Anxiety wasn't an unfamiliar feeling.
He's always had it, ever since he turned four and he had to find a playmate during play time in kindergarten. It amplified and burned his skin when he misunderstood the Sadie Hawkins dance concept and asked out Liz Allan and everyone laughed at him for a month. He's always felt the anxiety buzzing across his skin and tingling at his fingertips, particularly when it came to large crowds, girls and when his loved ones were dealing with hard times.
When Uncle Ben...
And now the anxiety returned so suddenly, full force, like the kind of hit when a train is slammed into one and the breath leaves the lungs.
That's how it felt when he got that phone call.
Aunt May...
He wrestled the suit off, peeling off the mask and frantically balling it and throwing it somewhere on the rooftop where it was safely hidden for the time being. He didn't care at that moment. All he could think about Aunt May and the worst.
She had to be okay, she just had to be. He couldn't lose her too.
Discreetly hopping off a fire escape, the second his feet hit the ground, he broke into a sprint, feet slamming into the gravel. His head pounded in his ears, the wind rushing through him harshly as it slapped his skin, goosebumps prickling across his pale skin. Heart in his throat, almost choking him, he rushed through the doors of the hospital, doors swinging. He skidded to a stop at the receptionists desk, hands flattening on the counter.
The woman, who'd been previously speaking to somebody on the phone, looked up, startled.
She lowered the phone to her shoulder. "Can I help you?"
"I-I," he stammered, "some-somebody called...my Aunt May...I'm Peter Parker."
The woman nodded, slowly, eyes narrowing, not in a mean way however, at seeing the disheveled teenager with a panic stricken expression. She lifted the phone back to her ear, saying to the other line, without looking away from him, "Imma have to calm you back." She hung up, dialing another number. "Hi, I have a Peter Parker here, he says he was called about his Aunt, a May Parker, I presume?"
There was a pause. Brief, but too long that Peter had to swallow the anxiety back down.
A moment too soon, the woman nodded. "Alright, I'll bring him up." She hung up again, and gestured Peter forward. "Follow me."
Immediately, like a lost puppy, Peter followed after her on instinct, lacing his hands together in front of him, trying not think of the worst. Trying to keep his hands busy.
Please be okay. Please be okay.
If a God that didn't control thunder existed, Peter prayed he listened.
She directed him into a small room, opening the door as she gestured him inside. He swallowed thickly, eyes flitting around the small room, with a desk and two chairs facing each other. It was dimly lit, too. He sat down when the woman suggested he do so, informing him she would notify a doctor of his arrival.
The wait dragged on, even though it might have been, like, thirteen minutes. Most likely less, given Peter's history of impatience. But the wait crawled so slowly, filling him to the brink of dread, and this felt worse than the initial fear of seeing the Goblin. Those cold yellow eyes, glaring into him with such maniacal venom.
The Goblin's laugh could rival the Joker's. Both were so equally bone-chilling.
He snapped his head up when he heard footsteps approach the small room he felt suffocated by, tensing with attention. The doctor, a dark-skinned woman with kind eyes, smiled, though it looked a tad bit force.
" Hi, Peter, I'm Doctor Karen," she greeted warmly, taking a seat across from him, in the empty chair.
"Hi, I'm, uh, I'm Peter," he fumbled for words. She knew that. She already knew that.
The tips of his ears burned.
"Is my aunt okay?" he blurted, momentarily choosing to forget his manner. May would smack him across the head, scolding him about manner.
His stomach twisted in tight knots.
The smile weaned, but her brown eyes didn't lose their warmth. It reminded him of Uncle Ben's warm blue eyes, so kind and so full of love that it ached when Peter made the comparison. Such odd colors. Blue and brown...
A sigh left her lips, too heavy, layered on thick, and it instantly set him on edge. "Peter," she began, sounding too soft. Like when Uncle Ben informed him that faithful night that his parents weren't returning home.
They fell and he had felt so abandoned.
"We're colleagues," she said, struggling for the right words, her expression twitching as she straightened her shoulders just a bit. "I was assigned to her tonight, two hours ago. Her shift had ended and she was driving tonight, and some drunk driver was driving in the same lane as her, but in a different direction. The car was totalled when the ambulance arrived on the scene. Her breathing had stopped for around three minutes. We had to take her into immediate surgery." She paused, her expression clearly fighting for the right words to say next.
She explained, slowly, "She's sustained a serious blow to the head, and we had to rush to stop the hemorrhaging, but...honey, I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid she's in a coma."
The rest was muffled, as if Peter was dunked under water and he struggling to breathe. His chest heaved, his eyes burned, and he had a faraway stare.
He teared up when she asked if he wanted to see her. He nodded without hesitation, following her like he had followed the desk lady, anxiety turning into something else. Something more dangerous.
He went rigid when he entered the room, smelling thickly of whatever cleaning supplies they used, eyes widening when he saw his aunt.
His lower lip trembled as he rushed to her side, taking a seat in the chair beside her bed, shakily reaching out. Pale and bruised, it was still his beloved aunt.
"Do you know...?"
To his disappointment, she sadly shook her head. "I'm afraid not. We've done everything we could, but comas are very...tricky. And sometimes a person doesn't make it through."
It wasn't the answer he wanted, but it was an answer nonetheless. He shut his eyes, despair washing over him, eyes burning hotly. He squeezed her hand, whether he was comforting himself or her, he didn't know. But at least maybe she could die with someone's hand to squeeze.
Uncle Ben got to squeeze his hand when he left this plane of existence.
"Peter," Dr. Karen said, sounding hesitant. He didn't look away from May when she asked, "...how old are you again?"
"...fourteen."
A sigh. "Do you have anyone you can stay with, for the time being? There is still a chance."
That she could live. That Peter could have one person to love left.
Or else he would only have the dead to love.
He shook his head.
"There'll be papers you'll have to sign. It'll most likely be temporary guardianship, of course. Or perhaps there's a friend you could stay with. May mentioned once to me you're very close friends with a boy named Trey."
He already dragged Trey into his Spider-Man mess, he couldn't add this on.
She insisted on calling Social Services when he shook his head, panic leaping in his eyes when she became more firm, insisting that he was far too young to stay alone in an apartment building. Especially if May didn't make it through.
So of course he didn't the dumbest thing he ever did.
He ran.
He ran out like hell, using his spider speed. He was pretty sure they had security chase after him, but he managed to lose him in the sea of New Yorkers, drowning in the crowd.
He grabbed his suit and swung all the way to his apartment building, grabbing a duffel bag that used to be Uncle Ben's when he was in the navy, or marines, air force...whatever the hell he served in, and all the essentials. Pictures, clothes, money May saved and had lying around.
He told himself this wouldn't be necessary when May awoke from her coma.
One good thing about the ending of this night was swinging across the city. He felt more free, more liberated, swinging across skyscrapers and buildings. That moment he released a web and released. It felt like he was flying, defying gravity, going along for a rollercoaster ride.
The wind flying through him, rushing in his ears, flipping and sticking to a building for a second. His spider-sense guided him mostly, since the goggles were a little difficult to see through.
He released a web and lifted his entire body up a few feet in the air, pulling his knees to his chest, thrusting his wrists forward. Strands of web shot from his webshooters and stuck to a crane, flying again, keeping a firm grip on the bag.
Right now he didn't want to be Peter Parker, or Spider-Man.
He just wanted to be a kid swinging on webs.
"Okay," Tony slapped down the newspapers, looking up, "first of all, I just wanna say...newspapers. That's all. Newspapers. This is the twenty-first century. Who the hell even reads newspapers?"
"The Daily Bugle has always been a very popular company, Tony," Pepper said, her fingers dashing across the screen, sitting in one of the love seats in their suite.
Tony made a disgusted sound, grimacing. "The Daily Bugle? J Jonah Hitler just bitches about the hero industry. He makes money off of it. And lately he's taken a liking to the new kid on the block."
"Oh, do you mean that spider guy?"
"Apparently they call him Spider-Man," Tony said with a sniff, glancing down at the front page, shaking his head as he clicked his tongue. "Guy calls him a menace. The real menace is whoever photographs the guy with this mess of a blurry picture. I mean, Lordy, you can't even see him. For all I know, that could be a smudge."
Pepper hummed, shaking her head, her smile warm with exasperation. "Is somebody jealous?" she teased, looking up at him with an arch of her brow.
"Okay, I have nothing to be jealous of," Tony held up a finger. "For instance, my suit is made of titanium alloy, he has spandex. Clearly I would win in a fight."
"Clearly." Her voice came out dry.
"Your lack of faith in me is utterly astonishing."
"So have you found a lead on the Goblin?" Pepper asked, changing the subject.
"That's been dilemma of the week," Tony answered, twirling his pen between his fingers. "No trace of the guy, it's concerning. We've heard from military sources that the glider originated from OsCorp, something about it being stolen. Apparently a few bases were blown up, but everyone's too dead to tell us what by."
"OsCorp?" Pepper furrowed her brows.
"Call me paranoid, but why do I have a feeling Osborn is up to something?"
"Tony, the man just lost his son."
"A decade ago," he corrected.
"Still," she insisted. "Everyone says he's been completely different ever since the accident."
"Which gives him a pretty good damn reason for diving off the deep end." He shrugged. "And from personal experience, Goblin doesn't exactly suit the sane type of villains we meet on occasion."
"So you they're connected?"
"Somehow." He looked back at the page, eyes narrowing. "My God, how the hell did he survive with all that spandex?" he murmured under his breath. "And where the hell did this guy come from?"
Curiosity was typically a dangerously wonderful aspect of Starks. It came with the intelligence and anguish it brought to others. And Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, both new beings Tony had very little knowledge about. Spidey certainly intrigued him. The bug handled small time crime like kittens on trees or muggings. And somehow magically appeared when the Green Goblin had attacked the tower.
He wondered if that was a coincidence or not.
Pepper narrowed her eyes. "I don't like that look on your face."
Tony stood, his father's fancy robe loosely tucked around him as he strode down the stairs. "Tony?"
"I have some work to do," he called, ideas already forming in this brilliant mind of his, walking into the path of his lab.
If this Spider guy was on their side, then he needed a massive upgrade.
*hides behind Hulk* I'm sorry? Okay, I had a lot going on, a lot of schoolwork, loss of motivation. Whatever. Anyways, I am SO sorry that all I have is this to offer. I know it's not what you guys wanted but this is all I had. I've been really busy lately. I promise I have not given up on this story, it's just gonna take some time figuring out what I'm gonna be planning and when I'll have the time to actually write it.
Thank you all for the lovely reviews, they have truly motivated me into finally writing this. I live to write you these stories.
Until next time!