Chapter 7: After the long night

The sun was high in the sky when Peter finally made his way over to the address Marco had given him. Just like everything else, it had been in his bag when it went up in flames, but he had been able to eventually remember enough details to find it in the Bowery.

He had had to resort to thievery to hide his injuries and his destroyed spider suit, grabbing clothes off of the lines that were forgotten outside. He didn't have much choice in the matter and ended up with straight black pants that were slightly too big for him and a blue hoodie with a large S on its back.

He felt absolutely awful for the theft, memorizing the address he had taken the clothes at, determined to wash them and bring them back as soon as he could. In his sneakers, the only thing that had survived his fight with Firefly, he could feel his feet ache and itch as the skin grew back over his wounds. Regular humans would form scar tissue but he knew from experience that, although he could scar, it never stayed for longer than a few weeks, and that was for the worst of injuries.

His face was still a mess, a public bathroom full of drunks and passed out adults was the only washing up he got that day. He could feel that some of the cuts on his brows and forehead hadn't closed yet, his healing focusing on the worst injuries first.

His back, by far, hurt the most. The skin hadn't regrown over it yet, leaving it tender and irritated. He wouldn't get an infection, that was almost impossible for him, but he had been in so much pain that he hadn't managed to sleep that night. Exhaustion was like a heavy weight on his bruised shoulders, making him drag his feet, hang his head low.

He still had to go on though, learn from his mistakes and become a better person. His family and friends would have wanted that for him and, even if he would never see them again, he didn't want to disappoint them in case there was indeed an afterlife. He wanted to be able to face his parents, Ben, May and Tony, and be satisfied with what he had done in his life.

He wasn't proud of the previous night's events. He had acted recklessly and, as a result, caused the deaths of civilians. If he had waited a few more minutes, the police would have arrived in time to stop Firefly. 

He had done nothing but make the situation worse.

He would not go back out as Spider-Man. Not until he had learned everything there was to know about Gotham, just like he did with New York, back home. He needed to learn the streets and the buildings, the criminal situation and the various vigilantes he could encounter.

For once, he was walking down the streets of the Bowery. He didn't have a weapon anymore, the taser Nightwing gave him had disappeared alongside the rest of his supplies. He had been hungry all day.

People didn't bother him. His knuckles were dirty, full of blood and grime, and his face was set in a mask of stone. He melded in with the crowd of this district, as if he was one of them.

Could a city really change someone this fast?

But then, it wasn't just the city, was it? It was everything that had happened recently, with Mysterio, M-J and May. It was everything that had happened before, too, when Thanos almost destroyed them all.

The street he was in was long and sinuous, the address he'd been given being at the very end of it, blocking the path, turning the alley into a dead-end. He looked up at it. It was large, ancient. One of those classic gothic buildings spread around Gotham. It was in a remarkably good state, for the Bowery.

He knocked at the door.

Inside, he heard shuffling, then grumbling. The door opened slowly, an eye peeking through the gap in the door before he heard a loud sigh, and it was opened fully.

In front of him stood an old woman, wrinkled with time. Her features were East Asian, her hair a bright silver. She spoke slowly but sharply, an air of authority in her voice.

"You're the new Marco's delivery boy, I assume?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "You kids always look the same."

He nodded, not knowing if he was able to speak in his current state. She rolled her eyes.

"Come on in. Did Amelio explain the deal?"

"Amelio?" Peter echoed, not understanding. He stepped after her, into the entrance hall. Some mailboxes were sat on the left side of the room, quite a few of them busted open, and a staircase could be seen further into a corridor, going both up and down. Despite its intimidating exterior, the inside was very mundane.

"Since you work for him, you get to choose between one of the two attic rooms. They come with a mattress and a private bathroom. Electricity comes on at 7pm and turns off at 3am. The heat is on from December to February." The strange woman told him, waving him forward.

She led him up the stairway and he followed, body aching with every step. As they moved, she kept talking :

"You can get hot water from 8pm to 10pm and 5pm to 7pm. Otherwise, I turn the gas off. There are no cooking appliances or cutlery in the units."

They climbed up the spiral staircase, Peter noting that, even though there were plenty of apartments there-three per landing in a ten story tall building-, there were no names anywhere. So, this was this kind of establishment.

"No illegal activities can go on within those walls. This includes dealing, kidnapping, murder, sexual assault and terrorism. Arson and any other kind of violent crimes are also forbidden. If you think the cops are on your back, you can't stay until it's cleared."

Peter nodded, throat tightening, wondering where he had ended up. He could hear movement in several of the apartments, where those people all criminals?

"Rent for you is only 10 a day, since you work for Amelio. There is a communal kitchen you can use in the basement, as well as a laundry room. Cannibalism is banned, if you want to use the machines to wash blood, make sure to decontaminate the inside with isopropyl alcohol or another form of disinfectant and wash it off with water before leaving."

Peter decided there and then that he would try to avoid his neighbors as much as possible. He did need housing desperately, but it sounded like he had ended up in a criminal hiding place.

They walked in silence to the attic, which only had two apartments in it, one on each side.

"This one," the woman said, pointing to the door on the left. "Has a television and a closet." She then pointed to the right. "This one has a radio and a desk."

"I'll take the desk." Peter replied immediately. He had never been one for TV anyways, and he needed a place to do his research.

"Very well." The woman nodded. After a moment, she added, politely : "You may call me Xiuying."

"I'm Peter," he told her in answer. He felt bad for not being as friendly and enthusiastic as he usually was, but the night had been long and the only think he could think about was that he couldn't wait to take a shower. Then, he would collapse in his bed and try to sleep.

Seeing her held out hand, he blushed, digging into the stolen hoodie's pocket. She frowned at the 100$ bill, but did not comment on it. She probably had been paid in much weirder means before.

"Can I have some of it back? I need to buy food." He asked her, too tired to be overly polite. She nodded curtly, businesslike, and took three crisp ten dollar bills out of her purse. He exchanged them thankfully, handing over his hundred.

"Very well, Peter. Rent is covered for the week. Now, keep your head down and don't attract attention to this place."

She shoved a small metal key into his hand then left without any other words, leaving him to stare at it in silence. A place for him to sleep in. A place he could even lock the door of.

It felt supremely weird, stepping into the little apartment all on his own, without May by his side. They had moved a lot and he remembered that feeling of opening the door to some empty, dreary room, but still believing they could make it into a home because, at least, they were together.

It took all that he had not to punch through the wall, but he contained himself. Instead, he toured the small room, eyes taking in every details.

There was indeed a mattress on the floor, separated from the rest of the room by a dark curtain, that could be pulled back and tied to the wall if need be. Just as Xiuying had explained, there was no cooking appliances, not even a table.

There was however, a little desk, standing by one of the two windows in the room. Made out of wood, it appeared to be of surprisingly good quality, considering the neighborhood. A small radio sat on top of it, turned off.

The only other thing in the apartment, aside from those two areas, was a door that, when he pushed, led him to a cramped little bathroom with a shower and a toilet seat. Of course, there were no towels or soap.

He did spot a mirror above the sink, which somehow fit in between the toilet and the shower cabinet. He stepped forward, looking up at his reflection. He looked exhausted and dirty, his eyes seemed like they had been punched, with how dark the circles under them were.

With a sigh, he stripped off his sticky, dirty clothes, shivering when the fabric brushed the flesh of his back.

The shower was cold and short. Despite not having any soap, he managed to scrub off a lot of the blood and soot that had stained his body. He came out into the main room, drying his hair with the blue hoodie, feeling too exhausted to even stand on his own two feet.

Staggering, he walked over to the mattress, lowering himself down on it.

He was out cold in an instant.

His dreams were harsh and cruel, full of screaming, crying and whimpering.

Over and over, he watched as fire burned through his skin, leaving him a charred carcass, barely able to breathe. Before he could die, however, he was dragged into the ground, suffocating on the dirt. Cold fingers wrapped around his ankles, stopping him from clawing his way out.

When he looked down, May's decomposing face smiled at him sweetly, a parody of the gentle looks she used to give him, just before ruffling his hair or hugging him.

He tried to grab her hand, go further down into the dirt, even if it meant dying. As soon as he reached her, however, her face morphed into a cruel smile and her features melted away, replaced by the scarred face of an armor clad man.

"Why won't you burn, Peter?" The man asked conversationally. "Why won't you burn burn burn-"

The litany echoed in his head, and the only thing he could do to fight it was curl up in a ball, putting his hand on his ears to try and block out the words. The smell of burning flesh reached his nose, it didn't know if it was coming from him.

He woke up with a gasp, sitting up violently. His head throbbed and his throat was paper-dry. He needed a drink.

After stumbling into the bathroom to down the equivalent of a few glasses of blessedly clean running water, Peter straightened up, glancing at himself in the mirror. The cuts on his face were gone, so was the pain in his feet.

He looked down at them, unsurprised to see them perfectly smooth and intact. His back, however, still hurt terribly.

Of course, he needed more food to heal a wound as big as this.

Distantly, he wondered how long he had slept. It looked like the sun was still shining, so he did not miss work. He walked over to the nearest window, pulling open the blinds.

Ah.

He had slept through work.

The sun was far too low for it to be anything else than morning, and the smells in the streets, coffee and bread mixing with smoke and sweat, confirmed his suspicions. He sighed. Good job, Peter, not even a week into a new gig and he already blew it.

His stomach twisted painfully and he forced himself to get out of his daze. He needed to take care of himself, build his strength back up. There was no point in letting himself die.

So, even though he felt empty to his core, Peter put his stolen clothes back on, grabbed the rest of his money, his keys, and stepped out of his shady new apartment. His shoulder hurt when he closed the door behind him, he needed to be careful, he was pushing close to his limits.

Stepping out into the street, he could tell something was different in the atmosphere. The usual Gotham gloominess had magnified somehow, making the city appear even darker than it had before. Civilians walked with their heads slightly down, eyes darting over left, right. He could smell fear in the air.

Was this a result of the Firefly incident? In a flash, he remembered the smell of fuel, the heat on his back. He had to stop, close his eyes and take a few deep breaths before he could keep moving.

Peter wandered around until he found a convenience store that looked like he wouldn't get stabbed if he stepped into it. In there, he grabbed two large sandwiches, a bottle of soda, and some chips. It wasn't healthy, it was probably too expensive for what it was worth, but he didn't care. He needed something to make himself feel better.

He started tearing through the first sandwich almost right away, heading to a back street to make his way up a house, using it to launch himself a bit higher, at a little administrative building. The roofs still felt safe to him, his ability to get to high ground quickly was the only thing that had saved him during his fight against Firefly. He needed to adapt to his surroundings better, needed to learn how to fight on the ground.

If only he hadn't been so reckless.

The roofs took him down the now familiar path to the Gotham Public Library. He thought about going in, maybe talking to Barbara, before realizing she didn't even know him that well, and probably would find it creepy.

He was alone. It was hard to remember that, sometimes.

With a sigh, he elected to use the fact he was now in a slightly richer district of Gotham to look around for a hardware store. He only had 20$ left, but he hoped to be able to find some tools that would help him dismantle what was left of the Iron Spider. If he was right, there would be useful components in it.

Turning away from the public library, he walked the streets for a good hour before finding what he was looking for. With his small electronic kit in hand, which he had to spend all of his money on, and only contained four different hand tools, he headed back to the Bowery.

He could hear conversations around him, could see headlines on newspaper, could make it out from the radios of passing cars, Firefly was on everyone's mind. Apparently, he had been gone for quite a while before being spotted, and had used that time to plant explosives around the city.

He hoped nobody else died that night because of his foolishness. He tried to ignore the advertisement screens. Several of them were talking about a mysterious meta that had clashed with the arsonist.

"Friend or Foe : Unidentified meta defeats Firefly" a sodden newspaper front page welcomed him as he stepped on top of a grocery store. He picked it up and crushed it in his fist. He did not defeat anyone. There was no victory in what had happened that night.

By mid-afternoon, he was back in his small apartment, sitting on the wood floor and staring at the destroyed Iron Spider. His last memory of Mr Stark, of Tony. It was in shreds, now, the back melted and torn, chunks of it strewn around the main body of the suit. He had a few hours to work on it before he had to head out to convince his boss to let him keep his job, but he couldn't bring himself to.

Every time he lowered the scissors to the fabric or tried to pull some components out with tweezers, memories overtook him. His first missions, meeting the Avengers, fighting alongside Iron Man.

In the end, he had to slide off the anti-static wristband he had gotten to make sure he wouldn't accidentally destroy components, and push back his tinkering. He felt nauseous whenever he thought about taking the suit apart.

He hoped Marco wouldn't fire him from the delivery job, as he was now short on cash again. If he kept it, he just had to keep his head down, learn as much as he could and, once he was ready, come out to patrol again.

The only issue was that he wasn't sure if he would ever be ready again.