Peter tucked his two middle fingers down against his wrist, and pushed. An interweaving string of webbing shot out and cracked against the wall ahead of him, sticking to the wood and pulling taut.
It had taken countless tries, but Peter had eventually found the trick to using his new web-shooters. Well, he supposed he couldn't call it that anymore. These webs were as far from mechanic as you could get.
But they were similar. Eerily similar. He knew that to others, it would appear as though there were no difference at all. To them, everything would look the same. But he could feel the difference; now, instead of having the weight of his home-made web-shooters tied round his wrist, he could instead feel the webbing under his skin, its weight sitting deep within his arms; as well instead of coming from closer to his palm like the shooters had, they instead came from farther up his arm, a good three or four inches from the base of his wrist.
Well, Peter mused, letting the web go and watching it break away from his arm, he supposed there wasn't really a "before" for anyone else. No one could remember the web-shooters that he had built from scratch, so for them, this would only ever be who he was. Who Spider-Man was. He doubted Tony would be overly thrilled in the long run, seeing as all his own ideas and improvements for the shooters would now be made useless, and –
Peter blinked, reality suddenly catching up with him.
Oh, right. For a moment, he had actually forgotten.
Peter chuckled humorlessly to himself, staring at his wrists with a wry grin. It had been a long time since something had made him forget like that.
Looking up, Peter glanced around the room of his attic, leaning back against the wall with a sigh. Webs hung from nearly every possible place in the small room. It looked vaguely like a room in a haunted house at Halloween, as though a million spiders had decided to make their home here and had insisted on decorating. Peter supposed that in a way, that was true.
He'd arrived back at the attic sometime before dawn. He'd hardly bothered to look round to see if the coast was clear before he started crawling up the side of the wall. He'd slipped and slid a few times, his fingers still refusing to work properly, before he'd finally made it to the window. Once he'd made it inside he had practically collapsed onto his bed, and hadn't woken until late afternoon the next day.
He still felt like rubbish. He figured that was why his ability to climb was being screwed up; that whatever they'd done to him in that lab, whether it was from the attempted vivisection or the chemicals they'd gassed him with, it had messed with his abilities. It had given him new ones, apparently, but in the meantime decided to screw around with the ones that he already had. Once everything aligned itself properly, it would all get better.
He hoped.
Peter winced as he moved onto the mattress, his shoulder throbbing with pain. He pressed his hand against it, massaging what he could to relieve what little pain he was able. The bullet was still lodged inside, his skin now a dark black and the colour spreading. He had tried digging it out a few hours ago with a knife, but between how deep it was and how painful it had been, he hadn't been able to succeed. Just twenty minutes after the attempt, the skin had already scabbed over and was attempting to heal once more. That was at least forty minutes faster than normal, and Peter was left wondering what other changes to his body there were.
Speaking of changes….
Peter lifted up the bottom of his shirt, taking in sight before him.
The scar ran from just below his clavicle all the way down to his sternum. It was still an angry and vivid red, though the skin was puckered in a poor attempt at healing. Or perhaps just a slow attempt. Whatever the Goblin had used on him, it wasn't letting his body – even as it now was – heal it completely. It were as though it felt that Peter needed a permanent reminder of the event, refusing to let him tuck himself away in his small corner of the world and act as though nothing had happened.
Peter didn't know what he should do. Logically he knew that the bullet needed to come out, that unless he wanted to risk further infection and permanent damage, it had to be removed. Except that he didn't know any way that he could do that, aside from doing it himself. Though he'd failed once already, it was clearly still the only option he had.
He'd have to get liquor, of some kind, to dull the pain. And something to extract the bullet with that wouldn't tear up his shoulder further. Both would be easy to find, but not so easy to obtain. He'd only been able to save up a little bit of money, all of which was supposed to be used when he turned eighteen and was able to finally get out of this place. He hadn't touched a dime of it for nearly two years since he started saving; he didn't exactly feel thrilled at the idea of using it now, for something as ridiculous as this.
The only other choice, then, was to steal. And it may very well be what he'd have to do. He'd stolen before, when times had gotten particularly rough. He'd hated every minute of it, every second, but when it had been between that and starving, he'd chosen the former.
Peter shivered, a chill running through his body. He looked up at the window, where white, grey clouds covered the sky. He stood to his feet, ignoring the numerous strings of webbing that brushed over him as he walked.
He stood at the window for a few moments, simply staring at the familiar buildings outside nearby and skyscrapers in the distance. Even though the window was closed, he could still practically taste the snow in the air that would fall within the hour.
The last two winters had been horrible. Stuck in an attic with no heat and not even walled insulation, Peter had spent many a cold night on his lumpy mattress with nothing but a jacket and a thin blanket.
He wondered vaguely if spiders hibernated, as there had been more than one time when he'd gone to sleep, swearing it was a Sunday, only to wake up and find newspapers for the following Thursday – sometimes even Saturday – out on the news stands. It was a bit jarring, but for the most part Peter had ignored it. When every single day was the same as the last, none of the days really mattered.
Peter wrapped his arms around himself, shivering once more before turning round and heading back to the mattress. He sat down on it with a thud, grabbing his blanket and throwing it around his shoulders. He laid down, curling into the corner, and closed his eyes, hoping that when he woke, it would be his eighteenth birthday.
Even better, maybe he'd never wake up at all.
The next two days were spent experimenting with his webs, shooting them this way and that, seeing just how similar and dissimilar they were to the web-shooters he had once known. He found the webbing to be just as he'd thought, in that they were stronger than the solution-based webs he'd made himself. The tensile strength, the flexibility – they were all just a bit stronger, a bit better than the chemical. How this was and whether or not it would actually hold up to scrutiny, Peter didn't know. But it was fascinating all the same.
The bullet wound was getting progressively worse.
Peter had secretly been wishing that somehow, someway his body would push the bullet out on its own; that whatever healing ability he had before was enhanced along with the rest of his powers, and that their reach could go as far as self-expulsion of foreign objects. It didn't.
He'd have to go outside. That was the long and short of it. He'd been avoiding it, hoping that he could get better on his own, that he wouldn't have to cut into his own tissue and muscle and dig around until he managed to find and pull out a bullet of who-knew how small. He'd been able to do that Before, when he'd gained wounds that might've been too serious for a human, but were too inane for the Avengers, leaving him to instead wait it out until they healed on their own. He'd gotten pretty good at stitching himself up; now if only his body would do the same now.
But it hadn't. And Peter knew, logically, that it wouldn't; not until the bullet was out. The rising heat in his skin and headache behind his eyes spoke that loud and clear. His body had slowed down the wound's effects for a few days, but Peter knew that he couldn't wait any longer.
Which meant he had to leave – now.
With a heavy sigh, Peter stood and made his way to the window. He opened it, shivering as a cold breeze blew in. Stepping up and crouching onto the sill, he looked down at the ground below. He tucked his mouth against his good shoulder and coughed; the fact that there was snow on the ground but he was still feeling hot was a strong hint that he had to get going. Or that he should have gone long before.
The question was, would his fingers work? Peter had figured that the reason they'd stopped before – or become very unreliable – was because of the change to his abilities, to the change in his molecules and his body. It had been nearly four days now since he'd escaped the Goblin, so surely everything was stabilized now, right? He had climbed around on the walls and ceiling of the attic while he'd been testing his webs, and everything had been all right; but the difference between a fifteen-foot drop and fifty-foot drop was a tad bit big, and Peter wasn't sure how his body would take the fall.
A wave of nausea fell over him, and Peter swallowed. It was time to go.
Stepping out onto the wall, Peter held tightly to the window sill until finally, with a deep breath, he let go.
He stayed.
Wasting no time, Peter quickly scurried down the wall, glancing this way and that to make sure that he was alone. Not that it would really matter at this point, if he hadn't been. Right now he just needed to get a big bottle of whiskey, some sort of tweezers, and a piece of wood to bite onto. Self-surgery was a bitch.
Stepping onto the ground, Peter wrapped his thin jacket tight around his body, and began to walk.
Liquor stores were the obvious place to hit. But being the obvious, they were also the ones with the most security cameras. And a guy that looked and dressed like him, walking into a place like that, was bound to be watched like a hawk the moment he stepped foot inside.
So a convenience store it was then. The open-air ones would be the easiest. He could be in and out in fifteen seconds, and he was certain he wouldn't be caught. Thieves were known for having "sticky fingers", but lucky for Peter, his actually were.
The tweezers he would have to find somewhere else. A pharmacy, perhaps. But the more higher-end the store, the more out of place he would be. And he couldn't just walk into a store with a bottle of liquor in his hands. So he'd have to find a place to store the liquor, that he'd be able to get quickly to later. It would have to be hidden so no one else could find it….
Peter hummed to himself, which turned into a cough. Maybe he'd have to get the tweezers first. Then he could get in and out of the liquor store with both items, and then finding the piece of wood would be easy as pie. He could just break a piece of the flooring in the attic if he had to, and –
The back of Peter's neck ran cold as his hair stood up, and a second later he could hear the sounds of people fighting. A woman screamed.
Peter steeled himself and began looking around, trying to find another corridor of an alley that he could escape down; some place where he could quickly walk away from the noise of anger and distress until he could no longer hear a thing.
But there were no other alleyways. He could only go straight or turn around. But going straight would mean passing the alley to the right up ahead, where the sounds of fighting were coming from, and Peter didn't want to do that.
He always avoided these situations before he could see them. If he could see them, it would only make it all the more difficult to look the other way. But if he avoided them, he could always pretend the noises weren't as bad as they seemed, and could believe that right after he'd left, help had come.
Lies were a far easier pill to swallow than the truth.
Peter took a deep breath and continued to walk. Eyes straight, never turning, never stopping, never looking over to see what was happening. Don't turn. Don't stop. Don't look, don't look, don't look –
The body being thrown in front of him and crashing into the wall, however, was difficult to ignore, and on instinct Peter's head snapped up and he looked to the right.
There were seven men that were surrounded around one man, who was fighting ferociously back. A woman lay on the ground, her jacket and blouse ripped open, a trail of blood lining down her lip.
Looking at the men, Peter knew instantly that it was a gang. The fact that they weren't fighting each other, but every single one was focused on the one man fighting back, proved as much. Peter was surprised at how good the man was, at how he was still standing, when –
The men shifted as they fought, and Peter froze as familiar features reached his eyes.
The man that they were fighting, the person that was holding his own against seven other men, was –
Was Clint Barton.
It took Peter a long moment to realise that what he was seeing was real, that the person that was currently trying to fight off seven other men was actually Clint Barton – was actually Hawkeye.
He was in civilian clothes, wearing a jacket and jeans, a pair of mittens tossed a few feet away on the ground. He was using nothing but his fists, and Peter wondered why on earth he wasn't using his bow. It was only when his eyes scanned the ground did he see it off in the corner by the wall. Peter frowned, his wide eyes looking back up at the fight. Clearly, whoever these people were, they were very good if they were able to actually disarm an Avenger.
The woman suddenly turned and looked round, before looking up and catching his eye. Her own eyes were wide and filled with terror.
"P-please," she said, "please, help – help, he – there's too many, he needs help –."
Peter shirked back at the sudden attention, lowering his chin into his jacket.
This was exactly what he'd always been wanting to avoid; if people saw him, they might ask for his help. And he wasn't in that business anymore; he didn't want to be involved with anything like that, he didn't want to catch anyone's attention, he didn't want to be on anyone's radar, he –
"Sir, please!"
He couldn't. Clint was an Avenger, he could more than take care of himself. He'd fought against aliens in the attack on New York, he'd fought in the fight against Thanos, he'd fought everything in-between. He wasn't on Tony's contact list for nothing, he wasn't an Avenger for nothing, he –
"Sir, if you can't, then please – please let me use your phone, or – or please call for help, please he – he's fighting seven men, he can't keep going and –."
Everything in Peter screamed at him to leave, and to leave now. He needed to go, to get out of here. Clint was taking care of himself, he didn't need any help, he was an Avenger, he was a skilled assassin, he was –
He was losing.
Clint – Hawkeye – was falling. The seven men that surrounded him were getting their own injuries sure enough, but – but they were getting their own punches in, as well. Too many of them. They were getting too many punches in, and… and….
But it was impossible. Clint was an Avenger, that was no easy club to get into, he couldn't – he couldn't possibly – he couldn't actually be losing –
Peter would call the police. He'd run and find the nearest way out onto the street, then run and find the nearest police officer, or someone with a phone, or –
One of the men who had been nearer to the back of the group pulled away, his eyes dancing around until they landed on the woman. A large smile revealed crooked, yellow teeth, and the gleam in his eyes spoke clearly what was going through his mind. He began walking towards her and the woman screamed, pushing herself back as fast as she could, but there was no way she'd be able to escape, there was no way Hawkeye could get to her, and –
The woman screamed again.
Something inside Peter snapped, and before he could even think a second thought he was suddenly running forward. His hand shot out and seized the man's arm just as it was about to grab onto the woman, stopping it in its tracks.
The man jerked and his head snapped up, startled. He stared at Peter for a moment with wide eyes, before the lop-sided grin returned. "I don't think you really want to get involved with this one, mate."
The man pulled his arm hard, and it was clear from the subsequently confused lines etching his face that he'd thought the move would free him. Instead, his arm didn't even move an inch. He looked up at Peter, his smile flickering with a hint of anger. "All right then, if you really want to play."
He turned and swung his foot, kicking Peter in the side of the leg. Peter, however, barely felt a single thing, and his grip on the man's arm tightened. He pulled the man back, taking him as far away from the woman as he could.
The man fought. He kicked and punched like a madman, but Peter dodged and blocked every single one. The man continued to try and wrench his arm free of Peter's grasp, but Peter had an iron grip on his wrist and wasn't letting go.
The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly tingled, and Peter could feel the coming punch that was heading straight towards the back of his head.
Peter instinctively moved his head to left, dodging the punch completely. He let his grip on the first man go and turned his full attention to the new one now in front of him. They traded kicks and punches for a few moments before both men decided to try and punch his head from both the back and the front at the same time. In an instant Peter dropped to the ground and swept his leg in an entire circle, bringing both men crashing down onto the cement.
A third man arrived, and the fight continued.
It was like riding a bicycle. He hadn't done it in what felt like an age, but he still knew exactly to do, which punches to pull and which to take. It was like a dance that Peter had thought he'd forgotten, but his body still knew every step.
Peter finally knocked one man to the ground and he stayed down, curling into himself in pain. Another man arrived to replace him and instantly Peter lifted his leg, and kicked. The man was sent flying back through the air across the alley, until he finally crashed against a brick wall, where he promptly fell to the ground in a heap and didn't get back up.
Peter continued to spar with the two other men for a few more minutes, before finally getting in a good punch to both and sending them unconscious to the ground to join the rest.
Peter could hear Clint's racing heartbeat, could hear his ragged breaths before he even saw him. Peter's head finally snapped round, his eyes quickly latching onto the last three men that still surrounded the Avenger. Finally, Peter could see Clint's face more clearly.
It wasn't good.
He had blood streaming down his face and bruises were already starting to form all across it. His eyes, though starting to cloud, were still filled with anger and fight. But he was still losing.
Peter didn't wait any longer.
Reaching the conflict, Peter quickly pulled one of the men back and punched him squarely in the sternum. The man immediately crumpled to the ground, and another kick sent him skidding off down the alley.
Another punch came towards the back of his head and Peter again dodged it effortlessly, turning back round to engage with yet another fight.
He sensed the punch coming towards his gut before it hit, knowing he wouldn't be able to dodge but that he could take it easily. He didn't sense the knife in the man's hand, however, and didn't realise it was there until it had already gone into his side.
Though the knife had gone well below his chest and into his lower abdomen, it still felt as though someone had punched him in the back and ripped all the air from his lungs.
Peter stumbled back, momentarily stunned. He shook his head, trying to get his senses back again, just as a second punch came straight towards his head. Before it collided, though, the man was suddenly thrown to the side, his head smacking the cement with a loud crack, knocking him unconscious.
Peter looked up to see Hawkeye standing in front of him, the final gang member on the ground behind him.
They stared at each other for a brief moment, before Hawkeye promptly collapsed.
Peter rushed forward, barely catching his head before it hit the cement.
"H-Hawkeye. Hawkeye, Clint, are you – where are you hurt, are you –."
"M-my back," Clint said through clenched teeth, his face twisting in pain as Peter moved him. "Th-they got – they got my back, left… the lower left…."
Peter turned the older man onto his side, running his hand across his back until he finally felt the warm smear of blood against his fingers. By the vacant look on Clint's face and what little he knew of anatomy, Peter knew the stab-wound wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.
Panic began to course through Peter's body. They needed help, they needed help right now. If they didn't, Hawkeye would either lose an organ, or bleed out, or –
Peter heard whimpering behind him and his head snapped round, his eyes meeting the terrified ones of the woman, who was still laying on the ground.
"Y-you need to go," he managed to get out. "Go. You need to go get help, he's bleeding, he needs help, he –."
The woman blinked, then nodded once before shakily getting to her feet. In a moment she had disappeared around the corner and was gone.
Peter stared after her for a moment, his heart beating loudly in his chest, before he turned back to Hawkeye. By the look on his face and the ashing of his skin, it was clear that unless the woman could find someone in the next few minutes, they were screwed.
There was only one other option.
"Clint," he said, turning back to the man whose eyes were now closed. Peter tapped the side of his face, trying to wake him up. "Clint, where's your comm? Where's your comm, Clint?!"
Clint blinked, staring up into the sky for a few moments before finally seeming to register what Peter had asked. "Right… right pocket."
Everyone that Tony considered important – well, anyone he considered might be a prime candidate for at-risk situations, anyway – got a communicator that they were told to take with them wherever they went. It was really nothing more than an old-school pager, but smaller; it was activated by either the use of your fingerprint or a voice command, which would then send an SOS beacon to the Avenger's compound and alert any Avenger nearby that you were in distress.
Peter instinctively pressed his thumb against the sensor, but of course nothing happened. He swore, white specks starting to dance in front of his eyes and he squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep breath as he fought against the pain in his side and the throb in his shoulder, which had been hit more times than he could count. He tapped the comm twice, and a small beep responded.
"Send –," he coughed, "send a message to T-Tony Stark – Clint's been stabbed, he needs help, send – send someone to get help, or –."
"Voice authorization not recognized," a tinny voice spoke from the communicator. "Please try again."
"God dammit," Peter swore, and he shoved the communicator up to Hawkeye's mouth, gripping the man's shoulder with his other hand. "Tell it to send help," he said. Hawkeye didn't respond, and Peter started shaking him. "Clint! Clint, tell the damn thing to send help! Just tell it to get help, or send an SOS or something –."
Clint's eyes partially opened, and he looked down at the comm. Thankfully he seemed to understand what he was trying to do, as he coughed a few times, then spoke. "S...send for h-help. Send… help…."
The comm beeped once, then started flashing red. Peter nearly collapsed with relief, crumpling against Clint as the adrenaline in his body slowly started to abate.
Peter stayed still for only a few moments, before starting to move.
He had to leave, he had to get out of here. He still needed to find a bottle of alcohol, he still needed to find something to dig the bullet out of his shoulder, and if he didn't leave now he doubted he'd have the strength to move at all, which meant he had to start standing and… and….
Peter suddenly became very aware of how hot his body was, and he vaguely remembered that he'd been running a fever. Well, as much as he could tell by only himself, anyway. It wasn't like he had a thermometer or anything like that, so he couldn't know for sure, but he was fairly certain he'd been starting to get one – or already had one – before, and he doubted that fevers much enjoyed getting thrown around like he'd just done. Or was it that his body that didn't like being thrown around? Weren't they the exact same thing? They felt like the same thing. His entire body felt like it was burning from the inside out, and Peter was certain that damned bullet wound was to blame, so all he had to do was just stand on his own two feet and get up and walk and find some alcohol, and – and –
The headache that had taken a back seat to the rest of the afternoon's events suddenly made itself known again in full force, exploding inside his temples. Peter dug the palms of his hands into his eyes, groaning in pain.
God, but he was tired. That's all he ever seemed to be now, tired. Drained. Exhausted. Whether it was because he was living on a homeless-man's diet or because he had the metabolism of a lion, he didn't know. Probably both. So really, all he needed to do was find some food and get some sleep and then he'd be fine, surely he'd be fine, and then he could go back to finding some alcohol – some whiskey, something that would burn, something that would burn all the fire away – and then he would dig his fingers into his skin and pull out that damned bullet, he would… he would….
Peter wasn't aware of when he fell to the ground, only that one minute the world was right side up, and the next Leonardo DiCaprio had turned it all onto its side. Maybe that's all that this was; maybe this was all just a dream, a very vivid, horrible dream. A dream within a dream. Or more accurately, a nightmare within a nightmare. Which meant that all he needed to do to get out of it was to die. He could die, and then wake up, and then everything would be as it once was; everything would be back to normal. He'd have Ned, he'd have MJ, he'd have Tony, he'd have Aunt May – but not Andrew. Not stupid, moronic Andrew. Andrew could get kicked to the curb, because Andrew didn't belong. He didn't belong in any of this. He could go far away, far, far away where no one else could find him, where he could be by himself, where he could continue being alone, where he could always be alone, and… and….
Peter closed his eyes, and the world went black.