Deception

Queens, New York

9:55 PM

Maybe if he wasn't too loud, perhaps Peter thought he could get back into his room without disturbing Aunt May, and that in turn would allow him to avoid any angry confrontation with her, which he knew was inevitable regardless. He would have to talk to her anyways. This was still her domain and her rules. She deserves to know where he'd been all this time. The problem was exactly how he would explain it all to her, if he even should.

Closing the front door behind him, gently and cautiously as to not make too much noise, the young boy walked into a trap of its own once he saw his aunt standing ahead between the kitchen and living room area, arms crossed with a deadpan expression. If he looked closer into her eyes, he would see pure discontent instead.

"Uh… hey," the boy said, caught in the act.

"Hey," she replied, seemingly unbothered. He knew she was pissed, though. "How was studying?"

"… It was- "

"You know what, I don't even want to know the details. I just wanna know why you think you can just stand there and lie right to my face," she spat, furious than ever.

"Aunt May, I- "

"Don't tell me you're sorry. Not now. I know this is gonna happen again - at some point. I - It's unpreventable! I can't! I just… I can't control this!"

She talked with her hands, and then gestured them at Peter. He knew exactly what she meant.

"It wasn't about that, Aunt May," Peter pleaded. "I promise it wasn't about that at all."

"It doesn't matter," she shook her head. "I still can't contemplate how the hell I'm supposed to live with this. I can barely figure out how you do it."

Almost getting everything off her chest, the woman took a deep breath, sighed, and then made her way to the couch in front of him. As she crossed him, Peter shifted his attention towards something else as to not even get a glance of her eyes locking with his for even a second. May then took a seat, and brushed her bang from over her glasses.

"I need to know… that what you do in a daily basis being… who you are, that I shouldn't have to worry if you've been gone for a while, then that means you're in deep shit or something," she spoke frankly.

"Aunt May- "

"Let me finish. I need you to know that just because I know your little secret now, doesn't mean you get to stress my life out even more. I mean, it's stressful enough that you're who I'm raising, but damn, I need you to help me not feel that way. I don't even like to watch the news anymore because I hear them talking about you all the time! It's scary!"

After a brief moment, Peter took the opportunity to have his chance.

"Aunt May, can I talk now?" he quickly spurted.

"What?" she irritatingly muttered.

"I wasn't out doing anything crazy today. Alright? I was just… catching up with an old friend."

"Who? Stark?"

"No, not him. Someone else."

"Anyone of those other super-powered friends of yours? The Avengers, or whatever."

"… Yeah, kinda."

"Who?" she sternly asked.

If he told her, he figured that'd really throw her for a loop. But what choice did he have?

"… Natasha. Romanoff," he finished. She arched a brow.

"Black Widow?" He nodded. "Why were you with her?"

"It's… it's a long story, but she needed help tracking someone from I guess her past? Or something like that. None of it made sense at first, but, to be honest, I don't want any bigger part of it… now."

The few feet of space between them grew further in his mind, as to not make the tension in the room anymore awkward. May's eyes fixated on him, studying him, searching for some answer within. She could tell he seemed a lot more honest about this than the lie he told earlier about studying with Michelle. If he truly spent time on a mission with the Black Widow, and admitted to feeling a bit more than uneasy about it, then perhaps giving him the benefit of the doubt should rest in her favor. She knew that would give him the satisfaction, of course, getting away with his wrongdoing to her, but… she understood. Knowing who he was now, what he was, she no longer felt as though she had any form of authority over him. What could she really do? Tell him not to go save the world? Not to help others? It proved as a bittersweet paradox she put herself in that only stressed her out the more she thought of it. The thought of her nephew no longer being in her grasp, no longer being her little boy and being out in the world doing who-knows-what hit her like a freight train.

"Okay," she quietly spoke. "Okay," she nodded this time.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, even though she didn't want to hear it.

"I know. I'm still pissed, but I know." She stood up from the couch and opened up her arms. "C'mon," she motioned with her hand.

It's not like it was in front of the school or anything, so the boy surrendered and considered this just as equal as any other sort of punishment she could give him. Peter accepted her embrace, and returned the favor. She planted her head gently on his shoulder.

"You don't get Thai this weekend," she said.

"Aw, c'mon," he groaned.

"Mm-hmm."


Hotel room number '47'. Not the first and certainly not the last place the spy would find herself 'hiding out' under the radar. Now that she thought about it, Romanoff couldn't actually recall the first time she was on the run. At this point it felt like a routine. She knew all the necessary steps to take in order to succeed at it. After Berlin, HYDRA… and him. Parker. But the other Parker. The 'taller' one, as she'd refer to him in her head. Meeting with him and his aunt again helped more than she hoped. It was a great help. They answered more questions than she could have imagined, especially over May's well-cooked roast she prepared for dinner. However, more questions still needed to be answered, not to mention the most obvious one as to how this all is even possible, let alone conceivable for her. Sooner or later she was going to need help from outside sources.

Crashing onto her hotel bed, then turning her head to the nightstand next to her, Natasha stared at her golden necklace with an 'arrow'-shaped charm sitting atop. She turned over closer to the edge so she could reach it. Sometimes she liked to just play with it in her hands to give them some sort of stimulation. Better than assembling and disassembling a gun, she figured. Natasha also found comfort in how it glistened in the lampshade. Clint gave it to her as a gift years back, around the time they first met. For her, it had a double meaning. The arrow was for his obvious trademark as a master archer, but also due to the fact that she was a Sagittarius. At least that's how she liked to interpret it.

Looking at the charm made her think of the same thing every time. Being on a team. Like she was a part of something. Black Widow isn't exactly a 'team player' title, but things did change for the better. She owed Clint Barton a lot. Natasha knew this. Even despite recent events, at the end of the day, they both knew it was nothing personal, really.

"We're still friends, right?"

"Depends on how hard you hit me."

She smiled, playing with the necklace in her hands, shuffling it here and there. It soothed her soul at its best. Kept her sanity in check. Someway, somehow, she would figure this whole thing out. Whether it truly was the Aether she referred to earlier to be manipulating reality, or something else entirely, she'd know in time. The truth was that Natasha never felt smaller than before. After seeing portals open to different dimensions, and many other things SHIELD intelligence gathered over the years, the spy realized that her very existence, and many others around her became more irrelevant than ever. There were much bigger things than her now. This was no exception either. Dealing with alternate realities definitely wasn't on her list of credentials. She wouldn't know the first thing about metaphysics and the principles of warping reality and matter.

The arrow glistened and sent a gold light ray straight into her eye. Distracting her, Clint crossed her mind again.

"This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for."

That was years ago. She remembered that day. The rest could certainly agree the same. Everyone remembered that day. But for Natasha, it didn't what everyone else thought. It didn't matter if Cap felt heroic and alive once again after 70 years in that good-old American fashion, or if Stark's ego felt bigger than the Empire State, or any of that. Natasha felt for the first time, ever, that she could make a difference. That Loki and the Chitauri couldn't hold shit on her that day, or any day after that. She knew it wouldn't erase all the bad things she had done in the past, but screw it. Might as well start making more good deeds while she was at it.

...nothing we were ever trained for.

Natasha scoffed. She gave herself the answer this whole time it seems even after all this time. If she didn't train in magic and monsters, then so be it. She'd find out the answers, but her way. The way she's been doing it all these years. As she dangled the charm in front of her, watching the arrow revolve left and right, it seemed to signify her next thought. Her target. Who would be her next target, and how would she get the necessary answers?

"Selvig," she said out loud to herself.

But what was she to do without the kid, though? He clearly held some answer that neither one of them knew yet. The nosebleed. He said he'd never experienced one before. So why now of all times? Natasha couldn't just let that one slide. He was a good kid - a kid, to be exact - and she knew to keep pressuring him into more and more stress-inducing situations was pitiful, even for her. But she needed his help, even if he didn't want to give it to her.


Peter remembered Natasha's words, once he found her in his home uninvited, that she would be out of his hair once this was all over. Of course, he didn't believe it. Now that he was in this deep, backing down proved out of the question. She probably carefully planned for this to happen in order to have his full cooperation, he wondered. Everyone knew how manipulative the Black Widow could be. In her defense, at least it seemed for the right reasons. Nevertheless, the kid didn't trust her as far as he could spit.

Staying up all night and letting his mind run wild didn't help him fall asleep any better, though. Every time he tried, he was terrified by whatever dream he'd awaken to. Each one revealing a unique horror of its own. One where he died a most brutal death at the hands of someone still unknown to him. All he could recall was that whoever it was, they certainly were not of this world. Almost god-like. They were powerful, more so than anything he'd ever witnessed. Stark appeared in the dream as well. From what he remembered, the billionaire kneeled by his side as he bled out, losing his life by each breath. The look in Stark's eyes… it frightened Peter. In his mind, Stark was god-like to him. Proud. Confident. Unbreakable. But in that moment, in the dream, he'd never seen him more broken than before. Utter defeat all over his face.

"I'm sorry," Peter remembered saying to him, as though he had failed his mentor. But it was Stark that appeared more remorseful. He failed him.

And that was all he could remember before waking up, relieved to be still alive in his bed. His body was shaking uncontrollably. It felt real, to the point that he couldn't retain himself. He cowered in the corner of his bed as long as he needed before returning to sleep. It didn't mean anything, he told himself. That was his mistake. Following that nightmare, another came before him. This one he believed to be even worse. He woke to a reality in which the police pulled Peter from school. Worried that his identity may have been exposed, it proved to be something much more sickening, and something that Peter wished he could forever suppress in the buried subconscious of his mind. They told him that Aunt May had been found murdered in their home. A passerby had witnessed the crime, and reported it to the authorities as soon as they could. It was undoubtedly far too late. Then everything around him seemed to pause in frame, while he still remained present in the dream. Begging and pleading for answers, not believing it to be true, it drove Peter mad when no one around him could respond. They were frozen, with their eyes still stuck in a wide open gaze, fixated on him wherever he'd move.

"Who did this?!" he cried. "Please, listen to me! … who did this to her? Y-You have to tell me…"

His tears did nothing to get their attention. The fact that he couldn't get through to them tormented him even more. Crying in his dream felt as though it might give some break in the illusion. But the longer he stayed in it, the more it began to feel like reality. Fear like this… he couldn't take it. These nightmares couldn't have appeared to him by chance. He didn't eat anything crazy before going to bed. This all felt out of his control. Like a higher force encompassed him, preventing him from seeing what he wanted to. And thankfully, after what felt like an infinity, Peter awoke in his bed again. He left his room this time to check on Aunt May. Making sure he was still quiet, he put his head to the crack in the door leading to her bedroom. The sound of her breathing softly in her slumber released a flood of relief within him. And with that, he returned to his room yet again. He came to terms with the fact that he wouldn't get a good night's sleep this time around. Oh well. He was used to staying up, he supposed… but not for this reason.

Laying his head against the pillow, the wallcrawler at least figured he should give his body as much rest as he possibly could tonight, even if he couldn't give the same remedy for his brain. The dampness of where his tears soaked into the pillowcase felt cold to the touch against his cheek. So that really did happen. He turned the other way so it'd be of no bother to him. Facing the wall now, the kid still felt greater than uneasy. An overwhelming sense of dread engulfed him. And an uncomfortable sensation crept over him each second he chose to turn his back to the room and face the wall… as though he were being watched.