A hundred bucks.
Peter's fingers traced the edges of the bill in his pocket as he walked. Rough paper. Sharp corners. Real money. His money. Not an allowance he'd begged from Uncle Ben. Money he'd earned with his own hands.
Buy a used camera? No. Get Aunt May a new blender. That thing sounds like a lawnmower every time she turns it on.
The night air was cool against his back where the sweat was drying. His knuckles ached a little. Good ache. Earned ache.
He turned the corner onto his street.
The song he'd been humming died in his throat.
Red and blue. Flashing. Spinning. The lights painted the front of the Parker house in alternating strokes, and the siren cut through the quiet neighborhood like a dentist's drill.
Two police cars. Parked across the intersection. Neighbors on their lawns in bathrobes, huddled together, pointing, whispering.
The blood left Peter's face and went somewhere else. His ears filled with a sound like static on a broken TV.
No.
"Over there! He's going into the back alley!"
Someone was shouting. A cop. Peter's head turned so fast his neck popped.
Between the two buildings on the far side of the street, a figure was scrambling over a fence. Dark jacket. Canvas bag under one arm. Moving clumsy and panicked.
Peter saw the back of the jacket.
A paint stain. Shaped like a bird with a broken wing.
He'd seen that stain five minutes ago. In the back office of the fight club. On the guy who'd shoved a gun in the fat man's face and run out with a bag of cash.
The guy Peter had held the door open for.
The cold started at the base of his spine and spread outward until his fingers went numb.
That man had come from the direction of his house.
Inside that house. Uncle Ben. Aunt May. Leon.
Peter didn't go to the front door. Didn't ask the police. Didn't think.
He dropped into a crouch and launched himself over the fence. The ground cracked under his feet and then he was airborne, clearing the two meter barrier, crashing into the dark on the other side.
-----
The abandoned textile warehouse smelled like rot and standing water.
The robber was bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. His lungs burned. His crushed hand throbbed with every heartbeat, the bones grinding inside the skin where the red monster had squeezed them together.
The monster. Those four eyes. That roar that had blown out the windows. He needed to get out of Queens. Get out of New York. Get out of the country if he could.
A sound above him. Wind moving wrong.
*BANG.*
Something hit the ground in front of him. The concrete cracked. Gravel sprayed his face.
"Who. Who's there?!"
The robber fell backward, scrambling through the dirty water on his hands and backside.
Peter stood in the crater he'd just made. Red hoodie. Ski mask. Cheap sneakers. Fists at his sides.
He didn't say anything. He couldn't. His jaw was locked shut and every muscle in his body was pulled tight and the only thing keeping him from screaming was the fact that he didn't know what the scream would turn into if he let it out.
"What did you do?"
His voice shook. Not from fear.
"Get lost, freak!"
The robber pulled a folding knife from his belt with his good hand and slashed the air between them. "Don't make me use this!"
Peter looked at the knife. The blade moved through the air like it was underwater. He could see the rust on the hinge. The nick in the edge near the tip. The tremor in the man's fingers.
He raised his wrist.
Thwip.
The web hit the robber's knife hand and Peter yanked. The wrist dislocated with a wet pop. The knife clattered to the ground.
Peter grabbed the man's collar with one hand. Lifted him off the ground. The robber's feet kicked at nothing. Peter slammed him against the brick wall hard enough to shake loose plaster from the ceiling.
"What did you do to that family?"
A fist. The nose collapsed. Blood sprayed.
Another fist. The eye socket swelled shut.
Another. Teeth came out with the blood, spinning through the air.
The robber's head bounced off the wall with each hit. His body went limp but Peter kept holding him up. Kept hitting.
If Uncle Ben is hurt. If he's hurt because of this. Because I held the door open. Because I said it wasn't my problem.
"Stop. Please stop hitting me."
The robber was crying. His face was swollen purple. Blood and tears and snot running together. "I didn't do anything. I swear. I just wanted to run. There was a monster. A red monster. It broke my hand. I just ran. I didn't hurt anyone."
Peter's fist hung in the air.
He grabbed the man's jacket with his other hand and ripped him off the wall. Turned him. Moonlight came through the broken window and lit up the bloody face.
Peter recognized it. Of course he recognized it.
The same face. The same jacket. The same paint stain shaped like a broken bird.
The man he'd stepped aside for. The man he'd opened the door for. The man he'd watched run past him while the security guard screamed you could've just stuck out your foot.
"Sorry, pal. Not my problem."
Peter let go.
The robber dropped to the ground. Peter stumbled backward.
If I'd tripped him. If I'd grabbed his arm. If I'd done anything. Anything at all. He never would've ended up at my house. Uncle Ben never would've had a gun in his face.
Uncle Ben's voice. From the breakfast table. This morning. A lifetime ago.
"If you have the ability to help someone, and you choose not to, then what happens to them is on you."
He'd rolled his eyes when Ben said it. Thought it was just old man wisdom. The kind of thing you nod at and forget.
It wasn't.
It was the truest thing anyone had ever said to him.
Peter looked at his hands. Shaking. Bloody. The knuckles already healing, the skin closing over the split faster than it should.
These hands could stop a car. Climb a building. Knock a man unconscious with a single punch.
And these hands had held a door open for the man who almost killed his family.
With great power comes great responsibility.
Not a saying. Not a bumper sticker. A scar.
Peter breathed. Deep. The rust and rot smell of the warehouse filled his lungs and cleared some of the fog.
He raised his wrist.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
Web after web, wrapping the robber against the lamppost outside the warehouse. Tight. Secure. A white cocoon from chest to ankles.
"You can explain it to the cops."
Peter turned.
And ran.
-----
The wind dried the tears under his mask. New ones replaced them immediately.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please please please be okay.
If they're okay. If everyone is okay. I swear to God I will never say those words again. I will never walk past someone who needs help. I will never look the other way. Never.
-----
The front door of the Parker house was slightly open.
The police cars were gone. Chasing the suspect. The neighbors had gone back inside.
Peter stood at the door. His hand hovered over the knob. He couldn't push it.
He was afraid of what was on the other side. A white sheet. Blood on the floor. May on the ground. Ben not moving.
"Leon! Hurry up! This board is about to fall!"
May's voice. From inside. Loud. Annoyed. Very much alive.
"I'm coming, I'm coming! Mom, I only have two hands, this door frame weighs a ton!"
Leon's voice. Complaining. Healthy.
"Stop goofing around. Watch the broken glass."
Uncle Ben. Deep. Steady. Calm.
Peter shoved the door open.
The living room looked like a bomb had gone off.
The back window was a bare frame, wind howling through it. The bathroom door was lying in the middle of the living room floor, cracked into pieces. There was a crater in the hardwood, like something very heavy had been dropped. Or like something very heavy had been standing there.
Three people stood in the wreckage, covered in dust and plaster.
Leon in a loose t-shirt, trying to hold up half a collapsed bookshelf. Ben with a broom. May with a rag.
All three of them turned and looked at the door.
Peter stood there. Red hoodie covered in dust. Mask balled up in his fist. Hair going in six directions. Tear tracks on his face.
"Peter?" May's expression went from annoyed to alarmed. "What happened to you?"
Peter wasn't looking at May. He was looking at Ben.
Standing there. Unharmed. Holding a broom. Looking back at Peter with that gentle, worried expression that Peter had been terrified he would never see again.
"Uncle Ben."
His voice cracked.
He crossed the room in three steps and threw his arms around Ben Parker so hard the old man staggered backward and the broom clattered to the floor.
"Hey. Hey, easy." Ben's hand came up and steadied himself on the wall. He could feel Peter shaking. Not a little. Full body tremors, like the kid was standing in a freezer. The joke he'd been about to make died before it reached his mouth.
His rough hand came up and rested on the back of Peter's head.
"It's okay, Pete. It's okay. Just a break-in. Some lowlife. Nobody got hurt."
"I thought." Peter's face was buried in Ben's shoulder. His voice came out muffled and broken. "I saw the police and I thought. I'm sorry I wasn't here. I'm sorry I came home late."
"That's not your fault." May was there too now. Her hand on Peter's back, stroking his hair, her own eyes getting red. "We should've locked the back door. That's all."
-----
In the corner, I put down the bookshelf and picked up a broom handle.
I watched Peter cry into Dad's shoulder. Dad holding him. Mom's hand on his hair.
There it is.
The lesson. The one that couldn't be taught with words. The one that had to be lived.
Ben Parker didn't die tonight. Nobody died. But Peter felt the edge of it. He looked over the cliff and saw what was at the bottom. Saw the future where he was too slow or too selfish or too busy saying "not my problem" and someone he loved paid for it.
That was enough. That was the version of the lesson that didn't require a funeral.
Spider-Man was born tonight. Not from grief. Not from guilt. From love, and the terror of almost losing it.
Peter pulled back and wiped his face with his sleeve. A mess. His eyes were swollen. His nose was running.
His gaze found me across the room.
He looked at the crater in the floor. The bathroom door in pieces. The missing back window. Then back at me, standing in the middle of it with plaster dust in my hair.
He didn't ask.
I raised an eyebrow. Pointed at the dustpan on the floor. Mouthed two words.
Get to work.
Peter's tears stopped. A small, shaky smile pulled at his mouth.
"Okay!" May clapped her hands. The grief counseling portion of the evening was over. Housewife mode engaged. "We are cleaning this up tonight. I am not sleeping in a house with no back window. Leon, you broke that door frame, so the replacement is coming out of your allowance."
"What? I was saving your lives!"
"Does saving lives require ripping the bathroom door off its hinges and throwing it across the living room?"
"There was a guy with a gun, Mom!"
"And you stepped on the coffee table too!"
"Peter! Back me up here!"
Peter picked up the broom. The smile was getting steadier. "I think she's right. And I think the window is on you too."
"Traitor."
"That's what you get for breaking furniture."
"I broke it saving Dad's life!"
"Still broke it."
May handed me the dustpan. Dad found the duct tape. Peter started sweeping glass. I started fitting the back window frame with cardboard.
The arguing didn't stop. The cleaning didn't stop. Somebody laughed at some point and then everyone was laughing and nobody could remember what was funny.
Under the warm yellow light, with dust floating in the air and broken glass on the floor and the cold wind coming through the cardboard window, the Parker family cleaned up the mess.
Together.
-----
Late. Past midnight.
Peter sat cross-legged on the roof beside the chimney, threading a needle by moonlight.
The red hoodie was spread across his lap. He'd cut it apart and reshaped it. Tighter in the torso. Longer in the arms. The ski mask was gone, replaced with something he'd sewn from scratch. Better fit. Better visibility.
On the chest, he'd drawn a spider with black marker. Big. Centered. The lines were clean. The proportions were right.
He threaded the needle through the fabric. One stitch. Two. Three.
This time, the stitches were straight.
-----
Midtown Manhattan. Daily Bugle Building.
The editor-in-chief's office was lit up at two in the morning because J. Jonah Jameson didn't sleep. He fed on outrage the way other people fed on food, and right now he was having a feast.
Two photographs on his desk. Blurry. Taken by bystanders with cheap phones.
Photo one: a red figure in a wrestling ring, throwing a man twice his size.
Photo two: a red figure on a Queens street corner, a man wrapped in white webbing stuck to a lamppost.
Jameson slammed his palm on the desk. His coffee jumped. His assistant flinched.
"Look at this!" He was pointing at the photos with a rolled up newspaper. "A masked freak! Running around my city! Who is he? What's he want? This is vigilante justice!"
"Sir, he did catch a wanted fugitive." The assistant said it quietly. Like he was trying to slip it past.
"That's a cover!"
Jameson shot out of his chair. His face was brick red. Veins standing out on his forehead.
"Anyone who hides behind a mask has something to hide! He's a menace! A threat! An unregistered, unsupervised, spandex wearing CRIMINAL!"
He grabbed a red marker and drew a fat X over the figure in the photo.
"Front page. Tomorrow. Biggest font we've got."
He held the photo up, squinting at the crude spider drawn on the figure's chest.
A cold smile spread across his face.
"The headline: Spider-Man. Threat or Menace?"