"Gwen? Are you okay?"
With a start, Gwen suddenly remembered that she, in fact, at dinner with Peter, in a quite nice restaurant, and that she had just disappeared into the depths of her brain for an unspecified amount of time. She shook her head, as if to shake away her mind trying to draw her back in.
"Hm? Sorry. Zoned out."
Peter made for a smile, but it went a little too close to a grimace. "I could tell. Thinking about Kamala Khan?"
Gwen blinked a few times, and poked her fork, which had been patiently waiting in her hand, mushroom stabbed on the tines, into her mouth. Blech. It was stone cold. How long had she been daydreaming? Twenty minutes? Longer?
"I can tell," Peter said, shrugging when she didn't answer. His eyes flicked to the window, where it would have been black as pitch, if not for the streetlights. "And I saw her friend leaving Oscorp with that school-group when I was waiting for you, and I just figured…" he trailed off. Gwen noticed that his plate was still full, and he was fidgeting. Apparently neither of them were particularly hungry. But that was fine. Whenever they were anywhere near each other, however much fun they were having, what Fury said about the 16 year old who was killed by the Goblin made them- subdued.
Wait one second. What had Peter just said? Kamala's friend? At Oscorp? Gwen rifled through her memories at work, and one came up with that school-group that Jack interrupted to loudly broadcast exactly what had happened to Gwen. The girl in the hijab, at the back of the group, the one who was trying her very best not to cry as she left the room. "That was her friend?"
Peter shifted. "Yeah. Bahadir, I think. I remembered her from the-" he made a vague gesture. "Thing. Newspaper. Obituary?"
"Yeah," Gwen sighed, putting her fork down. She remembered that, now that Peter had mentioned it. That blog photo had had the same girl beside Kamala, except she was grinning widely, and Kamala even more so. "I remember now. It was-"
Something distantly rumbled, and Peter's head jerked towards the window so fast she was scared he might have broken it for a second. His eyes flashed, and he seemed to be concentrating on something that had not yet happened.
"Do I need to get under the table?" she asked. "Is it close?" No one else in the restaurant had moved, chatting quietly at private tables.
Peter shook his head, the furrow between his brows growing deeper with every passing second. He bit his lip, "No, nothing's happened ye-"
Coming out from the cold and dark of the night, there was a chorus of screams, and behind that, the distant sound of sirens.
A waitress, who was on the other side of the restaurant serving someone, dropped the plate she was holding and dashed to the window.
"Oh my god," she whispered, pressing her face to the glass, fingers splayed across the cold glass. "Is that-? There's a fire. Oh shit."
"Where?" Peter demanded, leaping to his feet and lunging to the window. The waitress pointed a shaky hand towards the left.
"Behind that block. You can see the flames, even from here…"
Gwen found herself on her feet, wrenching her handbag open for her phone, and Peter's hand appeared on her wrist. She looked up into his eyes, and knew exactly what he was going to do.
"You stay safe," she hissed, and thrust his backpack, spider costume inside, into his arms. "Don't you dare get yourself killed."
"It's just a fire," he whispered. "It's not as though-"
"You know very fucking well it's not just a fire," Gwen insisted. "You get those people out if you can, but don't you fucking dare take on the Goblin." She shoved him in the shoulder. "I'll call for your friends. Now go."
Peter gave up trying to rationalise why he was going, and sprinted for the door. Gwen watched him go, a crease lining that space between her eyebrows, before she turned back to her search for her phone.
"You had better answer," she muttered when she found it, scrolling through her contacts aggressively. "You had better…"
An explosion rocked the restaurant, the glass quivering dangerously in the window, and many of the patrons dropping their glasses and knives and forks to cram their faces into the window. Gwen felt her phone vibrate softly in her palm as it dialled, and then a quiet voice emanate from it.
"Miss Potts," she said in relief. "You need to send your gang into Queens, now."
Natasha threw down her phone the second Pepper delivered her message from Miss Stacy, and sprinted for the hangar. Her footsteps echoed louder on the metal floor than she would have liked, but quieter than anyone else on the entire helicarrier.
"Stark," she snarled as she saw him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and dragging him along as she ran. "Find the others, and tell them to get to Queens."
"Where? Why? Queens is a bit bigger than a single apartment block Natash-"
"You'll see where exactly," she insisted, "and the Goblin is picking another fight. Spider-Man's going in alone, and Stacy and Parker are in the area."
Stark's eyes widened. He didn't need any more information than that, and took off to find Banner or Rogers or anyone.
Nat skidded to a halt in the hangar, and raised her communicator to her mouth. "Clint. Get to the hangar. We're going to Queens, and to hopefully catch the Goblin."
"Gotcha," Clint said after a few moments, presumably reading it from his communicator instead of listening, his hearing-aids sometimes went on the fritz near all the tech. Natasha dashed up the ramp of one of the craft, right into the control room. "I'll see you in forty seconds."
"Sure," she said, her hands dancing over the controls. The engine began whining as she prepped it, and even from within the metallic chill of the craft, even without any special powers or abilities, just her own body- she could tell that something, something bad was about to happen.
Peter was so thankful for the mask, not just for concealing his identity, but for other purposes he hadn't even realised he'd need it for
As the flames grew higher around him, swirling yellow and orange, towering towards the steadily charring ceiling, and as the young woman clutching onto his arm whimpered and held on even tighter, coughing into her free hand, Peter realised that this, this here right now was the reason that he risked his life in the streets.
What would it be like to be so afraid? A world without heroes, no one to save you when things seemed hopeless, no one to look up to when you felt alone, and no one to fight against those who destroyed the oppressed and cast evil like a net around the world for no other reason than for sick enjoyment.
The Goblin had set fire to an apartment block. An apartment block full of people and families and children, just little children…
The woman coughed harshly, hacking and choked up with smoke. Peter felt smoke trickle through the minuscule holes in his mask, streaming into his lungs. Well. Apparently the mask wasn't as good as keeping out the smoke as he'd hoped. He fumbled blindly through the smoke and flames, until he saw the outline of the door, leading out into the night and safety.
"Get out there, it's safe," he rasped, and the woman nodded, eyes streaming with smoky tears. He didn't wait to see her disappear out the door, and he ran back into the center of the inferno. There was one more person in there, he could hear them yelling for help.
"Oh Jesus," the voice choked out. How far were they away? On the next floor? Peter stretched out his senses and concentrated as hard as he could on his hearing. "Oh Christ please, is there someone there? Help me, oh Jesus."
The stairs were on fire. Peter clambered up to the next level on the wall, trying to ignore the burning in his palms and knees and feet. He'd regret it tomorrow, and for the next few weeks as they healed up. And the whole 'beaten up by the Avengers' thing was still all so recent…
The man gave a rasping sob, and Peter finally got to the level. The man, red haired but greying, was on his hands and knees, coughing into the carpet. That room wasn't yet aflame, but the smoke was getting to the man.
"Hey!" Peter yelled over the crackling of flames, and the rumble of something above collapsing. "You're gonna be just fine! Ya here?"
The man looked up at him, eyes streaming, and Peter's stomach dropped right of his body.
Spider-Man coughed from under the mask, and Norman Osborn rose unsteadily to his feet.
"Oh thank God," he said, putting a whimper into his voice just for effect. "Spider-Man… oh thank you thank you thank you-"
"Norman Osborn?" Spider-Man asked, stunned. He grabbed Norman by the arm and hoisted him up straight. "What are you- No, it doesn't matter. You're gonna be fine, alright?"
"I know," he replied, hacking away into his hand. Oh goodness, this boy was a fool. "I'll be fine."
"Yeah, I'll get you out. Now do you-"
Osborn rolled his shoulder back, pulling his arm out of Spider-Man's grip. "I think you'll find it won't be working that way, Spider-Man." He imagined that beneath the absurd costume, he was blinking stupidly.
"Whaddya mean?" Spider-Man grabbed him by the shoulder again, and began pulling him over to the window. "Look, we're gonna have to jump, but-"
Perhaps it was the fire that was clouding Spider-Man's enhanced senses, maybe it was just that Spider-Man trusted Osborn. But it seemed, as Spider-Man crashed to the floor, already unconscious and with blue electricity crackling around the taser Norman shoved into his side, that he hadn't even reacted.
"Little fool," Osborn said softly, drawing his own mask out from beneath the desk beside him. "You stumbled right in, and couldn't even contemplate that it was me."