Lying Heart

There is only one thought on Peter's mind after he hits the ground, and it's that he can't breathe. It's different from the near drowning from the first robot attack, different from getting the wind knocked out of him. He physically cannot command his lungs to suck in air—or maybe there just isn't any air left in this place.

When he smells the acidic, chemical smell of spandex burning, for the first time as Spiderman he truly considers his own demise. The pain is unimaginable and he can't even have the relief of being able to scream. He thinks of his Aunt May, thinks of breakfast this morning when he practically raced out the door with a piece of toast in his mouth—did he even say good-bye? He thinks of the look on Gwen's face this morning after she grabbed his camera, thinks of every rare moment he has seen her smile in the past few months, thinks of the way he barely acknowledged her on the way to this disaster.

Then he thinks of stupid things. He thinks of a full-time photography position at the Daily Bugle, thinks of college acceptances and buying textbooks and finding an apartment, thinks of the exhilaration of flying down the street on his board. All these possibilities, taken for granted before he has even had time to consider them.

He doesn't know what he wants. He never has. But this—it can't end like this, so abruptly, so unfairly. He has faced too much to die like this, trapped like a rat.

The heat comes in excruciating waves. He is burning. He is beyond saving. He tries in vain one last time to breathe, but his eyes are already closed, and there is some small, sick comfort in knowing that it should only be a matter of time now before he either burns to death or the smoke inhalation knocks him unconscious.

He is so far gone that he doesn't even notice when the chunk of the ceiling lifts off of him, and barely registers when someone grabs him off of the floor. He thinks he must be delusional; he can't open his eyes without seeing smoke, so he figures he is imagining it until he feels the unmistakable click of one of the biocable devices detaching from his wrist.

When they reach the window and Peter has some ability to see again, he is sure he is having an elaborate delusion. The man from before is carrying him with one arm and pointing Peter's biocable device up through the smog with the other. Peter closes his eyes again—this is ridiculous, this isn't real, but then he feels a familiar weightlessness as they hit the sky and the edges of his consciousness become blurry and undefined again.

Somehow they make it to the ground. Peter is sure he still hasn't breathed, but he hears this horrible, throat-wrenching, choking noise and realizes it's coming from him.

"Calm down, Peter. I've got you. You're going to be fine."

He's heard these words before, and suddenly the memory bursts like a bullet from the back of his brain: he is four years old, he is learning to ride a bike, he has gone too far down a hill and lost control and he's sitting on the sidewalk nursing a knee that is covered in more blood than he's ever seen come out of him in his short life. He sits there bawling, but not for long. He remembers looking up through his tears to see his father, the man who seemed to tower over his own tiny, three foot tall existence, lean down to sit beside him.

I've got you. You're going to be fine.

This isn't a bike accident. This is catastrophic. Peter knows this because he can't move, he can't breathe, and worst of all, he can't really feel a thing.

But that doesn't stop the realization from upending his world even further.

The next hour is a blur of impossible happenings. At some point when he opens his eyes he's in the backseat of a car. He hears the engine start, then hears a pounding at the window, desperate and loud and enough to rouse him out of his miserable daze. He hears the man in the front seat arguing with someone outside; at some point he hears someone scream, "You're not taking him anywhere without me!" and Peter thinks it sounds an awful lot like Gwen, but that can't be true, he left her twenty blocks away.

Eventually the backdoor to the car opens. Peter knows because the light from outside still hits his eyes, even though they are shut tight, grimacing against the pain that only seems to mount as time passes.

"Oh my god. Oh my god, Peter—"

"If that's all you're good for, you can get out of the car right now—"

"Would you shut up?" Gwen hisses.

Peter struggles to open his eyes, to make sure it's her and not a figment of his imagination. Before he manages to see her, though, he feels a hand grab his gloved one and there's no doubt in his mind that it's her.

"What can I do? What am I supposed to do?"

The man's voice is remarkably calm from the front seat. "There's a compartment in front of you. He needs oxygen."

He feels Gwen's hands on his neck, feels a slight tug on his mask and can't help the groan that escapes him. His eyes snap open. She looks so scared. He knows that she can't see him through the lenses and it's probably for the best, because his lungs are screaming and his throat is on fire and he is the last person to assure her at a moment like this.

"The mask—it's, the spandex, it melted and now it's—it's stuck to him," says Gwen, clearly having to make an effort to hold herself together.

"You have to take it off of him."

She tugs at it again, harder this time, and Peter cries out.

"Oh, god, I'm so sorry, Peter—"

"You have to rip it off. He'll heal, faster than you think, but if you don't get it off now—"

"It's hurting him!"

"If you don't get it off now," the man says again, "it's going to heal with the spandex still melted into him. He's better off. You said you were going to help, now if you can't handle something as simple as this—"

He hears her whisper the word "sorry" under her breath and that's how he knows to anticipate the agony a few seconds before it happens. Peter's scream from the backseat cuts off whatever the man was saying—it feels like all the skin on the back of his neck is tearing off and if he has to go through this with the rest of his suit, he thinks he will not be able to survive this, it's too much to bear. He is broken, unfixable, and the pain is so intense that for a fleeting, selfish moment he wishes they had just let him die up there so he could at least have some peace.

He must black out for a few moments, because when he is alert again he is coughing and spluttering with an oxygen mask on his face. He paws at it, trying to rip it off—it feels like it's forcing the air into his lungs, and the relief is so excruciating and unexpected that it feels like his lungs might burst.

"No, Peter," says Gwen, shoving it back on firmly.

"Back up. He still has his abilities, if he hits you he won't know what he's doing."

Peter lets his hands drop. He will let himself die before he ever hurts Gwen. He tries to look up at her, now that the mask is off and he knows she can see his face, but when she meets his eyes all he sees is her panic before she quickly looks away. He knows then that it must be as bad as he thinks, for Gwen to try to hide it from him.

Her voice is thick when she speaks again. "The rest of his suit …" she says.

"We're almost there, but try to get the melted parts off now."

Gwen takes a shuddering breath, as if to steel herself. "Peter," she says quietly, and he looks up at her to let her know that he's listening. "I'm going to roll you onto your side, okay?"

He shuts his eyes and nods, resigned.

"I'll be quick," she promises.

This time he anticipates it, so when she starts pulling at the fabric he grits his teeth, determined not to make a sound and scare her again. But the shock of it is so overwhelming that he can't help the half-scream that erupts from his throat—it doesn't matter, though, because he finally sees blackness at the edge of his vision, and has never been more thankful in his whole life to lose consciousness.

When he first starts to come to, the pain is still substantial, but thankfully nowhere near as bad as it was initially. He can't feel the familiar constriction of spandex on his skin and figures that they must have stripped him of it while he was out. He's thankful to have missed it.

"…understand," Gwen is saying. "How did you get up there to save him? How did you use his biocables?" There's a pause. "Who are you?"

The man must not have answered her, because he sense her body shift impatiently, and feels her hand pull away from his. He hadn't realized she was holding his hand—he squeezes it now in acknowledgement.

"Peter," she says immediately. "Peter, are you awake?"

His eyes crack open blearily. It takes a long time for the world around him to take logical shape again. Once it does he sees he is in some sort of medical facility. He wonders if it's part of the basement where the man originally took him all those weeks ago.

The man.

Peter searches for him. He feels Gwen watching him carefully, and knows she needs him to reassure her in some way, but he can't. Not now, not now that the foundation of his entire life, of how he has defined himself, has changed forever.

The man has his back turned to Peter. "Take—" Peter coughs, not expecting his throat to be so raw. He gasps and chokes on air for a moment, then looks at Gwen gratefully when she hands him a glass of water. By now the man has turned around, and the posture of his body, the slight, guilty way his shoulders are hunched, is all the confirmation Peter needs.

He finishes the water. His voice is hoarse and it burns to talk, but he manages to croak as firmly as he can, "Take off the sunglasses."

The man doesn't move. "Peter—"

"Take them off!" Peter tries to yell, but all that comes out is empty, strangled air.

He finally obeys, slowly lifting a hand to the sunglasses and sliding them off. He doesn't look at Peter at first, but when he does, the eyes are unmistakable.

"No," Peter croaks. It isn't possible. This man—this man who looks nothing like his father, talks nothing like his father, his dead father, can't be staring him in the face with his father's eyes. His head is reeling. He can feel the features of his face distorting in shock, can feel the beat of his heart pounding against his ribcage.

"Let me explain," says the man, taking a step toward him.

"No!" Peter yells at him, feeling his jaw lock with the effort. "You—you're dead. You're dead."

Gwen holds his hand tighter, looking alarmed. "Peter," she says, trying to sound calm, but he ignores her.

"What—what the hell?" Peter stammers, because it literally, actually makes no sense. It's too much for him to process. How does he look so different? His memories of his father are vague and unhelpful, but he has pictures, pictures that he spent his entire childhood memorizing, and this man looks nothing like the man Peter idolized for so many years. His chin, his nose, the angry way he carries himself. It's impossible, unthinkable.

To his father's credit, his eyes look genuinely remorseful, but he still stands rigid as a board and makes no effort to approach Peter. "I had to keep you safe—"

"Stop," Peter manages, "just stop." His entire body is quaking now, and he has all but forgotten the pain that only seconds ago seemed to overwhelm him. "You can't—you can't just—it's been eleven years. You've been alive this whole time?"

"I didn't have a choice," he says, an edge of desperation in his voice. "Peter—if I could make you understand how unbearable it's been, every day since the day I left you—"

"Where's—is my mother alive too?" Peter demands.

His father flinches as if Peter has slapped him. It takes him a moment to answer—not that it matters, because the pause is all Peter needs.

"No," he says. "No, I'm sorry."

Peter is gasping for air, and between the shock and the smoke inhalation he can't steady himself. The room is starting to sway. He knows he needs to calm down, it's the only way his lungs will stop burning, but he can't, he doesn't think he ever will.

"You did this to me," Peter manages in a strangled gasp. "You."

"I never meant for this to happen," he says, taking a step closer to Peter. "Believe me, Peter, this was never a fate I imagined for you. I thought I was doing what was best by you, that was always my intention, Peter, to keep you safe—"

"Oh, yeah?" Peter demands. "How long did it take you to figure it out? Was it after you kidnapped me, or after you tied me to a chair, or after you sucked all my abilities away?"

"At the time—I couldn't even fathom, I hadn't realized—"

"How long?" Peter tries to shout. "How long did it take for you to realize I'm your son?"

"Peter, please."

Sometime in the last few minutes Gwen has stepped out of the way, allowing his father to stand beside him. He looks weather-beaten and defeated, nothing like the man Peter remembered raising him, or even anything like the man Peter has come to warily understand in the past few weeks. There is a broken quality to him. Peter searches his eyes and there is no doubt that his father is sorry, that he is telling the truth, but that doesn't mean Peter can ever forgive him.

"You weren't even going to tell me," Peter accuses him lowly, because of all the wrongs his father committed, that is the one that cuts the deepest. "Were you?"

"You're hurt. You're tired. I want to explain all of this to you, Peter, and I will in due time, but right now," he says, putting a hand on Peter's shoulder, "right now you need to—"

"Don't touch me," Peter hisses, pulling his shoulder away. The resulting pain sweeps in an unexpected, terrible wave but he doesn't so much as cringe. The man—his father—almost looks devastated. It isn't enough to deter Peter. "Don't you ever come near me again."

Stressful day at work today, so I'm recuperating the only way a mature, well-adjusted young woman can: by buying myself cake mix and baking a giant cake I intend to share with absolutely nobody. Not even Andrew Garfield, or his ridiculously sculpted biceps. Bon appetit, bitches.

Also, a thousand million times over, thanks for the reviews. It makes me feel a lot better to see that there are other people in the universe every bit as unhealthily obsessed with this fandom as I am, and I really appreciate the suggestions and comments. I think the story will be ending sometime in the next ten to chapters, depending on how I end up sequencing the things that need to happen, so as I approach the close I can't say enough how much it has meant to me that you guys take the time to let me know what you're all thinking.

I was lying before. If Andrew Garfield showed up at my door asking for cake right now, I'd let him have some-he might have to eat it off his shoes since I most likely would drop it in complete and utter terror, but I'd let him have some.