Hi, this is my first Spider-Man story. Hopefully it won't be the last I write. I don't own Spider-Man or other Marvel characters, but I do own the plot and one or two characters.

Spider-Man: A Different Choice.

Aunt May looked so frail, so helpless in the hospital bed. But she looked peaceful, even if she was wired into the machines that registered her heart beats and respiration. Sitting next to her, tired and frightened for his aunt's life, Peter Parker, once the entertainer known as the Amazing Spider-Man, looked on. He didn't dare take his eyes off the peaceful face of his aunt, lest her heart gave out. All around the room were vases of flowers from friends and acquaintances, and cards stood open everywhere. At first Peter had opened them and said to his unconscious and ill aunt that so and so had sent a get well soon card, but now he no longer bothered, now he just opened the cards quietly, noted the names, also noting that said sender hadn't done anything beyond sending a card, and placed it on the table. The job had become so monotonous that he no longer had the mental energy to say anything meaningful to her anymore. He had other concerns as well. Money was getting tight, and bailiffs were sending letters to the house, threatening them with eviction if they didn't pay up. To make matters worse, the tiny and pathetic job he had, though it had brought in much needed income, though May had stubbornly protested at the time when he'd told her he was looking for work, wasn't paying much. In fact Peter wondered why he was even bothering; all the money he earned went into three things; firstly his travel fares, secondly his food and drink to keep himself alive, and lastly his aunt's treatment.

Now more than ever Peter wished Uncle Ben were still alive; Ben had been the glue holding their family together. He had been the strong one, not like little cowardly Peter, so skittish and feeble he couldn't even lift a fist. Guilt over his uncle's death brought back even worse memories into his mind. It had been Peter's stupidity, cockiness and egotism that had allowed that bastard burglar to escape, and it was that same burglar who'd gone out and killed his uncle. With his spider powers he could have stopped the burglar, and Uncle Ben would still be alive. But no. Peter had stupidly let the burglar past, thinking he was too good to stop a simple burglar when it would've been very simple, even the gun the man had carried wouldn't have been a threat. That arrogance had led to his Uncle's death, and now his aunt was teetering on death's door, and the bailiffs were threatening to evict them!

As Peter fell into a more melancholic mood, a nurse came in quietly. The doctors and nurses had become accustomed to Peter's quiet presence over the last few weeks, and their hearts went out to him, even as some of the more arrogant and heartless members of their profession tried to bleed the poor boy of everything he had just to keep his aunt alive.

They saw not a piggy bank with an infinite supply of cash in his bank account, but a boy with a thin and boney face who had just entered higher education, and was forced to dress in clothes that had obviously seen better days. They had no idea but they could guess how stressed he was trying to juggle his time spent here with his aunt, going to college, and dealing with working to put some food into his belly and keeping his aunt alive.

Some had tried to strike up conversations with Peter, but he barely responded, though he did tell them a few things. Beyond that he kept himself to himself. They didn't judge him, though, not like the kids at college. They knew that he was suffering, and they tried to make things easier for him and his aunt, but they could only do so much.

"Peter," the nurse whispered to not disturb him, but when he didn't notice her, she had no choice but to say in a louder voice, "Peter!"

Peter looked up at her face. "Hi," he said. "Let me guess, visiting hours are over."

The nurse nodded. "Yeah, I'm afraid so. How is she? I've only just started my shift so I don't know anything about the patients."

"She's stable for now," Peter replied, "but I've already received bills for her care. It's gone up again, and I don't know how I'm going to pay it. The job I got... it will take years to meet the demand without what I have to spend already on food and electricity. I can't find a better job, all of them have already been taken."

The nurse licked her lips. "Don't you...don't you have any friends or family who can help?"

"No. I don't have any family, or if I did they'd have given support to Aunt May and Uncle Ben when I was growing up, never mind what's happening now," Peter said in a monotone. It was the only way he could keep his temper under control. Ever since his uncle's death, Peter had noticed how volatile his temper was recently, and combined with his spider strength it wasn't an attractive combination. But he had no idea that he was broadcasting how he felt to the nurse, she could see the set of his jaw and the way he clenched and unclenched his hands.

Finally, he looked into the nurse's eyes, and saw the pity in them. But he also saw the compassion. She knew what her bosses were doing was wrong, but there was nothing she could do except provide strength, however small, to Peter. That made him grateful.

"Anyway, I'd better be going," he said to get himself back into the present. It wasn't a good idea to leave him wallowing in the muck that was everyday life. "I've got to get to work. I'll pay the hospital," he threw out his arms before letting them drop, "god knows how. Anyway, keep in touch in case anything happens."

The nurse nodded. "Will do."

The work Peter did was a part time waiting job. It was the only thing he could do without needing any real qualifications, not like the manager cared. In Luigi's eyes, education was only good for doctors, nurses, lawyers or presidents. You didn't need to add 10 and 10 to be a waiter, you just needed a finely tuned balance. That was all, but he had the habit of treating people working in that role like they were dogs. For Peter, the job had become nothing more than purgatory. The pay was crap, the air conditioning in the restaurant would've suited a nuclear furnace than a place to eat and drink, and the air was so choked with the stench of bad cooking, terrible breath, cigarette and cigar smoke, and BO. But the job was the only thing he had managed to get, and even though the restaurant wasn't far from Queens it was still a journey and a bit.

The restaurant had hired six waiters - Peter among them - and they were about the same age as the scrawny, but spider powered teenager, and out of the six only Peter and a girl called Heather remained. You didn't need a degree in physics or politics to work out why until you looked at the place. Luigi's was a tiny little restaurant, in a neighborhood typical of New York. The whole block was rapidly becoming a demilitarised zone, with dozens of wannabe crime lords rising and falling, everyday of the week. And they frequented Luigi's because Luigi turned a blind eye to drug dealing and other crimes.

Peter wasn't surprised the other four had left, and he was equally unsurprised that only himself and Heather remained. Two of the kids who'd worked alongside Peter were jocks like Flash Thompson, and they'd thought the job would be easy, but one look at those guns and knives that were carelessly flashed around (no Thompson pun intended), and they bailed without a backward glance. Despite feeling contempt like he always had for people like that, Peter couldn't blame them on this occasion, but there were other reasons besides how run down the place was to want to leave and never come back. The pay was crap, and the way Luigi and his brother treated the waiting staff was terrible. Luigi also refused to do anything to help Heather whenever one of the customers touched her, he also refused to give either of them extra hours whenever they'd asked, and both of them had long since stopped bothering.

When Peter finally arrived at the restaurant, Luigi instantly blocked his path.

"Oh no, Parker," the unshaven face, the yellowish teeth and the bald, glimmering head made Peter take a step back. Luigi was better seen from a distance.

"You're outta here, fired!" The Italian-American snapped in what may have been a snarl, but it came across more as a grimace.

"What, why?" Peter asked in disbelief. What had he done that would make Luigi fire him?

The restaurant owner gestured at the clock. Peter looked at the dirty, grimy disc on the wall, and then down at Luigi. "But I'm not even late! My shift should be starting in a minute."

"Not according to my new rules," Luigi said smugly back at him. What new rules? "Ya see, I decided to give you and Heather the chance to prove yourselves; you were so prepared to get more hours working for me that I decided to test you to see if you were capable of arriving here a few minutes early. Guess I was right, you're not."

Peter glared at the man as his temper rose; he tried his best all the time to limit how often he used his spider powers, but he did practice them to keep himself from lashing out and making people suspicious of piece of wall sticking to his fingers, and he knew that despite his skinny appearance he was strong enough to smash this dump ten times over, but it took a lot of self control not to put this good for nothing little bastard in hospital. "And just when did you come up with this?" he asked.

"This morning."

"When were you going to tell me and Heather? In fact, where is she?" Peter asked in quick succession, but then Luigi turned his grimacing yellow leer over Peter's shoulder, and he turned around and saw the brunette. Heather was shorter than Peter, but only about the head. Another boy would have compared her to a girl like Sally Avril or Liz Allen, and they would have deemed her plain, but to Peter she was much prettier. Heather was a nice girl inside and out, she wasn't as vapid and conceited like the girls he'd known in his life. But right now she was anything but happy. She looked as angry as Peter did, and more than a little hurt she was losing her job, then she glanced at Peter with the same expression and he realised she felt sorry for him as well. Then she turned her face back to Luigi, and her eyes narrowed again.

"Yeah, Luigi, when were you going to tell Peter and I about this?" Heather folded her arms and glared at the manager. But Peter already knew the answer.

"You never were, where you?" Peter shook his head at the unfairness of it. "You little bastard-" He took a step closer, but Luigi stepped back, eyes wide in surprise that one of his meekest former employees would dare move towards him threateningly, but some of the patrons saw the threat and stood as one. Peter barely paid them any notice, even as his spider sense started tingling with the danger.

"Peter..." Heather's scared voice brought him back and he realised that by stepping closer to Luigi some of his pals had taken out their guns threateningly, and he saw that quite a few of them weren't even aiming properly, some of the barrels were turned in Heather's general direction. Luigi allowed weapons to be brought to the restaurant, but he never allowed them to be fired. The cops would come down on them, and if anyone was injured, then there would be arrests, but Peter wasn't worried about that. He could dodge the bullets, Heather couldn't, and that was the catalyst to calm himself down. Finally, he decided there was nothing he could do; sure, he could let loose the pent up rage he was holding back from this example of unfairness, and smash everyone to a pulp, but he had played the careless card once before and Uncle Ben had paid for it, he didn't want Heather to get hurt because she was with him.

"I hope you can juggle being a manager, chef and host all into one, Luigi," Peter whispered darkly, "it gets busy in here really quickly." He didn't even have much satisfaction when the little man paled suddenly as he realised what he'd done, but it was too late. Peter and Heather had already left.

"How's your aunt?" Heather asked as they got on the bus. She didn't say a word about what had happened at the restaurant; true, she had been scared stiff of what Peter had almost done, but she was calmer now. She was holding her curiosity at bay for another time, preferably when Peter and she weren't stressed out.

Peter had been surprised by how different Heather was with the other girls he'd known in his life; she wasn't as self obsessed and vapidly stupid as Liz Allen, and compared to them Heather may have been plainer, but she was more beautiful underneath than they were to the outside world. Peter found Heather a refreshing change; most of the girls he knew wouldn't want to be caught anywhere near him, but she didn't care. In fact, she treated him like a human being.

"She's stable, for now, but I've got bills from the hospital."

"And being fired by Luigi is probably the worst thing that can happen right now, right?" Heather asked rhetorically. She knew how tight Peter was with cash, she was as well. Like Peter, Heather had to care for a relative, in her case her mother. Her father had run off, taking the family income with him, so she and her mother had needed to work. But her mother, like Aunt May, got ill easily.

"On top of having to attend college, eat and drink, have electricity and water, yes," Peter replied. "How's your mum?"

He was worried about his friend. She was a trying to juggle her life as a carer, a school girl and now formerly a waitress at a dingy restaurant. It hadn't been as bad before her mother tripped and had an accident. Losing her job was not something she needed herself. Heather sighed and looked straight ahead. "She's not as bad as your aunt, but she's still recovering from her fall. I just wish I could get someone in to care for her, but I can't. It's too expensive. Why don't you drop out of college, Pete, look for work and then reapply?"

"I wish it was as straightforward, Heather, believe me, but whenever Aunt May was awake before her health took a nosedive she made me promise to stay on as a college student," Peter looked at her imploringly, but Heather understood. She understood Peter better than most people could, because like Peter she was bullied and misunderstood at school. Heather was a year below Peter in education, but where he flourished in computers and science, she flourished in art.

Like Peter, Heather had lost a parental figure and the other was so frail it was almost impossible to not worry about them making a wrong move that could see them put into a hospital bed. Granted, Heather hadn't lost her father in the same brutal manner Peter had lost Uncle Ben, but she understood how stressful it was.

"I'm gonna try and look for something else tomorrow," Peter broke through Heather's thoughts, and brought her back to the problem at hand. "I might bunk college tomorrow, focus on that. Want to join me?"

"I wish I could," Heather replied sourly, "but I can't. I've got an important test tomorrow, and I can't flunk it."

Peter nodded in understanding. "I'll meet you after school if that's okay," she added.

"Perfect. I'll see you then."

Heather got off a few stops before Peter, and from the window their eyes met as the bus drove away. Out of all the girls he'd known in his life, Peter had never met one he could safely say he enjoyed knowing. Heather was nicer than many of the girls he'd attended school with, and she was proof positive that just because someone may have been nice to look at (Mary Jane Watson), she was proof Peter was not alone.

When the bus finally arrived at Peter's stop, he pulled his coat up to his neck and tried to hold down a shiver. It was so cold, but he knew it would be just as cold inside the house. Peter wasn't surprised to find a small pile on the doormat, and as he picked them up he sagged in despair. Gas, electricity, water... it never ended, and look, there were more notifications from the hospital. Money, money, money, that's all they wanted.

The good news was he had pawned one or two of his childhood toys over the last few months to add to his pay cheque, gained a bit of extra cash, but now he was fired by Luigi he knew he couldn't keep up with the demand forever. There was little in the house that he could pawn, and besides, he had pawned off enough without Aunt May losing it when she got better.

Dinner that night was a simple microwave dinner; Peter couldn't afford the amount of money needed to run the oven to make a proper meal, and he ate it in his bedroom. When he was finished eating and washed the cheap meal down with a swig of water, Peter sighed as he looked around his bedroom. There were very few of the things in here he could easily sell, and as much as it had pained him there had been little alternative than to sell the stuff Uncle Ben and Aunt May had bought for him over the years. There was no point holding on to something if it could let him and Aunt May live comfortably - not luxuriously, but comfortably - for another day.

And Aunt May needed all the help she could get. Peter had promised not to lose his Aunt May the same way as he lost Uncle Ben, but he found this was more testing. He walked around the room, and in the dim light he tried to find something that he could take to the pawn shop, and as though by fate or destiny, found himself outside his wardrobe. As if controlled by some mystical force, he opened the door and looked down at the box kept in a shadowy corner.

Opening it he found himself looking at the reflective white/silver lenses of his Spider-Man costume. It was hard to believe how strong his emotions were at the sight of the costume - anger, self loathing, guilt, but most prominent was hope. Peter hadn't worn the costume in a year, after trying and failing to work out what purpose he could and should put his spider powers, he had decided to give himself time to try to lead a normal life whilst deciding slowly what to do with his new powers. He'd put the costume in a box and kept it in a darkened part of his wardrobe. But now he fingered the stretchy fabric, tracing the silk screened web pattern, remembering the last time he had worn it as an entertainer...before Jameson wrote those deflamatory articles calling him a masked menace. The public and the entertainment industry had dropped him like a rock in the river.

Peter had hoped that if he could consistently entertain people with his powers he could make enough money to support Aunt May, giving her a simple lie about how he'd made the money. But unfortunately Jameson had killed that idea stone dead, and Peter had floundered trying to think of a means to make some good income. There had been three choices, and now one was still open to him, like it always had been. But he had tried and hoped that this year would give him the chance to work out what he could do in a normal setting, and that meant keeping his powers hidden.

But now he had no choice.

He had no interest in becoming a crime fighter; there was no money in it, and besides with Jameson calling him a masked menace once, there was no telling what the editor would call him if he donned this costume again to fight crime after a year's absence. And then there was what he'd seen last year that had permanently put him off superhero work.

Peter shook himself out of those thoughts as he tried to think. Then it came to him. It had occurred to him the year before, but now it looked far more attractive.

He could become a thief. Peter shook his head, he'd touched on this before, last year, when he'd tried to make up his mind about what kind of things he could do with his powers after Uncle Ben had been shot. He'd pushed the idea of becoming a thief out of his mind, he had no desire to upset or break Aunt May's heart, and with her health the way it was anything could happen.

But, try as Peter might, he could see no way out of this. He needed to be realistic; he couldn't be a superhero, he needed cash right now, and the entertainment business was not possible anymore. Crime was the only chance he had left, and then his mind touched upon what his Uncle had said.

"With great power, comes great responsibility."

Peter had tried to push the existence of his powers out of his mind for the past year, and yet he hadn't succeeded. He had wanted the year to give himself the chance to work out what he could do about his problems.

"With great power, comes great responsibility."

Peter cursed as his uncle's words echoed round in his head again like a stuck record. Out loud he said, "Responsibility to whom? To a public who'll crucify me 'cause I wear a costume and can run up and down on webs? Or is my responsibility closer to my family, to Aunt May who took care of me because my mother wasn't around to care for me? She's lying in a hospital bed, and a few cheap heroics aren't going to save her, are they Uncle Ben? Besides, I can think of someone else who could benefit from any crimes I commit."

Heather had entered Peter's mind again. Like Peter, none of her mother's friends had lifted so much as a finger to help her when things were getting out of control, and none of her family had come forwards to ease the weight off her shoulders. But would she accept pity and charity from him?

"What responsibility?" Peter asked aloud. "Look at Heather; her father fucked off to god knows where, and with him gone the family income suffered as well. He had a responsibility, and he blew it. Why shouldn't I use my powers to help Aunt May and Heather and her mother?"

At that point Peter had made an epiphany; instead of looking to people he didn't know, he would focus his mind and attention on those nearest to him. With that thought in mind he took the costume and the webshooters to the bed, went to the lamp and turned it off. He slipped off his trousers, shoes and socks and put on the tights and boots before putting on the top and the webshooters. He fired a webline and tested it's strength with his fingers. It felt strong enough, and the web fluid inside the cartridges was designed to last for a long time even being exposed to air. Satisfied with the test so far - he'd have better luck out there - he donned his mask to complete his disguise for the first time in a year, and he checked his costume. It felt comfy even though he hadn't been in it for over a year, but it would definitely do for tonight.

Opening the window, Spider-Man paused. There was no going back now.

Elis was looking forward to a night in bed. One thing they never told you was driving an armoured van was that you would be driving it at night, constantly afraid in case a bomb would explode underneath the van, blasting you end over end, knocking you almost unconscious as the robbers stole from the back.

Elis sighed as he pushed those gloomy thoughts out of his mind, and focused on the task at hand, glancing once or twice at the rookie sitting next to him. The kid was young, this was his first night, something Elis wished he was on, but he'd been doing this "terrible job" as his wife repeatedly told him because she was worried he'd get hurt, and he had once or twice during his ten year career.

The night had been going well, but Elise knew better than to expect any kind of peace. The van was just passing by a corner, when-

"What the hell is that?!" The kid yelled even as the van blundered straight into - the web? - hanging between two lampposts.

Elis put the van into reverse, but the van wouldn't move no matter what he did, no matter how many times he tried to pull away. He had no idea that outside the van thick webbing was holding the forward and back wheels immobile.

The kid jumped when his door was ripped off, and before either of them could truly get a good look at the extraordinary figure in the door before their vision was clouded by webbing. Elis tried moving his hand to his piece, but he wasn't fast enough. A gloved hand pushed it away and he felt a sticky substance glue his hand to the metal wall of the van.

Spider-Man was glad of his full face mask, it hid the discomfort he felt at robbing the van, but he had come this far. The doors of the van were specially reinforced and very strong, but they proved no match for him. He found six money bags inside, but his opened two of them to be sure they carried money. He was glad they did, but now he was faced with a problem; how many bags should he take? There was enough money in one bag to see him and Aunt May through for months, never mind his promise to Heather. With that in mind, he grabbed four of the bags, and created a crude web harness to stick them to his back.

Within minutes he was gone.

Please leave a review, and Happy Christmas.