Chapter Text
"Hello? Is anyone in here?!" he yelled into the kitchen, desperately trying not to inhale too much of the smoke surrounding him. His voice came out shaky from the smoke he had already inhaled, but it was still loud enough for someone to hear over the crackling flames.
He hoped.
"Help! Help me! Mummy!" A frantic voice howled from behind a door. "Help!"
Running to the door, he wrenched it open to find a child cowering behind a burning closet. Bending down, he bundled the kid in his arms. He turned to the door to leave, eager to get out of here before-
Crash!
The little boy shrieked as the wall collapsed in the smoky inferno of the flames, and with it, the door.
"Oh no. No, no, no!"
It was getting harder to see through all the smoke, despite the bright fires that were springing up everywhere. Plus, the kitchen door was now gone. He looked to the kid in his arms. The boy was starting to cough. A lot.
"This is going to be scary," he said soothingly. The boy looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes. "But I need you to be brave, okay? Can you be brave for me?"
He received a nod.
Taking it as permission, he quickly shifted the boy to his left and ran to one of the windows. He turned to his right so that the child would be safe and jumped, smashing through glass and into the night air. He took a deep breath of the clean night air that wasn't clogged with smoke and ash.
Shooting out a web, he swung to the pavement below, grunting as the impact jarred his whole body and his already shaky legs buckled beneath him. The crowd that had surrounded the building was now all around him, standing in a wide circle.
"Luke?! LUKE!"
A dishevelled mother ran out from the mass of people, shoving many out of her way in her haste.
"Mum!"
The little boy scrambled out from under his arms and rushed to his mother. She hugged her son tightly.
As heartwarming as the scene was, Peter forced himself back to his feet, coughing badly. He had to go back in there!
The crowed pressed inwards as he made to move.
"Spider-Man! Are you okay?"
"Do you need help?"
"Where are you going?"
The vigilante started trembling. No! He had to go back! As good as their intentions were, there were too many, they were pressing in-
"Whoa, whoa, let the guy breathe!" a strong commanding voice rang out. "Come on people! Get back to what you were doing before!"
The crowd reluctantly began to disperse, and with it, his earlier panic.
"You okay, Spidey?" A hand was put on his shoulder. "D'you want me to-"
Whatever he was going to ask was interrupted when the web-head went into another coughing fit, doubling over as his lungs attempted to force out the smoke he had inhaled. When it passed, he looked up at the man.
It was a cop.
Swinging his way out of there, he had to get to Oscorp, to Gwen!
"Hold your fire!"
Boom!
A blinding pain in his calf. He'd been shot, and it was like a-
"Hey! Calm down, Spider-Man! It's okay! I'm not going to hurt you!"
Peter blinked. His body had instinctively frozen into a crouch, ready to flee or fight, his breaths coming out in ragged pants. The cop in front of him had his hands up, showing he was unarmed.
He let out a shaky breath, relaxing his posture and shaking off the last of the flashback. He really, really needed to get over his instinctual fear of a man in uniform.
"Sorry... it's just, I've never really had a good experience with cops."
"It's fine, don't worry," the officer replied, putting his hands back down. "You did a good job back there, y'know? Saving that kid."
His head snapped back up. "The kid! There could be others in there! I have to get back!"
"No you don't, web-head. Everyone's accounted for. That kid was the last one in there, you did a good job."
His shouldered slumped in his relief. He had gotten everyone out. Everyone was safe.
"You should get yourself to the medics."
"I'm fine."
The cop scoffed, clearly disbelieving. "Have you looked at yourself, lately?"
What? Oh...
Rips in his suit were scattered around his torso, as well as small cuts and scrapes that were bleeding. Several burns also lined his forearms from the all the fires he inevitably had contact with. To him, it didn't look that bad, with his healing factor and all, but to others... yeah, he could see why they'd get concerned. The scraps and burns were pretty minor, so they'd all be gone in less than a half-hour, without even a scar left behind.
"I told you, I-" Another coughing wracked his body, forcing him to double over.
But his lungs, on the other hand...
The officer sighed and waved over some of the paramedics.
Earlier that day...
Midtown High - Before school
Although he didn't let any of it show, he was inwardly seething at his earlier stupidity.
Goddammit! He had promised the Captain! He had promised him as he was dying, and what did he do?!
He let her get too close again! Just because he got terrified of the press getting their hands on a recording!
Worse than the sorrow of losing her was the false hope he knew they were both harbouring. Distancing himself from her only to seemingly pull her back at the last moment, it was just cruel.
"Way to go, Parker," he hissed angrily to himself, "Can't even keep one, single, goddamn promise to a dying man."
He wrenched his locker open with vehemence. Captain Stacy hadn't even asked too much! He hadn't asked him to quit the Spider-Man gig, nor had he asked him to turn himself in to the police. He'd made Peter promise for the sake of his daughter's safety, something that Peter agreed with.
So why was it so hard?
"Peter?"
Said boy flinched violently, almost dropping his books. He turned to look at the speaker, but he already knew who it was.
"Gwen." His voice was completely flat.
They hadn't spoken with one another since... they hadn't spoken for two months now. And two months was a long, long time...
She ignored his discouraging tone, instead dropping her voice down to a whisper. "We need to talk." When he made no move to follow her, she added, "Now." Without waiting for him to respond, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the nearest (empty) classroom, ignoring his protests.
Peter just stared at her incredulously as she shut the door behind them. "If this is about-"
"It is," Gwen cut him off. "You know as well as I do that my father made you promise to stay away from me."
"Then why are we here?"
"Because," she took a long, steadying breath. "I asked my mother what my dad thought of us and it turns out, he had the wrong idea."
"The wrong idea?"
"My dad, he thought we..." she faltered, seemingly unsure of what to say. A faint blush coloured her cheeks.
Just what had her father thought?
"What did he think, Gwen?" His voice came out gentler than he expected.
A small laugh escaped her. "He thought you and I were more than friends, Peter."
It took a moment for the truth to register to him. When it did, however...
"Wait, what? He thought what?!"
"Your reaction was the same as mine," she remarked dryly.
"But we're too young to be in a relationship!" he hissed.
"I get that but don't you see?" The change in her tone caught him off-guard."Maybe my father only made you promise that because he thought we were in a romantic relationship!"
Peter opened his mouth to say that, No. That couldn't possibly have been the case when he stopped.
Risking everything for a loved one seemed like such a cliché thing to say but ever since he had become Spider-Man that was what his life had become. He might not love every New Yorker in that sense of the word but in truth that was what he did. He risked everything for the people. He was their protector. Just like a policeman...
Suddenly it didn't seem like such an alien thought that Captain Stacy might have been thinking along the same lines. What if he was scared that Gwen might get caught in the middle of a situation? Torn between the risk of helping him or fleeing and ensuring her own safety?
Her father had every reason to think like that. His last battle with the lizard was just proof that his worries were well placed.
"You have... that's actually a good point," Peter admitted reluctantly, "but are you sure-"
The bell chose that moment to ring, cutting off the rest of his words.
Gwen started and rushed for the door, "I've got to go, I've got calculus! But think about it!"
Present
And it was only now, sitting on the sidewalk and breathing through an oxygen mask that Peter started giving serious thought to what Gwen had told him.
He had managed to stop the ambulance workers from cleaning and bandaging his wounds, instead telling them to check on the civilians who needed the medical attention more than him. He hadn't, however, managed to sway them from giving him an oxygen mask, and so he found himself sitting on the sidewalk with his mask rolled up to the top of his mouth and taking deep breaths of the clean air.
Maybe Gwen was right. Maybe her father had been wrong in trying to keep them separated; even if it was to keep her safe. Perhaps... perhaps they could just remain friends as they were before. What harm could it do?
Some of the victims from the fire were looking at him curiously. He could feel their gazes on him. They were probably wondering what he was doing here getting medical help.
"Well, this is a first," a voice said. He looked up.
It was a dark skinned man in a suit. Probably in his late forties, if his salt-and-pepper beard was anything to go by. "Not something you see every day, is it? A hero receiving medical help on the street."
His voice wasn't mocking or condescending, it was straightforward and frank; the man was only speaking his thoughts.
Peter took the oxygen mask off. "Yeah, well I didn't have much of a choice," he snorted, gesturing to the ambulance nearby. "They kinda forced this onto me."
Chuckling, the man sat down on the sidewalk next to him. "I can't relate, you're the crazy one who swings around in a costume here."
And just like that, Spider-Man began to smile, knowing that the lower half of his face was visible. Despite being in the suit and having never met before, there was something about this man that was just so... so likeable.
"Ben Urich," the guy said suddenly, extending his hand. "I'm a reporter for The Bulletin."
The vigilante took it. "The Bulletin?" he asked warily. "I'm guessing you're here because your boss wanted an interview, then?" Peter couldn't keep all the bitterness from his voice. To think that he finally found someone who was willing to engage him in a normal conversation and then...
"Y'know," Ben remarked, noticing his change in demeanour, "my boss didn't send me. He doesn't know I'm here, actually."
That got the vigilante's attention. "Then why are you here?"
Ben glanced around as if to make sure nobody was listening in before answering in a quieter voice, "Because I want to give you an opportunity. Let me tell you something: it's much better to answer the questions and tell people the truth than leave them guessing and making up their own theories."
"I don't understand."
"You said it yourself in the recording, remember how you said that some people think that you killed Captain Stacy?"
It was true to some extent, but he saw what the man was getting at, "Yeah..."
"Well, this could be a chance to prove them wrong. What do you say?"
A chance to prove them wrong... a chance to tell the world what had really happened that night...
Ben had a point. People, when not presented with an immediate answer to things would always assume. And most of the time the assumptions were way off the mark. It was tempting, so tempting. But there was the thought of misleading articles that held him back. What if he just ended up printing something entirely different to what he said?
Peter looked back up to reporter. He liked what he saw, an honest man; trustworthy. He wanted so much to say yes, put faith in this man to tell the truth. But something in him still hesitated.
"I'll think about it."