not even be open, but what else did he have to lose?
It was a decent walk, but Peter eventually arrived at the Midtown Library with some daylight still left in the sky. To his surprise, the lights at the library were on, so he walked up and, sure enough, the front doors were unlocked, so he let himself in. The place carried a similar silence to most of his excursion thus far, but this was a more familiar silence. It was that of a place that was warm and welcoming.
Other than a lone worker at the front desk (whose head was buried in a book, no less), Peter found no one else as he ventured through the building. Intimately familiar with the genre sections and general layout, he found exactly the area he was looking for in no time. Scanning through the selection before him, he eventually picked out a few books he didn't recognize. Peter had always made it his goal that, anytime he came to the library, he did his best to avoid reading through the same book twice when it came to the sciences. He was quite good at picking things up quickly, so he liked to move on to something knew. Finding a table nearby, he sat down with his small stack of books. He had no idea how much he was even going to try and get through that night, but he was ready to dive into something other than his own thoughts.
For a while, Peter found himself disappearing into the world of physics, his mind taking in all manner of knowledge regarding electromagnetic theory, quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, among other things. Eventually, he came to the law of conservation of mass, which says that mass/matter cannot be created or destroyed; it merely changes form. The thing was, he now knew that to not be true, as he had witnessed an alien erase mass all throughout the universe with a mere snap of his fingers and the power of magic rocks.
This caused his mind to go back to that fateful day on Titan. It was nearly four weeks ago now, but Peter could still remember clear as day watching as, one by one, Mr. Stark and all his allies disappeared, turning to ash at first before vanishing altogether. They hadn't even died; rather, they had ceased to exist completely, as far as he knew.
Peter could tell his mind was getting off track, so he tried to force himself to keep reading. He thought, with any luck, if he could just get back into something interesting, the dark thoughts and memories plaguing him could be held off for a bit. Now, however, it seemed that everything he read only reminded him of them. Simple words would trigger thoughts; basic concepts sent him thinking in the wrong direction. Peter ran his hands over his face, exhausted from struggling once more against his thoughts. He was so distracted that he almost jumped when he happened to glance down at the table and notice a slender shadow had overtaken part of it.
He spun around in his seat and was surprised to find none other than M.J, the captain of his academic decathlon team, standing just behind him. She bore an expression on her face that Peter couldn't quite read; whatever it was, it was a bit off from her usual dismissive, I'm-going-to-ignore-all-the-dumb-high-school-stuff-around-me look she usually carried.
"M.J?" he said as if her sudden presence was the most improbable thing in the world.
"What up, dork?" she replied in what had become her usual method of greeting him over the past year or so. Hearing it made Peter do something he hadn't done in over three weeks now.
He laughed.
It was a small one, but it still counted.
"Oh my goodness M.J," Peter said, suddenly getting up and wrapping her in a hug. It took him a couple seconds before he realized what he had done and he backed off, releasing her from his grip. While he had gotten to know her a little better after she became the acadec captain, they still weren't that close, so he feared he might've overstepped his bounds.
"Sorry," Peter said meekly, his cheeks blushing a little from embarrassment. "It's just...it's good to see a familiar face."
"Don't worry about it," M.J. replied casually. She tried to put on her usual stoic expression, but Peter could still tell there was something else there... concern, maybe?
"So, uhm, what are you doing here?" Peter asked.
"Oh, just picking up my latest read," she answered.
"Right, of course," Peter said, because duh, they were in a library! "So, you just thought you'd come sneak up on me?"
"No," M.J. said, and her look shifted again so that now she appeared a little nervous, anxious even. "I just hadn't seen anybody from school since... you know, since everything went down. I'm sorry if I bothered you."
"No no, it's fine," Peter said quickly, realizing he might've accidentally sent the wrong message with his question. "I... I wasn't really paying much attention to what I was reading anyway. Just kind of lost in own head I guess; you know how it is..." his voice trailed off as he realized he was rambling a bit, a bad habit he really needed to crack down on some day.
"So... it's okay if I sit here, then?" M.J. asked.
Peter was about to answer her question, but he was suddenly distracted by his enhanced hearing picking up what sounded like a struggle of some kind. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere close by. He then heard a woman scream, and instantly he dashed away from the table, leaving M.J. there. He thought he heard her say something behind him, but he was too focused on the call for help to know for sure.
He made his way out of the front doors of the building to find a man and a woman struggling, the former looking as though he was trying to take the latter's purse. Peter bolted across the street, not even bothering to look to see if anyone was driving on either side of the road. Thankfully, nobody was coming.
"Leave her alone man!" he called out as he ran up to them. The guy turned to face Peter as he stopped a few feet in front of him.
"What are you going to do, boy?" the man asked as he skulked towards Peter. The guy wasn't that much bigger than him, but even if he was, Peter still wouldn't have been that worried, given his spider powers and all that.
"Look man, just leave the lady be, okay?" Peter repeated.
"I think, I'll do whatever I feel like doing with this fine gal over here," the man taunted before throwing a punch at Peter. He blocked it almost purely on reflexes, trying his best to make sure that it didn't look too easy.
"Come on dude," Peter said, pushing the guy's arm away. "I don't want any trouble."
"Yeah, well too bad," the guy said, throwing another punch, this time towards Peter's gut. He caught it again, this time with both hands. He couldn't help but notice the man was wearing a gold looking glove...
Suddenly, Peter was back on Titan, and he was looking at Thanos's glove.
"Go on, boy," the mad Titan challenged, Peter looking up at his confident expression. "Try it again. See if you'll succeed... or fail, again."
Peter looked back and forth between Thanos's glove and his face, his own eyes wide and his mouth open in shock. This couldn't be happening, not again...
He was suddenly shaken from his thoughts by a punch to the face. It sent him backwards a bit, but he recovered quickly to see that the man he was trying to stop was grabbing his right hand with his opposite one, his face clenched in pain.
"Ow!" the man said. "What are you made of kid?" He then turned and ran down the street, leaving Peter standing there, still a little shaken. The woman who had been attacked came to him.
"Thank you, young man," she said earnestly. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine ma'am," Peter forced out. "Just glad I was here."
The woman then went on her way, leaving Peter there by himself only for a moment, as M.J. came running up behind him.
"What happened?" she asked. "Are you alright?"
Peter was too shaken by what had just happened to answer immediately. All he could picture was Thanos's smug expression, like he was a mere insect to the alien, and the gloating in his voice, as if his victory was assured... and it had been.
"I have to go," Peter said, turning and taking off down the street.
Peter quickly unlocked the front door to the apartment, opening and closing it quickly. He took in a deep breath as he leaned against the door, letting it out slowly. He had run pretty much the whole way back, but he was less tired from that and more so emotionally. He set the key down on the counter where he got it from. It didn't seem like Happy had returned yet, which was fine by Peter, as his emotions were all over the place right now. His thoughts went nuts as he headed to his room.
For instance, why did everything seem to remind him of Thanos and the events on Titan? A few select words from his books, the color of the man's glove, all of it kept dragging his mind back to that fateful trip off world. Also, Peter thought of how lucky he got that the man had only tried hitting him again while he was in his little daze. What if he had drawn a gun against him, or worse, what if he had drawn one on the woman instead? She could've died, and he would've been powerless to stop it... yet someone else's life that would've fallen because of him.
As all of his thoughts started spinning out of control, Peter punched part of the bedframe in frustration, shattering a chunk of the wood in the process. Collecting himself, Peter sat on the bed, trying to relax a bit. The last thing he needed was to let his anger end up destroying the room that Happy was kind enough to let him have. Taking out his phone, he looked to see that he had missed a text from Happy saying that he got called in to handle something at work. That explained why he wasn't there at least.
Another message then came across his screen.
M.J: "You okay?"
Oh man, M.J! Peter smacked his face with his hand in frustration as he realized that he had twice run off on her. She wasn't exactly his best friend, but he still felt he owed her better than that. Deciding that she deserved more than a simple text back, he decided to call her.
"Hello?"
"Hey M.J," Peter began. "I'm so sorry about that. I didn't mean to make you worried. I just... I just needed to get back, that's all."
"It's fine; don't worry about it," she replied, "and I wasn't worried."
"Oh?" Peter replied.
"Well, not really worried," she said. "I'm still the acadec captain, so I just feel responsible for all of you guys, you know?"
"Right, totally," Peter said, playing along with her logic. He still felt bad though, so he was considering offering to properly meet with her and hangout somehow, but they didn't know each other too much, so would that be weird? She didn't say anything for a moment either, so he just sat in silence for a moment.
"Well, since you're okay, I guess I'll let you go," M.J. finally said.
"No wait," Peter said, deciding to act on his thought. "Listen, I still feel bad about ditching you, so why don't I make it up to you. We can meet and hangout for real this time, if you want to?"
The moment that passed felt like an eternity as he waited, wondering if he just made things weird between them when he was just trying to do something nice.
"Sure," M.J. suddenly replied. "That sounds cool."
"Awesome," Peter said. "How about tomorrow?"
"Yeah," she said. "That should work."
"Great," Peter responded. "I guess we can text about where to meet up?"
"Works for me," M.J. answered casually.
"Okay, great," Peter said. "Thanks M.J. See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow," she replied before hanging up.
Peter then let out yet another breath. Honestly, he was just glad he didn't make things weird after all. He had no idea what to actually expect of their little get together tomorrow, or even that they would ever see each other in such a fashion. He did know one thing though, and that's that he was tired of just hanging out alone in his room all day. He needed to begin the process of moving on, or he was going to go nuts.
Maybe, somehow, meeting with M.J. tomorrow could help with that.
Maybe.
Hope you all are enjoying it!
Continuing to pray for you all! Stay safe and healthy!
"Now that is remarkable!" John 9:13-34
