Chapter Text
Peter is working, when it happens.
Well, “working”. Maybe not in the traditional sense, as he isn’t really getting paid, but he calls what he does a job nonetheless.
It’s not easy work. It’s messy. It’s dark. But somebody has to do it. If nobody else will, then that somebody will be him.
He can feel the earth beneath him tremble, can hear screaming civilians trying to escape with their lives. He wonders what would drive someone to do something like this, why someone would go to such great lengths just to take over one city.
Then he remembers what he’s doing while everyone else flees, and he wonders if he’s being hypocritical.
The blade of the knife he’s gripping is still plunged deep into the chest of the man beneath him, just barely missing his heart, and the man’s cries of pain and terror are muffled by the webs around his mouth. They’re hidden in the very back of an alleyway; this whole ‘evil sorcerer trying to take over the city’ thing is honestly proving to be a damn good distraction for the Avengers. The darkening sky certainly helps. The heroes will be much too preoccupied with stopping him to notice Peter.
Peter, whose hands are soaked with red. Shit, he needs to wrap this up, he doesn’t know how much longer that sorcerer will be able to put up a fight.
He’s been tailing this bastard beneath him for days, after hearing about what he’d done. He can’t be bothered to remember the man’s name, but does it matter? The man is sick, an absolute creep who doesn’t deserve to roam the same streets as everyone else. Peter can’t imagine the grief the families of this guy’s victims are going through.
It’s better this way.
Peter is finally making things better now that he’s free, instead of worse.
The sound of the cackling sorcerer in the distance snaps him out of his thoughts. He makes quick work of slitting the throat of his victim and dumps the body in the alley’s dumpster, not bothering to do a better job at hiding it.
(He never does try to hide his work. Letting people see what he can do to scum like that only reduces the crime rates of this city. New York should be thanking him, really.)
He winces when he sees that he’ll have to get past the Avengers in order to escape, something he doesn’t look forward to doing while his hands are still covered in blood. Still, out he goes.
The heat of the summer night seems to intensify the harder he tries to evade everyone. There are so many civilians running around, and Peter doesn’t even have time to wonder why they’re all out at night in the first place, or why they haven’t gone inside to safety. Did they just want to see what was happening? Fools.
He runs through the cover of the swiftly-darkening area, trying to sneak past the Avengers while they’re distracted, but he only makes it halfway past the impromptu battlefield before he feels his arm being grabbed by a metal-covered hand.
Shit.
Iron Man grabs him by the shoulders and turns him around. “Hey, kid, you need to… get… hey.” He freezes and yanks off Peter’s hood, revealing his face. Anyone else would struggle to see Peter’s features in the dark, but the man’s suit probably has night vision. “Hey, I know you. You’re that kid we’ve been looking for, the one who’s been killing all those—”
Peter doesn’t let him finish. He panics and punches the man in his helmeted face, but the man’s iron grip does not relent. The two of them thrash wildly in a flurry of movement as Peter tries to escape and Iron Man tries to apprehend him.
Neither of them notice the sorcerer rising behind them until it’s too late.
The next few moments pass in a blur.
Peter sees the sorcerer raise his hand and shoot some kind of beam out of it, heading straight for the fighting pair. He’s sure, looking back, that it was intended for Iron Man, but it hits Peter in the chest instead, launching him backwards.
He doesn’t see the portal behind him, either, until he’s already gone through it.
He hits solid ground with a thud, groaning in pain as he rolls into his stomach and pushes himself to his feet.
Fucking ow.
Where is he?
The portal is gone, and he is in an alleyway, suddenly in unfamiliar territory. His training kicks in out of instinct, and within seconds he’s sticking to the alley wall, climbing as fast as he can to the rooftop above.
Where is he?
He knows, deep down, that he is no longer in New York. The skyline is all wrong, as is the smell and the noise.
The noise, god it’s loud out here. He can hear gunshots, screaming and, if he listens carefully, the sound of blood hitting pavement.
Crime.
He hears crime.
Peter smiles.
Where there's crime, there’s criminals.
In a place like this… there’s bound to be the worst of the worst. The pedophiles, the rapists, the killers of the innocent.
He knows he’s getting ahead of himself. He isn’t quite able to comprehend how that man had transferred him from one city to another so fast— they didn’t really teach him much about magic— and he knows he should look into that first, should do some research on the area before sticking a knife in the first guy his spider sense tells him is a creep. He’s smarter than that. Far more cautious.
Still, a thrill of excitement goes down his spine. If he’s as far from New York, from the Avengers, as he feels he is, then there’s no chance they’ll find him anytime soon.
That means that where he is now, wherever that is, is fair game.
Things are different than they were in Russia. Have been, for a while now. Now, he is free from Hydra’s grasp. Now he can do what he wants, no more of the heavy fear his handlers had embedded inside of him.
The blood he had spilled under Hydra’s control may still glimmer under his fingernails at night, but now Peter is in control. Now he can make up for his sins by cleansing the world one creep at a time.
And this city…
This city seems to need a little cleansing.
And this time, he won’t be caught.