Lying Heart
The day after Christmas Gwen leaves a voicemail on his phone: "Hey Peter. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you until now, things just got crazy with the holidays and everything, and I'm sorry I missed you. I'm headed up to my relatives' place, I just wanted to call and say … it's okay. I mean, it was nothing. Let's not dwell on it. So bye for now—see you next year."
Peter sits on the floor of his room for a long time after listening to the message. It was so short and almost business-like, as if he were one more thing she had to check off her to-do list before she left. He slumps against the wall, scowling.
I mean, it was nothing.
No. It was a lot of things, Peter thinks, but it certainly wasn't nothing. He thinks that of the brief message she left, this is the most part frustrating to hear. He doesn't want to be nothing. He doesn't want to be that lingering what-if Gwen squelches in the back of her mind as she leans in to kiss her picture-perfect boyfriend. He is more than that, the two of them are more than that, and he knows he is young and this is the first time he has ever felt this way about a girl and by virtue of this, his judgment isn't always the most reliable, but that doesn't stop him from really, truly believing that they belong together.
He sees the Spiderman suit in his closet. Anger wells up inside him, the kind of uncontrollable, twisted, immature rage that he hasn't felt since he was at least thirteen, and he gets up from the floor and slams the closet door so hard it rattles the walls of the house.
It only makes him angrier. It isn't enough to slam the door, he wants to tear it off its hinges and throw it at something, he wants to break through the wood with his fist, he wants to have some power over something again, some control, because everything else in his life is such an awful mess. A week ago he could have torn this stupid door with ease; he could have done it by accident, for god's sake, and now he's just stupid, pathetic, slamming a damn door like a five-year-old having a tantrum.
"Peter?"
He freezes, his lips a tight line.
"Is everything alright up there?"
He hangs his head, still not quite calm enough to feel shame, but getting close to it. "Yeah, sorry. I tripped," he calls down.
After a few minutes of sitting dejectedly on the carpet, Peter forces himself to get up and splash some water on his face. He can't just mope here all day. He doesn't have Gwen, and there is nothing he can do about it, but he can do something about his abilities, or the very least he can try.
It takes Peter a bit longer to find the intersection he emerged near when he came out of the basement, and even once he arrives it's difficult to reorient and figure out what side street he came out of. It's mid-afternoon by the time he finds it. He stands there for a moment in front of the unassuming black door and tries to gather some resolve to walk in.
It seems counter-intuitive to go inside. It seems downright thick. His only memories of that basement involve him being shackled to a chair. And while he wasn't conscious for the four days he spent there, it doesn't make the idea of it any less unsettling.
He has to do this. It's all he has left.
He turns the knob, a bit surprised at how easy it is to open the door. He assumed it would be locked. Certainly the man who had taken all of these precautions with Peter was smart enough to have some sort of security system, which is why Peter is careful not to look up in case there are any surveillance cameras on him. He doesn't like the idea of the man seeing his face from some other room, doesn't like the idea of anyone having that kind of power over him.
Peter descends down the staircase and finds the second door, the one that should lead to the room where he was held captive. It's completely silent in this place. He sees in the dim light that it is actually much bigger than he thought earlier, and beyond the room where he was held there is a hallway leading to what appears to be several labs and conference rooms, all visibly empty of people through their wide windows but nonetheless full of materials that seem to have been recently used.
"Hello?" he calls.
The hair on his forearms and the back of his neck tingles again, and he is absolutely certain he is being watched. Again he resists the urge to search for cameras, to search for faces emerging from the shadows. He does not want to look frightened or anything reminiscent of the caged animal he was the last time he was here.
He won't call out again. This place, for lack of a better phrase, really gives him the creeps. At least he tried.
He's about to turn around and walk back up the steps as fast as he can, but something stops him. For a second he doesn't move, doesn't breathe. It is a far cry from the heightened senses he possessed in the past, but it feels like almost a glimmer of them, and it's enough to restore some shaky confidence.
"I know you're here," Peter says quietly.
"I wondered when you'd be back."
Peter swivels around. He wasn't expecting the man to appear behind him, near the staircase that led him down here. He isn't even sure what door the man could have just emerged from to sneak up on him like this.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Peter asks, trying to sound more sure than he is. He is curious, though. The robots seem to have disappeared from New York's skyline and there is no reason for him to be in touch with this man otherwise.
The man steps forward, out of the shadows. It's the first time Peter has seen him in the light, seen him without the high adrenaline rush of terror that has accompanied his last few encounters with him, and something suddenly strikes him as familiar about him. It doesn't matter, though. He's probably just some guy from OsCorp gone rogue, and there's a chance Peter has seen him in the papers, or even at OsCorp at his brief visit. Regardless, Peter has more important things on his mind.
"The counter serum," the man explains. "There were … complications, as you are realizing."
Peter's chest constricts. "It's permanent, isn't it?"
The man shakes his head curtly. "No. It isn't permanent. It is, however, going to take much longer for your abilities to be restored than I previously thought."
Peter's hands ball into fists at his sides. "How much longer?" he demands. "What, a week? A month?"
"I'm working on it."
"What—what do you mean, you're working on it?" Peter snaps. "I thought you were supposed to know what you were doing—"
"Calm down," the man says in his usual condescending tone. "There were factors involved that I did not anticipate when creating this serum. Factors specific to your genetic make-up. It's nothing that I can't fix, but I'll need time."
"I don't understand what that even means. And—and you clearly have known for a long time that you messed this up big time, why wouldn't you try to contact me right away? I mean, look at me," says Peter, jutting out his chin and unconsciously pointing out the purpling bruise from the attempted robbery two days before. "I'm completely useless. You could have warned me about this days ago."
The man's lips crease into a thin line. "I was waiting for you to come to me."
"Well I'm here now—"
"I was waiting," the man says over Peter, "because I wanted you to have a choice this time." He steps closer to Peter, and it takes everything in Peter's power not to back away from him. "I see now that there is no way you could have anticipated these abilities or the responsibility that came with them. It's a burden. It will change your life forever. And despite yourself, you enjoyed this last week without your abilities, didn't you?"
"Not at all," Peter retorts.
Peter still can't see the man's eyes behind his sunglasses, but he doesn't need to see them to know that the man is looking at him patronizingly. "It took you a week to come find me. Tell me it didn't make things easier. School. Your social life."
"You seem to think you know a lot about me," Peter says, both suspicious and uncomfortable.
The man doesn't answer.
"I don't understand—why do I get a choice now? Have you decided to trust me or something?"
"Circumstances have changed," the man says carefully.
It dawns on Peter a little slower than he would have liked, but after a few seconds he says, "You need my help, don't you?"
"Not necessarily. But you are inextricably involved in this now, in ways you can't even fathom."
Peter swallows. "That was really ominous and unhelpful," he points out.
If he isn't mistaken, the tiniest smile almost cracks on the man's face.
"I apologize that I can't really tell you much right now to explain the situation. But there is something unique about your genetic make-up, something that has been lying dormant in you for years, and I fear the man who is creating these robots has just become aware of it since your last encounter with the robots. This quiet—I suspect it is only the calm before a storm."
Peter mulls this over. "You mean … before that spider bit me … there was something wrong with my DNA?"
"Precisely. It is also the reason why I made such a gross miscalculation in developing the serum. I wasn't aware."
"But you are now?" Peter asks. "I don't understand, how would you possibly know if there were something—I mean, I'm perfectly normal, or at least I was. Before that spider bit me I was just—" He almost says I was just Peter Parker, and even though he is almost certain the man knows his identity, it feels dangerous to say it out loud. "I was just normal," he says again instead.
The man nods. "I'm going to tell you something, because I think you have the right to know."
"Alright," Peter says tentatively.
"Richard Parker's formula," the man explains, "was not the formula that mutated Dr. Connors. He hid the real formula somewhere else. Hid it in the one thing he knew would always be kept safe."
Peter's palms start to sweat. He searches the man's face, trying to understand, and afraid that he already understands all too well. "What … what does that mean?"
"You, Peter." The man nods toward him definitively, almost regrettably. "He hid it in you."
Shout out to my little sister, who developed that little wham-o idea at the end. I frequently cry to her for help with writer's block because she actually has a brain and knows a lot more about the Spiderman universe than I do, so credit where credit is due on that plot twist. When she texted me this idea I was so pleased I basically cried on the street.
Also, other song everyone needs to hear "Four Color Love Story" by the Metasciences. It's a sweet little song poking fun at comic book romances, including Peter and Gwen's, I've had it on my iPod for years and didn't remember until it came up on my shuffle this morning.
I have to go now. My frozen pizza is done. My Friday night is such a rager.