Peter Parker... Stark?

Not Anymore

Hawkeye shot an arrow at Peter that opened up into a net. Peter jumped over it, but he wasn't quick enough to totally clear it. His feet clipped the top and he landed awkwardly on his arm. He heard a loud snap and couldn't stop the cry of pain that followed. Peter rolled out of the way as War Machine shot at his legs, and as he moved he realized that Hawkeye's net had accidentally pinned Iron Man to the ground.

Two down, four to go. Horrible odds, considering my arm is definitely very badly broken.

Suddenly, his spider-sense blared, and Peter found himself fist fighting Black Widow. She was almost as fast as he was, but he could tell they were both trying not to seriously hurt the other.

Peter had the advantage of speed and strength, but Nat had been trained in close combat. And, Peter's arm was hanging uselessly at his side. He felt his heart skip a beat as she glanced down at it and looked at him again with an apology in her eyes. She launched a series of attacks, eventually landing a solid blow on Peter's broken arm. He screamed as shooting pain exploded in his arm, stumbling backwards right into Falcon's path.

Peter was lifted into the sky and then dropped. The noise in his head, both from the air rushing past him and his spider-sense still ringing in the back of his mind, was only adding to the nausea that his arm and the fall were bringing on.

He reached out his good arm and managed to snag a web on a building, yanking hard to pull himself out of his uncontrolled plummet. Another net flew out of nowhere, slamming him against a wall. The concrete cracked beneath him, and, with a sudden burst of panic and adrenaline, Peter ripped the net off and leapt into the night.

He glanced behind him to see both War Machine and Falcon hot on his trail, so when the opportunity presented himself, he spun around mid-swing and webbed a line between two buildings. Falcon didn't react fast enough and slammed right into it. His wings began to spark as he started to free-fall. War Machine instantly changed direction and blasted after him.

Peter turned and kept swinging once he knew that both heroes were okay.

This time, no one followed him.

~~~

Peter called in sick for his internship the next day, and then made quite a scene in front of Ms. Walters about tripping and falling down the stairs.

To say she was angry would be an understatement, but she knew that brushing off an arm as badly broken as Peter's would be bad news for her. So she took him to the hospital and had his arm taken care of.

When they climbed back in the car, she frowned the entire way home, then sent him directly to his room to sleep.

It was a week before his arm was okay again. The doctors who checked it the second time were amazed at the speed it had healed, but assumed that the scans from the week before had just been misinterpreted.

By the end of the next week, Peter was healthy again, but he'd abandoned his internship altogether. He knew it was pointless to keep trying to explain away Spider-Man related injuries. The Avengers were too smart for that--they would see right through him. So he stopped going, and tried to just be a normal kid.

Then everything changed.

"Peter?"

"Yeah?" It was Tanner. He came into the room and sat on his bed as Peter put the math homework he'd been working on aside.

"Where do you go at night?" Tanner asked.

Peter froze as his brain scrambled to come up with a believable answer.

"To... sleep?" he finally said. Tanner's gaze became annoyed.

"So you fight crime in your sleep, then?" he asked holding out Peter's mask.

Peter's eyes widened in panic. He snatched the mask from Tanner's hands and jumped to his feet.

"Th-this is just a costume, Tanner," Peter said in a hushed tone, "you really think I'm Spider-Man?"

"Yeah, I do," Tanner said, standing up and stepping closer. He was slightly taller than Peter. "And now you've got Ms. Walters breathing down my neck because she thinks I'm the one being an illegal vigilante by night!" He held out his hands, revealing thick lines across his palms.

Peter's lashes had healed by the next day. He hadn't realized Tanner had gotten them too.

"I should tell her your little secret. It would get me off her bad side," he said, "but I saw what you did in that apartment a few weeks ago." He looked down at the ground as Peter watched him warily.

When Tanner finally looked up again, tears were in his eyes. "It was an apartment fire that killed my family and put me in here. You saved a little girl from experiencing the same thing. So, I'm going to keep your secret, but don't count on me to be a helping hand or anything like that. I watch my back, and my back only."

Peter met his gaze. "Tanner, I'm not Spider-Man. Not anymore."

"What?"

"The Avengers are after me, they're the reason my arm was broken. I can't keep fighting them, or one of these days I'm not going to walk away from it."

Tanner stepped back, clearly processing Peter's solemn words. They stared at each other for a second longer, and then, as quick as he'd come, Tanner left the room.

Peter put his mask under the floorboards with the rest of his suit. Sirens suddenly began to echo from outside, and by instinct, Peter ran to the window to see, but when he looked outside he frowned.

"I'm not Spider-Man," he reminded himself. "Not anymore."