Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it came from the films or the comics, even if I flatter myself that I've put my own spin on things.

Feedback: All constructive comments or appreciative observations are welcome

AN: Another relatively short chapter, but I feel it's important to establish the kind of world the Avengers are dealing with in the immediately post-Snap reality; hope you enjoy this further bit of world-building.

The First and the Last

It would still take time for the world as a whole to get back to any kind of normal, but as he swung through the air above the streets of New York a couple of months after the Snap, Peter allowed himself to enjoy the simple pleasures of being Spider-Man, one of the few true happy experiences left to him since that museum trip was interrupted by Thanos's forces. The wider world was still working on adjusting to the sheer scale of everything that had happened, ranging from governments trying to re-establish themselves to delivery services getting back into operation, but Peter felt like he personally had done everything he could do as Spider-Man to contribute to sorting that particular mess out, which meant finding a balance between being Peter Parker and Spider-Man.

When he actually got back to school, it had almost been disturbing how empty the building was. With the academic year so close to ending before the Snap, quite a few of the surviving students hadn't bothered to come back for the last few weeks in favour of dealing with the new situation. Signs had been set up all around the building to direct people to their new classes after they got back, and from what Peter had heard education boards across the country were still working out what would be done regarding exams after the sheer scale of damage caused by the Snap. There were even plans to merge some schools together just to avoid having to face the scale of the loss, with plans being made to close some schools and transfer students and staff to more established buildings to consolidate everything and take some financial strain off the survivors.

Peter thought he'd heard about plans to do something similar to the merged school idea for various businesses, but right now his priority had to be his own academic career; he couldn't control the wider issues, so it was best to focus on what he could control at the moment. He'd taken his own end-of-year exams mainly to get them out of the way, but there had only been a few other students present, and from what he had heard most of them were the ones who had been 'lucky' enough to only lose a couple of people in the Snap. Orphanages had been forced to rapidly expand to serve as temporary housing until suitable relatives could be found to take in at least some of the children, but even with companies like Stark Enterprises doing their best to help out, there was only so much the world could do to cope with the sheer scale of the loss they had just suffered. Even after the last few weeks since the Snap, whenever Peter went out on the streets, either walking or swinging, he saw so many shops closed, putting him in mind of a zombie film or some kind of dystopian future after everything had been devastated by some horrible event. It was never clear if the shops had closed because all the staff had dusted, if the owner had been lost and nobody wanted to take over, or some variation between the two, but the end result was all that mattered.

Peter wondered if he should feel guilty that he had relatively fallen on his feet in this particular mess, but told himself that he couldn't focus on worrying about that kind of thing. It wasn't as though his situation was completely unique, given all the other Stark Enterprises people receiving this kind of support from the company; he was just the only one getting Ms Potts' personal attention, and it wasn't like it was his 'fault' that he had been in a position to get noticed like that.

Like always when he was out swinging these days, as the sun began to set, Peter's mind found himself drifting back to his thoughts on the wider global situation since the Snap. Society was still working on rebuilding itself, but one obvious benefit so far was that at least the Accords had been basically called off. With Secretary/General/whatever-his-title-was Ross one of the victims of the Snap, the whole idea of the Accords had lost its most powerful supporter, and given how Mr Stark had set himself up as the 'face' of the Accords for the heroes his own death meant that the general public didn't have anyone they trusted to say that the Accords were a good thing.

OK, Peter had seen a few articles where certain people tried to argue that the Avengers could have stopped Thanos if they'd been united under the Accords from the start, but other people had swiftly pointed out that if the Avengers had been forced to answer to a committee they probably wouldn't have been able to mobilise any kind of defence against Thanos's army at all. Peter appreciated that he'd been off-world while the main team had been mobilised, but from what he'd heard about the Accords, it was unlikely that any committee would have been ready to let the team come together without clear evidence of what Thanos was up to, which the Avengers couldn't have provided at the time. Once the Avengers had been able to confirm that Thanos and his army were dead, the rest of the world had been far more prepared to actually vote against the Accords, as opposed to when they had basically voted in favour of what the government told them was a good idea after everything went wrong at Lagos. The end result was that the Accords had been officially ended (or repealed, or whatever the term was when a piece of legislation stopped being enforced), and the Avengers allowed to go back to work with full pardons for those who had been against the Accords and were still alive (there was some work being done to give a posthumous pardon for the dead Avengers, but Peter understood that people didn't want to push for too much too fast).

That said, even with the Accords no longer a thing, Peter wasn't entirely sure what the current situation with the Avengers actually was. With Ms Potts having inherited control of Stark Enterprises, she'd discreetly taken over funding for the Avengers once again, even if the team at this point was primarily Colonel Rhodes and Ms Romanoff. Captain Rogers was apparently keeping himself available but was pursuing other projects at the moment, and Thor had apparently left Earth to try and find any other survivors after the destruction of his planet (Peter had to wonder how Thor was coping after suffering what sounded like so many serious losses in such a short amount of time).

Peter had asked about Doctor Banner, but all he'd been told was that the scientist was working on his 'relationship' with the Hulk in some way that nobody felt inclined to talk more about, and Peter had chosen to respect that. He'd heard vague comments about Hawkeye having survived the Snap and gone underground for some reason, but he'd never felt comfortable asking for more information, especially since he'd never really met Hawkeye even during the fight at Leipzig Airport, so he didn't know what that was all about. Carol was alternating her time between Earth and the rest of the galaxy, so Peter could never be sure when she'd come by and see him (and he was not going to focus on why that was such a big deal to him right now). Nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened to Ant-Man, Vision had been killed when Thanos took the Mind Stone, and obviously Black Panther, Falcon, Winter Soldier and Scarlet Witch had been victims of the Snap…

Do I really deserve to be there?

Peter wasn't even sure if he was ready to consider himself part of the Avengers after everything that had gone down. Right now, he wasn't even sure what he was going to do once he had finished school, or even how he was going to finish it. Ms Potts had offered to sponsor him for applying to get a GED, but Peter had decided that he wanted to at least finish school on his own rather than jumping ahead like that. It was a purely symbolic victory in the grand scheme of things, but he felt as though getting his diploma the regular way would be another way to confirm that Thanos hadn't done that much damage to them overall.

Maybe the Mad Titan had expected them to be 'grateful' for giving them so many resources or something like that, but as far as Peter was concerned, he and others would continue to live in spite of what Thanos had done, rather than because of it. He wouldn't rely on Ms Potts for anything more than the basic essentials he needed to get by on his own, but he'd stand or fall as a student or a hero on his own merits.

A part of him wished that he could talk more about it with his peers as Peter Parker, but he didn't want to risk attracting too many questions to his out-of-school activities. With Ned gone, he'd lost his best friend and the guy who'd be most willing to help cover for him, and he didn't know anyone else in school well enough to start trying to bond with them. The remaining Avengers were more Spider-Man's colleagues than Peter Parker's friends right now, and maybe he'd get up the nerve to talk with some new people at school eventually if the planned merge went through, but right now he was just trying to find his feet…

Peter was just about to swing away when he heard the sound of smashing glass from further down a street. Quickly adjusting direction, he launched a new line of webbing towards the sound, and his gaze soon fell on the broken window of an electronics shop with three people gathered outside it, carrying boxes out of the building towards the van just outside. This was one of the more deserted streets Peter had found in the city since the Snap, and with the sun having gone down most of the places that were still open had closed by now, so whether the targeted shop was still in business or not was almost unimportant to anyone else.

Of course, that's not to say that I'm going to just let them off…

"Seriously, people?" Spider-Man looked down critically at the group of thieves as he came in to land on top of the nearest lamppost, fighting back the urge to laugh as he saw them wearing bandanas of all things. "You really decided to embrace all the clichés here, didn't you?"

"Crap!" one of the men said, basically dropping the large television screen he'd been carrying and running off down the street, only for Peter to grab him with a web-line and pull him back. Leaving the runner hanging from the lamppost, Spider-Man jumped down and fired a couple of web-pellets at the feet of the man who had been left holding the other side of the television screen, basically trapping him to the ground. That dealt with, Peter turned to the third man, standing by the van they had been loading the goods into, who was now pointing a gun at Spider-Man even as his arms shook.

"You really think that's going to do anything?" Peter said, rolling his eyes under his mask. "The stealing wasn't a bad idea in itself, but you really went too far with the clichés-"

"Hey, I'm desperate here; my job-!"

"You think you're the only person who got a bad break?" the web-slinger glared at the thief. "Trust me, we've all suffered losses because of the Snap, but you don't get to act like you deserve to steal things right now when so many other people in your position aren't doing that."

The thief stared at him in frustration for a moment, but Peter ended the stand-off by firing a web-line at the gun and yanking it out of the man's hand. Looking at the weapon in his hands, Peter noted that, while it was just a standard gun rather than the Chitauri tech he'd seen being used by Liz's father and his gang, this weapon looked a bit shinier than he'd expect for something in the hands of a street punk who had just admitted to being 'desperate'.

"Nice gun," Peter said, before looking at the other man with a cooler glare that he hoped was properly reflected in his mask's gaze. "So where did you get this?"

He wasn't sure if what he was about to do was overreaching his authority as an Avenger (assuming that he had any explicit authority in this kind of situation), but this gun looked a bit more elaborate than the kind of thing he'd expect some random street punk to have gotten his hands on, particularly with the world still trying to find itself after the Snap.

Maybe it was just a small detail in the grand scheme of things, but if someone was selling weapons to people already, it was probably a good idea to try and stop that particular attempt to rebuild before the people involved could do more damage…