This is complete for now, because I've been looking at my rap sheet and I don't want to promise something I obviously have difficulty following through with. Of course there's more to the story, it just isn't on paper (yet).

Enjoy!

There's a crack in his wall.

It's been there for some time, and for some time, things in Peter's life have been slowly slipping away. Slipping through the cracks, and that's normal, because things do that and it happens to everyone, everyone loses things, even people whose cracks are more metaphorical than literal.

The first thing he truly loses are his parents.

He remembers warm hugs, cool kisses, a deep laugh and a pretty smile. He remembers home, or the feeling of it anyways. He remembers stuffed bears and plastic red-and-gold masks, and a voice saying (although he can't remember whose) "Wake up, sleepy, today's the Stark Expo."

He doesn't remember how they died. He doesn't try to either, because the other memories are enough. It's what he's told himself since that day when he was seven, and for a while, he'd forgotten how much of a lie it was. How much of a lie it is.

Peter loses things all the time. It's the way of things, it's normal, it's what children do. A pencil here, a book there, a balloon snatched away by the wind.

The second thing he loses is his Uncle Ben.

He doesn't know how it happened. He should know. Something nagging at his thoughts, his memories, tells him he should. But he doesn't, and that's okay. He remembers Uncle Ben, he remembers swinging hugs, tousled hair, feet stomping up the stairs in anticipation of a poorly cooked meal, and he remembers Aunt May's smile. It's enough, he tells himself. It's enough to remember these things, and nothing else.

Peter starts attending Midtown Prep, the school for budding genius, and still he loses things. They slip through his fingers and out of his mind like they never existed, school papers and bags of candy, his glasses one morning, his phone the next. But that's okay, it's normal to lose things, it's what teenagers do.

The third thing Peter loses is normalcy.

He remembers talking with Ned, ignoring Flash, seeing Liz's lips pull into the prettiest smile he'd ever seen, and then MJ, smirking into her book from the other end of the bus. He remembers swinging his arms, turning this way and that to see everything in the lab, questions bursting from his lips. He remembers knocking a beaker over in his excitement, the instant horror, bending to help clean it up, the sting of a cut… in retrospect, it had been a spider bight.

Peter doesn't remember what it feels like to be normal. He doesn't, but that's okay, because this life is better anyways, he doesn't want to remember what everything was like before, what he could have had…

It's Ned who tips him off.

"You realize you could just write out your life's story. You're like a walking sitcom, dude, your life makes no sense. Ms. Market will love it."

They're working on their extra curricular theater project. They have to write a two page sitcom. Ned has a weird sense of convoluted.

"I'm serious, if you're not, I'll do it. Boy living with his hot aunt gains superpowers and has to keep it secret from the rest of the world. Bam! Done. Add in some romance and enough drama to make MJ squirm, and there's an A++."

"Dude, not cool, that's my life!" But Peter laughs, and eventually they come up with a good story, and it isn't until he's lying in bed after patrol that Ned's words come back to him out of the dark.

Your life makes no sense.

He sits up in his bed and turns on the light, and slowly lifts tired eyes to look at the crack in his bedroom wall, the one he keeps meaning to tell May about, to suggest that maybe they fix it, but he always forgets. It doesn't make sense. And he should remember, he realizes, his thoughts flowing more freely, jarring their way to the front. He should remember things, and it's not that he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to be forgetful, he doesn't want to lose things all the time. It's not that he doesn't try to remember, it's that he can't. He can't remember his parents, although he was seven when they died. He can't remember Uncle Ben, and that had only been three years ago. He can't remember normal, and his room is almost empty because he always loses things in here, and he can't remember if May came home tonight, or if she's still working.

He stares at the crack in his bedroom wall and feels colder than he's ever felt, because he does remember something now in this state of half dreaming, something which doesn't make sense at all but is without a doubt true.

It's the same crack as the one in the living room of his old house, the one he was always afraid would eat him when he was little, when he was four and five and six and living with his parents in their apartment in Queens. It's the same crack in a different house, and he realizes that this, this has been the one constant in his life, the one thing he hasn't lost, although he's forgotten time and time again.

There's a crack in Peter's wall, a crack in his life, and things have been slipping through for a long, long time.

With trembling hands he fumbles for his phone, opens the camera, switches to video, and presses play. He can't forget again.

"There's a crack in my wall. There's a crack in my wall, and it's been there since I was little, and I – I can't remember, but it's been eating my life away, and it – it's going to eat me and I was right… I need help. I need to tell May or Mr. Stark, or someone – I need to get help. I need help, I need – "

Peter stops his whispered message, because his Spidysense is saying something, something is coming… not danger, not exactly, but something.

There's a noise from the living room, a sort of metallic humming.

Peter has grown used to strange machines. Nothing screams danger, and in his mind weird (awesome) machine equates to Mr. Stark. Without a second thought Peter stands up and opens his bedroom door. Mr. Stark has been spying again, and at another time Peter might be annoyed at the obvious incursion to his privacy, but now he is only relieved. Somehow Mr. Stark heard him, and has come about the crack in his wall –

But it's not Iron Man. It's not even a machine, although it sure sounds like one.

It's a big, blue, wooden box, parked on the carpet of a living room in Queens, with the label "Police Public Call Box" glowing in white letters over a set of doors and a sign that says "Pull to Open."