Chapter Text
Peter's fingertips graze the side of the building as he tumbles headfirst down the eleven stories below. Alarms ring through his mask, colors dancing across his viewfinder while he twists in the air and mutters, “Shit, shit!”
He's so tired.
“Thirty feet until impact,” Karen warns. “You have not reinstalled your parachute after the last fall, Peter.”
“Don't need a lecture, Karen!”
Peter tries to right himself enough to fire a web. There are walls on either side of him, and nothing close enough in front to connect to. His brain flashes through options as fast as it can. Collide into the building. Create a canopy below to catch him. Aim in the distance and hope for the best. What does he have time for? What will work?
“Karen – agh!” He yelps, jolting when a hand circles his ankle, grip firm and steady, and pulls, yanking him away from the approaching ground. He squirms and cranes his neck, shielding his eyes against the sun to see who has caught him.
“Oh,” he says, relaxing. “Hey, man.”
Sam Wilson gives him a short look. “You web me and I drop you.”
“That's fair.”
They land on the roof of a shopping center two blocks over. Sam lowers him onto his hands, touching down to his right while Peter gets his feet under him. It's not the first time he's fallen in the last couple weeks, but it's the first time he's been saved by Sam, and he can tell by the irritation bleeding off him that Sam wishes it wasn't happening just as much as Peter does.
He waits for him to launch into some rehearsed monologue or lecture about not being an idiot – Peter has heard it all before – but Sam is distracted, tapping away at the bracelet on his wrist.
“How's it going?” Peter asks. “You know, the whole 'new Captain America' thing?”
“Fine,” says Sam. “How's falling off buildings?”
“Good. Really getting the hang of it.”
“I see that.”
He shifts the shield strapped to his back, and Peter feels like he's plummeting all over again. For a second that passes by like a dozen lifetimes, he sees it cracked and shattered, bloody, destroyed, Steve holding onto it like like a lifeline.
His heart seizes in his chest. He stumbles a step and blinks to clear the memories.
We won, Mr. Stark. We won.
Sam turns his attention on him. Peter swallows. “You get to use it yet?” he asks, motioning to the shield.
“Yeah.”
“You like it?”
“Uh huh.”
“Hey,” Peter says, rocking on his heels, “Do you ever wonder why Steve picked you and not Bucky? 'Cause like, he and Bucky go really far back, don't they? Is Bucky mad that Steve picked you?”
“You'd have to ask him.” Sam activates the wings of his suit. He scans over Peter, wary and calculating, the way he did on the battlefield while Peter cried and cried and cried. Sam had been the one to calm him then, but he must find what he needs to deem him okay enough to leave now.
“Take the stairs,” he says.
Peter gives him a shaky salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
He watches Sam take off, flying back into the city to help mend what's been broken. Most of Peter's patrolling lately has been this – aiding in the rebuild, catching squatters and people breaking into boarded off apartments and shops so owners can restore and start over. Five years and only now is the world righting itself too, desperate not to fall anymore, trusting hands ready to catch it if it does.
Peter takes the stairs down to the street. He always hits the ground, one way or another. Some days it just hurts less.
- - -
Bucky finds him later in Queensbridge in the shell of a building under construction.
“You sleeping up there, Webs?”
The sound of his voice in the comm startles Peter and he nearly tips out of the hammock he's made for himself.
“Mr. Stark?” he asks, jumbled, half-awake, but then he remembers. No. Not Tony. Tony is gone. It's been four months and six days and somehow Peter manages to catch himself in these moments where he forgets, where his thoughts are soupy and slip and slide and he can convince himself everything is the same, everyone is alive. He can convince himself they really did win.
But these moments don't last. They never do.
Bucky speaks again, softer. “It's Bucky. You all right?”
Peter ignores him. It's like anything else these days – blink and it's gone. He peers over the side of his makeshift bed to where Bucky is sitting on his motorcycle at the curb, looking up at him. The bike's engine hums softly in the quiet of the night.
“How'd you know where I was?” Peter asks, which is stupid, because, hello, trained assassin.
“You're becoming more well known for the insane places you nap and less for the crime you fight. You do fight crime still, right? Or did you settle into an early retirement?”
Peter rolls his eyes, forgetting about the mask and the dark and how high up he is. “I was just resting.”
“Okay, Grandpa.” He shoots a web at one of the concrete pillars and Bucky takes him in with a tired expression of his own, eyebrows pinched as he tracks Peter's movement to the ground. “But don't you have a bed? A real one?”
“Yeah, but I –” don't wanna go home, Peter stops himself from saying, because that's not right. Not really. He does want to go home. He wants to feel safe, at peace, but in his new room in the apartment May bought while he was gone are blue bedsheets and half-packed boxes filled with all his belongings. In the kitchen, in a drawer where he shoved it in a wave of panic, is a picture Pepper gave after the funeral of himself and Tony, smiling, joking.
Everywhere he looks, little reminders look back.
Peter spends most days wishing he could go home, but the problem is he can't go someplace that doesn't exist anymore.
“What's up, Sergeant Barnes?”
“I told you – you don't have to be so formal with me," Bucky says. "There's a guy in a weird metal suit terrorizing half of Queens. Right up your alley if you're interested.”
Peter scrubs at the spark of pain in his sternum. “You probably should have led with that.”
“Probably. You in?”
“I'm in.”
“Then let's go.”
“Wait, can I get a ride?”
Bucky revs the engine of his motorcycle. “Nope,” he says, and speeds off.
“Wow,” Peter mutters. “Save the world together and you can't even catch a ride. This job has, like, no perks at all.”
- - -
The man in the metal suit ends up being anything but the joke Peter expects him to be. While mostly Peter has been dealing with petty theft and the occasional mugging, this is the first real panic he's felt from the city since coming back. It hums through the concrete and up his legs when he touches down in the middle of gunfire.
“What the hell is that?” he asks.
“It appears to be a rhino,” Karen says.
Behind barricades and car doors, police officers fire round after round at the hunk of metal tearing its way across the road. It's a man. Peter can see him swallowed up in the armor, protected from all sides. Bullets ricochet off him like they're made of plastic.
“What is up with everyone dressing like animals lately?”
“That's rich coming from someone named Spider-Man,” Rhodey says over the comm.
Peter tilts his head back, searching the sky. “Yeah, but I don't dress like a spider. It's different.”
“You guys gonna keep this up or can we get to work?” Bucky asks. Peter hears the sound of him loading a magazine into his gun. Heat thrums at the base of his skull. He dives to his left and narrowly avoids the heavy fist that smashes down in his place. The pavement cracks under the force.
“Jesus!”
“Get out of there, kid,” Rhodey says.
“Don't need to tell me twice.” Aiming blindly, Peter tugs on his web and lets it take him to the top of the convenience store on the corner. He shoots another web at Rhino's legs, binding them together. Rhino breaks them apart.
“Does anyone have a plan?”
“That armor is impenetrable,” Rhodey says. “We gotta find a way to get him out of it.”
Bucky grunts. “How? Not like we can just rip him out.”
“Yeah,” Peter agrees, “But that thing is huge. Tip him over and it won't be easy to stand back up. I bet there's a latch somewhere. No offense to him, but that thing doesn't look advanced enough to be some kind of nanotech. It looks like he made it in a basement.”
“He threw a car at me,” Rhodey says. “A car.”
“Um. Sorry?”
Rhodey sighs, blowing air noisily in all their ears. “You thinking a reenactment?”
“Well ...” That's exactly what Peter is thinking. Take him down like the AT-AT walkers. Like Ant-Man. If it worked then, it should work now.
“Yeah, fine,” says Rhodey. “Whatever. I'll go high. Barnes, get ready to move in.”
Peter grins and leaps off the roof. A chorus of “hold your fire!” echoes around him. The sound of thrusters is loud. It's Germany all over again, adrenaline and excitement and the rush of something new. “You ever see that really old movie Empire Strikes Back?” Except –
Except.
There's always an 'except.'
Little reminders everywhere.
He falters, and his spider-sense warns too late. With a sickening crunch, a beefy arm slams into his stomach, sends him careening through the window of a Chinese restaurant, his breath caught in his throat. He hits the back wall and lands among shards of glass and splintered wood.
“Shit. Kid, you all right?”
Peter coughs, sucking in gulps of air. “Ow,” he says hoarsely. “That's gonna hurt tomorrow.” He can feel the bruises already beginning to form. They're grounding, in a way. Different from the pain he's used to – that numb, all encompassing ache.
He heaves himself up and out onto the street, cradling his ribs. Rhodey zips through the sky.
“Okay,” Peter says. “Lemme try this again.”
It works like it did on the airport tarmac, Rhodey diverting Rhino's attention, Peter swinging around his legs and wrapping them in layers of webs. The guy doesn't have the height Ant-Man did, but he looms tall enough to be intimidating. When he realizes what's going on, he activates a new part of his suit and two rifles slide out from a panel, straightening to point at Peter.
“Uh oh,” Peter says. “Is this because of that basement comment?”
The man snarls. Before he can say anything, Rhodey swoops down and knocks him off balance. Peter rolls out of the way when he tips toward. Dust and debris billow around the collapse. There's a rhino-sized indent in the road.
“Boom,” Rhodey says. “You mess with the bull, you get the horns.”
Peter props himself up on his elbows. Police officers inch forward, guns raised, but Bucky has already found the hatch to the suit and torn it open with his vibranium arm. He rips the guy out by the collar of his shirt.
That's it.
They've won again.
It's odd, though, how nothing feels like a victory anymore.
Peter stays until the man is arrested and then makes his way back to his apartment.
- - -
By the time he crawls through his bedroom window, May is asleep. Her snores are soft in the stillness, two doors down at the end of the hall. They miss each other a lot these days. It's one part Peter not knowing how to talk to her, the other part not knowing how to be the same person in a new place.
Is he the same? Maybe it's all new. New world, new apartment, new him.
He peels off his suit, wincing at the sight of purple spots blooming across his skin. They'll be gone by morning. They always are. It's one of the nice things about having an advanced healing factor. No matter how many times he falls, he always gets back up.
He changes into his pajamas and topples face first onto his bed. Beside him, sitting on his desk, a small box catches his attention. There's a note on top.
Peter Parker, it says.
He frowns, reaching for it. The paper it's written on is crumpled, warn. It's not from May. May would never address him by his full name, and her notes tend to show up on pastel colored Post-Its, a few lines of reminders and a smiley face. Peter doesn't recognize this messy scrawl, but curiosity gets the better of him, has him unfolding the paper and reading across the long passages.
Time comes to an abrupt halt, all the oxygen drained from the room, all the sound in the world on mute.
“Oh my god,” he breathes. “Oh my god.”
His hands shake. Panic bubbles in his chest, threatening to spill over. It can't be.
He sits up and opens the box and looks inside.
“Holy shit.”
- - -
“I don't understand,” Ned says, his voice small and tinny over the line, Peter only half paying attention as he shoves sweaters into his backpack.
“I'll explain later, okay?” Peter pinches his phone between his ear and shoulder and carefully maneuvers the box into the cocoon of clothes he's created to cushion it. He wonders if May has any packing peanuts. He stuffs more t-shirts inside. “I just need you to cover for me.”
“Is this an Avengers thing? Are you going on a mission?”
“No. Sure. I mean, kind of? Listen, it's complicated.”
“Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Peter says, because, for the first time in a while, he thinks it's possible he might be. For the first time in a while, he thinks maybe he's found a way for them to win. For all of them to win. “Just … trust me, Ned. I need you to trust me.”
Ned doesn't miss a beat. He has been one of the few constant things in Peter's life. A familiar presence, understanding and solid and real. “I trust you,” he says.
Peter closes his eyes and exhales. It's enough for now.
- - -
It takes almost all the money in his savings to afford the round trip bus ticket to Cambridge, but an hour after he arrives at the station, he's on his way out of New York, tucked into a seat by the window, his backpack nestled in his lap. The other passengers ignore him, shuffle by with sleep-tousled hair and grumbled complaints. Peter checks the time on his phone. It's eight in the morning. He's been awake all night, palms itching, nerves tingling.
He hasn't stopped to think about what he's doing. All he knew from the second he opened the box is he had to do something as soon as he could, and as soon as he could is now.
The bus rumbles to life.
Peter dozes the first hour in.
He's not the same. Nothing is the same.
But maybe he can make it better.
- - -
At two, they pull into the station in Massachusetts and Peter catches a taxi, giving the driver the only address he knows.
“You a student?” the driver asks, glancing at him in the rear-view.
Peter shifts in his seat. “Erm. No. Not here anyway.”
“Scouting it out?”
“Kind of.”
The driver nods like this is an everyday occurrence for him, like he's used to picking up kids with no idea where they're going. “MIT's a great school. Lots to offer.”
Peter bites his lip and looks out at the campus passing by. God, he thinks, Tony wanted to send me here. It feels like a hundred years ago.
His heart thrums loudly in his ears. He should have thought this out more, should have found some other information about the person he's looking for besides the fact they work in the IT department. He hasn't even considered what he'll do if they aren't there. He doesn't have a plan. Doesn't even have a phone number.
Which is something, he realizes as he walks through the door of the building and a blond-haired boy at the front desk smiles at him, he really should have planned for.
“Hey there, can I help you?”
“Um, yeah.” Peter hovers at the counter. “I'm looking for Harley. Harley Keener. Uh, does he still work here?”
“He does,” Blondie says. “But he's not in right now. I think he's out splicing fiber.”
Hunched in the corner, playing a game on his laptop, another boy around the same age with brown hair says, “Can't splice fiber without a license, moron. Student workers aren't allowed.” There's a nametag hanging around his neck with a picture of himself on it and the name “Damien” printed below.
Blondie blinks. “Right.” His own nametag is turned backward. He smiles again. “Well, I'm not sure where he is then.”
“Hang on,” Damien says. He pauses his game and opens a new browser, clicking through a multi-colored calendar. “Looks like he got out of class an hour ago. You might try his dorm.”
“I'm pretty sure he's one of the Nexties,” Blondie says.
“I don't know or care what that means.”
“Um.” Peter clears his throat and grips his backpack strap tighter. Blondie jumps.
“Oh! Sorry. He lives in Next House. It's a dorm. Here.” He fishes out a map from a drawer, slides it over to Peter. “It's not far from here. About a five minute walk. Just go down Memorial Drive, right past the tennis courts.”
“Thank you,” Peter says.
Blondie's face lights up. “Good luck.”
Peter needs it. Next House is huge, bigger than any dorm he's ever seen on TV. He enters through the dining area and his legs go numb. Four stories and eight wings and he can't even find the elevator. Students chatter at tables. The smell of food reminds him he hasn't eaten since yesterday, and his adrenaline is fading, the reality of the situation weighing on him.
He wants to cry. He wants to go home.
He wants –
“Peter?”
The universe, it seems, takes pity.
Though they only spoke a little bit after the funeral, both overcome by grief and loss, Peter recognizes the voice right away. Relief tightens his throat as he spins around. Harley crosses the space between them in two large steps, eyes wide and concerned, shoulders tense.
“What're you doing here? Is everything okay?”
Peter has to work his mouth a few times before any sound comes out. “I'm – everything's okay. It's – I – um.” Where does he start?
Harley leads him to a row of fancy chairs to sit down. It's too loud in here, too hard to think with all the added input. Peter, who has been falling for the last four months, who has been lost and hurting and alone, can't find the words he needs.
Instead, he scrambles for his backpack, bringing it around to his chest. “I found it,” he says, pushing aside sweaters to free the box. He passes it to Harley, who gives it – then him – a cautious look.
There's a difference between losing something you wanted and losing something that never got to be yours. One is a cut that stings for a bit. The other is a wound that never quite heals.
Pay attention, the universe says. Everyone is moving on without him.
“What is this?” Harley asks.
Peter steadies himself. “The answer,” he says. “Harley, I ... I think I found a way to bring Tony back.”