Spider-Man: Legacy

Peter Parker laid awake in his bed next to his wife Mary Jane Watson. Though Mary Jane, or MJ, as he called her, was a heavy sleeper, he was still terrified of waking her up to do something he knew she wouldn't approve of. After almost an hour of lying in bed, he finally mustered up the courage to get out of it and retrieve a small box he had hidden under the bed days earlier. He opened the box to reveal the red and blue suit he had designed 25 years earlier, the suit of none other than the amazing Spider-Man.

Peter had retired his crime-fighting secret identity seven years earlier as a response to the government passing the Superhuman Registration Act, which would have made it impossible for him to keep the identity a secret. He also had a son with Mary Jane, Stanley Parker, who had no idea that Peter was Spider-Man, something he and his wife agreed to keep Stanley in the dark about for his own safety. Peter knew all the reasons to never put the suit on again, but as he held it in his arms, all he could think about was all the people he had helped, all the people he could help if he brought Spider-Man out of retirement. New York still had its heroes, all of them registered under the Act, but none were as committed to helping the city as Peter had been. They would occasionally get cats down from trees, maybe even save people from a burning building every now and again, but that just made them firefighters in flashy costumes, not true deterrents to crime as Spider-Man had been.

New York tried its hardest to suppress the figures, but crime had skyrocketed in the city since Spider-Man's well-publicized disappearance. There were copycats, but the Spider-Men swinging around with artificial webs shooting out of expensive devices sold by companies, including one of the main lobbyists for the SRA in Stark Industries, usually didn't last long. If these Spider-Wannabes didn't end up killing themselves, the criminals they tried to fight were more than happy to do it for them. There could only be one Spider-Man, and Peter knew it had to be him. The years of emboldened criminals littering the city with bodies and stealing everything they could get their hands on wasn't enough to spur Peter back into action by itself, however. The biggest factor motivating Peter to become Spider-Man again was much, much more personal.

Three months before, Peter had gotten a call from the hospice facility taking care of his Aunt May.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Parker," said the man on the other line with the manufactured empathy of someone who had clearly said something similar to that a million times.

"No, no, no," whimpered Peter, who refused to accept what had become inevitable at that point as his aunt's health continued to decline.

"We did everything we could, but she's gone."

Gone.

Peter never got to tell Aunt May about his secret identity, but he suspected that she knew about it, anyway. He had visited her every weekend, and he wanted nothing more than to be there when she passed. Mary Jane tried her best to comfort Peter as he grieved, but nothing she did worked. Every night since he got that call, just like this night, he lay awake in bed for hours with those words from May's late husband, Ben. repeating in his head:

With great power comes great responsibility.

Great responsibility.

Peter stood outside in his suit, which fit just as well as it did when he was 18. Memories from his 18 years of fighting crime rushed into his mind all at once, and for the first time since he learned of May's death, he felt relaxed. He told Mary Jane that he destroyed the suit shortly after he retired, but instead, he put it in a storage locker a few blocks away from where they were. He suspected he might want to bring Spidey back sometime in the future, and he decided that he would do just that a week earlier, taking the suit out of the storage locker and bringing it back home where it would be ready for him to don it and head into the city at the most dangerous times of night. He held the box in his hands, which no longer had the suit but had his pants, shirt, wallet, and cell phone in it now.

The cell phone vibrated. Peter took it out and read the notification on it.

"Shooting at West 31st Street. Time to go," said Peter.

Peter put the cell phone back into the box, hid the box behind some bushes, and jumped as high into the air as he could before pressing down on his right palm with his middle and ring fingers. A long string of web shot out of his wrist and latched onto a high-rise apartment down the street. He did the same with his left palm as he swung on the web, and another string of web shot out and attached itself to another tall building. He continued doing this as he headed to West 31st Street, needing no GPS even at night as New York's skyline had been burned into his memory from years of swinging through the city.

As he reached where the shooting was reported, he saw a body lying there. He landed next to the body, which belonged to a young Hispanic man, and felt his pulse.

"I'm too late," whispered Peter.

He looked in every direction, and as he turned his head to an alley in the northeast, his head began to throb.

"Bingo," said Peter, recognizing the warning from his spider-sense.

Peter swung into the alley, which was pitch black as there were no working streetlights. He stuck his hands and feet to the side of a building and waited for the assailants to reveal themselves.

"He had a good amount on him. Not enough to pay us what he owes, but a good amount, neva-da-less," said a man in the alley, who had a thick Italian accent.

"Let's get this to the boss before the cops come," said another man with a similar accent.

"No can do!" said Peter, who then jumped to where he heard the voices come from.

Lights began to flash in the darkness as the men shot at Peter. Peter was able to avoid most of the bullets, but one hit him in the arm, causing him tremendous pain. Peter was able to knock the guns away with quick web shots, and he dodged the punches thrown at him by the now-disarmed men.

"What are you?" asked one of the men. "Another guy pretending he's Spider-Man?"

"No," said Peter. "I'm not pretending to be anything."

Peter returned a punch to one man, knocking him out immediately. The other man, seeing this, ran out of the alley.

"Oh no, you don't!" said Peter, wrapping the unconscious man in webbing and carrying him as he followed the other man out of the alley.

Peter aimed webs at the escaping man's ankles, causing him to fall to the ground.

"No! Please!" begged the man. "I...I was just following orders!"

"Get better orders, then," said Peter before shooting a blast of webbing at the man's mouth, muffling the rest of his speech.

Peter wrapped the second man in webbing the same way he wrapped the first and left them both next to the man they killed as he swung away. The pain in his right arm, which had taken the bullet wound, started to overwhelm him once the adrenaline of his fight with the gangsters wore off. Unable to swing anymore, he rested on the roof of a building, taking off his mask and taking a deep breath.

"What are you doing, Peter?" he said to himself. "You have a wife, you've got a kid. You can't start this up again."

As Peter looked over the city, taking in a view he knew he could never afford to buy despite what he made as Stark Industries' top physicist, he realized that he couldn't stop. He wasn't as strong as he had been in his 20s, not as agile, not as much of a force of nature, but he knew that he could get there again. He tested his right arm by squeezing it. It still hurt a lot, but he believed he could at least get home with it. He swung home, trying his best to ignore the pain, and retrieved the box with his shirt, pants, wallet, and phone from behind the bush where he hid it. He took the suit off and put his pants back on before going into his apartment and into his room, where he was relieved to find Mary Jane still asleep.

Peter walked into their restroom and turned on the light, finding his shirtless, unremarkable body in the mirror. He saw the bullet wound in his right arm, which was deep. He wished he could see a doctor about it, but it would lead to questions he did not want to answer. He put on a YouTube video about treating bullet wounds on his phone and tried his best to imitate its instructions. After nearly 20 minutes, he was able to get the bullet out with tweezers then sanitize and wrap the hole in his arm. It had been a long time since he had taken a bullet, and even longer since he had to treat the wound himself, as Mary Jane had done it every time since they had gotten together.

Though Mary Jane was initially supportive of his work as Spider-Man, she became more apprehensive as the years went by. The day she found out she was pregnant with Stanley was the first day she had suggested retiring Spider-Man to Peter, a suggestion he refused to even consider. In the eight years following that, Mary Jane continued to ask Peter to give up on Spider-Man and focus more on his family. Peter's answer was the same every time. They began to fight more and more about it, with Mary Jane accusing him of putting himself and the glory he got from putting on the red suit and fighting bad guys over his responsibilities as a husband and father. Peter always countered that what he was doing helped to keep the city safe for her and Stanley and that she knew he and Spider-Man were a package deal from the moment they started dating.

Sometimes, the fights got really bad, and he had to spend the night at Aunt May's.

Peter was almost grateful for the Superhuman Registration Act forcing him to retire Spider-Man, as he didn't think his marriage would have lasted much longer if he hadn't. Their marriage had been great in the seven years since Spider-Man's retirement. Mary Jane was happy, Stanley was happy, and Peter was happy, too, in a way. The joy that came with swinging around the city and matching wits as well as fists with troublemakers could not be replicated at home no matter how much he tried, though. Tonight was the happiest he had been in seven years, and even with a hole in his arm, he knew he couldn't stop.

And he wouldn't stop.

Peter put his shirt back on and hid the box, which only had his suit inside of it now, under his bed. He got back into bed with Mary Jane, who didn't move at all. Though sleeping had been a frustrating experience for Peter since Aunt May's death, it wasn't anymore. After getting into bed with his wife, Peter was asleep in minutes.

Agent Sharon Carter walked into Director Nick Fury's office at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.

"Whatever you brought me in for this early in the morning had better be good," said Carter.

"It is," said Fury. "We have evidence that Spider-Man has finally come out of hiding."

"There's a new Spider-Man in New York every week," said Carter, rolling her eyes.

"Based on the sample we got of the webbing from his gift to the NYPD last night, I'm convinced that this Spider-Man is the real deal."

"All right. Let's say that he is. What's the plan for bringing him in?"

"If he showed up last night, he'll likely show up again. We're going to have eyes and ears all over New York City. If Spider-Man shows up again, we'll subdue him, and we'll give him a choice: come here and register like every other living superhuman in America has done, or join the ranks of the other superhumans who refused to register with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"But you just said every other living superhuman has registered with us?"

Nick Fury took a sip of his coffee and smiled.

"Exactly," he said.

Carter nodded, understanding exactly what Fury suggested.

"That's not the only reason I brought you here, though," said Fury. "What's the status of the Scorpion suit?"

"It's almost finished," said Carter. "Whoever wears this suit will be more powerful than any superhuman we've registered, likely more powerful than Spider-Man, too."

"We'll know for sure soon," said Fury. "You're dismissed."

Carter nodded again and left the office.

Author's Note: So, I've got a new fanfic that seeks to continue the story of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films, with enough of a time gap between where Spider-Man 3 ends and where this story begins that I can have it take place in a world that's a lot different and more interesting, with many new heroes and villains and everything in-between. I'm not going to reference any of the multiverse elements that were introduced in the Spider-Verse films or in Spider-Man: No Way Home for the sake of simplicity, but I may borrow from those films and from everything in the wider Spider-Man canon and Marvel canon, just like Raimi's movies and the movies that came after his did. You can already see some of that with references to the Superhuman Registration Act that ignited the Civil War in the comics, as well as the brief scene at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters that ended this chapter. I do want to tell an exciting, unique story about what I believe Raimi's Spider-Man universe could look like decades after we last visited it, but I also don't want to ignore what has happened with Marvel in general in film the last 15 years, and this is a story that I believe will give us the best of both worlds, so definitely keep following it if you're interested in seeing what happens from here.