Archive of Our Own ^beta

One Year Ago

Upper Manhattan, New York City, New York

Peter backed up, staring at the thugs who were coming at him. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, and it just felt so good. He opened his mouth to say something cocky which would undoubtedly just get him into more trouble, when, without any warning, the ground gave way beneath his feet.

He briefly thought how ironic it was that this ‘spidey-sense’ of his enabled him to dodge everything from a bullet to a spitball, and still did not warn him of the imminent danger beneath his feet.

Maybe he just needed practice.

With a thud he hit the ground, the air forced out of his lungs in a rush that left him gasping for breath. Plaster and bits of wood showered him and he let out a low moan.

“I know what you look like! I’ve seen your face!” cried a voice from above. Peter was vaguely aware of footsteps on the roof above him as the thugs left him where he lay.

Still gasping, Peter looked around him. The room was dark, and probably abandoned, for which Peter was grateful. An awkward situation would have arisen had he fallen into an occupied building.

It was a boxing gym, and he’d fallen directly into the center of the ring. In fact, he probably owed it to the padded floor beneath him that he hadn’t broken any bones.

Slowly, Peter got to his feet and stumbled into the railing. A splash of red caught his gaze and he looked up at the poster before him.

The thug’s final words rang in his ears, and Peter came to a sudden and vivid realization. If he was going to find Uncle Ben’s killer, he couldn’t do it as himself. His mission was just, he knew that, but he also knew that the police might not see it that way when they came looking for whoever beat up those criminals.

A small smile tugged at the corner of Peter’s mouth, his mind filled with the image of what his mask could look like.

And that was the beginning of Spider-man.

Now

Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, New York

As Peter lay gasping in the center of the boxing ring, he couldn’t help but think of how ironically similar this situation was to the happening of his first Spiderman excursion. He would have laughed, too, if he wasn’t in so much pain.

He credited it to the pain that he did not hear the sound of another person swinging themselves lithely into the ring with him.

“Ah-haha….” Peter moaned. “Oooow….”

“Are you all right?”

Peter went rigid, eyes widening beneath his mask. A gentle hand brushed his shoulder and he lashed out instinctively, trying to twist the owner of the hand to the mat and bring himself to his feet so that he was standing above his potential assailant.

Normally, this move would have been completed flawlessly in the space of a millisecond; in any other scenario, Peter would now be in a position of dominance and tensed for any further retaliation on the part of his opponent. That is not, however, what happened.

What happened was Peter pathetically hurling the upper half of his body upwards and tugging weakly at the stranger’s arm, before flopping back to the ground with an exclamation of pain.

“I wouldn’t suggest movement.” The voice was low, velvety, and tinged with concern. And unless there was something wrong with Peter’s hearing, amusement.

Peter blinked the black spots from his vision and turned his head slightly to the left. A man crouched there, not looking at him but ear angled in his direction.

“Wh-who?” Peter managed to choke out, and the man smiled.

“Matt. Matt Murdock. How are you feeling?”

“I…uh…” Peter swallowed with some difficulty. “I think I was trampled by an elephant.”

The man—newly dubbed as ‘Matt’—chuckled. “I don’t think there was any elephant involved,” he said, still smiling and still not looking at Peter. “You did fall through the roof, though, so I’m waiting on a back story for that.”

“Criminals are really cocky. Uh…especially when they manage to get their hands on electric bolts.”

“Bolts? Like from a crossbow?”

Peter nodded, then groaned as the pounding in his head increased. “The world is a strange place.”

“Hm. So what happened?”

“Fried the webbers,” said Peter hoarsely. “See?” He held his right arm out and activated his web-shooter. It fizzled and sparked, cord-goo sputtering everywhere.

Matt turned his head downwards, and Peter saw his eyes clearly for the first time. They were unfocused, and though they were pointed in the general direction of his face, they seemed to look right past him. This and the fact that Matt seemed to be listening to something brought Peter to a certain conclusion. Curiosity now bubbling in his mind, Peter blurted out his question with a tactful grace equivalent to that of a walrus.

“Are you blind?”

Then he cringed at his one words, waiting tensely for the stranger’s reaction. Matt, however, did not seem offended by the abrupt manner of the question. On the contrary, it almost seemed as if it had amused him.

Why did everything amuse this guy?

“Yes,” said Matt. “I am.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

A sudden vibration on the side of Peter’s leg caused him to start violently. “Ugh…” he moaned, fingers clawing weakly at the tight pocket where his phone was held. “Uh…can I…um…could you…”

Matt nodded and pulled out the ringing cell for him, fingers finding his pocket with terrifyingly immediate accuracy. Silently he pressed it into Peter’s hand, head tilted curiously.

Peter checked the caller id and groaned. Then he took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and answered it.

“Peter Parker, where have you been?!”

Peter winced. “Uh…hi, Aunt May.”

“You were supposed to be home an hour ago and you weren’t answering my calls! Peter, what happened?! I turned on the news and when I saw what was happening and you still weren’t home I thought maybe you’d gotten caught in the middle of something!”

“Um…no. I mean…uh…well…I forgot I said I was coming straight home and I had a lot of…um…stuff….for school, you know, right, so Gwen said I could…so I went to her house and it turns out I’ve got a lot more to do than I’d realized and it’s due tomorrow so I might stay over. Okay? ! Love you! I’ll call you later. Bye!”

“Peter, wait—“

Peter put his head back with an exhausted sigh. “Ow,” he said dully.

“Your aunt?” asked Matt with a smile.

“Yeah.”

The smile dropped off of Matt’s face. “Does she know?”

Peter was silent for a moment. “No,” he said finally. “She doesn’t know.”

Matt straightened suddenly as if a thought had just occurred to him. “How old are you?” he questioned.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a man his age?” joked Peter, but it was a feeble attempt at humor that ended in another groan of pain.

Matt just waited.

“Old enough.”

“No,” the stranger prodded. “You’re young. So how old are you?”

Peter sighed and stared upwards at the hole in the ceiling from where he’d fallen. He really needed to be more careful so incidents like this wouldn’t happen so often.

“Twenty-three.”

“Right. Tell the truth.”

How did he know that Peter was lying? While they were on the topic, how could he tell that Peter was young?

Peter asked him.

“You told your aunt that you were coming home tomorrow, which means you live with her. That’s one way I can tell. But it’s also in your voice. Both your age and the lie. When you can’t see, you learn how to listen. That’s how I know. And….other reasons.”

“What other reasons?”

“How old are you? Really?”

Peter glared at him, before remembering that the glare would be completely wasted due to the fact that he was wearing a mask and Matt was, in fact, blind.

“I…can’t tell you.”

Matt nodded. “I get it. Secrets keep us safe. But…does anyone know? Do you have anyone you can go to?”

“Yeah,” murmured Peter. He didn’t elaborate further, and Matt didn’t pry.

Another silence fell. Matt seemed to be listening to something, and when at last he spoke his voice was tinged with concern. “I’m guessing you’ve got some fractured ribs,” he said with infuriating surety. “I’m guessing you’d say no to a hospital?”

Peter laughed, before wincing at the jostling of his apparently injured ribcage. “No hospitals.”

“How about I call a friend of mine who just so happens to be a nurse?”

The teenager raised an eyebrow beneath his mask. “And this nurse friend of yours is totally cool with bandaging up an injured superhero?”

Matt grinned like they’d shared an inside joke. “You’d be surprised.”

“Why are you so chill about this?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had a lot of experience. Now be quiet for a moment and let me call Claire.”

Peter lay there quietly as Matt exchanged a few brief words over the phone with ‘Claire’. He reached up a hand and pushed his mask up over his head so that it rested atop his hair—he figured he could pull it back down when the nurse arrived and it was completely redundant in the presence of a blind man. In any case, he could breathe better now, thought it still hurt like hell.

Matt hung up and trained his unseeing gaze in the general direction of Peter’s face. “She’s coming.”

“Good.”

Matt’s expression was unreadable for several moments, and he seemed to be deliberating over something. Finally he spoke, face serious and eyes sad.

“I’m going to give you a bit of advice that you didn’t ask for, okay? And I just want you to be quiet a listen for a moment.”

“Um….okay?”

“I don’t know a lot about you,” Matt began slowly. “I don’t even know your name. But I do know that you are young, and you have people that you care about. I know that you’re in a dangerous business, and you’re injured. You probably get injured a lot. But you probably just ignore it, because you want to help people.

“But have you ever stopped and thought about what would happen to those you love if you didn’t come back? If you never told your aunt your secret and just went out one night, and then you were gone and she never knew what happened? What would that do to her? What would that do to the one person who does know who you are? They’d have to tell her, and then she won’t have heard it from you.”

Peter stared at him. “What are you trying to say?”

“What I’m saying is that you’re young, and you have a whole life ahead of you. You got a girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Then go out with her! Spend time with friends. Do stupid, ordinary things. Leave the superheroing to those who don’t have an alternative.

“I…I can’t.”

Matt sighed and rubbed the palm of his hand. “Why not?”

“Because I have a responsibility,” Peter said softly, thinking back to when his uncle had said something similar. “Because I have certain abilities and it isn’t fair to keep them to myself.”

“Then be careful,” said Matt. “And just…there are roads you can’t come back from.”

Peter didn’t answer. He was thinking about how close he had come to following that path. If he’d found Uncle Ben’s murderer, he had no doubt that he would’ve killed him.

And what would he be then? Not Spider-man. Not a hero.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “But I know.”

Several minutes later, the nurse arrived, and the mask was pulled back over his face.

It is a week later and Peter is healed.

He’s taken the week off; he’s been thinking. And he does have the responsibility to be safe, for Gwen and Aunt May. But he also has a responsibility to this city.

He hadn’t thought, before, about what would happen if he died doing this. If Gwen was left with the burden of telling his aunt everything, a burden that would be added to the grief that he’d caused.

He’d have to tell Aunt May. Sometime soon.

But not yet. Secrets protect us.

And they can hurt us, too. Secrets didn’t save Richard and Mary Parker.

And yet those secrets protected Peter for so many years.

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know the answer to his questions. What matters is that he’s asking the questions in the first place.

Matt was right. He has been doing this brashly, without thinking about the consequences.

These things need to be considered.

Peter lets his fingers trail through the air as he swings to the top of a building. He lands in a crouch, muscles flexing in a glorious stretch.

There is already a man atop the building.

“Spider-man,” says Daredevil evenly, and Peter thinks the voice is familiar.

“Thanks for the help with Sparky last week,” he quips, and Daredevil chuckles.

“Sorry. I was…occupied.”

Peter is struck with sudden certainty. He knows that voice. Those distinct, velvety tones have been playing in his mind for the past week.

“Thank you for the advice, though.”

Daredevil sighs. “Ah.”

“How does a blind man get to be the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen? How is that fair?”

“How does a boy learn to spin a spider’s web?”

Peter grins. He backs up and stands on the edge of the roof, toes hanging over the edge.

“Nice meeting you, Daredevil,” he says. “The name’s Peter Parker.”

He throws himself from the building and catches himself on a web, hurling himself up past Daredevil and towards the next building.

“But you can call me Spider-man!”

Matt smiles. There is a change in the boy—Peter.

He can only hope it’s for the better. After all, the streets of New York are always in need of a hero.