#i know it's literally april but i finally finished febuwhump wow

[lyssismagical]

When the sky is losing light, I swear my head fills up with memories

Febuwhump Days 25-28 - Presumed Dead, Freeze to Death, Glass, Post-Tragedy

Read on AO3

{TW: Minor Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence}

*

His breaths puff out of him, visible in the frigid air.

Kidnapped again.

He’d only been kidnapped a handful of times before, but being both Tony’s Intern and Spider-Man had some pretty obvious downsides. It always ended fine, a grand rescue mission ending with Tony coddling Peter in Medical.

It never took longer than mere hours for him to be found, always covered in trackable devices or taken by people who underestimate Tony’s genius.

But this was different already, Peter could tell.

The man speaking to him from the other side of the glass-walled enclosure Peter’s in, isn’t interested in using Peter for ransom like most others are. He doesn’t even seem interested in hurting Peter, doesn’t step inside the enclosure at all.

And worse, Peter recognized the man pacing. He was one of the police officers constantly chasing after Spider-Man, believing he was failing the city, all of the bullshit that the Daily Bugle puts out. He’d tried to arrest Peter a few times before and had even started shooting at Peter as he swung through Queens.

No matter how much good Peter did, police officers like him would always believe he was a menace.

“Did you know,” the man starts, dress shoes clicking against the ground as he paces. “that over thirty percent of the criminals you web up end up free to roam the streets within days of arrest? Did you know that we still have to present the criminals to the judge and jury nearly evidence-less, and they’re proclaimed innocent until proven guilty? Did you know that the majority of the criminals set free after you play pretend police with them, end up doing more crime and hurting more people?”

Peter does know that. He watches the news as often as he can, he’s got access to files and information through Tony and FRIDAY even if he’s not technically supposed to see it.

He knows it and he hates it. He keeps tabs on all the criminals and he gives them the benefit of the doubt, hoping the close run-in with the cops will get them to turn good, but it rarely works out that way.

Peter keeps his mouth shut, testing the chains that hold him to one of the four glass walls, metal freezing cold on his wrists, but they’re too strong.

“There’s an obvious solution here, spider,” the man says condescendingly. He taps at one of the two guns that sit against his hips. “Bullet right in the forehead. Get the job done for real.”

Frowning, the young hero shakes his head. “That’s not right-”

“If you don’t, you’re letting these criminals walk free.” The man, shakes his head, leaning up against the glass. The name tag on his shirt reads David Walker.

“That doesn’t mean I can start killing people just because they did something wrong.”

David scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Let’s start with a man you webbed up three months ago, alright? His name was Scott Paterson. Scott’s a drug dealer, he’s got a few counts of assault under his belt, even had a charge of arson. You caught him three months ago in a drug deal gone wrong. Scott was webbed up and we collected him. He was out on the streets again within two days.”

Peter doesn’t remember Scott. He believes David, but it’s hard to remember specific names or crimes that he stops on the daily.

“Two weeks ago, we found Scott in his apartment,” David continues. “He had been in the process of moving out of state to avoid being caught because he’d killed two guys who were witnesses to Scott’s crimes.”

Guilt rushes through Peter, settling amongst all the other buckets of guilt he’s stored deep within his conscience. He knows this kind of thing happens, he does, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

David leans against the glass, hands splayed out. “Those two deaths are on your hands, Spider. Two women are now widows, three children are fatherless, thanks to you.”

“I didn’t want-”

“It doesn’t matter what you want, Spider,” David tsks. “If you had killed Scott instead of leaving him for us to deal with, those families wouldn’t have lost those men, and Scott would’ve gotten what he had coming. Isn’t that the better outcome? Just think of how many deaths are on your hands if over thirty percent of the criminals you webbed up are still commiting crimes.”

Peter flinches, not wanting to think about blood on his hands, reminding him of Ben and all the citizens he couldn’t save no matter how hard he tried.

But David won’t stop now. “Wouldn’t it be better if the precious hero stopped failing? Wouldn’t it be better for you to rid the streets of all criminals, not just the ones that us cops can put behind bars for a couple of years? Wouldn’t it be better if you protected your civilians and your city, Spider-Man?”

“I can’t just kill every person who’s done something wrong! I can’t just start pulling the trigger every time somebody steps out of line! Wouldn’t that make me just as bad as them?”

“You’re already a menace, Spider-Man, do you really want to be a failure too? If you don’t kill them, they’ll just hurt more people and then it’s on you.”

Tears are welling in Peter’s eyes against his will because this isn’t right. Tony’s always said that Peter’s morals rival those of Captain America. That Peter was always good, simply put. And Peter believed it. He was a hero, after all.

David’s face softens a fraction, a frown tugging at his mouth. “Alright, let’s make this easier for you, okay?”

He turns down the hallway, they seem to be in some cliché abandoned warehouse, only the glass blocking Peter away from David, but Peter doesn’t have to try to know the glass isn’t normal glass, and the handcuffs holding him down aren’t regular handcuffs.

Peter takes the second of solitude to check himself over. He’s wearing the t-shirt and jeans he had on when he was walking to school, he guesses only a few hours earlier. His phone, watch, and backpack all missing. Even his shoes were gone. He doesn’t feel hurt at all, other than the headache from being knocked out.

David’s a police officer. There’s no way of knowing how many others are working with him, if he could’ve wiped any security tapes, if he could’ve taken them somewhere non-disclosed where even Tony couldn’t find them.

The cuffs must be vibranium, refusing to break no matter how hard Peter tugs at them. It’s January too. The abandoned warehouse isn’t about to have heating, so the frigid air makes sense. Peter shivers just thinking about the cold seeping into him.

“Alright, Spider.” David’s voice returns. He emerges back into Peter’s view, but this time, he’s dragging a body along with him.

David shoves the door to the glass enclosure open and tosses the body to the floor by Peter’s feet.

“Meet Scott Paterson, Spider-Man,” David says, a grin stretching across his face.

Scott’s face is enough to trigger the memory of him. There was shouting behind a bar when Peter was on his way home, so Peter went and webbed both Scott and another guy up. He left them with the drugs as evidence along with the knife Scott had pulled out.

His face is a little beaten up, blood dripping from his split lip onto the ground but his eyes are wild with confusion and fear, hands shaking in the plain handcuffs holding his wrists behind his back.

“We’re going to play a little game, alright?” David pulls one of the guns out of his pocket along with a roll of duct tape.

Peter’s shivering steadily and his head is pounding, vibranium holding his wrists in front of him, so there’s not much he can do as David tapes the gun to Peter’s hand, covering his hands and fingers in the silvery tape, index finger on the trigger.

“You’ve got one bullet in there,” David explains, taking a step back to admire his handiwork.

He pulls Scott to his knees, draws the second gun and holds the barrel to Scott’s temple.

“Wait a second-” Scott gasps, biceps straining as he tries to get away, out of the handcuffs, out of the grip on his collar.

“Now, here’s the game, Spider.” The click of the safety. “Put your bullet in his forehead.”

Peter tugs at his restraints harder, shaking his head as tears rush into his eyes. “I can’t- I can’t just kill him!”

“The blood is already on your hands, Spider. If you don’t kill him, I will, and it’ll be your fault. Or you kill him.”

Scott’s wild eyes lock onto Peter’s. “Please, man, I’m not- I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I got caught up with this awful dude who was threatening my daughter, and I did what he told me to do to keep her safe. You gotta- Please, man, I can’t die. Don’t- Don’t let me die.”

Peter’s heart clenches, hands shaking as he lifts the gun, a tear already tracing its way down his frozen cheeks. He turns the gun towards David.

“Do it, coward,” David says, lifting his eyebrows. “You’re just a coward, Spider. If you kill me, my death will be on you, but you’d save Scott. If you don’t, I’ll kill Scott and it’ll be your fault. Either way, somebody dies and the blame is put on you.”

Shaking his head again, Peter can’t convince himself to speak around the lump in his throat, worried that if he opened his mouth, a sob would escape.

David shoves the gun harder against Scott’s temple, glaring at Peter. “Your choice, kid. Me or him.”

“Please, man, you’ve gotta believe me,” Scott pleads, tears streaking down his flushed cheeks. “I know I did bad things, but I’m not a bad guy. My daughter’s dance recital is tomorrow and I- I promised I’d go for her. Please.”

Peter’s hands are trembling as he points the gun up at David, chains pulling taut. “You don’t have to do this. You could put down the gun and we could all walk out of here.”

But there’s no sympathy in David’s face, no care, just the same nonchalance. “You’ve got three seconds or I’m killing Scott.”

Three.

There’s no way out. There’s no way to change the outcomes of this. Somebody’s going to die. Either Peter kills somebody, or Peter lets somebody kill someone. Either way, it’s on Peter. Either way, Peter will leave here a murderer. No better than David or Scott. No better than the people he puts in prison every day. No better than the man who killed Ben that night all those years ago, the one that Peter spent months obsessively tracking. No better than the worst of the worst.

Two.

Either way, Peter’s a killer.

One.

* Peter startles awake when he feels hands on his shoulders, shaking him hard. He gasps, cold and sweating and crying, not shivering because he’s long since stopped shivering in this stupid fucking glass prison, but trembling from the anxiety that still thrums through his veins, the adrenaline crashing.

“Oh fuck, kid, I thought- You weren’t moving and I- I thought-”

“Tony?” His voice breaks on a sob, tears frozen against his cheeks, and the gun is still taped to his hand, still warm against his palm. “Get it off, get it- get it off, please, I can’t-”

Tony’s quick to grab a knife handed to him from somewhere behind Peter, probably Natasha, and cutting the weapon away from Peter’s palm.

There’s blood and glass everywhere. Peter peeks over Tony’s shoulder, barely able to contain the hoarse sob that escapes him when he sees the unconscious figures.

“Are they-”

“One of them was,” Tony responds shortly. “The other one passed out from shock, he’ll be fine.”

But that’s not better.

Peter pulled the trigger.

He was the one that put a bullet in another man’s head.

He was the one who took the life from a human being.

Peter hides his face against Tony’s shoulder, stomach twisting at the flashes of blood and shattering glass and feeling the recoiling gun.

His head gets stuck in a loop of percentages, of statistics. Thirty percent of criminals. He wonders how many police are like David, how many of them would push Peter to murder. He wonders what the statistics are for people he’s saved versus those the police have saved. If Peter’s really making a difference of not. He wonders, in another universe where he never became Spider-Man, if Queens would be better off.

It doesn’t matter though, alternate universes and statistics, because Peter killed a man. Because there’s a dead body only feet away from him and the gun is only inches away from his fingertips, glass shards littering the floor and digging into his knees and shins.

“C’mon, let’s get you to the car and back to Bruce, okay?” Tony says, voice soft and low. His hands are much too careful against Peter’s shoulders and thumbs running over his cheekbones and fingertips brushing back his hair.

Peter doesn’t answer, doesn’t think he could even if he wanted to, throat clogged up with grief and crushing guilt.

He doesn’t deserve any of it. He doesn’t deserve Tony and his soft words and softer touches, doesn’t deserve the luxury of seeing a doctor and getting patched up, doesn’t deserve safety and warmth. He deserves to be behind bars for this. He killed a man.

Tony leads him up to his feet, careful to position himself between Peter and David’s body, it doesn’t matter because the image is already scarred into Peter’s memory.

The world is too bright, sun bouncing off the snow and into Peter’s eyes before Tony slips a pair of sunglasses on him. The world goes dim and dark, and Peter lets Tony lead him forward and maneuver his pliant limbs into the car.

He hears Happy say something to him, but he sounds distant. Underwater.

Tony’s fingertips are on his face, pushing his curls back and smoothing his thumbs over Peter’s temples. “Sleep, kid. It’ll be okay.”

Peter doesn’t believe it’ll be okay, doesn’t know how Tony could, but he rests his head against the window anyways and spends the drive trying his best not to think about the glass against his head and in his skin.

Peter doesn’t answer many of Bruce’s questions, but thankfully, the doctor is kind and limits his questions to yes or no answers where he can.

Tony sits at his side while Bruce takes the glass out of him and stitches up the deeper wounds, putting butterfly bandages over the rest.

And then Peter’s led back up to the penthouse where May arrives, bundling him up in a tight hug before getting a sandwich in front of him.

He eats even though his food tastes like nothing and it’s hard to swallow around the lump in his throat that doesn’t seem to leave. He can’t get the image of Scott’s crying face and David’s body dropping to the floor, gun going off and hitting one of the glass walls, effectively shattering it.

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony murmurs sitting down across from Peter and pushing a cup of water towards him.

Peter doesn’t know if Tony did it intentionally, but the cup is a colorful plastic one, not glass.

“Thanks,” Peter says, coughing to cover up the effort it takes to stop himself from bursting into tears again.

“I know this is a bad time and I shouldn’t be asking you anything this soon, but the man’s at the hospital with Nat and Steve, and they’re wondering what they should do with him,” Tony says. “He says it’s your decision whether or not you want him in prison.”

Scott’s giving Peter the decision. Another decision. Maybe that means Peter did a good job the first time Scott’s life was put in his hands.

Either way, he doesn’t want to make the decision. He doesn’t know if he’s psychologically capable of making another big decision like this one.

“Send him home,” Peter says, voice robotic and not quite his own. “Wasn’t his fault.”

Tony lifts an eyebrow. He’s always been overly-curious. Someone incapable of holding in the questions he wants answers to, so it’s not surprising when he says, “It wasn’t his fault that there’s a dead police officer on our hands now?”

It’s not his fault. He probably assumed the gun on the ground meant that Scott shot David, not Peter who shot him. He probably saw the gun taped to Peter’s hand and automatically assumed it couldn’t have been him.

“No,” Peter says shortly, taking a sip of the water and trying his best not to draw attention to his violently trembling hands. Water sloshes over the edge of his cup onto the table. “Scott’s not a bad guy.”

He doesn’t say that he doesn’t think David was the bad guy either. He doesn’t say that he thinks Peter’s the bad guy.

“Okay, I’ll let them know,” Tony says, looking at Peter like he’s going to ask another hundred questions to get to the bottom of this.

“I’m going to my room.” Peter stands up abruptly, arm jerking like it expects to be held down by the chains from earlier. He almost forgets to put down his cup and when he does, he forgets to reign in his strength and the cup breaks, spilling water over the table.

Instead of dealing with any of his obviously unusual actions, he just nods at the mess he’s made like he did it on purpose and walks to his bedroom.

He doesn’t want to deal with any of it. His skin is crawling and his lungs feel like they’ve collapsed. And he knows what that feels like.

He wishes he could talk to Ben.

Ben would know what to do, what to say. He always did. May’s good and Peter loves her, he does, but she always used to let Ben deal with the emotional side of things. After Mary and Richard died, Ben would be the one to comfort him after nightmares and he was the one who would drag out old photo albums and hold Peter while he cried. May was the one to put the funeral together and she did his laundry and cooked them food and offered any support she could.

But Ben’s not there anymore. He isn’t there to be the elaborate story-teller he used to be, making up voices and gesticulating wildly until he got Peter to fall into a giggle fit. He isn’t there to tuck Peter into a warm blanket, make Ben’s Special Hot Chocolate, and do jigsaw puzzles with him in the middle of the night. Ben’s not there.

“Yorke Construction, how can I help you?”

Peter jerks, fingers clutching the phone against his ear. He hadn’t realized he’d called.

“Um, sorry- I shouldn’t have-”

The lady’s voice softens. “Are you okay?”

It’s not the same person who used to pick up the phones at Ben’s work when he did work there.

“I shouldn’t have called, I just-”

“Are you okay?” she repeats gently. “Are you trying to reach someone?”

Peter resolve crumples and he tries to hide the obvious tears in his voice. “My uncle used to work there, he doesn’t anymore. I shouldn’t have called, I’m sorry, it was an accident.”

“No worries at all.”

Peter hangs up before he can say anything else, and he lets his phone fall to his bed, curling up in his blankets as he cries.

* Ben used to want to be a police officer, Peter remembers. He got accepted into the academy, but he never ended up going. He didn’t have the money and he hated how much Mary and May worried about him, even if he hadn’t become a police officer yet. Instead, he went into construction.

He always talked about one day building May a house in the countryside. He liked building things, was super smart. Peter thinks that’s where he got his desire to build.

He wonders if things would be different if Ben were a police officer like David was. Ben would’ve been hundreds of times better than David.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony murmurs, walking in. He winces, probably noticing the tearstains or maybe the blood he’s drawn from biting his lip. “How’re you holding up?”

He sits at the end of Peter’s bed, gently rubbing his shins where his wounds have all healed from the broken glass. Peter turns his eyes to the ceiling.

“It wasn’t Scott,” Peter says.

“I know.” Tony’s voice doesn’t hold any anger, any hurt, any betrayal. He’s been the one saying Peter’s the most morally sound person he’s ever met, he should be angry that Peter’s killed a man.

“It was me.”

Tony nods. “I know.”

Ben would’ve been angry. He was always better. The best. Peter imagines himself holding the gun at Ben, not a bystander like he was that night. He thinks of murder and blood and glass shattering. Of Ben’s body dropping the same way David’s did.

“I’m- I’m a murderer, Tony.”

“Scott said that you saved his life,” Tony offers. He shifts back on the bed to rest his back against the wall, propping Peter’s feet up in his lap.

Peter swallows thickly. “He wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it weren’t for me. If I hadn’t webbed him up three months ago, he wouldn’t have ended up on the police’s radar at all.”

“You wanna tell me what happened in there?”

From his tone, Tony’s not expecting a story. But Peter wants Tony to yell at him, to hate him for what he’s done. Peter thinks Tony will understand if he hears the statistics, if he hears how Peter failed again and again, how dozens of people are dead because of him, and how David’s blood is on his hands.

In his strange state of mind, confused and focused on all the wrong things, Peter forgets to leave out the details like he normally does. How he always does. He leaves in the gory details by accident because he can’t think straight, and he’s pretty sure some of the details he tells are of Ben’s death and not David’s, but he isn’t sure.

“You didn’t have a choice, Peter,” Tony says, voice somehow still staying soft and low, thumb still rubbing his ankle, expression still full of care. “He didn’t give you a choice.”

“I held a gun and I shot somebody, Mister Stark. How is that not my fault?”

Tony sighs, long and tired like he isn’t sure how much he wants to fight this fight. “Listen, kid, I know you have a guilt complex the size of America, so I don’t know how I can ever convince you that this wasn’t your fault, but nobody’s mad at you regardless.”

“I’m a killer!” Peter exclaims angrily, sitting up in bed and glaring at Tony through his tears. “How the fuck can you argue that I did anything right today?”

“Because I know you, kid, and I know you didn’t have a choice. And let’s say you did, okay? Let’s say, you had a choice and you chose to kill him. You know what? I still love you. Nothing could make me not love you, kid. Nothing could make me hate you.”

Peter presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “But I’m a killer.”

“I’ve had people die because of me,” Tony says. “Lots of people that I tried to save and couldn’t. Lots of people that died because I made mistakes on the job. And I know you don’t believe I would’ve, but I nearly killed that fucker last year that hurt you. If it weren’t for Rhodey that night, I would’ve killed him.”

“You were protecting me.” Peter doesn’t know how to wrap his head around any of it. “That makes it different. You’re not a killer, Mister Stark.”

Tony shrugs, sending him a sad smile. “You were protecting Scott and yourself. Plus, you weren’t given a choice, bud. You had that gun taped to your hand. That’s not a choice.”

“That doesn’t make it okay. I still- I still killed him. I still shot the gun. I still watched-” Peter cuts himself off, brain stuck in a loop of David dropping to the floor and Ben’s hands coming up to cover the wound as he sunk to the ground and glass shattering.

“Maybe not,” Tony shrugs again. “Even if we were in that hypothetical that you killed somebody in cold blood. And I’ll repeat, hypothetical. I think you’ve saved enough people to make up for it. What the NYPD and the legal system do with the criminals, what the criminals do if they get back on the streets, that doesn’t fall on your shoulders.”

Peter sniffles, too tired to keep arguing it. His guilt has settled enough to think a little bit straighter, but he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to make it go entirely away.

“Plus,” Tony continues, patting his kid’s ankle. “You should know, Scott spent this morning at his daughter’s dance recital. Her name’s Anne, I learned, and she’s very happy her favourite superhero saved her dad.”

Later, Anne and Scott will send letters with their thanks for allowing them to stay together. For choosing both Scott’s survival and for not sending him to prison.

For now, Peter pulls his feet away from Tony to instead curl up against his side, tucking his face against his father-figure’s shoulder, hiding away his tears.

“You know,” Tony says eventually, arms tight around Peter. “When we found you, you were so cold, so pale… There was so much blood.”

“Hm?” Peter responds, too tired to try for a real conversation.

Tony sniffs. “I thought you were dead for a second. We got there and there was only one heat signature and it was Scott, and the blood made me think you were dead too. I thought- I thought I had lost you.”

Peter hums in response, nuzzling closer to Tony.

“If David wasn’t already dead, I would’ve killed him.”

It’s a strange thing to bring comfort to Peter, but he trusts Tony, he believes Tony. And he lets Tony burden some of the guilt that’s stored in him. He lets go of some of it, believing that Tony will always catch him when he falls.

* Peter visits Ben’s grave that evening.

He figures it’s only fair. He’s got a lot of guilt to work through, but he knows Tony’s going to be there every step of the way, and May’s going to continue being there for him too.

He doesn’t say anything, scared that his words would never be enough to mean anything, to amount to what he thinks and feels. He doesn’t know how to articulate any of his thoughts into anything real.

Instead, he lays the blueprints down on the dirt. He dug through storage until he found them. For the house Ben was going to build May one day. It’s a silent promise, that if he can do anything for Ben, he can do this.

He’ll try to keep the streets safe, he’ll try to be a superhero, he’ll try to be the person Ben always wanted him to be.

But he will build the house for May. He will let Tony take care of him the way Ben would’ve wanted him to. He will learn to forgive himself how he knows Ben has.

{I’ll be starting a taglist officially the next fic I post, so if you wanna be added let me know}