Chapter Text
Ned's not sure what happened, and he’s kind of ashamed to say he doesn’t know when exactly he started to notice.
But he does notice, eventually.
Maybe he just finally saw it for what it was, or maybe Peter just got worse at hiding it.
Maybe he stopped trying to hide it.
Ned isn't sure.
Maybe it was Calculus and looking up and seeing nothing but dark in Peter’s eyes, nothing but the broken remains of a pen in his hand and ink on his fingertips.
Maybe it was doing homework at his apartment and seeing a new shrine in Peter’s room, a framed photo and small candles and a pair of cracked red glasses.
Maybe it was AcaDec practice and Flash saying something stupid and Peter clenching his fists so tight that the scabs ripped and blood dripped onto the wood, red and bright and terrifying.
Maybe it was the rosary wound tightly around his wrist.
Because Peter isn't Catholic.
He’s Jewish and… and witchy and there’s really no way to put a label on it, but Ned knows for certain, at the very least, that he isn’t Catholic.
Peter still shows up to school one day with wooden beads and a cross clenched tightly in his fist.
It takes a while for him to place it, to figure out what it is, even though he doesn’t know what happened.
But he does place it.
There’s a fresh grief to Peter now, raw and aching and new.
It’s not like those funerals to Hell’s Kitchen, where Ned and Michelle learned that Peter still had a nice black suit for watching dead people get buried under the ground.
It’s like when Ben died.
Like when he was shot and bled out in an ally, in Peter’s arms, and half the school whispered about how Peter Parker was almost an orphan for the second time in his life.
How he’d watched someone die.
It’s like that.
Except this time, Ned doesn’t know who it was.
He doesn’t know what happened.
He doesn’t even know when it happened.
All he knows is that someone is dead.
Someone is dead and Peter is hurting and he’d probably rather tear his hair out than tell anybody what’s wrong.
He’d probably rather die himself.
Ned wants to help him.
But it’s like middle school all over again.
It’s like the gunshot wound Ned knows is in Peter’s shoulder.
Peter doesn’t want help.
Not from them.
He never has.
———
Michelle hasn't known Peter as long as Ned has.
Hell, she hasn't known Peter as long as Eugene has.
But that doesn't mean she can't see that something's horribly wrong with him.
Something that's fucking him up left, right and sideways.
It takes her a while to piece together the shrine and the rosary and the keys that don't go to the apartment, but she gets there eventually.
Peter isn't Catholic, she only vaguely recognizes the man smiling with Peter and two other people in the picture, and May very, very quietly tells her and Ned that sometimes Peter just doesn't come home at night.
And on the mornings after those nights, Peter steps back into the apartment with red eyes and cracked knuckles.
One time, she whispers, two fingers on Peter's left hand were broken.
And when May had asked what happened, Peter had almost started crying.
Michelle puts it all together.
Puts together the shrine that's like Ben's and the rosary that Peter wears around his wrist and connects it to the not coming home and broken bones and bruising knuckles.
Someone's fucking dead.
And Peter's grieving.
Wearing the man's rosary, lighting candles by his picture, probably sleeping at his apartment.
She asks May about the man with red glasses that look like they belong two decades behind them.
May puts a fist to her mouth.
She tells Michelle that his name is Matt Murdock.
Was Matt Murdock.
Peter never tells them that Murdock is dead.
He never says anything, never puts on a suit and leaves for a funeral.
But Michelle knows that he's dead, and she tells Ned and May with absolutely certainty that Murdock is a cold, cooling corpse.
After that, after putting the pieces together, Michelle kind of isn't sure what she's supposed to do.
She doesn't do emotions, or comforting.
She's not good at it.
Ned is.
Ned is good at it.
Michelle doesn't comfort people.
She just makes them un comfortable.
She's too blunt and too honest and too caustic.
She's too harsh and abrasive, too awkward to be anything even nearing properly sympathetic.
Michelle had done okay with Ben.
But with Ben, it wasn't just Peter grieving.
It was May, and May and Ben's coworkers, and May and Ben's friends, and Michelle was still technically a child and not expected to try and psychoanalyse her best friend as he worked through his weird grief shit.
There had been two guys at the funeral, ones only Peter seemed to know, that had made May weary, she remembers.
And she remembers a man, that she now realizes is Murdock, and that's where she knows him from, telling May that Peter needed to grieve with someone that he didn't feel he was burdening.
She doesn't think Peter has those people now, and she doesn't think she can be one either.
It's not just the grief though, the mourning and the tears that he just doesn't fucking talk about.
Michelle's kind of picked up on it over the years, but Peter is an angry person.
He's laid back and calm until he's not, sweet and kind until he's not, small and unassuming until he's not.
Midtown doesn't know, not yet, but she remembers.
Peter Parker fights like the Devil.
Midtown doesn't know, but with the way things are going, Michelle thinks that soon they might.
Because at the death of Matt Murdock, Peter becomes something that can only be described as carefully contained rage incarnate.
It's actually better than it was, which she thinks should probably be frightening, about and in relation to somebody that she knows could kick ass at the height of five foot nothing, but it's really only concerning.
There's so much anger in Peter's little body.
So much tightly wound and meticulously controlled fury.
Sometimes it seeps out like magma from the earth.
Sometimes it just simmers under the surface like a mirage.
And sometimes it's like Peter just doesn't feel anything at all.
Like he's drained.
Like he's empty.
Michelle doesn't know what she's supposed to do with all of that.
She gathered her information.
She scouted and sorted and pieced everything together.
She's found the whole puzzle.
But instead of showing her the full picture, it just feels like staring at a hidden image painting.
Michelle wants to help, as surprising as that is.
She wants to help, and knows that Peter doesn't want her to, knows that Ned knows, and has known, since middle school.
But Peter needs help.
She's just not sure how to give it to him.
———
They feel bad for him.
He thinks Jessica might be the most guilty, but that could just as easily be Danny.
They feel bad.
They feel guilty.
Peter doesn't… know what he's supposed to do with that.
They didn't–
They didn't kill Matt.
He stayed behind.
He let the building fall, so that they could get away.
And when Matt got an idea in his head, it was really hard to stop him.
They didn't kill Matt.
Matt killed Matt.
Matt let Matt die.
He’d heard it.
He’d heard it through the concrete and C-4 like he’d heard the bullet rip through Ben’s chest.
Like how Matt heard his dad get shot.
He’d heard it, the last exhale, the last heartbeat, the last I’m so sorry, before it was smothered and gagged by a rain of glass and fire.
For a moment, Peter hadn’t breathed.
Just watched the metal and rubble and flame, watched it all twist and collapse like broken ribs and steel wool.
And then it hit, like the entire building itself.
Matt hadn’t walked out with them.
He knew that.
Matt wouldn’t be walking away from that.
He knew that too.
Matt was still there, under the rubble and burning steel.
Matt was dead.
Matt was dead.
At the time, it hadn’t seemed real.
And then Miss Claire had taken his shoulder, and slowly folded him into her arms.
She smelled like blood and that stupid, stupid C-4.
And she’d told him that he was crying.
And he was.
And once he realized it, he wasn’t able to stop.
He sat with Miss Claire the whole way back to the police precinct.
Peter was too big for carrying.
Mr. Luke Cage had carried him anyway when the sobs had wracked his body so hard he could barely breathe.
Miss Claire said he was having a panic attack.
Peter hadn’t cared, and Mr. Luke Cage had handed him off to Foggy.
Foggy held him too, and then so did Karen.
Peter was almost fifteen, and too old for carrying.
He didn’t care.
In that moment, he hadn’t felt fifteen.
He’d felt seven, eleven, thirteen years old, felt too damn young to be grieving so damn much, felt the funerals and the suits and the roses in his soul, in the thorns that had broken the skin and the parts of his suit that were worn from so much wear.
He’d felt like an orphan, losing his family all over again.
May was alive.
He knew that.
But if Ben was gone, if Matt was gone, how was he supposed to be sure she was safe?
How was he supposed to be sure she was off limits?
How was he supposed to be sure that he wouldn’t just keep grieving?
They don’t get to have a funeral for Matt.
There’s no way to explain why he was where he was, no way to explain that there’s no body.
No way to explain that Matt Murdock and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen are dead at the same time.
No way to explain that all Peter had been able to find at the bottom of that pit, after weeks and weeks and weeks, was a pool of blood the size of a person.
Miss Jones had looked nauseous seeing it, but that might’ve been the horrific amount of alcohol she’d downed at the sight of it.
Mr. Luke Cage had sworn and looked away.
Danny had gotten on his knees with incense and prayed in probably one of the only ways that mattered to Matt and his stupid cult/Catholic upbringing.
Peter liked Danny most days, when he wasn’t being unintentionally ignorant.
It was distracting, almost fun, to teach someone how to not be an asshole on accident, how to be considerate and aware of things, and then also how to be an asshole on purpose to the people that deserved it.
Other days, Peter hated Danny.
He hated Mr. Luke Cage.
He hated Miss Jones.
He hated everything they stood for, everything that Matt had been moving on from, everything that had gotten him buried under a skyscraper built on the backs of the dead.
He hated them some days.
And some days, it was easier to deal with the anger, than the pain and grief.
Some days it was easier to just be furious.
Some days it was easier to walk up to a tombstone, stare at the wilted flowers on the surface, and break his fingers punching straight through it.
Some days he hated Mr. Luke Cage and Miss Jones and Danny.
He hated them and their pity and their grief because they hadn’t known Matt as long as he and Foggy and Karen had.
They weren’t losing a vital part of their lives.
He hated Stick and he hated Elektra too.
He hated Stick and his war and he hated Elektra for pulling Matt down and into the undertow, and he hated the both of them for making him think that he was only something worth sacrificing.
He hated what Stick and Elektra had done and did to Matt.
He hated the lasting affections, the parasites and the poisons.
Some days he hated Mr. Luke Cage and Miss Jones and Danny.
Some days he hated Stick and Elektra.
Most days he hated himself.
———
The thing about Spider-man and the Antichrist is that being them is like standing on the opposite sides of the visible light spectrum.
They’re two sides of the coin that makes up his life.
And they’re very, very different.
Spider-man is kind, is lenient, will take the guns from the pettier criminals and tell them to run because next time he’s leaving them for the police.
The Antichrist won’t leave you with a leg to stand on, won’t hesitate, because he doesn’t go after petty criminals, doesn’t poke around the bumps in the night.
He goes for the blood in the water and follows it like a shark, latching on and leaving teeth.
He brings his catches to the police because if he doesn’t, they aren’t going to know to look in the nooks and crannies for bound and bloody but still breathing bodies.
The Antichrist is always softer for civilians, always smaller and nicer, but no one is under any illusion of just how dangerous he is.
People didn’t have that with Spider-man.
Not until he’d grabbed a bus for the first time and held it.
That’s when people became a lot more wary of Spider-man.
New York doesn’t love him, not really.
But it’s starting to.
And where Peter’s at right now, it means more than it ever used to.
Means more to have people leave out food with notes, means more to know that there’s a fan club with his name on it, means more to look at the buildings of Queens and see steel bars for him to grab onto extended from buildings and widows and scaffolding.
It means more.
But sometimes, when he looks at the red lights of Hell’s Kitchen, at the pit of Midland Circle, at the hole in the grave of a dead woman that should’ve stayed dead, Peter thinks that maybe he's too angry to be a Parker.
Because May is kind.
Ben was kind.
He doesn't really remember his parents, but Ben and May used to say they were kind too.
Kind, kind, kind.
He's seen May hold a grudge, and when she did it was a grudge, but it wasn't for more than a few weeks.
She'd said it wasn't in her nature.
Aunt May forgave and forgot.
Uncle Ben had gotten annoyed a lot at work, disappointed and irritated and tired , but he didn't get angry often.
Not there and not at home.
He didn't have the energy for it.
He'd said it was exhausting, that it was easier to be kind than it was to be furious.
Peter agrees.
Sometimes, it's easier to be kind.
It's better.
It's softer and sweeter, it's a calm in his bones, it's helping people cross the street and returning stolen bikes.
It's good.
It's warm.
It's all the good parts of helping people, of being a hero.
If the Antichrist is Matt and the Murdocks and all their demons, then Spider-man is the Parkers, all their loss and their kindness and their love.
The Devils are an ode to Jack Murdock.
Spider-man is an ode to Ben Parker.
But then the fury starts creeping in.
Magma, swallowing him whole and burning everything to soot and ashes.
Sizzling, boiling over and out the bullet holes, scorching the red spilled all over the ground until all he can smell is copper.
He may have a new suit but there's still a bandana with his name on it, with his blood on it.
There's still cord waiting to be wrapped around his wrists, across his knuckles, up his arms.
There's still horns locked in a box in his closet.
Once a Devil always a Devil.
When Spider-man isn't enough, when the kindness isn't enough, the fury oozes over and the bandana wraps around his face tight.
His suit is still twisted and scorched and broken, and repairing it is taking longer than he wants, but Melvin can only do some much with what he has to work with.
He’s never heard of a technology that could melt through Kevlar.
Peter hasn’t either.
And with the suit so broken, Melvin has to start almost half of it from scratch.
He doesn’t ask Peter why he wants the suit back now.
Peter is pretty sure he knows why.
He makes the time to stop by at least twice a month.
He doesn’t have a lot to spare, but it’s all he can really do.
It’s all he has.
Melvin never asks.
Peter never tells.
He’s grateful, in a way.
Melvin is one more person that he doesn’t have to explain himself to.
One more person he doesn’t have to dodge the questions of.
Melvin already knows.
And he’s grieving too.
Passing the suit back and forth is easier than speaking though.
Sending recipes and soft fabrics and shiny objects and fidget toys is easier than speaking.
Anything is easier than speaking.
It’s getting to the point, though, where they may just have to move on from trying to make something new for the suit.
They don’t have time for it.
With the Hand gone, and the power vacuum in place, Hell’s Kitchen needs a Devil.
It needs the Antichrist more than New York needs Spider-man.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to make it work.
He hasn’t thought that far ahead.
He just knows that he has to.
———
"Oh hey! It's the intern! Hey inter– oh buddy when was the last time you slept?"
Peter doesn't answer.
He's got three more hours of interning and he's running on a combined four hours of sleep across eight days.
Some guy named Hammerhead was getting uppity and it was slowly ruining Peter's ability to get sleep and have emotions and not be a complete and absolute asshole.
The employees and other interns haven't done shit to deserve him being mad or hostile at them.
They're just doing their jobs, and Peter's just angry and pissed at the world in general, pulled thin and exhausted in too many ways to be healthy.
He hasn't been very good at healthy lately.
"Yikes. That bad?"
Control, Peter.
Control.
We don't snarl at normal people.
We keep the rage and the sorrow contained until we can beat the shit outta gangbangers.
Like reasonable people.
Spider-man had been becoming a lot more violent lately, across all the boroughs.
A lot more back alley and a lot less friendly neighborhood.
Especially in Hell's Kitchen.
And sure, Danny was helping out, but he was no Devil.
With the fall of the Hand it was like every piece of scum was crawling out of the woodwork to make a place for themselves, now that the big scary shadow had been crushed in a storm of fire and steel.
Everyone knew.
Everyone except for the cops, who didn't have a fuckin clue beyond what the Antichrist had told Mahoney years ago and what Knight had seen before she got her arm cut off.
But really, they didn't need to know anything more than that.
Not with them gone.
So all they had was the idea of some horrific power vacuum, quickly rising crime rights, and the shadow a vigilante that walked in and didn't walk out.
A long, burning shadow that Peter wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket of stars, because it was the only other legacy he had.
The only other one he really remembered.
Peter drops his box of files.
It hits the table.
Loudly.
The employee that had been trying to talk to him jumps.
Their name tag says H. Rowe in clean little letters next to a picture of them and, in the corner, an old halloween bat sticker.
He focuses on that.
It’s easier than looking at their face and their concern.
It’s easier than processing more potential pity.
“Sorry,” Peter apologises. “I haven’t slept in a while. Did you need anything?”
H. Rowe doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“Nah,” they finally say, and Peter listens to their lungs rattle instead of looking at their face. “You just looked real rough there for a second.”
Peter smiles dryly.
“I always look rough,” he says dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
H. Rowe tenses, for just a second–why what did he do what did he say what did they see that he didn’t– before relaxing.
“Sure, kid.” They agree easily. “How old are you, anyway? How'd you even get hired? You’re probably like, the youngest person in the building right now, besides the tour groups.”
Peter tries for a high tilt of his head, and it feels so much like something Matt would do that for a second all he can feel is agony, before leaning back down into a gaze at the floor that doesn’t hurt so much.
Right.
Right, right, right, how could he ever forget.
How could he ever possibly forget that Matt’s dead.
Except he does.
He keeps forgetting.
He keeps pushing open the window to Matt’s apartment and thinking he’ll be there, keeps curling up on his couch to let the worse injuries heal and thinking Matt will yell at him to at least change clothes, keeps waking up rolled onto the floor in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling as the billboard paints the world, because there’s supposed to be someone else breathing in the apartment and there isn’t.
Peter keeps forgetting.
He keeps forgetting and thinking everything’s going to be okay.
It’s stupid.
It’s stupid and Peter should know better.
He should know better.
By now he should really fucking know better.
“That would be telling.” Peter intones as seriously as he can past the whirlwind in his chest.
It doesn’t come out as grave as he wants, probably because part of him feels like crying and the other part feels like breaking someone's ribs.
“According to my records, he broke into the building, sent FRIDAY offline for thirty minutes, and tied Tony to a chair before lecturing him for said thirty minutes. He was impressed enough to offer him an internship.”
Fuck.
He doesn't know that voice.
He doesn’t know that voice, not really, but–
She said my records.
Called Mr. Stark Tony.
Knew almost exactly what got him hired.
Peter turns.
Miss Pepper Potts stares back at him evenly, tablet in hand and a bluetooth in her ear.
She looks more put together than anybody he’s ever seen in his life.
Like the kind of person Hogarth wishes she was.
"Walk with me." Miss Potts says, and it's an order that at least has the decency to not sound like one.
Peter looks at his box of files one last time, doesn’t look at H. Rowe, and checks his pockets to make sure he has everything.
Wooden beads rattle in his pocket.
It's safer for them to not be on his wrist when he's working, especially lifting things, but he's still always afraid of losing them.
He can't lose them.
They’re like Ben’s glasses.
He doesn’t need them.
But it’s what he has left, so he wears them.
Peter doesn’t really believe in God, or a plan, or anything right now.
It’s hard to.
It hurts too much.
But he believes that Matt did, that Ben did, and re-wraps the rosary around his wrist and adjusts the glasses he doesn’t need.
Sometimes it’s enough.
Sometimes it’s not.
But if he pretends, it could be, just long enough for him to get through the fog.
It will get better, because it has to.
“Did you need something Miss Potts?”
Her heels click loudly against the linoleum.
They sound kind of like Karen’s.
She doesn’t look at him when she says, “FRIDAY told me your ribs were broken," and just keeps on walking, her heels click-click- clicking.
Peter doesn't just keep on walking, and stumbles over his own feet.
"I– what?"
Miss Potts stops.
She turns her head to look at him, one perfect eyebrow raising in confusion.
"Your ribs are broken," she repeats and Peter scrunches up his nose, sliding a hand into where the groove of his bones rests just under his skin.
The left feels fine.
The right– does not.
Oh.
Oh.
His ribs are broken.
Peter must do something with his face because Miss Potts' face goes a little slack.
"You didn't know."
He shakes his head.
"I didn't– realize." Peter mumbles.
He's not sure why.
He's not sure how he missed it.
When did–
When did broken ribs stop registering?
Miss Potts purses her lips.
"You didn't realize you had broken ribs?"
He shakes his head again.
Now that he knows it's there though, he's starting to feel an ache where his binder presses into his skin.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
This situation is the definition of fucking up his ribs.
Fuck.
Miss Potts takes a deep breath and then sighs, before tapping out something on her tablet and starting to move again.
Peter follows her numbly through dozens of corridors that all look the same.
The only difference is the splash pattern of scorch marks across the walls and floors and occasionally the ceiling.
He doesn't ask where they're going.
He doesn't really think he has a say.
Miss Potts has the look in her eyes that May and Foggy get when they want him to take care of himself, so he has a sort of vague idea of what's going on.
He just hopes that she's not going to take him to the medical wing or something.
And then Miss Potts opens a dark wooden door to what is definitely not the medical wing, and gently pushes him in.
It's an office.
A nice office with huge, glass bay view windows and carpeted floor, paintings on the dark colored walls, and a high steel ceiling.
Pete thinks he might've seen it in a picture of Stark Industries once.
There's a desk in the middle of it all, nice and clean and stacked with papers.
It has a little name plate that says Pepper Potts in neat lettering perched on the edge in front of a desktop.
It's her office.
He's definitely seen a picture of it then.
Two chairs sit in front of the steel and glass, and on the far side, there's another door.
They go through that one, and enter a small room.
It has cabinets on the walls and the same carpeted floor as the office, with a table in the middle and an old couch against the wall opposite the door.
There's a coffee machine on the counter, an afghan on the couch, and a white board covered in doodles and what looks like Mr. Stark's hand writing.
Miss Potts pushes him onto the couch and pulls a key out of a pocket in her dress slacks before putting it on the table, and the sound of metal hitting wood is what finally gets him to look up.
"I don't understand."
Miss Potts sets down her tablet and walks over to the coffee machine.
It's a Keurig.
There's a tiny Iron Man sticker on the part that pops open for you to put the Keurig cup in, and a dent in the plastic container that you fill with water.
For all that it's just a Keurig, it looks loved.
Kind of like the one that used to sit in Foggy and M–
Kind of like the one that used to sit in the old office before the Castle Trial.
"This is a break room," Miss Potts explains as the machine whirs to life. "I'm telling you to take a break. Take off your binder. Sleep off the ribs. Have a nap. I have a meeting to get to, so I can't make sure you actually take care of yourself, but it'd prefer it if my employees weren't working with grievous injuries."
She slides a thermos under the dispenser and presses one of the blinking blue buttons.
Miss Potts turns to lean her hip on the counter.
"You don't have to do any of those things, but if you don't, then I'm going to send you home so you can sleep it off there, okay? Tony said you don't like hospitals, and I can understand that, but it's not something we can avoid if you puncture a lung on the premises."
"I'm not going to puncture a lung, Miss Potts." Peter says, and she raises one of her immaculate eyebrows again.
And suddenly, the break room feels too warm, the walls too small, Miss Potts too close.
Suddenly, everything feels stifling.
Suddenly, the magma seeps up through his skin.
"You didn't know your ribs were broken."
"This is one time thing." He argues.
"One time thing. When was the last time you slept?" She shoots back.
"Why do you care?" Peter snarls in response, and he doesn't know when he started standing but he is now and his nails are digging into his palms and there are fangs dripping from his mouth, and he wants to scream for all the choirs to hear.
"Because," Miss Potts says, voice too damn level to have any right, "you're acting like Tony unchecked, and the last time I really let Tony go unchecked, it was the Stark Expo, and his blood stream was full of poison."
"I'm not Tony Stark," he growls, "and I don't need your help."
Miss Potts grabs one of his wrists, slowly, choreographed, and peels open his fingers.
Blood runs down his arm in rivulets from crescent moon cuts.
"Yes," she intones with a terrible finality, "you do."
———
It's dark out when he gets the call, lying on the floor of Foggy's apartment.
Going to Matt's felt too painful.
Going back to Queens felt like drowning in pity.
So he went to Foggy’s, tapped on the window when he arrived, and pretended that he forgot to call ahead and not that he forgot that Foggy couldn’t hear him approach like Matt could.
It somehow feels unsaid anyway.
Peter had been let in, and he wasn’t bleeding or in the suit so he hadn’t been shaken down to treat his wounds and change clothes and toss the bloody ones in the wash.
Instead of picking a piece of furniture like a normal person, Peter had dropped and curled up on the rug.
Foggy hadn’t stopped him.
Had just gently stepped over, given him a pillow, and settled onto the couch above him, legs folded and phone in his hand, solemn and still and silent.
He's been a lot less chatty lately, when he doesn't have to be.
Peter feels guilty going to Foggy, sometimes.
Foggy knew Matt the longest out of all them, has always known Matt the longest and taken things the hardest.
Matt’s abilities had hurt him the most, Matt being the Man in the Mask had hurt him the most, Matt dying has to be hurting him the most.
He never says anything though.
Peter never says anything back.
It goes unsaid just like everything else these days.
Foggy is mourning, and so is Karen and Peter and Melvin and Miss Claire.
Danny and Miss Jones and Mr. Luke Cage didn’t really know Matt enough to mourn him, but he thinks that of the three of them, it’s Miss Jones and Danny that mourn the could-have-beens.
They had taken it surprisingly hard, for all that it wasn’t very obvious in Miss Jones' case.
Mr. Luke Cage had kind of just.
He’d looked tired.
He’d looked really, really tired.
Captain Rogers tired.
A tired Peter sees in the mirror all the time now.
They're all tired, nowadays.
What does that say about the world?
And then his bracelet lights up blue.
Peter doesn't know how the kimoyo bead works, and he's never asked, but he's had it long enough to know that blue means hearing something about Bucky.
And that's.
That's something.
It's something.
Peter pushes off the floor and into a sitting position, holding his hand open in front of him.
The light from the kimoyo bead shines across the other ones like glass.
He only has the one, the others all just a plain dark stone.
He doesn't quite remember what they are, but he's pretty sure it's black tourmaline.
Watching the hologram piece together is like watching sand reverse in the tide, T'Challa staring back at him in moments.
Damn it all, but he looks tired too.
Foggy doesn't look up from his phone, but Peter can hear the way his teeth grind together as he clenches his jaw.
"Is this a bad time?"
Peter takes a deep breath.
There's a cut on his jaw from earlier that morning, a bandaid over his nose because Aunt May saw a gash before it had finished healing, and the purpling bruises of someone making the stupid ass decision to try and rob him with a shitty sleeper hold painted across his neck.
He has, admittedly, had a bad day.
"No," he lies smoothly, but T'Challa still makes a face anyway.
No.
No faces.
Stop that shit right there.
"You are sure?"
"Yes, your Majesty ."
T'Challa raises an eyebrow.
Why does everyone always raise an eyebrow?
"I'm fine." Peter stresses.
T'Challa holds up his hands in surrender.
"Alright, alright. He's been completely cleared for a few weeks now, and I just thought you should know– he is awake."
Peter sits up ramrod straight and almost closes his open palm.
Foggy looks up from his phone and slides down the couch completely to settle next to him, staring intently at the hologram.
Peter had told them all about what had gone down in Germany and Siberia, had told them about Zemo and Bucky and T'Challa, but he guesses that it's one thing to hear about it, and another to see it.
Karen kind of hates him for it because his stories are the kinds of things that could make her as a journalist, but, for obvious reasons, can never be published.
"He's awake?" Peter whispers, throat closing up, and Foggy's hand finds his shoulder. It's the grounding kind of thing he needs right now because if he doesn't have something, he might just break all over again.
"Really awake?" He continues in a croak. "No more words?"
Peter–
Peter remembered when Bucky had first written down the words.
Had first remembered the words.
Had filled a page with them, again and again and again, before tearing out the paper and burning it to cinders.
Usually, when Bucky filled pages with words, it was HYDRA, over and over and over, and then he would get quiet and hide the book under the floor like it was something shameful, before curling into the beaten armchair with one of Peter's textbooks.
The fact that he'd burned them had sort of been an indicator of how terrifying, whatever they are, were , but when Bucky had finally actually told Peter what they were, it had been…
It had been an angry day.
An angry, magma kind of day.
The image of T'Challa smiles above his palm, and Peter does his best to focus back on that.
Foggy mock swoons beside him, and Peter cracks what feels like the first real smile since–
Since Matt–
Since Matt died.
It's not a lot.
But it feels like something important.
"We have had him doing tests and physicals for some time, to make sure that everything was in working order and that he did not relapse," T'Challa answers pleasantly. "Either because of the programming or from going back into cryostasis after being out for so long, but he is recovering remarkably well."
“His arm?”
“Scrapped. Shuri is making him a new one. The old one offended her.”
Peter wrinkles his nose and rocks back.
“I did my best with what I had, okay?” He mutters defensively.
T’Challa blinks rapidly for a moment, and does a confused sort of smile.
“Oh, no, that is not what I meant,” he apologises quickly. “Shuri hates the arm itself. She was very impressed by the modifications and maintenance you performed to keep the arm running, but she hates the thing itself very much.”
It’s… very strange, being apologized to by a king.
Sort of in general, but also because this particular king is the king of Wakanda.
The most advanced country in the world.
He settles back into Foggy’s side.
“Are you sure?” He asks, squinting. “I mean, you guys, you live in Wakanda. Your tech is miles ahead of us. Oceans.”
“And that arm was made during World War Two,” T’Challa says dryly, “and continued to be used up to the twenty first century. It is fairly advanced for the outside world during that time period, but it is still a miracle that it kept running without heavy updates. I believe we found cell phone parts in it?”
Peter purses his lips and tries to hide under Foggy’s arm.
“I didn’t have a lot on hand,” he mumbles.
“All the more impressive,” T’Challa says gently.
“It’s really not--”
“Take the compliment,” Foggy interrupts. “Please.”
“I would rather d--”
Peter chokes.
Snaps his jaw shut.
Looks away and covers his mouth with his hand that doesn’t have the hologram above it.
Foggy looks pained.
Peter feels pained.
He says, “Thank you, your Majesty,” instead.
T’Challa looks at him in concern for a moment before his eyes turn sad.
He seems to get it rather quickly.
His father didn’t die too long ago, did he?
So many people have died lately.
The world just takes and it takes and it takes even when you’ve got nothing left to give.
The world just keeps on spinning, lovely and cruel.
T’Challa seems to make up his mind about something then, and does something off… screen? Hologram?
Something.
He does something.
And then his hologram disappears like fine sand.
And then the light rebuilds into something new.
And then Bucky blinks back at him with eyes that are clear.
Peter stops breathing completely.
There’s braids in his hair and a hole where his arm used to be, something that might be paint smudged on his cheek and a tan to his skin.
He looks…
Better.
He looks better.
Less dragged down and dogged by a quiet horror.
Less afraid.
Wakanda’s probably the only place in the world where Bucky doesn’t have to worry about HYDRA or SHIELD or anything else that might try to kill him.
It’s probably the only place safe.
“маленький паук," Bucky smiles softly, with his slanting of his eyes and the widening of his mouth and brightening of his shoulders.
Malen'kiy pauk
Little spider.
Peter chokes again.
“Hey JB.” He manages to get out past the tightening of his throat. “They treatin’ you right?”
“The kids like to braid my hair, and Shuri only calls me broken white boy, but…” Bucky tilts his head side to side. “‘s nice here.”
“Snice,” Peter croaks. “Snake ice.”
Bucky makes a face.
“I thought it was snail ice.”
“It’s snake now.”
“Steve says it’s snails.”
“Steve is a liar.”
Bucky twists to look at someone out of frame.
“You hear that, Steven?” He asks loudly. “You’re a liar.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Then Bucky bares his teeth in a grin and turns back to look at Peter.
“He has fully accepted these claims, but insists that it’s snails right now.”
He’s never seen Bucky smile so much in one sitting.
“Well he’s wrong,” Peter responds, and has to stop speaking because his voice is cracking and he can hardly breath.
Bucky notices immediately, the bastard.
Foggy does too.
“Hey, hey,” Bucky says gently, “what’s wrong?”
Peter grits his teeth and digs the palm and fingers of his free hand into his eyes.
“Nothing,” he croaks, “I’m fine, I just…”
He hears Bucky sigh through his nose, and then Foggy is moving, leaving the room and digging around in his closet from the sound of it.
Matt’s rosary rattles on his wrist.
“Doll, you ain’t ‘fine’. ” Bucky says, his one hand making quotation marks. “You’re cryin’.”
Peter grits his teeth and pretends he doesn’t hear one crack.
“‘m fine.” He hisses. “I’m fine.”
Foggy drops a blanket on him.
He’s wearing a hoodie he wasn’t before.
They both have Columbia and lions on them.
He sniffles and feels so pathetic it floods away all the angry.
When Foggy settles back down next to him, he wraps the blanket over his shoulders and drapes it over his extended arm.
He takes a deep breath and it rattles so hard it feels like he never got his powers, like the asthma’s still weighing down his lungs like lead and bricks and bullets.
“I–" He covers his mouth with his hand again.
Takes to steady himself in the raging storm.
“Matt… died.” Peter says in a strangled whisper and it’s…
It’s the first time he’s said it out loud.
The first time he’s made it… real.
Matt’s not coming back.
Matt’s not coming back.
Bucky’s face falls.
“Kid… what happened?”
Peter sucks in another breath.
“Building. Stayed behind and it… fell.”
Bucky doesn’t do anything except tilt his head.
Peter’s hand splays all over his face, and his elbow digs into his thigh near painfully.
“It’s been almost two months.” He whispers into the lines of his skin.
Bucky’s eyebrows draw together and just looks so damn sorry.
It only feels slightly less terrible than the looks he gets from everyone else.
“What can I do, hon?” He says into the following silence instead of I’m so sorry or Are you okay.
Bucky knows he’s not okay.
He knows he doesn’t want to hear any sorrys.
He knows Peter pretty well by now, almost three, maybe four years old knowledge rattling around his skull.
He knows how much he hates pity.
Peter closes his eyes.
“Can you bring back the dead?” He asks mirthlessly, and almost chokes on the air that passes through his lungs.
Foggy goes still, and then the hand on his shoulder turns into an arm around them, and he squeezes.
The light playing against his eyelids shifts before settling again, and he thinks that Bucky might’ve dragged a hand through his hair, or maybe looked away.
“If I could doll, they’d have a lot more folks like me and Steve to deal with.” He answers sadly, and Peter hazards a guess that he might be trying for a smile said with only his crows feet and eyes. “The whole squadron of Howling Commandos.”
“The world can’t handle that,” Peter says back, all tremor and shake.
“Sure would be fun though.” Bucky mutters wistfully.
He’s the only one left, and I’m still here, Captain Rogers pleads, voice raw and agonizing.
“Sure would be fun,” he repeats, and he can’t tell if his eyes are hot from tears or the pressure of his hand.
He’s not sure which is worse.
“Hey, hey,” Bucky says quickly. “Don’t cry, kid, don’t cry. I’m– Peter. Peter, look at me.”
He tilts his head back towards the hologram.
If he opens his eyes he doesn’t–
He doesn’t know what would happen.
“Good ‘nough. Hey, y’know what? “ Bucky asks softly. “I’ll be home soon. I’ll be there. Promise.”
Promise, echoes the soft voice of a dead man.
“Bucky, you’re a war criminal,” he whispers sadly past the snake coiled around his throat. “And everyone knows your face now.”
“I know, kid. The king has– he has this plan,” Bucky stutters. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna go on trial. And we’re gonna get my name cleared.”
Peter doesn’t breathe for a moment, eyes opening.
He–
Trial?
“You– you’re gonna go to court?” Peter whispers, and he can’t quite believe his words, that he said them and they’re real.
Bucky looks uncomfortable, hand over his mouth.
“Yep. Gonna… go on trial. For war crimes.” He answers, voice faltering and going ever quieter.
“It’s not your fault, Bucky,” Peter warbles out. “You didn’t have a choice.”
Bucky dips his head in a jagged nod.
“I know. I know. ’s just…” he grows quiet, and his eyes look far away. “No one’s gonna believe that. Not really.”
“But T’Challa and the princess–"
“It’s good evidence that I was programmed, yeah.” Bucky interrupts stiffly, carefully. “But there’s no way for them to confirm how… aware I was or wasn’t while I was– while I was the Winter Soldier.”
Peter grits his teeth.
“Guess you’re just gonna need a good lawyer then.” He says cautiously.
Bucky snorts. “You know any miracle workers?”
Foggy tenses, and then sighs, great and gusty and loud.
“I’m such an idiot,” he mutters to the couch cushions.
Peter squeezes him with his free arm, and hears one of the bones in his back pop.
“Ow.”
“I know a guy,” Peter answers brightly, and it feels like the first good thing to happen since Midland Circle.
“One that can handle a case like this?” Bucky asks wearily, disbelieving.
Peter smiles with all his teeth, and he’s not very sure that it’s nice.
“Definitely.”