Disclaimers:

All Spider-Man and all its related characters belongs to Marvel Entertainment, which is owned by Walt Disney Company, and the Sam Raimi Original Trilogy belongs to Sony Pictures Entertainment. No infringement of these copyrights are intended, and not authorized by copyright holders.

Spider-Man was web-swinging alone throughout the dimming Manhattan skyline, gracefully soaring through the breezing, air during his usual nightly patrol.

Despite the city being relatively calm lately due to lack of crime, the Web-Head's thoughts were still plagued by the haunting words of Gayle Watson and Harry Osborn.

Since the night before at the Planetarium, he tried his best to drown out those words away, keeping himself distracted from it all, but overtime, it just became so difficult to find a clear headspace in it all, and it definitely didn't help when he already got so much going on in his personal life just being stacked on top of it.

Mary Jane did seem to notice something's wrong at first, but Peter being his usual stubbornly, yet cynical self, he tried reassuring her that nothing's wrong with him. Peter just didn't want to ruin what was supposed to be the love of his life's sister's best day of her life, especially not about their unfortunate first face-face with each other.

Trying to get back to focusing on his patrol, as Spider-Man lifted his arm to aim the next web-line, to his shock, nothing happened. "Oh no," He then started to panic when he looked over his hands to see his webs not working as they supposed to... again. "NO!"

With nothing holding him above the city's skyline, Spider-Man gradually descended all the way down, crashing back and forth on the buildings as they were breaking his fall along the way, until he landed flat down on a large puddle in an empty alleyway with garbage bin by the side.

Spider-Man groaned in slight pain as he recovered from another embarrassing dive. He struggled to pull off his sticky wet mask, clearing out all of the excessive water that was suffocating him.

After letting a breath of fresh air sink in, Peter extended his hand and tried to shoot out his webs again, but nothing came out except the same splatter noise he heard before. "Why is this happening to me?" He murmured to himself.

Seeing that his question was left unanswered, Peter turned to the brick wall on his left and, after some contemplation about what's going on about his powers, placed his palm against it, using his hands to scale himself up the wall to get to a higher vantage point.

After climbing to a decent enough high off the ground, things seemed to be working out fine for the most part, until suddenly, Peter just began to lose his grip on his climbing when he started to slip back down abruptly. Peter tried to hold onto the wall as much as he could, but then his fingers just no longer clinging on, making him fall back to the way he started, water just splatted all around him on impact once more.

Peter shook his hands as he frowned his eyebrows in exasperation, hating how the entire unfortunate circumstances that just somehow occurred to him. Resting his head against the dumpster bin behind him in frustration, Peter noticed something was sticking out from his peripheral vision.

It was a throwaway copy of the latest Bugle newspaper article.

Letting his curiosity getting the best of him, Peter ripped the newspaper from the dumpster to try distract his mind a bit, but when he tried to take a read of it, all it he could see was splattered lines and colors spread across the white paper. He realized his sight was also affected by his withdrawn powers.

As he managed to get a little clear glimpse of the newspaper, Peter's expressions quickly turned from a focused look to irritated anger when he made sense of the front page.

SPIDEY AND OCK ROB BANK

$2 million stolen

And then, a title on the red bottom section of the newspaper also got his attention, furthering his frustration.

SPINNERET STILL A NO SHOW FOR LONELY PARTNER

No longer want to see more of the slander of his own name and further slander of the girl he loved bring him down emotionally than he was already, especially by the likes of typical Jonah, Peter just chucked the newspaper away from his exasperated face.

Right now, Peter felt so distraught with himself about how he even came to this terrible point in his life, he didn't even care about trying his webs again. Instead, he just looked for whatever clothing he could salvage from the closest charity bin, considering the fact his own personal ones were too far away to get back to on foot, and walked back home.

Still not feeling too well with himself, especially after how his powers just kept on fading from time to time, Peter forced himself to seek some medical advice from the ESU campus doctor the next day.

Peter was sitting on the medical bed, allowing the doctor to give his quick examination.

"You seem very okay to me. My diagnosis? It's up here," The doctor pointed towards his own head, emphasizing the fact it's not the physical that's the problem, but rather it was something psychological. "You say you can't sleep. Heartbreak? Bad dreams?"

"There is one dream where... in my dream... l'm Spider-Man," Peter somewhat confessed. "But I'm losing my powers. I'm climbing a wall, but I keep falling."

"Oh," The doctor said in a surprised tone. "So, you're Spider-Man?"

Peter nodded. "In my dream," He then tried 'correcting' his words in a form of a different context, in case he accidentally gave any idea he was actually Spider-Man. "Well, actually, it's not even my dream. It's a friend of mine's dream."

"Somebody else's dream," The doctor nodded in understanding. He then sat next to his patient on the bed, curious about his next thoughts. "What about this friend? Why does he climb these walls? What does he think of himself?"

Peter just shrugged. "That's the problem. He doesn't know what to think."

"Gotta make you mad not to know who you are. Your soul disappears. Nothing as bad as uncertainty," The doctor said. "Listen... maybe you're not supposed to be Spider-Man climbing those walls. That's why you keep falling. You always have a choice, Peter."

After hearing those words, Peter slowly looked off into the distance, as if he was contemplating the thought. "I have a choice... " He muttered to himself.

Later that night, Peter was back in his apartment, his back was laying upright against the wall that was adjacent to his bed, his eyes were dozy as they were focused on the bright and loud thunderstorm outside of his window, his facial expressions almost looked like as if he was in a state of trance, not too different to the same one he had during that talk with the doctor

Since that appointment, Peter had been pondering over his words for hours.

Back then, when he donned that costume for the first time, Peter really presumed he was doing some good for this city. But, the more he thought about it, he started to realize all those good-for-nothing spider-powers did was just bring more misery to him; Peter got more defamation to his name by the people he swore to protect, failing to keep his grades up, struggling to pay his landlord's rent on time, unable to help his Aunt May when she needed him the most, being called unreliable to the one he considered his best friend, and worse of all, made him feel unworthy of the girl he loved.

What's the point in doing any good deed, if all it did was bringing him pain in the end?

Slowly, he laid his back on his bed as he succumbed to his own suddenly starving slumber.

Inside his self-conscious dreamscape, Peter found himself not wearing his sleeping clothes, but in his familiar gray hoodie, sitting in the passenger seat of a also familiar-looking car, which was surrounded by an endless white space.

Though confused about where he was at first, Peter slowly realized his surroundings. It was the recreation of the day he learned the meaning of responsibility. At least, that's what he thought at the time.

When Peter looked to his left, he saw a ghost of a father figure seating in the driver seat: It was Uncle Ben.

"All the things you've been thinking about, Peter... make me sad."

"Can't you understand? Do you know how much of this life affected me?" Peter said softly in a somber voice.

"Peter, all the times we've talked of honesty... fairness, justice," Uncle Ben said. "Out of those times, I counted on you to have the courage... to take those dreams out into the world. I'm sure she would've understand that if she was here with you."

"I can't live your dreams anymore, and I don't believe that's what she would've wanted," Peter said tearfully. "All I wanted was a life of my own... like Mary Jane."

"You've been given a gift, Peter. With great power... comes great responsibility," Uncle Ben said solemnly. "Take my hand, son."

Peter looked down at his hand with hesitation. With a deep breath, he shook his head as he tried to swallow a lump in his throat when he said his next final words to his father figure, much to his upsetting tears.

"No, Uncle Ben. I'm just Peter Parker. I'm Spider-Man... no more. No more... "

With that saddened. possibly last, exchange between the two, the entire space started brightened around them, as though they were being wiped out of existence.

As if he was magically flashing back into reality from that dream, Peter opened his eyes and seen himself back on his apartment, noticing himself resting his head on the same pillow of his own bed.

After giving himself a moment to gather his thoughts and self-reflection from what happened inside that dreamscape, Peter finally came to a decision. "... No more... " He echoed his last thoughts out loud in a somber tone.

With those two words escaped his lips, it's time to put to an end to that part of the curse that had brought him nothing but misery to his personal life.

Peter then got up from his bed and slowly walked his way to his small wardrobe, glaring at the red-and-blue costume with saddened disdain. After harshly grabbing it from its hanger, scrunching the chest part a bit with his bare fists, Peter walked out of his apartment and to the nightly streets.

Already a few blocks away from his home, Peter stopped by an alleyway near a public garbage bin, holding the boneless form of his alter ego in his two hands.

As this could be the most biggest turning point of his life, Peter just slowly lowered the costume into the opened top of the bin, leaving its fabric torso and head dangling around the outside.

Letting himself take one deep breath, Peter took one big step back, giving one last glare at the triangular eyes of Spider-Man, before turning around and walking away from that very alleyway.

With that mask of his alter ego now finally gone from his sight, Peter's felt freed from the life of responsibility.

Words: 1864

A/N: Well, there we have it, folks. We finally reached the turning point in Peter's life. Could never got over how good that scene in the movie goes, and I'm still listening to the track that accompanies it to this day.

On side note, next chapter's obviously gonna be Peter finally enjoying the new status quo for himself, but that also means MJ's turning point will be coming up soon.

Anyway, any constructive criticisms and comments would be greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter.

Reviews:

CT311998: Thanks. And, knowing Peter, he'll keep it to himself, but MJ will find out eventually and have that talk with her sister in due time.

As for reviewing your stories, I don't know if I'll be much different to anyone else that reads them, considering I'm likely to share the same opinions since the first season of your Amazing Spider-Man fanfic(still enjoying them to this day), but I'll try my best to express them honestly whenever I can.

DCDGojira: Appreciated the review.

While leaving the rest for the upcoming chapters to answer, you have to keep in mind this takes place in the early 2000s; not everyone was all for the internet popularity back then, otherwise everyone would be posting Peter's face all over Social Media in that train scene.

FandomLover2006: Just released now, and no, someone else will take her place in this reality.

TW: Cheers for your words. And don't worry, MJ will give Gayle that talk.

TheGentleman2022: Thanks for your review.