More a filler chapter than anything else, which is why it's short

Spider-Man was back in business.

Peter had just spent a very relaxing afternoon taking out a few bank robbers and a would-be murderer, and now he was sitting at the top of his favourite place in the city: the clock tower a few blocks from the power grid, watching the sun slam-dunk its way past the horizon.

Peter pried the lower half of the mask away from his face, stuffed in the entire sandwich some kid had handed to him when his stomach grumbled after he pulled the kid out the way of a car. Then he let the mask tighten around his face again, and chewed slowly, trying to work out if he should regret pushing an entire sandwich into his mouth. He was Spider-Man, not Snake-Man, and dislocating his jaw probably wasn't the best idea.

It was a good sandwich though.

Peter rotated his dodgy ankle a few times, content when the only pain that came from the movement was a dull, mild ache. He flexed his shoulders, and when no pain came from that, ever after his workout of catching crooks, he smiled lazily under the mask and lay back in front of the clock face.

Life was good. He knew the Avengers currently on the planet were looking out for him, and quite honestly, that was more satisfying than just having his ankle heal up.

He was an Avenger.

Life was really good.

The next two weeks of Steve Rogers' life after that helicarrier meeting went past in a blur of worry and fear.

Not for himself, certainly. The incident with HYDRA's helicarrier had certainly made sure of that. The prospect of his own death, injury, dismemberment or otherwise painful and humiliating demise did not scare him in the slightest. His life had already ended once before, and it had been unlikely that any such situation would arise again.

But… it wasn't unlikely anymore. The world had moved on, sped away like Bucky when that shard of metal snapped in the cold-

Anyway.

Stark had been blindingly close to dying in the battle against the Chitauri, Loki's alien forces. Barton had had his mind pulled from his body and crushed, something else forced back in until Romanoff beat it out of him again. And then there was Spider-Man, with his injuries being the product of Fury's deception and Steve's own determination to get a criminal off the streets. But he wasn't, was he? A criminal, that is. He'd been doing the same job, with fewer resources and just as much success.

(What would Peggy and Bucky think?)

After the incident, he'd visited Peggy in her aged-care facility, and told her everything that had happened, over and over again with every visit, her weeping in recognition marking the beginning and end

And now, there was Peter and Gwen. Two lovely young kids, who were now involved with a monster crashing around the city, destroying buildings for the single purpose of finding Spider-Man. A girl had already died, not much younger than they were.

Steve massaged his temples with his fingers, and scrunched his eyes up.

He couldn't deal with another Bucky. Some other person, whether it was Stark or Barton or Peter or Gwen, dying for the same, stupid purpose and succeeding in hardly anything but leaving the world.

He couldn't let them happen to any of his team. Especially not the two kids.

They deserved that, at least.

School groups.

Truly, of all monotonous duties she had to perform, supervising and touring school students was by far the worst.

Even though the students themselves were generally well-behaved, the teacher and parent chaperones were, more often than not, irritating and patronising to a point where she was more than just tempted to punch them in the face and yell that she had gotten a scholarship to Oxford, helped save New York, and do not underestimate me.

Gwen's eyes drifted over a roll, students' names blurring together. Jason Able. Nakia Bahadir. Akio Shirai. Zoe Zimmer.

Oh please god, let this day end quickly. She flipped over the paper, baring the blank slate of the clipboard. She pretended to study it while the students, who had forgotten her as soon as she had brought them to a particular display, gawked at the measly little display or otherwise talked with one other.

"Morning!" a voice squawked right beside her ear. Gwen nearly dropped the clipboard, and straightened up to find herself face to face with Jackie Bright, a young female colleague who had achieved notoriety for being possibly the most intelligent and/or irritating person on the entire property. "How was yesterday? I heard that Stark tower, y'know, where your boyfriend works, got attacked! That would have been sooo scary!"

Her long, pink fingernails drummed the edge of a lab bench. Those fingers that appeared to be useless for everything, but could splice separate strands of DNA together better than anyone in the northern hemisphere. Jack had worked at Oscorp for nearly six years now, first recruited when she had escaped high school. If there was anyone Gwen looked up to, it was Jack. Unfortunately, she had the habit of either coming across as a mad scientist, or a mad bimbo, but despite that, she loved using her appearance and manner to make people underestimate her. She was woman who looked good, and had an even better brain.

"Good morning, Jack. It really was," Gwen said absently, wishing that she would just get back to work so that she could finish leading the high-school kids around the place. Speaking of the kids, their attentions had wavered and were now focused directly upon Jack and Gwen's exchange. They'd first begun to turn when Stark tower had been mentioned, and now their stares were coming full-force. Gwen, however, refused to waver under those stares. She'd not gotten valedictorian, and her position at Oscorp through meekness. "Terrifying. In fact, it was so scary I can't bring myself to talk about it."

A few of the school students waiting snickered. Gwen eyed them, and then directed her gaze back to her blank clipboard.

"Sure, Gwen," Jack replied chattily, "it must have been! I mean, I heard you were in the building, I'd've just died, anyway, I have to take apart a few stem cells, talk to you later!" and she flounced off to presumably yank apart said cells.

The school group's singular gaze watched Jack leave, and then came to fix upon Gwen in awe. The teacher chaperone tilted her glasses down and surveyed Gwen appraisingly. One girl, at the back, was watching her stiffly. Gwen recognised her, but just couldn't remember where from.

"If any of you say anything about that stupid Stark tower," Gwen said, "I will have you kicked out of the building. I'll have you know Stark is one of our biggest business competitors. No talk about the enemy."

A few laughs echoed around.

"Lemme guess, no one's talked to you about anything else?" a student offered.

"You bet," Gwen replied, and then gestured towards a pair of glass doors, leading to the inner sanctums. "Anyway, if you'll come this way, you'll be able to see the latest experiment; an investigation of the effects eagle DNA has when spliced with a different species, falcons… which, I might add, is an area of experimentation Stark Industries has not covered."

Students filtered away through the glass doors, chatting amiably to one another, not particularly interested but not dead-set bored either, their brief interest in Gwen already waxed and waned back to just over zero. A hijabi girl paused behind the group, watching Gwen.

"You should feel very lucky," the girl said coolly. "Not everyone is."

As the girl hurried through, her face making an odd, twitchy movement, Gwen tried desperately to remember where she knew her from.