Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Listening to the interview from another room, George had to give the kid credit - for all that he claimed to be a bad liar, he was doing a pretty good job of it right now.

“...he worked with my father on this - in this general field. At the time I thought that Connors deserved to have it. I...working with Connors was like being close to my dad again...”

Peter had taken his quip about the daddy issues to heart. Listening to the kid talk about how much he missed his father and reconnected to him through Connors and how sorry he was about the formula and how he just wanted to help people like his dad had done - even knowing how much of it was prefabricated, it was still heartbreaking to listen to.

Or maybe that was because George, despite knowing how much of it was a lie, also knew how much of it was true.

“...around the city like that. I saw what it had done and destroyed the notes - not my brightest idea, I know - but Connors was already a giant, mutant lizard thing. I went down to the precinct, but I didn’t have any proof I could carry and show them, it was all inside OsCorps and I couldn’t get inside without Connors, so I had to go home and wait...”

There were nearly a dozen officers lingering around the remote viewing center, trying unsubtley to listen in on the statement and spreading word of what they heard as they went. Peter was incredibly subdued the entire time, barely looking up from the table or veering further than few inches away from the recorder.

“...thought I was gonna die. He was so big, and had his tail wrapped around my neck, massive claws all over me, it was- I was so sure I wasn’t gonna make it, that my Aunt May was going to be left all alone, and I’d never find out what really happened to my dad.”

And the latent terror in his voice as he described being attacked by the Lizard while inside the school was most definitely real. George had to smother his smile, though, at how monotone Peter had sounded while describing Spider-Man saving his life. Though the kid had enough awareness to say he was a little “out of it” when that happened.

By the end of his statement, George is pretty sure the kid made at least one rookie cry, and George made all the officers that weren’t supposed to be there scatter. After the fact, of course - the gossip spreading around about Poor Peter Parker would most likely help them in the long run, even if it did mean a bit of uncomfortable attention for Peter.

Then came one of the more crucial moments of this little cover-up.

George hissed when the kid ended up pulling his shirt off for the forensic videographer, and he could hear some horrified and impressed whistles around him as everyone took in the damage the Lizard had done to Peter. Though George mostly ended up thinking what a good job Peter had done with those scars - if he hadn’t seen them so well-healed this morning, he would never believe they were no more recent than just the day or so old Peter was claiming them to be.

“Poor kid,” his lieutenant commented as she processed the audiovisual feeds from the room. The kid was practically trying to hide his face as he let the interviewer ask some questions about specific injuries.

George had to fight down nausea as he realized just how much Peter, right now, reminded him of all the abuse victims he’d seen over the years when they reported everything that happened to them. He even had the black-and-blue wrists typical of those cases. And none of them had to be video taped to satisfy the bevy of non-police agencies this case was being saddled with.

He could see beside him, May was having the same problem. She’d given a much shorter statement with little to say of interest to the detective interviewing her, and walked in as Peter finished up his version of events.

He knew the wetness in her eyes wasn’t faked as she watched Peter on the security feed.

When Peter was done with that and was answering a few more questions, George left them to it and went into the conference room where most of the non-NYPD agencies trying to get a foot in the case were holed up.

He walked right into a jurisdictional slapfight - over Peter.

We need to see if he has any biological or radioactive agents left in those wounds!”

“Oh, please, like you’ll find anything on him you didn’t already get from those infected officers. The important thing is figuring out Connors’ angle this and if there’s a long game going on here-”

“This isn’t a terrorist cell, he’s just a random crazy scientist operating on his own because someone got lax enough in security for a teenager to-”

“The kid barely did anything relevant to you guys.”

“Private,” he addressed their errand boy with. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since the kid walked in and first said those nasty scrapes on his face were from the Lizard,” the rookie said.

“And no one’s tried to come in and settle this?”

“Just Nalvarez, sir.”

Deputy Commissioner Nalvarez was standing in the middle of all this trying to mediate between them. He wasn’t giving any of them sole access to the kid, but he wasn’t exactly holding his ground, either.

George always thought that man was just a little more of a politician than a police officer.

Putting two fingers to his lips, he whistled long, loud, and sharp, and kept going until his lungs were out of breath and he had everyone’s attention.

“...yes, Captain?” Nalvarez said, his wry voice doing nothing to hide the relief on his face.

“The kid’s injuries will be examined by our doctors, and then he’s going to be taken to urgent care after this to get everything looked at,” George said. “If there’s anything any of you want to know about all those injuries, talk to the NYPD forensic medical officer who will be taking a look at him, understand?”

“You have no authority to do that, Captain,” said the CDC agent - Leinen, if George remembered correctly.

“Well, until I get an order saying exactly who this case goes to, this case is ours.”

“That can’t possibly be legal,” one of the FBI agents said. Special Agent Sorros, or maybe he was just a regular agent. George didn’t particularly care, either way, they were all feds to him. “Not with your daughter involved in this - and the kid involved with your daughter!”

“A lot of people were caught up in this,” George said. “And I’m not leading. I’m sure you can take your concerns up with Commissioner Johnson if it’s really such an issue, but as he has yet to interceded, I think for now we can agree my judgment’s still pretty sound.”

“This isn’t just-”

“I know this isn’t ‘just’ anything, agent!” George snapped at the Homeland Security representative. Why had he thought calling them in was a good idea, again? “Believe me, I know how abnormal this case it, it’s kind of hard to forget battling a giant, mutant lizard on top of a skyscraper with Spider-Man. Really, I get it.”

Was it just George, or was there a lot of “I get it” coming from him, lately?

“I know you all have your priorities, as do we. But they all add up to protecting the people. That includes Parker. He’s got every right to privacy as any other assault victim has. If you have any pressing matters about his injuries you want addressed, take it to my medical forensic team. Otherwise, shut up and use someone who isn’t a minor in shock for your battleground.”

He got an approving nod and smile from Nalvarez as he turned and headed out of the room.

He signed off on twenty different field reports, the tail end of at least a hundred immediate statements, and settled two more, much smaller jurisdictional disputes. He knew his authority was extremely limited on the matter and he didn’t actually have any legal say but goddamnit why was everyone acting like such a child about all this? Gwen and Peter, the only two actual children in this mess, were more mature than most of the adults sticking in their noses.

A lot more mature.

Horrifyingly more mature, if George thought about it too much - so he didn’t.

He saw Gwen hugging Peter and the two just holding each other close as May talked to a police sergeant, and some of the agents from earlier were haranguing his forensic medical officer, the poor guy. But someone had to do it and despite last night, George was no doctor.

He checked in on them all one last time, before going towards the basement to try and clear up some of the vehicular snafus caused by last night.

At the last moment, though, he was waylaid by Nalvarez.

“Stacy,” he said. “What the hell did you say to Connors? He’s talking.”

“Great,” George said curtly.

“Which is why you’re needed in interrogation 2B,” he continued. “Connors won’t talk unless you’re there.”

George’s eyebrows rose at that. “What - really?”

Nalvarez shrugged. “Normally I’d be willing to push Connors on this, but...Johnson’s paranoid. He wants this thing wrapped up as quickly as possible, rather than tightly - or at least enough for some other agency to take it off our hands. You have any idea what’s making him so nervous?”

“A few,” George said curtly. “Someone gonna take care of the cars?”

“I’ll get one of the others on it, just go - the Alphabet Soup are getting antsy about interrogating Connors.”

With a long suffering sigh, George turned and went.

“By why do I have to go to urgent care?” Peter asked when he and Aunt May had a moment alone. “I’m going to heal, anyway, and what if they notice-”

“What if someone else notices that you are so badly hurt and I don’t appear to be doing anything about it? Or what if someone remembers later those were supposed to be looked at, only to find you all healed up?” Peter looked down. “We just need to make sure people know you’re all right...and I want to know, too.”

“Besides, now that we don’t have to worry about the doctors noticing the worst of the injuries or how fast you’re healing in the beginning stages or trying to do surgery on you, maybe you can get some antibiotics,” Gwen said from beside him. “Those don’t change based on your metabolism. And you’ll need them.”

Peter sighed and nodded, and leaned against Gwen as Aunt May went to talk to another officer about...something.

“Hey,” Gwen said, leaning into his shoulder as Peter pressed his face into her hair. “It’ll be alright. It won’t be a deep look like we worried about when you were first hurt-”

“But it’s still a look. They might still notice something’s off.”

“They might. But they probably won’t. And if you couldn’t get professional care last night, at least you might get something close to it, now.”

“I don’t need-”

“Yes you do,” Gwen said, gripping his elbow tightly. Leaning in, she said quietly, “Peter, when my father was carrying you out of that building - do you have any idea how terrifying it was? Before you said something I thought you were dead!”

Peter winced. “I’m sorry, I just-”

“Don’t apologize, Peter, not for that. All I’m saying is that...I know how bad this could be, but I also know how much worse it could be, and...I think this might be things finally looking up for you. For us.”

Peter sighed, dislodging some of her hair from under his nose. “I hope so.”

“I know so.”

That was when Aunt May and the officer helping them came back, and Peter was taken to some kind of forensic ward where he had to take his shirt off again and let himself be prodded at by some NYPD doctors and three different ‘agents’ from what the police officer called the Alphabet Soup. Peter saw how many different agencies were looking into this, and it terrified him how close most of them were going to be looking at his life, soon.

The experience was jarring, and quite possibly more humiliating than the interview as instead of just a video taped interview with him answering questions, every little thing was being photographed and he was being scanned by Geiger counters and there was talk of swabbing all his wounds, which only subsided when Gwen pointedly asked Peter if he’d cleaned the wounds at home.

Thank you, he mouthed at her. She smiled reassuringly in return.

It didn’t help that not only were there so many people directly involved in his poking and prodding, but instead of an office like the interview, they were at some desk-station type thing in a large room that served as a general forensic center. Apparently, there were normally curtains and dividers for privacy but in the chaos of examining people last night most of those were removed for efficiency purposes, which meant a few dozen other people got to take a nice, good look at his misery, too.

For a moment after they were done - finally! - Peter just leaned against the wall, clutching his shirt in his hand but feeling too tired to move. At least until Gwen took the shirt and started helping him dress in it.

“C’mon, bug boy,” she murmured quietly into his ear. “Just a little longer, okay?”

Peter nodded, looking warily at all the officers and agents openly ogling him and all the reports and readings, though a few at least had the decency to be pretending to use their phones. “Terrible photographer. Lighting was horrific and no respect for the models.”

“Models?” she asked teasingly.

“I never make people feel like that when taking pictures of them. Or at least I hope not.”

She smiled, and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Of course not.”

It was kind of creepy, now that he was listening to it, how similar Connors’ statement ended up being to Peter’s.

“It was like working with Richard all over again,” Connors said. “Peter is an extraordinary young man. If not the most ambitious one.”

George fought the urge to snort, keeping his face as neutral as possible. The interviewer seemed to appreciate it.

“Once I had the serum completed, I was planning to slate it for the proper trial process. I knew it wasn’t likely I would have to wait too long, as Mr. Osborne would have just as much personal investment in its completion as I would.”

“So what made you skip the process?”

“There was a...rogue agent, of sorts. Someone higher up within the hierarchy seeking to further his own personal gain, but he took the serum and instead of going through the proper channels - simulations, animal testing, that sort of thing - he set in motion plans to test it on homeless veterans. I knew how wrong that was, but at the time I was in no position to stop him. So I took the serum and...I believe I stopped him. I’m not sure, I’m afraid - my memories of Lizard are hazy at best, and this was certainly not the best of times.”

George couldn’t tell whether that was a lie or not just from looking at him, even though he knew it actually was. Or at least he was pretty sure it was.

“After that - well...there were side-effects.”

He ran through the story, vague and unhelpful in pretty much every way - except, of course, to Peter.

He had to give the man credit. He saw the same thing George had seen, how Peter might end up at fault for all this. And he took the blame all on his own, having apparently manipulated the boy and then tried to kill him.

Prison sentence for him for sure. But hopefully Peter wouldn’t get so much as a slap on the wrist for all of this.

George would never like the man, and he doubted he’d ever forgive him for terrorizing New York. But he could respect the man, and respect the same drive to protect that resided in George, and in Peter.

He had to admire Peter and Connors’ executions of their statements. Where Peter had made people look ready to cry, Connors made George’s skin crawl, and he knew how much of it was a complete lie.

But then, he also knew much wasn’t a lie.

The interview was short - Connors was good enough to explain everything and yet give them nothing actually helpful - and George was handcuffing him, and escorting the man back to his cell with a fully armed guard around them.

“Thanks,” George said quietly as he released the man into his cell.

“It wasn’t for you. But you’re welcome,” the man murmured, before turning and sitting on his cot, staring blankly at the wall.

George shook his head and went back into the main part of the building.

George spent the rest of the day battling off more Alphabet Soup agents - was that CIA in there he just saw? - and trying to reorganize the city back into something resembling order. He gave a statement saying that while he saw Spider-Man it wasn’t a clear enough look to be able to positively identify him, and while no one really bought that, everyone accepted it.

He’d made an enemy of just about every non-NYPD agent in the building, of which there were a lot. Somehow, some Defense Department guys got involved - how did that even make sense? - and they were just adding to the noise, which was all blurring together into one giant national-investigative blur at this point. The FBI ultimately left the ring, thank god, but that just left more room for Homeland Security to rattle around and make noise. And it didn’t help that they seemed to be teaming up with the CDC guys to make life difficult for everyone else. The one international organization involved, SHIELD, was as mysterious as ever. There was only one agent there, a guy a little too bland and polite for George’s comfort. Despite his lonesome presence, he always seemed to know what was going on, well-ahead of anyone else. George got the supremely uncomfortable feeling that this was the one he didn’t want to underestimate - if anyone would see through the lies, it’d be him.

It was a hectic and exhausting day. Everyone either stared at him in discomfiting amazement, including his own officers, or they were national agents who glared at him constantly for holding onto the case so tightly and who made no attempt to hide their hatred of him.

Whatever. Inter-agency feuds and office enemies, he’s dealt with all of that before. These were threats he knew how to handle...even if that didn’t necessarily make them any easier than the giant freakin’ lizard. Actually, at this point he’d rather have to take down the Lizard again than keep going with them.

Throughout the afternoon, he got a series of texts from Gwen keeping him updated on everyone. The first one said Peter was peripherally checked out. Second one said he got antibiotics and painkillers - maybe now George could have his own pills back. And then he got another one asking if she could go home with the Parkers.

Before he answered that one, he called Karen to check up on her and the boys.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” was what she said as soon as he said hello.

“Yes, I’m fine-”

“I’m seeing all that footage of you, against Spider-Man and the Lizard and now Gwen is involved, what’s this about her going up against the Lizard? And where does that Parker kid come into this?”

“The Parker kid?”

“Have you seen all those newsvans outside the precinct?” she asked. “I keep getting clips and pictures of Gwen walking out with the Parker kid, and he looks like hell and there are rumors that he’s involved somehow - honey, what’s going on? What happened to Gwen?”

He sighed. “It’s a long, long story, one I’m still in the middle of unraveling. I’ll give you the full story later.”

“Can the boys and I come home, at least?”

“Of course.”

“Do you need me to pick up Gwen from the precinct?”

“She’s gone with the Parkers for the day,” he said. Actually, he hadn’t called her yet, but she’s never been one for actively waiting for permission when she wanted to go somewhere. She’d always been very independent.

“Again I ask - how is he involved? You’re scaring me, honey, I didn’t call last night because I wanted to give you guys space but-”

“I know, I know, just...look, Gwen and I will be home tonight for sure. Grab something for dinner on the way home, and when we get there we’ll tell you the whole story.” If one of the news stations didn’t spread the whole story first. And once he and Gwen decided whether or not to bring Karen into the loop and good god, now he was considering lying to his wife?!

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine, Gwen’s fine, we’re both just a bit rattled. I’m about to call her, I’ll tell her to call you when she can, okay?”

“Okay.”

They bid their farewells and I love yous and George hung up, called Gwen, and was utterly unsurprised to find she was already on her way down the stairs into the nearest subway station with May and Peter.

“Just remember to call your mother, okay? She’s worried.”

“What should I say?”

It seemed Gwen had reached the same inconclusion he had.

“I told her things are still unclear and we’ll tell her the whole story when we got home for dinner. Just say I asked you to hold back for now, for police business.”

“Okay, dad,” she said, a waver in her voice. At least she felt as bad about lying to her mother as he did.

“I love you,” he said. He was going to be saying that a lot more from now on.

“I love you too, Daddy,” she said.

George ended the call, and spent a moment sitting back in his chair. He wasn’t even halfway done with his day, right now, and he was exhausted. Though in his defense, he hadn’t slept last night.

He looked down at the photos on his desk. One of him and Karen on their honeymoon. One of him and boys on a camping trip. And one of him and Gwen, age twelve, at a state science fair. He was holding her first-place trophy in one arm and with the other wrapped around her shoulders, while she proudly waved a gold medal at the camera. He could see part of her project on her other side, and even back then the science was becoming incomprehensible, her words increasingly going right over his head. He’d never minded that, before, no matter what George’s own father had to say on the matter.

He smiled, reaching out to pick up the picture, lingering on her delighted expression and proud smile. She was so happy, that day, and George wondered briefly if she would ever have such innocent happiness again in her life, after this.

Shaking his head and pushing down those maudlin thoughts, he set it down and roused his computer from sleep mode.

He had work to do. His city needed him.

Chapter Text

It was nearly dark when May Parker opened her door to let an exhausted George into her home.

“Mrs. Parker,” he greeted. “How are they?”

“Asleep,” she said, gesturing upstairs. “They’re in Peter’s room.”

Some part of him immediately rankled at realizing his daughter was in the boy’s bedroom, despite the fact the door was open, which apparently was more than he could say for when Peter came to their home.

And when he got up there to check in on them, they hadn’t so much as gone to bed as dropped asleep where they sat — on top of the covers of the bed, thank god. Curled up together, Peter’s head rested on Gwen’s chest with their arms wrapped around each other, two smartphones, a book, and three notebooks laying forgotten around them on the bedspread. They looked so young and innocent right now — and so, so tired — George couldn’t find it in himself to be indignant about finding his daughter in literally in bed with the kid.

He felt marginally invasive, stepping into the kid’s room, but not enough to stop him. He picked up the phones and set them on the kid’s desk. He picked up the book, only to frown as he realized from the cover what it was — a favorite of Gwen’s, it was Doctor Connors’ book. He remembered her reading it before the internship started, taking notes and losing a rainy afternoon to it.

George tried reading parts of the book, but apart from a rather bland foreward about the applications of transgenics, it was all incomprehensible jargon to him. The fact that these kids could understand this stuff so well amazed him to no end. He wondered what Connors wrote that had inspired them so much, and that could result in them being so shattered now that Connors was headed for prison.

Shaking his head, he set it aside, and picked up the notebooks, most of which were filled with equations and chemical structures and notes for he didn’t even know what. He put those on the desk, too, and took one more look at the kids. He briefly considered trying to get a blanket over them, but it was pretty warm, anyway, and he didn’t want to risk waking them up just yet.

Downstairs, he saw May had already put on some coffee, the old fashioned way with a whistling stove-top kettle.

“You didn’t have to,” he began.

“You look as tired as I feel, Mr. Stacy,” she said.

“Call me George.”

“I suppose we’re a bit beyond formalities at this point. Call me May.”

He nodded, and at a gesture from her he took a seat at her dining table. “You didn’t have to, but I am truly grateful for it.”

“Are you going to stay for dinner?”

“No — I need to home to my wife.” He paused. “Thanks for looking out for Gwen, today. I didn’t want her to be alone, and hanging around the precinct all day…”

“It was my pleasure, honestly,” she said. “You raised a wonderful girl, George.”

“Thank you,” he said. He stared tiredly at the table-top. “And you’ve certainly done a good job with Peter.”

“A little too good, I think,” she said quietly. “How do you take your coffee?”

“A few drops of cream, three sugars.”

She nodded and started moving around.

“I remember,” she said, pulling some creamer out of the fridge. “After Peter’s uncle died…when he first started coming home all beat-up and secretive. I…I imagined so many things. I was terrified he was getting into gangs or drugs — especially the drugs. I know it was that spider bite, now, but one day well before all that, he came home a nervous wreck, sweating and starving — Ben and I honestly thought he was coming down off of something, until he turned up sick the next day. And after Ben died, Peter was so…so guilty, and so…I don’t even know how to say it.”

“I don’t think you have to,” he said, reaching out and thanking her for the coffee. “I’ve seen enough to know what you’re talking about.”

“I imagine you have,” she said. For a few moments they sat in silence, sipping at the coffee, and George took a good look at everything strewn across the table — a few photo albums and a digital camera.

She caught his eye and nodded. “You can take a look if you wish.”

He didn’t, not really, but he started flipping through, anyway, raising an eyebrow when he saw pages of crappy photos with Peter in them alternating with pages of photos that almost never had Peter in them but were all much, much better quality.

“It can be a little hard to get pictures of him, some time,” she said, glancing over his shoulders. “He’s always the one behind the camera.”

George stopped when he reached a photo of Peter at…a science fair. A district fair from the looks of it, not a state-level one, but the pride on his face as he held up a gold medal was no less than Gwen’s — and nor was the look on Ben’s face from where he held a very, very young Peter in his arms.

“I have a photo just like this on my desk at work,” he said. “Did you see the stuff they were working on, upstairs?”

“Saw, yes, understood, no. It’s all Greek to me, sometimes literally,” she said fondly, then suddenly reached for the camera. “But…”

She did some stuff with the menu, then turned and told him, “I took a few photos. After everything, I just…I just wanted to hold onto the good parts, and hope to forget the bad.”

It was a picture of Gwen and Peter, much earlier in the day. They were both sitting at the kitchen table, their sides pressed together as they sat slumped over with their heads buried in folded arms, fingers laced together by their elbows. He clicked to see the next photo — them sitting on the couch, a slew of papers on the coffee table with them looking at each other with such fondness, such true affection and maybe even something like lo-

He quickly moved to the next picture, a much more recent one — it was the very scene George had stumbled across just moments before, the two asleep with things scattered around them.

“I don’t know whether to ask you to send these to me or delete them,” he said honestly.

“I’ll hold onto them,” she promised.

There was more silence as George finished his coffee. Just as he was about to thank her for it again, she said, “Captain, I have to ask — what’s going to happen to Peter?”

“He…in the short term or the long run?”

“Both.”

“In the short term…well, he’ll probably come under media scrutiny for a while. OsCorps might poke around a bit but in light of everything else they’ll ultimately leave you alone. Beyond that, hopefully not much.”

“And…in the long run?”

George swallowed.

“My wife — she once asked me, after all these years and all I’ve done, why I never accepted any promotions to become a commissioner, something I’ve been offered multiple times. I told her I was a cop first and foremost. She cried, then she polished my badge.”

“Peter’s not going to stop being Spider-Man.”

“Not anytime soon. Probably not as long as he can help it.”

“…it was part of what he was fighting with Ben about, the night he died,” she said. “Ben always said power came with responsibility. If you can do something to help others, not only should you act, but you must act. I guess Peter just…took that to heart.”

“No kidding,” George said.

“I just…I worry. Ben was only wandering around in the streets when he got killed. And Peter is out there fighting criminals and running headfirst into danger, and…and I can’t stop him. I know that, I know that if I tried — it wouldn’t do a damn thing.”

George tipped his head in acknowledgement. “I…I think all we can do now is help him.”

May looked at him, consideringly.

“George, I have to ask — why the sudden change of heart? About Spider-Man?”

“I wish I knew the answer.”

“You know some of it,” May said. “It can’t just be having fought alongside him. There’s something else there.”

George nodded. “I have this whole speech planned out for what I’m going to say to my bosses when I pull the arrest warrant on him. About how Spider-Man is clearly operating on a whole different plane from us or any other human. How unprepared we are, without Spider-Man, to handle threats like the Lizard, and how there are more threats like him every day. The wreck in Harlem last year with those two…monster things from that university in Virginia. All that nonsense surrounding Stark Industries. Unidentifiable weapons and threats capable of calling down thunderstorms out of nowhere…strange things are happening and the only thing we can do to fight back is hold on to something even stranger.”

“…but I take it that’s not your real reason,” May said.

“No, it isn’t,” George agreed, taking a few gulps of coffee to brace himself. “I thought Spider-Man was just a random vigilante, or an anarchist. Yet Peter…he had a rough start in all senses of the word. He has good intentions, genuine good intentions that aren’t just an ideology in disguise, and powers and capabilities no one else has, but that this city could really, really use. He has been through so much, and instead of falling into a black pit or shuffling along through life, he came out fighting, ready to take on every bad guy in the world. He…he figured out what’s important.”

“What is important, here?”

“Protecting people,” George said. “There are so many other aspects of being a cop, but ultimately that’s the most important part, protecting the people. He learned that and he does that, and there are still a lot of rough edges that need to be smoothed out, but if we can figure this out…”

He sighed. “I — I’m honestly not sure. About any of this. Quite frankly, I’ve had my world turned upside down so many times in the last couple days — I don’t know what else to do. I don’t think he really knows, either. But at least there is that — he isn’t some cocky bastard trying to prove a point and he isn’t a megalomaniac out to…”

George sighed, took another sip of coffee. This made even less sense out of his head than in it.

“He just wants to help and protect people. He’s ready to do whatever it takes to achieve that, and he can do so, so much more than I ever gave him credit for, or that any of the rest of us can do on our own.”

His knuckles were white in his tight grip on the coffee mug, and George just stared at his bruised and scraped skin, feeling suddenly hollow at baring out his soul like that.

She seemed to realize it, as she turned away to give him a moment to collect himself, looking towards the photo albums again, George’s eyes skimming them from the side.

For all that Richard and Mary Parker had left Peter so suddenly in his childhood, at least they hadn’t really abandoned him. If the photos were anything to go by, he lived a very good life with his aunt and uncle. Happy, fulfilling. Apart from the parents themselves, he hadn’t really missed anything because they were gone, which was…something, at least.

Eventually, he said, “I need to get going. My wife must be worrying about me, by now.”

“She definitely is,” May said, glancing woefully towards a photo of Ben Parker on the well.

“Thank you. For the coffee, for Gwen, all of it.”

She smiled. “And thank you, for helping Peter.”

He went upstairs and gently shook Gwen awake, unsurprisingly waking both of them.

Surprisingly, Peter’s hand immediately shot out to grab George’s wrist, and he kept still as the kid’s eyes snapped open and he sat up, panicky eyes taking in his surroundings.

When they finally landed on George, he said, “Easy, kid, I’m just here for Gwen.”

Peter swallowed, slowly tracking his eyes down his own arm before letting go and inching back across the bed as Gwen blinked awake.

“Hey, sweetie, let’s get going,” he said.

“Mm, ‘kay,” she mumbled, pushing herself up and searching around herself. George handed over her phone and helped her up, and looked over to see Peter still seemingly slightly confused as he looked between Gwen and George.

“Get some more sleep, kid,” George suggested, before heading out with Gwen in tow.

Inside his car, she dozed off until they were about halfway home. She yawned and stretched like a little kid when she woke up again, before saying, “We’re not going to tell Mom the truth, are we?”

George blew out a long breath through his nose.

“I don’t know, but…I don’t think so.”

Gwen sniffed, having clearly expected that answer. “Does she get the public spin?”

“Probably. Maybe a little more personal version of it from us, but…that’s safest, for now.”

He gripped the wheel tightly as that sunk in, lying to his wife about that. As much as it pained him to admit, lying to the boys about it felt so much easier, but Karen…

He felt a small, gentle hand on his elbow, and his eyes flickered over to see Gwen’s attempt at reassuring him.

“We’ll get through this, Dad.” He was pretty sure he caught a grim smile out of the corner of his eye. “We’re Stacys. It’s what we do.”

He laughed, just a little darkly, something she clearly empathized with at the moment. “Yeah. It’s what we do.”

After dinner was over and the boys were packed off to bed, Gwen was unsurprised when mom dragged her and Dad to the living room and asked, “So what aren’t you two telling me?”

Gwen looked at her dad, who sighed and said, “It’s just…complicated. We’re giving you the simplified version because the real version doesn’t make any sense.”

They’d told her the story, the same one they’d ended up telling the police. Gwen was avoiding the couch and hoping her mom didn’t notice, because she didn’t have a good explanation for why she’d have to do that, but neither did she want to sit there after treating Peter on it last night.

It had been a hassle enough to explain away the missing tupperware and handtowels with a good enough lie for her mom not to notice — or at least not enough to pursue it in light of everything else — but now Gwen could feel her heart tightening at having to lie to her mom so much, and yet somehow, unable to even bear the thought of divulging the truth to her. It was too intense and surreal to give her the true story.

And as much as Gwen loved her mom, she couldn’t guarantee she’d keep quiet on the matter if she knew the truth.

It took a fair bit more convincing on their part, but after having spent part of the day lying to the police it was also terrifyingly easy. Was this what she was doomed to become for Peter — a liar?

She couldn’t find it in herself to regret it.

Instead, she left her parents to argue and went to her brothers’ rooms, reading them each a story (and maybe trying to sneak a little bit of critical thinking into them in the process).

Her brothers had always been impressed by her and her smarts. Despite them being boys and her being a girl, she knew they looked up to her. But after spending the day seeing newsclips which, among other things, portrayed her as some kind of damsel hero thing, they seemed ready to hero-worship her, too, like apparently everyone at the station was doing to her dad.

“Hey,” she said after she was done with the story. “I’m still Gwen, I’m still your big sister, and I’m not any different from who I was yesterday, okay?”

“Everyone is going to be so jealous in class when I tell them about you,” Howard said.

Simon grinned at her like he wasn’t listening. He probably wasn’t. Phil stuck his tongue out at her, which was a disconcertingly nice reaction.

She sighed and left them to their sleep, drifting into her room in a daze and changing, trying not to think about the matter too much.

Without Spider-Man wandering around to be made uncomfortable with awe in the wake of the disaster, it seems the city was settling for the Stacys.

There were even security tapes of her from within the lab — her making the antidote, her using Doctor Connors’ access codes to get the entire tower evacuated, her spraying the Lizard with the coolant mix trying to protect the Ganali device…

She wasn’t the girl in all the news stories.

Right now, Gwen was just a girl who couldn’t sleep.

After changing and her nightly rituals, Gwen lay in bed for ages, staring up at the ceiling despite her exhaustion.

God. The whole city knew her name, now. They thought she was something she knew she was not. She knew who the real heroes were, and she wasn’t one of them. Doing a few heroic things wasn’t what made you a hero.

She shut her eyes as she realized the kind of waxing philosophic path she was headed down.

Sleep. She really needed sleep. Unfortunately, her long nap earlier that day was making things difficult now.

It was a while before she drifted into fitful slumber, uneasy darkness broken by golden glints of her father’s police badge and the red and blue of her boyfriend’s suit.

And maybe, just maybe, the barest hint of white, the white of her labcoat.

(She remembered none of it when she woke the next morning.)

It had been a relief to wake up in his own bed with Karen at his side. He spent a few moments laying there and trying not to think about the day ahead of him as she brushed her fingers over his scrapes and bruises in the dim morning light, but eventually he sighed and got up, heading to the bathroom while she went to start on breakfast.

He spent a few moments standing there shirtless, studying his chest and back. After a day for everything to start popping up, he looked like a total wreck. Half his upper body was black and blue, there were scabs all over the place, and George could see at least three cuts that would probably scar permanently.

Still, it wasn’t as bad as the kid…or at least as bad as the kid had been. Who knew what he looked like, now — though George could get a good idea of what he would look like in a few weeks.

One quick, hot shower woke him up, then he got dressed and followed the scent of coffee to the kitchen. There were waffles already waiting, stacked up on the table next to some sliced fruit and a pitcher of orange juice with a few empty plates waiting beside all of them, his wife watching the news and taking down stock information like always.

Gwen was already sitting at the table, sipping at a coffee and eating some waffles without seeming to realize it, clearly still wrung out despite the full night’s sleep.

“Morning, dad,” she said, her focus sharpening as he came into view.

“Morning,” he said. He got his coffee in the biggest mug he found, and they sat there quietly sipping at the rejuvenating drinks, though George only started eating when Gwen pushed one of the empty plates towards him.

“Do you think you’ll be able to get Spider-Man’s arrest warrant pulled?” she asked quietly as he ate, peering at him carefully over the rim of her cup.

What a way to start the morning.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, keeping his eyes focused on his breakfast. “I hope I can — or I can at least discourage my officers from acting on it. But I can’t control the entire NYPD, and it might not mean anything if one of the other agencies sinks their teeth into this and decides to issue their own warrant.”

Gwen didn’t seem too happy to hear that, but she nodded anyway.

“Any word on school?” he asked, trying to get away from that subject for now.

“I got an automated phone call saying we’ve got the week off,” she said. “While they do repairs.”

George’s eyebrows rose. He remembered the damage reports. The lizard had done quite a number on the institution.

“Only a week?” he asked.

“They said they might open even earlier, and that if they would they would give is another call saying so. Otherwise, we’re to assume the entire week is off and stay home.”

“That soon?”

Gwen shrugged. “I guess they’d rather risk a construction accident lawsuit than try to clean up the legal mess of losing too many, uh, what’s the word…instructional minutes.”

He continued staring incredulously.

“At least it’s not Los Angeles?” she tried. “My friend once had to go to school even when the power was out and there was a wildfire nearby.”

Good grief, what was wrong with these people? Was that even legal?

He was about to ask as much, when Karen appeared in the doorway, eyes wide in something very close to shock.

“You two have got to see this,” she said, gesturing frantically towards the living room wall with the TV on it until they got up to go see it.

When George saw the screen, he thought he might be sick.

Beside him, he could feel Gwen stiffen and quiver with tension as she gasped in horror at the sight.

They were cycling through photographs of Peter, exhausted and miserable but most of all, shirtless — laying out his entire battered body for the world to see.

“Son of a bitch,” George swore as he took in the remembered horrors and the far-too-chipper-about-it news anchor.

“Was that was nearly happened to Gwen?” Karen asked in a shaky voice, even as her hands went to protectively cover the boys’ heads.

God, they were seeing this. The whole world was seeing this.

“No,” he promised his wife. “She was never in any danger of that.”

He turned to Gwen, only to see her already dialing on her cell phone and holding it up to her ear with a shaking hand, eyes locked onto the TV screen as they went through nearly half a dozen photos.

“Where did these come from?” George asked, turning back to the screen. “These aren’t the forensic shots.”

Gwen turned to him, about to answer, when she jerked as someone presumably answered her call.

“Peter?” she said into the phone. “Turn on the TV and tune to Channel 7. You’ve got to see this.”

Chapter Text

Peter flipped over the last few slices of bacon as he picked up the ringing phone.

“Hey,” he greeted as he moved some bowls on the counter over for Aunt May to mix the pancake batter.

“Peter?” he heard Gwen say, barely over the sound of the sizzling bacon he was keeping an eye on.

“Yeah-”

“Turn on the TV and tune to Channel 7. You’ve got to see this.”

“What for?” Peter asked, moving from the kitchen to the living room and turning on the their TV. “You sound upset.”

“They — you’ll just have to see it for yourself.”

Frowning, Peter tuned in as Aunt May joined him, looking at the TV curiously.

A moment later, that curiosity turned to shock.

He would never admit that his jaw actually dropped for a second when he saw that, but he couldn’t deny his horrified, “They can’t do that! I thought there were laws against this stuff!”

They were pictures of himself, beat-up to hell and back, his bruises splashed across the TV screen for all the world to see.

Beat-up and...vulnerable. He thought he might puke.

“The police can’t do that,” Gwen said. “But these aren’t from the cops. They’re from after you were being examined, I think — someone else must have taken pictures on their phone or something.”

And, yeah, now that he was paying attention, he could see the rather than being from close up like the police cameras, they were from far away, and one even had part of the police camera in the shot. They were all a little grainy and blurry in a low-megapixel kind of way.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop any of the details from coming through.

One of them even had Gwen’s back in it. She was holding his shirt with one hand and cupping his face with the other as she gave him the reassurances he still remembered perfectly.

It had been their quiet moment in all that chaos, a moment which had no right being splashed across the news like this.

“They can’t do that,” he protested again, his knees weakening beneath him.

“Hey, look, maybe if we call them, they’ll stop, we do have laws-”

“It wouldn’t matter, they’re already out there!”

There was a shuffle of noise and voices from her end, and then Captain Stacy was saying, “Is your aunt there?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, throat getting drier with every photo.

“Give the phone to her, then,” he said calmly.

With a shaky hand, he handed the phone to her, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Hello? Yes, I’m seeing them now. Is there anyway we can-? Okay...no, I wasn’t going to, anyway...right...okay, I will...”

Peter listened with half an ear as he watched the news station cycle through the photos one last time.

There was Peter holding up his arms so the police photographer could get good shots of his sides. Him unintentionally facing the camera head-on — he could remember a couple times when he was facing someone on their phone. Two shots of his back from two different angles — was there more than one person in on this? And finally, the one with Gwen again.

His face heated up in latent humiliation as the photo cycle finished, and the newshost started droning on about the attack again.

When he heard, “Preliminary reports suggest Connors confessed to having attacked Midtown Science High as the Lizard in order to kill Parker,”, his knees finally gave out and he collapsed back onto the couch in a daze, barely hearing the anchor’s words anymore.

The shock of this felt a bit like being slammed into a wall, and for a moment the world was drowned out in white noise as he remembered actually being slammed into a wall, repeatedly, during the attack on the school.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Only the cops were supposed to hear about how he was mixed up in all this, not the whole world. He knew some of the story would get out to the public eventually, but not this soon.

And not in the amount of detail the news anchors were promising would be coming in later during the week.

“Peter?”

He turned to see Aunt May handing him the phone. His hands were practically vibrating as he took it from her.

“Yeah?” he said into it.

“Listen,” Captain Stacy said. “I’ll get to the bottom of this and we’ll do everything we can to stop this, okay? There are laws against this sort of thing, and for a reason.”

They both knew how futile that would be.

“That won’t...,” Peter started, cutting off as there was another photo of him walking out of the precinct with Gwen, him practically leaning on her as they both followed Aunt May.

“Thanks, Captain,” he said, taking a deep breath. Maturity, he could do that, really. “But don’t put yourself out for this. I’m a photographer, I know how this works. You won’t be able to pull them, and it might just make things worse.”

“Listen to your aunt,” he said. “Stay inside and don’t answer any questions from anyone other than the cops, got it?”

“Got it,” he said.

A moment later, Gwen was saying, “Are you okay?”

“How did this even happen?” Peter asked.

She sighed. “I wish I knew, Peter. Probably someone looking to make a quick buck off of this.”

He shuddered at the thought of someone else profiting off his misery.

“We’ll get through this,” she said.

“You keep saying that,” Peter said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t — don’t be, I’m just...what the hell, that’s all I can think. Seriously, this stuff is making me embarrassed to be a photographer right now. I should’ve gone into, like, making ships in bottles for a hobby or something.”

“...ships in bottles?” she asked.

Peter snorted at the incredulity in her voice.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “But call me if anything happens or if you need anything, or even if you just want to talk, okay?”

“Thanks, Gwen,” he said.

A few goodbyes later, and Peter was still staring in shock at the TV screen when she hung up, barely feeling Aunt May’s firm grip on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Peter. We’ll get through this.”

Peter wanted to believe her.

“There’s nothing we can do?”

“They aren’t police photos-”

“They were taken in the station in a situation where the kid should’ve had some privacy-”

“But they are not police issue forensic photographs,” Commissioner Johnson said. “If the Parker family wants to pursue legal action with the news station directly, we can provide evidence as needed, but that’s about all we can manage.”

And, of course, they wouldn’t try anything, not with their lives already gutted so much as was.

“Jesus Christ, this ain’t right,” he grumbled into his phone irritably.

“You seem...pretty invested, over a guy who by all accounts you didn’t even like. I heard what happened the first time he came to your station.”

George could just imagine Johnson leaning back in his seat, legs propped up on his desk like every worst police cliche ever.

“Have you heard his statement?” George asked.

“...yes,” Johnson said. “It was pretty hard to miss.”

“Well then let’s just say I can greatly empathize with having your ass handed to you by a giant goddamn lizard and not wanting the whole world drooling over the details.”

“Not too much, I hope,” Johnson said, the phone fuzzying his faint Texas twang. “You’ always been great about keepin’ distance in your head, and that’s why I haven’t pulled you from this case yet. And believe me, a lotta people been calling for you to be kicked off entirely. You’re damn good and you’ve been there from beginning to now, we need you on this. But if I have to worry about more ’an your daughter’s involvement clouding your judgment, I might just have to start listening to those people.”

“You don’t have to worry,” George promised curtly, leaning back in his own chair with a frustrated sigh. “This has just been a very messed up case and most of the time I have no idea what our next step should be. Or if there even will be one, when at any moment one of those other agencies could finally win their jurisdictional slapfight and take this case for themselves.”

There was a long, considering pause, full of nothing but office background noise and static.

“To be honest with you, it’s one of those agencies that’s the real reason you haven’t been kicked off this case yet.”

George frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

“From the looks of it, that intelligence group, SHIELD, is set to take over. Heard this from the governor himself, and there’s talk that if it comes to it there will be an order from the White House.”

“The White House?!” George cried out, slamming back forward in his seat. “What the- what do they care?”

“Bioterrorism?” Johnson said dryly. “And t’ be honest, I think there’s some backroom politicking going on, some’n way above my paygrade. But apparently that one agent they have on the ground right now reported that SHIELD is best taking over this case, but letting you continue to lead it with NYPD support.”

“Which part are they interested in — the Lizard or Spider-Man?” he asked. Because good god, some of those rumors he’d heard over the years about shady dealings from those SHIELD nuts...

“Near as I can tell, the governor chipped in to get a lid on the Lizard situation, but SHIELD wants to find Spider-Man.” He paused. “But don’ take my word on that, ‘cause I honestly don’t know much more’n you.”

“And us? What are we interested in?” George asked. “Because honestly, I don’t even know anymore.”

“You’re the one who sent five hundred men after him. And you know who he is.”

“Commissioner, as I told everyone else-”

“You didn’t get a good look at him. I heard, and I called bullcrap the moment I heard, and I didn’t call you.”

So. NYPD was Spider-Man friendly at its heart, now, if not on its surface.

“Did that agent say why he wanted me on this case, despite all the conflict of involvement?”

“Didn’t say a word, though I got the feeling the conflict of involvement is why he wants you on this. He was asking a lot of questions about OsCorp, more than anyone else, and probing pretty damn deep. And he believed your story about Spider-Man’s identity even less than I did.”

George breathed out deeply through his nose.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Bad enough to step away from the case voluntarily?”

“No.”

“Figured as much. Well, at least we won’t have to worry about all the other Feds for much longer. They should be gone by the end of tomorrow, latest.”

“First good news I’ve heard all day,” George said.

“Then get going, Captain, before more bad news ends up on my desk and I’m the one who has to give it to you. And get me my deputy commissioner back.”

George laughed lightly. “Sure thing, sir. I’ll update you by tomorrow evening of the status of the case. Goodbye.”

“And George?” Johnson said.

“Yeah?”

“You went toe-to-toe with a giant, mutant lizard, and lived to tell the tale. That’s something to be proud of. Remember that.”

George blinked dumbly at the wall of his office. He and Johnson were reasonable friends, but it’s been a damn long time since his old mentor had gotten this personal with him.

“And,” Johnson added. “Maybe try telling that to the Parker kid, too.”

“Will do. Sir.”

When he put the phone down a farewell later, George just stared at the photos on his desk, wondering what the hell just happened.

This must all be a bad dream. A long, convoluted one that would make him find out what the hell he had before bed and never have it again.

God, he wished it were that simple.

He got up to go let all those other agencies know they could leave, now. Unless SHIELD stepped into it, first, which was entirely possible — sometimes he wondered if that agent, Col-something, was psychic, considering how he always seemed to know everything that was going on, sometimes even before George did.

Hey, his daughter was dating a superhero and he’d fought a giant mutant lizard on top of a skyscraper. It wasn’t totally outside the realm of possibility.

There was a reporter outside his home.

Peter stared incomprehensibly at the car parked on the other side of the street about three houses down, sitting in the driver’s seat and pointing a camera at the house. He wasn’t even trying to be subtle about it.

And someone else was walking down the street with a recorder in her hand and a press pass hanging down from her neck.

“Peter!”

With a jolt, Peter stepped back from the front window, and Aunt May pulled the curtains closed again.

“Let’s not encourage them, okay?”

Peter nodded, still trying to process the fact that a reporter was outside his house, taking pictures. At least he hoped it was a reporter, and not like the FBI or something looking for Spider-Man.

On second thought, maybe a reporter wasn’t so bad.

With a dejected sigh, Peter splayed over the couch again, turning on the TV and resolutely watching anything but the news. And he tamped down on the ridiculous urge to cover his ears every time Aunt May opened the door to tell someone, “No Comment, we are not talking to the press,” exactly as Captain Stacy had told her to say.

Reporters. Like he was a celebrity or something. Even if there were ultimately less than half a dozen, it was still crazy that news people were actually interested in Peter Parker.

He ended up switching off the TV to do all the homework he’d been missing out on. The teachers had been pretty sympathetic about the whole ‘your uncle was shot dead right in front of you’ thing, but that unofficial grace period had ended and his grades had ended up slipping anyway, and now he had a lot of catch-up to do.

Peter refused to think of how his teachers might be reacting to those pictures.

Lunch and homework ended up taking too little time, but Peter couldn’t really switch on his phone or go online without dealing with the barrage of messages from friends and classmates asking how he was and what was going on.

Aunt May was unsympathetic to his boredom, saying, “Read a book. That thing with paper in it that we used before those fancy phones and computers became popular. Unlimited battery life, you know.”

Peter laughed as she pointed at the bookshelf. “Yes, Aunt May.”

He ended up absconding to his room and started rebuilding his webshooters.

Well, he tried to start.

He sat on the floor with everything laid out, ready to go, but once he picked up one of the webshooters and took a closer look, all thoughts of repair went out the window as he spent a moment staring at them, and at the damage. If he focused, he could remember how each crack was made. He could still feel the Lizard’s grip in the bones of his wrist.

He dropped the parts of the webshooter to tug up his sleep and stare at the bruises. He could even see the darker parts of the bruise where the pressure had been strongest. If Con...no, if the Lizard hadn’t decided to go for one last monologue, Peter’s wrists probably would have been broken.

As he stared, Peter remembered that tail wrapping around his neck, too, cutting off his air supply and leaving him kicking helplessly as Connors...as the Lizard ripped off the mask.

“Poor Peter Parker. No father. No mother. No uncle...”

Peter shut his eyes but was unable to stop imagining, stop remembering being unable to breath, his face blowing up and his head feeling like it was about to blow as the blood flow was cut, kicking and wriggling in that titan’s grip, so helpless until Captain Stacy came, so close to-

“Peter?”

He jerked and scrambled back into the bed, shoving it into the wall and startling Aunt May in the doorway.

“Sweetie, are you alright?”

“I thought I was going to die,” Peter blurted out.

She stared at him, pale and wide-eyed as Peter said, “That night on the roof. I didn’t — I didn’t think I’d live. Even after Captain Stacy showed up, I was so sure and the lizard, and when the tower antenna fell down, and the building, and my webshooters were broken, and-”

He couldn’t keep going and just sat there as Aunt May came in and sat beside him. Peter was breathing heavily and trying not to, but it wasn’t until she wrapped her arms around him and held him that he realized he was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said.

“Shh, don’t be, you were saving the city.”

“Not for that,” Peter said. “For — I can’t...”

“Hey, it’s okay, just let it out, we’ll talk later, okay? Just breathe right now. Can you do that for me?”

Peter nodded, even though he wasn’t sure.

He didn’t cry again, instead dry-sobbing until his breathing was back to normal. Well, something like normal, anyway.

Peter realized it was getting darker in the room but he didn’t want to get up and turn on the light, didn’t want to leave the safety of Aunt May’s arms ever again but he had to, because his uncle wasn’t there and it was all Peter’s fault and with the whole thing with Spider-Man, there was no way, just no way-

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, hating how his voice cracked as he spoke into her hair. It smelled like that weird lavender-herbal thing she liked in her shampoo, and beef stock from cooking downstairs. “I was so scared. And you’re even more scared. But I can’t stop. I have to be Spider-Man.”

“Peter...” He felt a drop on his cheek, and pulled back to see she was crying.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry-”

“Stop apologizing.”

He shut his mouth with an audible click, because what else could he say to everything but mea culpa?

“Peter...I want you to stop being- no, listen to me, let me finish. I would love nothing more than for you to hang up that suit and never go out there into danger again. But I’m not a fool, Peter. Your uncle and your father were both noble and stubborn men, and that’s a trait you have definitely inherited. As much as I want you to stop, I know you won’t stop being Spider-Man and helping other people, not if you can help it. I know it, you know it, even the Stacys know it.”

She leaned up to kiss the top of his head. “You’re my brave little superhero. You saved millions of people that night on the tower, and who knows how many more you can save in the future. I would say that you will be great man, Peter — but here’s the thing: you already are.”

“But I-”

“-made mistakes. And those mistakes ended with people’s lives being lost. I’m not doubting that or forgetting that. But there are so many other mistakes everyone has made to that end, and you’ve taken yours and done something so extraordinary, something most people never do, never would do even if they could.”

She smiled at him. “I’m proud of you. And I am scared, terrified. But I have faith in you, and I always will. Do you understand?”

He smiled and he Did Not Cry. Really.

“Yes, Aunt May,” he said around the lump in his throat. Mysterious lump. Really mysterious.

“Just promise me...promise me that when you do go back out there, you’ll be careful, and you’ll fight your hardest to come back home in one piece.”

“I promise.”

Neither of them said anything after that. They sat close as the room grew dark, and let the silence speak for them both.

“Peter, I know things have been difficult, lately, and I’m sorry about that. I think I know what you’re feeling. Ever since you were a little boy, you’ve been living with so many...unresolved things.”

“Well that’s one way to put it,” Peter mumbled into his phone.

“Well, take it from an old man — those things send us down a road...they make us who we are. And if anyone’s destined for greatness, it’s you, son.”

Son...?

His throat was just dry, really. That wasn’t a lump.

“You owe the world your gifts, you just have to figure out how to use them.”

“I know,” Peter said to the air, to his uncle, to anybody who was listening. “I owe the world everything.”

“And know that wherever they take you, we’ll always be here. So come on home, Peter. You’re my hero, and I love you.”

The voicemail menu came up again, and Peter sat there in his chair, shaking as the automated voice when through the options.

“You’re my hero, and I love you.”

His vision blurred as he stared up at his corkboard, the pictures of his parents and his uncle as a young man all turning into one blob of indistinct color as he felt a drop, two, more on his shirt, right below his face.

He said his option into the phone.

“Peter, I know things have been difficult lately...”

He gasped out a laugh at that. Difficult. Yeah, back then when he was just letting his stupid daddy issues put Aunt May in danger, when he was helping create the Lizard, that was difficult.

“...you’re my hero, and I love you.”

“No, I’m not,” he said to his blank computer screen as he abruptly shut off his phone. “I’m sorry, Uncle Ben, I’m not.”

He left his chair to toss himself onto the bed, throwing his phone aside to dig the heels of his palms into his wet eyes, breathing in deep and ragged as he tried to stop crying.

It wasn’t long, though, before reached up to grab his phone again and replayed the message.

“...take it from an old man...”

The picture he had of Uncle Ben was of him as a young man. Young, happy, and no idea of just how his life was going to end, how his final moments would be bleeding out onto the pavement in the middle of the night, with only a boy who’d smiled at his killer there with him, failing at saving his life.

The message ended.

“...if anyone’s destined for greatness, it’s you...”

It was wrong, all of it was wrong, Uncle Ben had no idea how wrong he’d been.

“You’re my hero, and I love you.”

He threw the phone across the room and stared helplessly at the ceiling.

Uncle Ben probably regretted his last message to Peter, now, and everything he said in it. Well, everything but the ‘I love you’ part. And the owing people his gifts part.

With another ragged breath that was not a sob, Peter pushed himself up and slowly moved to the other side of the room, picking up his phone and curling up in the corner like he’d done the night Uncle Ben had first died.

“Peter, I know things have been difficult, lately, and I’m sorry about that. I think I know what you’re feeling..."