THAT NIGHT WAS THE NIGHT WHERE SOME, THOUGH LITTLE, SUCCESS WAS HAD.
Though it did not amount to too much in the end, at least something had been done and Inga could not scold for no progress to be had. I followed through with the lead she had been given, dressed all in black and heart beating so fast, I feared it would be heard by anyone around as I slipped into the shadows and made my way through Queens, New York.
The world was curious when it was dark - not any quieter, but certainly, there was a much different sense of it all going about. The crowds were angrier and rushing at a faster pace, honks and shouts filling the air and acting as a disguise for my feet and breathing. Bright lights flashed and at first, I worried about exposure, but Inga had instructed a careful route and the shadows were enough of a shield for me to blend into, most of the time. I followed the mental map and her verbal instructions, racing through dim-lit alleyways and past throngs of curious crowds, a flicker gone within seconds and vanishing off to find him.
Even with the worry of a thousand threats pressing into my skull, there was a victorious smile licking up my lips.
Though, it would not end up lasting. Just as we reached the last steps, the bright lights getting clearer and shouts getting louder, there were footsteps and then two men racing down the way I was going, leaving me to avert the immediate route and dive for cover in the darkness. I had to wait several long, consuming seconds in the corner, hoping that the coast would be clear before racing out again on my path, only for it to be too late.
The boy was gone.
Slipped through my fingers, just when I had a chance to prove myself worthy.
The shame alone, it was enough to break a man.
I muttered off a dozen curses under my breath. Sweat dripped from my brow, my hands clammy from exertion. Locks of dark brown had escaped the tight bun at the nape of my neck and fell across my face, tiny hair tickling my forehead as I stood and observed the crime scene around me, everything that had been asked for except the Spider-man, who had disappeared into the night without a trace.
The frightened store owner shivered in the chilly night air as tears ran down his wrinkled face, and there was a medic nearby, urging him to 'come and take a seat; you're in shock'. Three men stood with their heads bowed next to presumably officers, one muttering to himself over something or other, angry from the looks of it. A small crowd stood watching, dribbles of people scattered and talking to others who were in the same curious boat as them.
None of that mattered, to me.
Inga was silent in my ear, the first time she had since I had left her side. Somehow, that was worse, knowing she was fuming and just waiting for the chance at berating me over something that had never been in my power. I could picture her, hands forming fists, a dark look building in her eyes as she watched the tiny cameras set up on me. Were she a god, there would be thunder and lightning crashing down, a red and black storm raging around for the failure.
It would be that image, that would inspire a new thought, in my head.
I had to head home. It was what she expected, and there was nowhere else I needed to be, aside from in her reproachful gaze.
However, instead of rushing back home and dealing with her assumable wrath, I whirled away and began to run. My feet bounced and hit the pavement, half my hair fleeing from the bun to run behind me dramatically. The sharp cries of a startled Inga filled my ears; I dared not to stop and answer. Not then.
My focus was solely on running and figuring out my way to where I had to go.
The trip was not so far, not nearly as bad as it had been to arrive at the initial scene. I made it there easily, fleeing from the shadows to find an apartment only familiar from photos shown a while back.
It was not difficult to scale the building, using the adrenaline to pull myself up onto the fire escape. From there, it was an easy trip, climbing the stairs with a new determination that I myself was not so aware that I had. The only sounds came from the clangs of my feet on the steps, unavoidable even with the special footwear and training given, and my almost silent huffs into the night air.
Inga had gone quiet again.
My eyes searched rapidly for the right apartment, scanning before moving on in search of the room I had seen in photos I had had to memorise. I had thought it ridiculous, but in my mind, I was thanking Madame for that little detail, for it could potentially save me, that night.
And perhaps my decision was stupid, not anything Inga would have asked me to do, but it was what I had and I had to do more than just skulk back to my prison.
I pressed myself to the brick, willing myself to make nary a noise as I neared the right window. My breath caught in my throat and one hand found the window ledge, lifting myself up to catch a glimpse of the room inside.
Peter Parker had already found himself home before me, much to my relief, and had decided to leave the window ajar in his rush to climb inside. However, with his curtains drawn shut and only a strip of light leaking through the fabric for me to peek through, there was no use in trying to get a good look at what he was up to in there. My only condolence was that there was a way to catch any conversation or audible work being done in there. At least the boy had given me something to work with.
All I could hear was rustling and muffled noises, giving me no hint as to what he could be doing in there. I itched to peek into the bedroom to get a better look but feared he would notice the curtain moving. However, maybe if I made it appear like it was simply the wind-
"Peter?"
My hand immediately fell backwards and I clung to the outside of the fire escape, holding my breath to eliminate any noise. There was a new voice, a female one, though much older than the boy or me. From estimation and the research I had done, it was probably his Aunt May checking up on him. дерьмо.
A door opened, squeaking on its hinges. "Hi, Aunt May. Is everything okay?"
"Yes, I - I just heard loud noises and a crash and I was worried. What are you doing in here?"
There was a long pause, and I was beginning to worry that he had left before I heard another reply. "I'm just...working on some homework."
"Oh, okay."
Silence. She was hesitating. The floorboards creaked, assumably his weight shifting across the bedroom floor as he waited for her to finish her thought.
I pressed myself closer to the window and prayed that somewhere, Inga was listening in, or seeing what I was seeing. The curtains had fluttered with the wind and gave me more of a look-in, a crack showing me the boy with his back turned, though not much else.
"You should go to bed, honey. There's school tomorrow and you've been looking tired lately."
"I will, Aunt May. Don't worry about me."
A loud sigh. "I try not to, but you've just been so quiet that I can't help it. I mean, after Uncle Ben's accident, you-"
"I'm fine." The boy's voice had raised higher and sounded much angrier; the death of Ben must have had an impact on him, bigger than I had originally believed. "I'm fine. Just a lot happening at school."
"Will you talk to me about it? I want to be here for you."
It was beginning to be unbearable, just standing on his fire escape and waiting for them to speak. I needed to get a better look, else there was no point in me standing there and doing nothing. Holding my breath, I reached over carefully and slid a hand under the window sill, opening the curtain just the tiniest bit so I could see what was happening.
At least then, I could see more than just a turned back and mess of brown hair.
The boy had changed from his suit into a pair of pyjama bottoms and a white shirt much too big for him and looked as if he had never left the apartment at all. In his hands were what looked like some sort of tech devices, though at my angle, I had no idea what exactly I was looking at. The female voice came from his Aunt May, a tall woman with wrinkles in her forehead, speaking of extreme worry or upset distorting the kind look in her eyes.
May's arms were crossed, but she did not appear to be angry; instead, she simply looked weary, and sad, and worried - presumably about the Parker boy. She cared deeply for him, that much was known, and his words had upset her. For some reason. "Peter, please, if you need to talk, I'm here. I don't want you to think you're alone in this."
Peter was not facing my direction, so I could not analyse his facial expressions, but his voice was low and full of raw emotion too, leaving me to believe he was more upset than I could initially make out. There was a thick tension between the two. "I'm okay, just busy. School's been...just a lot of work."
His caretaker only sighed and looked more distressed. I watched her right-hand rub against the left knuckles like there should be something there but it was gone. I could only assume it was some sort of ring, taken off after the death of her husband. "I'm always here for you, Peter. Even if it's small, I'm here. You shouldn't have to feel otherwise."
The boy turned away into my direction, face down, looking at the object in his hands. "I know that. But I'm okay."
"You keep saying that, but-" her sentence was broken off abruptly as her head snapped up, staring right at the window. "What was that?"
дерьмо. I had moved my foot wrong, and a loose stone or something fell, alerting her that there was someone outside and letting her see the eye staring in. I moved back immediately and, gritting my teeth, swung my legs over the fire escape railing so I was holding onto the floor of the stairs, making sure to move as silently as possible. I could only hope I wasn't visible in the night sky, and that my hands wouldn't give out before she gave up searching. Please, please, please don't find me...
The window screeched open, and warm light flooded the area; she was looking around. "I'm sure I saw someone out here. There was someone watching from the window!"
"Aunt May, I think you're just thinking you did. Maybe it was some sort of bird."
"Why would a bird be on your window? And why was it open?"
The Parker boy's voice was beginning to sound more and more weary with this conversation. "I'm sure it was nothing. See? The window-"
I couldn't hear any more of the conversation; he had shut the window, eliminating my source of intel. At least, however, I could swing back up onto the escape and allow my quickly blistering hands to breathe. Gripping the surprisingly cold metal was harder than I had thought, and I regretted using that as my hideaway.
Seeing as there was no way to listen to what was happening behind the dark curtains, there was no point in me waiting for more to happen. I waited a couple minutes, hoping something would happen, but began to realise that I was waiting for nothing. It would be smarter to go home.
At least, it would be to a more leniant Inga. As I crept down - carefully masking every footstep - she finally dared to speak, her voice tinny in my ear. She said very little, only instructing me to find my way back home and follow the same route as before, but her tone was of a much lighter variation than it had been before.
I had done well, though not much had really been done.
||
"Hello," was the first thing I said to the boy, whose music was echoing through his headphone and into the ears of the people around him. It felt wrong to be much more forward than before, but Inga needed answers, and I needed to win. "Peter?"
He quickly slid his earbuds out and smiled quickly, shoving illegible words back into his binder. "Hey...Emily, right? It's not that I forgot, but I just never want to mess up a name, so I just want to make sure-"
"Emily is right. That is my name." His nervousness was confusing, but yet, I could gather it was just from a general act put on when around people he was not so comfortable with. "Are you okay?"
Peter nodded, gripping his bag a bit tighter and raising his shoulders a little higher. "I'm fine, just walking to class. Why?"
"I suppose I am just curious; you had an upset expression on your face."
He shrugged. "I'm fine. Did you end up doing the homework?"
I moved to answer, beginning the casual sentence that would hopefully lead to more of a conversation, but my words died quickly when he turned. Peter had a large bruise covering the side of his face, blue and mottled, colour shifting as he moved his head. It was slightly faded and looked as though he had tried to mask it in some way, but the mark was still extremely evident and shocking. I had not realised he had suffered any blows last night, but clearly, I had not been paying so much attention as I should have when I had the chance.
"What happened to you?!"
"What? Oh, um, n-nothing!" His hands instinctively flew to cover the mottled disfiguration of his skin, and he sent me an embarrassed smile. "I um, walked into a pole? Like, those really big ones that stick out of the ground and just seem to appear out of nowhere. One of those things. Really, it's not anything to worry about, just a mistake?"
Anyone could see it was not just a mistake, and I was not about to drop a topic that could potentially provide me with a vantage point. If the boy was going to be foolish and you such an obvious lie, I would have to take advantage and press further. It only seemed right. "Who did this to you?"
"No one. I just bumped into a pole-"
"-it's obviously not a mistake, Peter." My voice had gotten lower, softer, and I drew him aside so that no one exiting the English classroom we would soon enter would hear our conversation. My hand fell on his arm, resting lightly to promise contact and ensure his attention. "If someone is doing this to you, you should do something, right? You want them to pay for what they have done, right?"
"What?!"
"I am just saying, I-"
Peter didn't seem to fall for my soft voice and sweet words; instead, he looked confused and even more flushed than before. "Look, Emily, you haven't been here long, but this is how it works here. And I, uh, don't really know what you mean."
I had overstepped my boundaries; I had tried to hard to sound like I cared, something someone would not do if they had only talked to someone two or three times. I had to move back, dropping my arm so that it hung loosely by my side. "Peter?"
He paused, halfway to the classroom again, this time looking more annoyed than before. "What?"
"I am...sorry?" The words fell out of my mouth like a piece of accidentally dropped food, and even I could tell it sounded fake. "I mean, I just overreacted. I guess I just do not like people getting hurt. I am a bit of a pacifist I guess."
"It's fine." Anyone could tell that it wasn't really 'fine', but I chose to drop the topic, just as he wanted to. "Class is about to start."
I nodded and we trudged in, his eyes forwards while mine analysing the way he walked, the way he carried his bag - everything about him to add to my extensive mental databases. I began to notice that though he leapt with ease and spun webs and flew around the city, his legs dragged more than expected and he didn't have the same careless nature as he did in the air. Strange.
Peter slipped in one of his earbuds, and I took that as a sign to drop the idea of another conversation. Instead, I took out a book; one that I had no interest in and wasn't even really reading the words to, but one I had seen poking out of the boy's bag in the pictures handed to me at the start of the mission. Inga had presented it to me a few days later - not as a gift, of course, but as a setup. If I read the same thing, he would hopefully notice.
"You like that book too?"
I looked up, pretending to have been engrossed in the dull words. The cover was carefully angled to catch in the light, the glossy letters just in view for him to pick up. "I just got it, actually - why?"
He smiled slightly, a smile I had not seen him yet have with me. "It's a good one; I really liked it. I mean, you might not like it, but I think it had some great points of progress and conflict and in my mind it was good. You might end up hating it but-"
"I am sure it is going to be good," I replied, ending his ramble before it became too much. "Thanks for the recommendation. I will get back to you on how I feel about, yes?"
He moved to speak, but another voice piped in, instead.
"Parker, is this your girlfriend?"
We both stiffened and whirled around to the voice, my eyes catching on the boy towering above us both. He was dark-haired and wore a thick sneer across his cheeks, swaggering and jeering as though to imply his superiority to us both.
Eugene Thompson, a boy that had shown up multiple times in my research. Peter and him had a tense relationship, one that had unclear beginnings but ensured a rivalry that had links in their academic and physical differences. Jealousy seemed to be the route, though it was hard to trace it back - some sort of insecurity, though, from what I could gather from Eugene and his backstory.
Whatever it was, he was not someone I wished to be around, at that moment.
The Parker boy did not respond. His mouth lay gaping like a fish, a light flush crossing his cheeks to colour his pale complexion.
"Mr Thompson; will you take your seat, please?"
At least there had been no chance of me releasing my clenched up fists or my pent-up anger, though I could already tell that this was not over - far from it. All the teacher's words ended up doing was leading Eugene to his seat and Peter sliding back to the front of the class, both boys not looking too happy about the incident.
I glanced back towards the boy, but he had lost interest in us and was now quietly chatting to someone about something I could not pick up. I did not bother, to. Instead, I turned to Peter, shooting what I hoped to be a supportive look. "Just ignore them. They are nothing of worry, Peter."
"Yeah," he sighed, though he didn't seem to be exactly convinced by my lack-lustre words. "I'm trying."
I bent my head down to the book in my hands, tucking it away safely in my backpack. The lesson was to begin and our chance at conversation had died, leaving me to drop the case and just try and begin at the next opening. Though, my thoughts would not stop drifting back to the situation, to how drastically the Parker boy reacted to the mere sight of Eugene Thompson. It was nothing more than a jeer, one or two sentences but it shook him to the core. I wished I could care more for him, have empathy for his troubles brought on by that boy and his presence.
Only, I found I could not, and would not be trying to. The Parker boy was not one I wanted to feel for.
[ dedicated to @humaneity for the beautiful cover ]
Wowza, it's been a while! Sorry about leaving y'all hanging for a while; I've been rewriting this plot so that it works a bit better, because now with Spiderman Homecoming coming out in like, three days, I wasn't going to just mess around with this and have it look like I didn't know what I was writing about. So, now, this is set between Homecoming and Civil War, so this is still an AU, but this will not tamper with Homecoming. Once that comes out we'll see if I care to make a sequel to this that incorporates the movie, but that's unimportant; all you need to know is that this will not be involving Homecoming at all yet.