Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was humid, and it was hot, and it was terribly dreadful: that was how Carmen Jorge waited, with sloped shoulders and ear jacks in, sandals-clad feet on her desk, for the Goab Police Department to arrive to her motel.

A mosquito landed lazily on her olive calf—slow, incommensurably big despite its pathetic size, announced by an annoying telltale lullaby. She tried to slap it dead before it gave her a bite to take care of instead, but it flew back to safety just a hair before curtain’s fall. Its presence was stronger than the slow rock playing against her brain, and almost stronger than her paranoid fear of accountability when faced with pseudo-arbitrary jurisdiction.

Meaning: Carmen had done no wrong, but if things went wrong, she was, by all odds, completely fucked.

A heavy knock echoed against the discoloured front door of the Nisba Motel (World’s best mass-produced pancakes, gratuitously left in pairs in each room! Pool with dino-bones and corals on the bottom! Clean mattresses! Hot tub! Hot tub! Jacuzzi!), followed by equally heavy, indiscernible words. Carmen Jorge stood up at that, not caring much about overhearing, pocketed the ear jacks, and stumbled towards the door, all with a hastened distress born out of anything but exhilaration.

She opened the door. Before her stood two men in uniform: one older, shorter, wider, and the other younger, taller, slimmer; none of them affable. Cartoon goons-ass looking cops, she thought, verbatim. The shorter held up his golden badge—so he was likely the chief—and grunted in a thick Texan accent.

“Police, we’re here for-“

“Yes, yes, come in, officers.”

Carmen gestured for the pair of men to walk in, and then closed the door after them. They sat down on the small couch, made of abhorrent fake leather that stuck to sweat and also generally just uncomfortable to rest on, that bordered the only public room in the motel. The chief cleared his throat, and Carmen Jorge got the vague impression that this was the first, possible, big case they had in a long while—not much happened in these parts of Utah, and if it did happen, then not much was done about it.

“So, miss…” He started, and trailed off in commonly placed blanks.

“Carmen.”

The cop stared at her through bushy, greying eyebrows, slightly furrowed in suspicion. She swallowed, and stared back. An insurmountable wall stood erect between them, and another, insurmountable wall, stood erect in a worse part of the globe, and beyond that many more; there, after enough walls, billions of insects claw to their unnamed demise. Will she be amongst them? Will her family be amongst them?

She knew, they knew she knew, and she knew they knew, and so on so forth.

They probably didn't even need her to say her full name.

“Carmen what?”

“Jorge,” Then, she quickly added, “Sir.”

“Well, miss, why don’t you tell us what happened this afternoon,”

The chief gestured with his hand towards the woman, while his colleague overzealously took out a notebook and a pencil from his pocket.

It was maybe around 1 PM, there were no people around planning to book a room, and she was sitting behind that same receptionist desk and scrolling through Twitter on her phone, despite it indisputably being the source of all her ailments. Then, under a shitton of discourseslop, was a resurfacing thread:

Peter Benjamin Parker is Spiderman and here is why:

Carmen Jorge never had much cared about silly theories, much less when it concerned a random dead guy—but she’d have to live under a rock to not know how they went, and they went mostly like this:

1. Spiderman also vanished alongside him; 
   
   
2. Tony Stark took intense interest in the case, paid for his funeral (that one got out with a dubious leak, but who cares?), and even made the Parker Foundation, which does about the same as all the other foundations named after disappeared people do. Why would he have done that if Parker was not the nobody his CV made him out to be, but, say, maybe an old pal vigilante?

Still, the rumours were old and sour and boring: true crime affected the memory of the victims, or whatever that YouTube video she watched said. It mustn’t have been very famous, though, because the post had thousands of retweets, and mentions, and likes, way more than the sum of everything she had ever posted.

That was why she righteously hated the picture that stared back at her, at the top of the page: those brown, warm eyes and those warm, brown curls. So incredibly innocent, a picture-perfect missing person poster. What did this kid have to make his disappearance so known around the globe, when others of the same fate were doomed to be buried under the hourglass's sand? The young age of twenty? A good GPA? A good timed kidnapping? Or maybe a billionaire’s inexplicable graces? That, at least, seems worse than the sand.

Not that it mattered, a kidnapping was a kidnapping, right? Six years were more than enough time to leave alive only a memory.

That is, of course, secondary to the fact that that face passed last night in Nisba Motel and left just that morning, through that same, discoloured door. Alive, older, grimmer, gaunter, beard-er, and half-hidden by an oversized thrifted hoodie, but still with the same unmistakable features of an overgrown doe. He said neither a word nor a name, but she was not required to have him say any, especially when the man looked like he could barely stand upright. His nervousness was suspicious, but not unfamiliar for the place they were in. He paid with crumpled bucks, made no chaos, and didn’t even use the dino-coral-pool or the Jacuzzi. For some reason.

For all her fear of the police, it was kind of the only morally correct decision to make, calling them. It wasn’t any day you see a dead man, and his family would probably really, really like having him back. A little less lonely insects in the world, clawing to their demise.

She finished her nutshell of the events, tight-lipped on everything unnecessary.

“And you only made the connection after he left?” The younger officer interrupted, earning a glare from his senior.

“He probably ain’t the guy, anyway. Dead people don’t come back alive, and if they did, and if I were him, I’d choose someplace way nicer.” 

Carmen ignored him and shrugged defensively, turning to the former, “It’s an old case, so I didn’t remember how he looked before seeing the picture again,”

“S’a cold case,” The chief corrected, standing up, dusting himself off despite not being dusty. “Cold and closed, and we’ll need more than a pair of eyes to reopen it. Jerry, call the department, this is feds’ backyard now,” he spat out both names, and then spat out again, literally, in the potted fake plant on the coffee table.

“The FBI?” Carmen Jorge gaped. Less competent than the already low average cops, she could handle, but the FBI?

“If it turns out to be the Parker kid, yes,” The taller officer—Jerry, poor guy, imagine being known as Jerry first, and anything else second—nodded, “It was a big case, back in the day.”

“Or so he heard,” The chief sighs, “And so you likely did. We gonna search the room and the…uh…security tapes, yes, now. Kid?”

Jerry nodded again, pocketed his detective-for-a-day arsenal, and walked back out to make the call without as much as a goodbye. The chief turned back to Carmen,

“So, where’s them?”

The footage showed about the same as Carmen saw and told. A hooded, lanky man entering, paying, leaving, only from a isometric perspective where it was even harder to see his face. Although it did give a better view of his swaying, his fidgeting and his distrustful glancing. And how he smuggled the candies in the stereotypical candy bowl that comes with every receptionist desk.

Still, four minutes and a half total of screen time, and not much more than a couple of blurry pixels to go off from. Peachy. Alas, Carmen Jorge authorized further searches on it: what else could she have done?

Then came the dubiously authorized search. Could cops search unoccupied motel rooms without a warrant? Maybe she should have thought about that before leading the chief up the stairs and around the place, numbered keys in hand, sweat pooling under the friction of her armpits.

Room 482 wasn’t actually the four hundred and eighty-second room in Nisba motel. It was the twenty-sixth, second to last on the second flood. Second to last in general. The previous, and first ever, manager just wanted to leave the impression of a grandiose, much more influential establishment; since he left, she hasn’t done any major changes. At least room 482 has the best view of their own T-rex maxi-miniature, standing proud at five feet of height: nothing but an atom to the city of man after, nothing but a nanoangstrom to the even farther desert it is a simulacrum of.

Inside, the accomodation is a little sadder, and nothing like the promotional photos (not that it was ever): the beddings were removed from the cheap mattress, opposite the drawers that host nothing but a small, cubical TV and one empty pancake wrapper. They find the sheets behind the latter, dumped on the ground, in what is the only blind spot of the room—besides the bathroom. Pushed awkwardly against the corner, the improvised nest laid cold and unfeeling, but it looks like someone slept curled up on there. Like an animal. A predator, if the indications of restless pacing that scatter the area are of any indication; a prey, if it actually was Peter Parker that did the prowling.

The chief half-heartedly searched on unsure basis with his eyes, thumbs pushed under his belt. He opened a few (empty) drawers, kicked the sheets with a boot, found numerous lumps of brownish hair lost around the perimeter of the improvised cot, and beneath them what appeared to be thick, white, and fading webs.

¿Qué chingados fue eso?

“What-“

They both looked up to the ceiling. There, desperately sticking with primitive vigour, was a big, big web. Larger than anything a normal spider could make, visibly stronger, stickier, and blocked off view by decorative ceiling beams. Carmen Jorge shivered, feeling like her everything stopped in its tracks.

“-the fuck…?” The chief trailed off, nudged the sheets some more, uncovering their sticky dark side. So they were on the ceiling as well. Which meant the webs were strong enough to hold them up, alongside a presumed person.

“’Suppose ya’ll don’t get spiders that big in this place?” He inquired in a low voice, taking a precautionary step back and a precautionary hand on his gun.

“Nuh uh,” Carmen numbly shook her head from where she stood a few feet back. Most they had is cockroaches, really, and somehow even those seem more innocuous than whatever this was. This kind of insect, bug, vermin, that ate its comrades while it crawled amongst them.

“Nope, uh-uh, this here's forensic work! Don' tidy up this room, and keep everyone outta there until they come,” The man squeaked, attempted to mask it with a cough, and speed walked out of the room, then leaned out the aquamarine railings that faced the parking lot, where Jerry was scrolling through his notebook, rested against the police car.


“Turn the engine on, kid! We’re off!” Then, to Carmen, who followed him a few steps behind as they hurried down the stairs, “We’ll call you if we need anything,”

Carmen Jorge watched the car drive away in silence. When she looked back, the door to room 482 was left open.

The commute from the People’s Hospital, Indianapolis IN, to the Garden Flats Apartment complex, Indianapolis IN (two point eight stars on Rent dot com!), takes around half an hour on bus—accounting for the stops and an average traffic. A perfect amount of time for May Parker to eat her packaged dinner with all the tranquillity in the world, and then spend the money of the day adding to the water bill with a hot shower, and then get back at the hospital for her night shift. Tonight, her meal consisted of a tuna sandwich, a handful of plums, and a bigger handful of vitamins.

Phone call not included.

May had her mouth momentarily more interested in a bite of vending machine sandwich and her hands busy trying not to topple the rest over, but…the caller number was private. In another life, she remembered being distinctly told to answer private numbers, if they happened. Just in case. However, it was another life, and now…

Now she answered it, because maybe no one had called her in a while that was too long for comfort.

Looking back, she can’t tell you the actual words that were exchanged during the conversation.

The call couldn’t have lasted more than three, four minutes, but by the time she dropped the phone back onto her lap, to accompany the white polystyrene box, she felt like she aged more years than she could afford. Frost ran freely in her bloodstream, biting coldly at her organs with the traitorous and joyful feeling of hope. But, above all, ruled despair.

In Utah, the agent said. Peter could be in Utah. Her baby could be in Utah. If it was Peter. But it was him, it was! Except that maybe it was not. And then what, if it was the countless next false lead? It wasn’t like anyone ever even entertained the idea that he might have been in Utah, in all these years. Some great fucking investigation they’d done. Was Utah where they took him, or did he go there after? And if he was near civilization, maybe actively in it…how come had he not called her yet? Why hadn’t he called anyone?

Did he know about the Spiderman-shaped void he left in New York? Did he know how much time has passed? Did he know anything at all? Did he know what May felt, standing by an empty grave surrounded by proof of his death and flowers and more crying people? 

The bus reached the street parallel to the Garden Flats Apartment complex before May could even comprehend the scope of this violent, irreprehensible miracle. Time snapped back into working order like a well-oiled machine, and she had to get off; a few moments passed after she did, where she mechanically reached to dump her trash in the green metal bin by the stoplight, before puking her dinner alongside it. Empty wrappers (no, some were still containing food), banana peels, cigarette packs, papers, acidic half-digested vomit and tears mix together in a nauseating soup; it was then she noticed that she started crying. The bus sped off before anyone on it could do something about her episode.

A pigeon cooed, amplified in the empty street; it flew peaceful, worriless for anything but what crumbs it’ll find in the bins, or in the subway, or trailed after good Samaritans in the park. Primate hate overwhelms her, how dare this creature live so carelessly in God’s most detested Earth? So equally near and far, indistinguishable from its thousand copies in this neighbour alone, so spotlessly placed as a scapegoat for targetless anger: so who could blame May if she wildly kicked at it? It flew away eons before it could have been hit, telegraphing her shoe with instincts given to any big city bird, of course, and equally predictably, she felt no better than before. Perhaps guilty was a better term. Guilty, happy, and deeply encumbered: more revolting than the trashcan.

The case had reopened, the officer said, but she knew that actually meant they began looking for better reasons to reopen it. Which is finding a body, alive or dead, or actual proof of its existence.

His existence.

Because there wasn’t a body without a name attached to it in this world, and both Peter’s body and Peter’s name seemed to be doomed to be accompanied with disgusted perplexity by the caller. What was up with that, anyway? Not much could instil such…unsureness in the police, May hoped.

It didn’t help the fact that they very clearly were keeping shit from her.

They probably told Stark more, as always. There was nothing surprising about the government licking up the ghost of Tony Stark’s boots. He was in on the case, too, of course; based on his pseudo-mentorship with Peter and the fact that. Well. Peter is Spiderman. If they found out about Spiderman related things, reasons as of why he was kidnapped in the first place, then shit would have hit the fan real fast, and with neither SHIELD nor the Avengers to conduct the investigations, a retired Iron Man was the next best thing they had to keep the story under wraps.

Besides, he was Tony fucking Stark. Good enough of a reason to get him information as any.

May wasn’t even mad, really. There was nothing to be mad about when there was a chance her baby might be alive, there was only a miserable everything to be anguished about.

She leaned over the trashcan, then pushed herself away from it, wiping her mouth with her cardigan's sleeve. The taste of her viscera and enzymes won't leave her mouth for a while. 

The commute from the bus stop to the Garden Flats Apartment complex usually took May around four, five minutes, depending on how much of a hurry she was.

Sometimes, she let herself indulge in the suburban purgatory she now calls home. Morally neutral ground, designed to repeat ad infinitum forever and ever and ever, like all things in non-degradable America.

That day, though, May blinked and suddenly there was a key in her tear-stained hand and a door in front of her. She should open it, right? Or maybe walk away, lose herself in the vast expanse of her consciousness…maybe find a shade to sleep under, like she used to do when Ben, Peter and her had their park outings, always a weekend and always a picnic. A book in her lap she read a page of per sitting.

Yes, reminiscing about happier times is too comfortingly devastating for anger to ruin it. Above, a better bait, is the possibility of it happening again, with two parties out of three. There is no reason to drink her two glasses of wine tonight; she'll call to see if someone can take her next shift, and get to actual work.

They’ll find Peter, just not that day, and that day May Parker got to live in her blood borne misery for a little while longer. She’ll call Stark another time, if the number still works.

Chapter Text

“No, you are the arrogant pirate captain that’s secretly, like, really kind; you are the edgy buccaneer, and I am the secret agent from the future posing as a mermaid to save the world. Yes, Brian, you can be the ship’s dog.”

Morgan explained for what felt like the billionth time that day, pointing to each kid when interpelled with their assigned role. Some peers looked at her numbly, while Brian cheered. He really liked dogs.

They were supposed to play pretend a vicious maritime war in the XVIII century, Caribbeans, but many of the supposed British militia had already deserted. Cowards. George II shall have their heads.

It didn’t help the fact that no one really understood what was going on besides Morgan. She really liked pirates, didn’t even need the movies to get into them. When she had said she wanted to be a privateer when she grew up, she received mixed signals, like “No you’re not, not with you not eating vegetables, scurvy is a terrible illness. ” and “Fine, but you’re not stealing for the government. Your first mission is getting me the trash bag where I buried mommy’s favourite broken cat mug. I’m gonna try and kintsugi it.”

She had asked for cookie ice cream and a sword in return. She only got the ice cream, and Pepper didn’t get her mug back.

A sound came from inside the lake house, interrupting their character creation. Questions, cries, a crash? Someone stumbled upstairs, and someone hurried outside, standing by the threshold of the door. Pepper searched for Morgan with her eyes, assured herself of her presence, and after almost saying some needless explanation of what was going on, she only shouted a little less needless reassurance.

She hurried back inside and followed upstairs.

Morgan had to settle on an amateur game of volleyball instead. 

Above, the sky shined blue.

--

It was cool, and it was windy, and it was sunny—Morgan’s tenth birthday was blessed with good weather, enough school friends to fill out a good portion of the clearing, good child’s party-appropriate food and less appropriate wine for the parents.

Not a lot of people, but the occasional handful super-metabolism haver surely helped mow down the mountain of brownies Morgan’s best friend had made with her mother. Delicious, but a total appetite killer.

This was probably one of the last years they’ll have a birthday celebration at the lakehouse. If there was one thing Tony couldn’t blame Morgan for, it was following the fuzzy freedom of juvenile glory; he’d much prefer his daughter to fool around in bowling alleys and cinemas before jumping right into college booze confraternities. Pepper liked saying that he was overprotective, but really, he just knew the way Earth turned.

More or less.

If he truly did, would he be having a panic attack in the bathroom when he was supposed to entertain guests and friends?

“Tony,” Pepper called from behind the door, likely leaning against it with her arms crossed and an empathetically tired expression on her face, eyes lost somewhere during the length of the hallway.

“Please, come out so we can speak about this like reasonable adults, because if I don’t stop you now, I know you’re going to do something stupid like immediately book a flight to Utah.”

He wasn’t. He was going to make a few calls, make sure the right people were doing the right thing, and then fly to Utah. Begin the process of complete reparation. Totally different magnitude of recklessness, but he still had enough presence of mind to not correct his wife on that.

Also because he was having trouble breathing, it was much easier imagining Pepper’s expression morphing into a frown at the sound of his rasped hyperventilation. God, was he too old for this shit.

“Honey, deep breaths, remember? Look, I know this is hard, but I need you to consider the possibility that it might not be–”

“It’s him! I know it, it can’t be anyone else, fuck the statistics, it’s Peter, and he had to save himself because I gave up on him,”

The very image frightened him: Peter, chained to the wall of a mold-covered basement, grey and thick with over-breathed oxygen, human fluids on the ground, on him. Away from everything else, locked in lead, then titanium, then a wall of pure, frozen in time landscape, then lead again. No hope for his voice to be heard, no mouth to scream futility from.

Maybe in a nondescript building.

In a nondescript town

In a nondescript part of the rocky mountains.

Blood crusted lips, purple marks hidden by brutal binds, heart beating slowly…slowly…slowly…slower…

Things so terrible they only appeared in blood-coated dreams, amorphous and emetic.

But more abominable was the thought that, if Peter had thought they had abandoned him, he would have been correct.

“You didn’t, we did all that we could, it isn’t your fault that they dropped the case.” Pepper pleaded, “Please, Tony, unlock the door.”

With herculean strength and force of will, Tony detached himself from the sink he was hunched over, hand still white-knuckling the lit Starkphone, and slowly stepped to the door, turned the lock, and waited for Pepper to open it.

The first thing that happened after she had done so was a painfully gentle hug. Tony let his head drop on the crook between her shoulder and neck, arms sneaking under her armpits and rejoining on her back, and moaned in lament to avoid straight-up crying. He wasn’t sure what about this got him so emotional—maybe the fact he’d prefer if it wasn’t Peter the face the motel owner saw, as his survival meant Tony had failed in more blatant ways, which had resulted in more blatant losses.

Maybe he would come home one day, after the police figured out where the fuck he was going, he’d eat dinner at their table like he used to do post-exams and all would be swell; but when they’d speak, or even just glance their way, they wouldn’t be able to recognize the other. Time is a quantity that can be affected only by itself and something so ineffably big it has been made by man only once.

Peter wouldn’t recognize Tony and Pepper and May and Happy and Rhodey and—

They were older. Different.

Even Morgan started sprouting rare and irregular white strands. Growing inches. Losing teeth.

Ned, MJ, Gwen; they moved on.

They all moved on.

And Peter…Tony couldn’t even imagine the ways Peter changed. A fawn lost to foreign touch. Maybe the bruises had become tattoos, the chains had fused with bones, and his brain was permanently lost inside nondescript four walls.

“There you are,” Pepper smiled against his hairline. He could feel the shape of her mouth trembling in the effort to stay in place.

“I’m worried,”

“Me, too,”

“The police told me they’re not sure about re-opening the case. Not enough reasons to, before the CSI gets results.”

“Don’t do anything rushed, Tony. I tried calling May, but she wouldn’t respond. Do you think she already knows?”

“It’d be kind of illegal for them not to tell her. I hope. I’m worried about her, too.”

Tony idly wondered what she was doing now. He hoped for anything better than what he was planning. Outside, he could hear Rhodey re-telling an ancient funny story about college times to friends and family, likely to distract from Tony’s breakdown. Further, kids laughed, birds chirped and trees swayed, the entire world continued to change as it had always done.

“We should go there. Meet her. It doesn’t matter what happened years ago, she’ll want to talk, too.”

Tony carefully abstained from objecting: May probably still hated his guts, and there was no justification of innocence he could defend himself with. If he drove her away, it was his fault, and if she drove Happy away…it indirectly was always his fault. Tony compartmentalized this guilt into something to build from, and by now he has placed exactly one brick. Baby steps.

Pepper sighed and broke the hug, patting him twice on the shoulders, “We’ll take this a moment at a time, like we did those first few months, yeah? Now, we do have a daughter to celebrate. Take today to calm down, and we’ll think about what to do tomorrow.”

She landed a reassuring kiss on his lips, equally loving and impeding and which Tony returned after a short lag, before she parted and rounded the corner off view.

Downstairs, she was greeted and asked questions.

Tony Stark wasn’t a man used to waiting. Maybe this time they got lucky, maybe six years weren’t enough for Peter to slowly rot away, but now he couldn’t even risk the chance of him losing a hair.

If it was Peter, he was coming home.

He had a couple of people to call. One, he could rationalize the shame out of, and the other…not so much. All of the self-centered, arrogant billionaire journalists liked to call him—now years ago—helped him stay a teensy bit humble, at the very least enough to know when to split his burdens. Pepper had enough, Rhodey too, not to mention Happy and May, and no one alive was really left besides acquaintances with favors to return or a hunger for his finances.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Nothing was an overkill.

After ten more minutes of talking and agreeing and forcing and paying, Morgan flew up the stairs two steps at a time, exuberant and youthful.

“Dad!” She grinned, Tony lowered his phone, “Is your gift Francis Drake plushie shaped?”

He smiled, ended the call without goodbyes, and returned to the party.

“Is this the place?”

I have to say, this feels just like a Fargo moment.

...

The TV series, no way this could pass off as an icy, desolate North Dakota landscape. Do you think you’d be the pathetic egomaniac soyjack murderer with unresolved issues or the chad detective figure?

“Wasn’t the TV series also icy or-”

You’d be yourself. I’m pretty sure there’s an archetype named Deadpool in that show, and he’s not the type of guy that gets invited to parties, or weddings, or gender reveal cake cuttings, or—

—We get it, shut up.

“Back to you, bucko,” Deadpool chirped as he hopped off the car daddy’s money rented him for the journey, black combat boots turning not-so-black the moment they touched the sand-sprayed cement.

Really, it could hardly be any other place in the world, but he liked stating the obvious—and hated when anybody else did.

He stood before a shabby, desert-side motel. Nisba, the neon sign flickered helpfully. Fenced in yellow police tape and blue police cars, with a single white, striped van boldly labelled forensics.

“In around a week they’ll have the DNA results. If they coincide, the case is reopened, if not…I won’t be able to give you police support on research. You continue anyway, of course.” That’s what Stark said, over the phone, and over sounds of people having fun, a child speaking?

It was amazing that just the name of an important case could be enough to speed the process up so fast. Too amazing, for this country, and for the abilities of the police force. It must have been big, whatever kneaded time, gave more mite to a colossal property.

Obvious questions with obvious answers and all that.

“I need my freakin’ brain on this, guys, so if you could please zip it—and of course I’d be the chad detective figure. That’s literally today’s job prescription, eugh,”

It seems unlikely Stark had no better options than you.

Ouch, anyhow. Deadpool shrugged the self-insult off, checking his weapons one last time before stepping up to the porch. It wasn’t his fault if Iron Man decided to pay him a shitton of money to track his surrogate son or whatever. He promised he’d be discreet, kill as few people as possible, and get Parker back home.

Also, as an afterthought, maybe figure out who kidnapped him in the first place.

Others’ decisions were not his concern. He was in for his pay, and, maybe, some personal interest in who was most definitely Spiderman.

Cicadas sang the night’s parade as he knocked on the discoloured door. Five times, knock—knock knock knock–knock, a good rhythm.

Then he let himself in anyway, needless of any invite.

Behind the receptionist desk was a brunette woman, no more than thirty in age, no more than five foot six in height. Carmen Goerg, or whatever Stark and the police report called her. Truly, the mercenary didn’t have much to do here, but getting something out of her that nobody bothered to yet could be useful.

If she has any. If not, please please please please can we ask for her number? I swear I won’t suggest any barking on all-fours this time around. And also no dick jokes.

“If you’re here for the—” The woman glanced up from her monitor for a moment, then went right back down, uninterested by the idea of a normal guest, “—room then I can’t—”

She did a double take, then shifted her whole focus on the mercenary that stood out like a red, sore thumb against the backdrop of sun-stippled decor. She cleared her throat, leaning back in her chair when Deadpool tipped over the desk. On her computer a DuckDuckGo tab, where ChatGPT-68 was explaining to her that the police force could search an unoccupied accommodation without a warrant, was open.

“Oh! Uh, noeresunpolicía! Good evening, we have…twenty-five…rooms available…for booking…?” Carmen trailed off the more Deadpool stared at her. Her eyes wide, her posture now ramrod straight, her hands gripping her desk, then moving for a phone: placated surprise, like she knew someone besides the police could pay her a visit, but it would have been a rare enough occurrence that she hadn’t planned the perfect behaviour.

After enough staring, he leaned back, propped an intimidating boot sole on the edge of the desk, giving her a good, nice view of his—

Guns! A nice view of his guns! In his holsters!

Of his guns. Two customized 1911 Colt pistols, at the moment. He could have brought more, but he figured that it would have looked a little silly.

“Riddle me this, how is Peter Parker?”

“What?”

“Pietro Parker, whatever, Los Parkeggiadores? You know him, everyone says you do. So, how was he?”

“He…” Carmen trailed off. Looked outside, where the night held no answer besides a plea for overdue sleep. The guns back inside offered an indeterminate one. And a scary one. Not scarier than the fear she already had when questioned—what was scarier than the threat of death for her?

“I already gave my statement to the cops, man. He was weird. Nervous. Kept his head low and shit, I don’t know. What do you want?”

“To know if you left anything unsaid, why of course! You see, it’s real important stuff, everyone wants that man, and I’m part of everyone. So, if the police said anything, I need you to tell me,”

It was a weak request, admittedly, the motel owner already saw the effects of whatever happened in that room, and she didn’t seem like the type of girl that abstained from social media. She knew the stakes. Every possibility of Peter Parker was already theorized and debunked by fanatics and criminologist zealots, and even the worst rated hypothesis involved an X-gene.

If she stumbled upon any relevant conversation, it was likely it would have been nothing she hadn’t heard before. No new answer to the problem on the ceiling, that even if not confirmed, had to do with Parker.

Still, if her secrets aren’t personal and actually concern the case, he’d like to hear them, pretty please.

Carmen glanced at her monitor. Something in her shifted, Deadpool could see it: regret, disdain, protectiveness. Brown eyes turning from familiar boredom to situational aware, she knew what she was getting into, but not how to get out of it.

“Do you need to see the room, too? Cause it’s all taped, and stuff,”

Need. Importunate. The longer he stayed here, the more her defense withered.

She’s hiding something, sire!

“N-two-S’s, dude,”

“What did you say?”

“I’m not a freakin’ cop, lady, I was illegally told what they found like any sane person. Blah blah blah, detective bullshit.” Deadpool scoffed, waved her off, “I also know that good old Jerry from the police force told his boss that he found you weird. I can recognize the look of someone with secrets, so, you better start spilling, or something else will.”

A pause.

“Something red,” He clarified, “Blood. Yours, but if you feel lonely I can join in,” Whoops, he botched it, didn’t he? Luckily, Miss Carmen seemed rattled nonetheless. Perks of being a wall of muscle with guns and swords, although he is a little saddened by the fact that she didn’t recognize him as the Merc with a Mouth, Regenerating Degenerate, the likes; fun nicknames.

“Are you a cop? Working for them?” She pressed again. The threat of death was now clearly smaller than whatever her worries were.

“Again, no! I’m not, like—I commit crimes for myself and for people that give me money, not for the police, I’m, huh—”

Sir Francis Drake!

“—I’m a cooler Sir Francis Drake, my dirty deeds aren’t done cheap, the police couldn’t afford me. And I don’t want to work for them anyway, non-police-affiliated-capiche?”

Carmen Jorge looked at him weirdly. Fair.

“I really do not have anything to say. Why does everyone think that they tell witness things, they don’t! I just—I can’t tell you nothing. I have nothing.”

“Well, I think you’re lying,” Deadpool tutted, calm, unholstering a 1911 and playing with a safety that was already off. He examined the barrel from the wrong end, then dropped it on the desk with a loud, tombal thud.

“Mybrothersaidthere’satraffickingringinSLC!”

Huh. Deadpool blinked. Leaned back.

“Okay, repeat that, but slower and with more details,”

“My brother,” Carmen started, fidgeting with a DIY bracelet, “He deals in Salt Lake. Small stuff, he’s only the runner, I think. He called me the other day, said he quit because his boss was getting into…you know,”

He didn't. She leaned forward, “Human trafficking, and he’s not that bad, yeah? And he said they got a good hit a while back, important people. So he called it quits. Said he was scared. I don’t really care about him, but—”

She hesitated again, and Deadpool jerked his head towards the gun. Important people meant mutants more often than not, so it went without saying that it was worth checking out.

“—But our mother’s visa expired! And I can’t let anyone find out about that, and this—this thing with Parker brought a lot of police and…And the chief is going around saying he got someone on his side, or something. It's weird shit, man.”

She deflated, spine curling inwards to accommodate her head into her hands, shoulders shaking with the early stages of terminal grief.

Oh. That’s it?

Look at her. No wonder you’re a fucking dirtbag. Self-assorbed and careless before character-defying intelligence. Pah! Nothing good comes out of your mouth. Didn’t this possibility ever occur to you?

What did it fucking matter? He got his answers, the secret was unveiled, and this was fruitful. Came out in pompa magna and greater understanding of weight.

He felt like shit nonetheless. A feeling he'd like to say was novel, but that in reality was even more present than the people in his skull. His skin felt like shit, and his brain felt like shit, and his name felt like shit. Couldn't bring anything less than shit if he tried. 

He needed to get out of there, for both their sakes.

Slowly, Deadpool stood back up on his two feet, reached and took his 1911 back, holstering it with the safety on. He had nothing else left to do here, anyway.

“Okay. Okay. That’s fine, I won’t tell. Snitches get stitches. That also applies to you, yeah? So not a word of this to anyone. Nice talk,”

Then, he turned on his heels and got out of the Nisba motel. Cicadas greeted him again, as did his car, as did Salt Lake City, two hundred and fifty-three miles North.

There was a waffle house, near the roundabout. Nighttime breakfast with misery?

Nighttime breakfast with misery.

Don't you think you should ask her more questions?

Like, I don't know.

On how to find her brother?

Right. He should. Deadpool turned around again.

Chapter Text

The wind blew gently over dry low branches, leaves, yellow grass and red sand, soothing the scorching violence of a midday sun. Deadpool had been driving for a while, shotgunned by a bag of now lukewarm-to-go waffles and the allure of slamming his car against the first solid object in sight.

You could say he didn’t really like his talk with Carmen. How much of it was needed, he couldn’t tell you. Stark wasn’t that clear with the purpose of what he was paying for, besides the frantic orders to get Peter and also something about get “Them”. He took a polite leap of faith and assumed that They were whoever took Parker, so he should see where the man had come from. Probably.

Besides, if they weren’t dead, then they were chasing their fugitive as well. Might know something about where the fuck he was going; yeah, Deadpool would appreciate the help. And also getting them out of commission, so they wouldn’t be a bother anymore.

He imagined it easily: out of dumb luck, he found Parker in an abandoned warehouse that somehow explained the solitary trajectory he was running along, only he was dead, and the people that wanted him gone were having a drink in the dingy bar with a jammed old-style jukebox a block over. The kind of place with no seats out.

So he couldn’t crash the car now, no matter how much he wanted to, or how the allure of conveniently placed breaks in the straight line of the horizon seemed to call him like a siren in the central Mediterranean sea.

There, a massive boulder on the side of the road; after that, a traffic sign with an extraordinarily ignorable speed limit; after that, a forgotten-by-God Chevrolet gas station. An infinitely small point in an infinitely big plain…And he was in the middle of it, with suit sticking to sweat sticking to skin sticking to revoltingly human insides.

Incredible luck, you were just running low on gas. What God did you de-piss of?

“I don’t know, I just don’t know. They just put these things out there, it’s literally how life is, I never did anything ever,”

But he pulled in the driveway, regardless of whether or not it was plot convenient. Four dollars dot six hundred twenty-nine cents a gallon, he wondered when those thieves will get put in the slammer on imminent death row. Whatever, it was Stark daddy’s money he was spending: made it funnier, really. Capitalism4capitalism.

Not that he could use it anyway: there was a fucking pick-up truck in the LPG lane: empty, un-moving, not even doing the fuel business one came to a station for. Deadpool waited, then waited some more, gloved fingers restlessly drumming against the wheel at the rhythm of the radio. A song he had never heard before, but didn’t like nonetheless.

Finally it became enough and he hopped off, sauntered to it, and noticed to his grim displeasure that it was, in fact, empty. A note sat on the driver’s seat, visible from the window: sorry for the car. Shaky, written with haste and good intentions.

“Oh, fuck this stupid life,”

It was with less-than-good intentions that Deadpool pushed it out of his way. It was with the least-than-good intentions that he pictured the various ways he could take revenge for this, all in all, minor inconvenience. Medieval torture chamber mayhaps?

“Hey! What are you doing?! Wait!”

A middle-aged chubby man with a receding hairline, a bricklayer tan, and a phone in hand, hovering near his ear, interrupted out of the service station, alarmed and Greg-looking—wait, what?

He looks like a Greg, hence, a Greg-looking man.

Are you stupid? He could have never been named Gregory as a kid.

And that’s why everyone calls him Greg. What’s not to understand?

“He does look like a cartoon dad named Greg…” Deadpool muttered, straightening up from where he stood behind the car.

“Don’t—Don’t move it, man! The owner fuckin’—he’s gone! Left it here! I tried calling a pick-up, but no one’s answering!” Greg explained, using his hands more than his mouth.

“I was having a great day, it’s almost peak season, many family's come 'round these parts, you know? And now this happens.”

The mercenary inspected the site again, this time under a barely more curious gaze. Looks like the thief left the fuel inlet cover open and the fuel spitter hanging sadly by the gasoline pump.

Scared by the price?

Kettle, pots, black, blah blah blah. You don’t need me to say this.

Too scared to commit a crime, standing frozen at the precipice of it, then booking it out on foot. Sad. Many such cases.

“Who does that?” Deadpool asked to the sky, then turned to the man, who was still acting agitated and a proportional dose of mad.

“Hell if I know. Either it’s a kid who sneaked out or a car jacker, who knows. Anyway, not that I could do much.“

“Well, I moved it. I suppose that doesn’t qualify me for a discount?”

Greg stared at him with a fading alarm and a growing utter void of visible emotions, except maybe concerned suspicion—not any day he saw a man in a clown-esque suit move four thousands pounds of metal. The weapons? Probably yes, he saw that every day, but the line was apparently drawn somewhere else: somewhere exploratory and wild as the brief panic that flashed across Greg’s eyes when a barely unsheathed katana caught in a joyful world of light and danger toying at the edge, before the Tsuba and after the end of the Saya. Unprecedented encounters is where he drew the line.

Turning awkwardly justificatory no’s into reluctant yes’s.

“Well, I mean…I guess we can work on somethin’.”

“Love you, man. Hearts!”

So Deadpool filled the tank, paid fifty percent less, leaked something different in a bathroom too hot and too stuffy, then began driving again, waffles and all.

For some more.

Then more, again.

Guess what? Also more.

Stupid people would call it freedom, with wind violently crashing into his cheek from an open window, AC pumped up max setting, gas floored, nowhere to look forward to but another man’s back.

Deadpool found it hellish.

The same texture repeated over, and over, and over again; if he looked elsewhere, he saw it; if he closed his eyes, he still saw it, imprinted for what felt like permanently in his retinas. Didn’t even risk crashing the car, when he did close them: everything in this momentary world was a straight line, going from point A to point B, and all the cool rocks and road signs to fill out space ran out before.

Until he reached a small town. A bonbonnière that stood outside all other points in space, because it was adequately cozy, lonely, and reaching an elevation infinitely higher than the sand around. A wet dream for old catholic southern conservatives. A normal dream, Deadpool corrected, mostly because he didn’t want to imagine what other wet dreams they could have.

And also there was trash. There was a moderate amount of trash lining up the borders of the road. You know, standard stuff: cigarettes, bottles, bottle caps, toilets.

And also there were no lights. But that could be because the sun is still up, and would be for a while.

And also there was a little less trash around a particular home with a clearly busted window at the edge of town, all plastic bags and cans piled up neatly near a broken yellow trashcan with apologetic care. A guy walks out—

He’s called Gregory.

—wearing an open navy blue bathroom robe, striped boxers and flip flops, a mug of what Deadpool assumes is coffee in the brief span of seconds he drove by. Gregory looked around, sipped leisurely on his probably not even that hot coffee, because who drank hot coffee in the hotter July heat of central Utah? Like, for real, Deadpool never understood people who interact with hot things when it was already hot out, are they crazy?

Anywho, Gregory sipped on his not-so-steaming drink, elbow held at ribs-height and free hand rested akimbo on his hip. He half-assedly perused his shack of a property, and by the time Deadpool was nearest…

“Where’s my fucking truck?!”

Gregory dropped the mug, porcelain white shards sent flying on his porch, as he stared at where his car supposedly was just the day earlier. Horror cut brief by the short span of time Deadpool saw it painted the man’s face as he hurried down the steps, tripping on the last one and face-planting on dry soil. He stood up again, looked some more, then shouted something to the door, but Deadpool was already out of earshot.

He had a feeling he was on the right path, as the house gradually shrank to join all the other dots on the desolate horizon.

“No–yeah, how was your day? I want to…I understand the fourth of July always overwhelms ER, but I have my paid leave—which I haven’t…yes…yes…no, I…ugh…Hannah can do it, you can’t deny me one anymore, so I’ll see you in a week.”

May Parker rested the phone down on her lap, familiarly unsure on what she should be doing now.

It was late, later than it had any right to be, the sun detestably awake in another, better, part of the world. She, on the other hand, felt like sleeping through for the rest of everyone’s lifetime on Earth—a sleep plagued with sweat on pillows and in her hair, of tangled, hot covers, of restless muscles and bones pulling uncomfortably under her skin. A body not fitted for itself, one too many years and losses past its prime.

So, she didn’t know what the fuck she should be doing.

Everything felt empty and beautiful, senseless enough for her to be nothing but the smoke in her living room: body burning, melting, morphing, and yet unable to change in any way that mattered. She looked in the mirror and it was the same skin cells, now arranged in flaccid shapes, but still belonging to the same person she was before. It hadn’t even been seven years, maybe some of that meat still bore the touch of Peter’s hands.

Her touch, it seemed, wasn’t as indelible.

Her fingers didn’t leave marks in her hair; the loose, old strands falling off at the motion would decompose into dust, which would fly as far away from her as possible from a rarely opened window; her body was going to decompose in a day, eventually, eager to produce more life than she had ever in her life. Worms, dirt, plants.

(A forgotten night, spent with Ben, non-committally throwing around baby names, more for the fun of it than anything remotely serious.)

Her corpse would look at her, and she would ask: “Why, cadaver, are you better at living than me?”. She would receive no answer, and then maybe it would finally reunite with Peter in the afterlife—

No. He wasn’t dead, she had already been over this.

Incapable of sitting still any longer, she stood up. Paced around, going thrice from one wall to the one parallel, then grabbing her keys and walking out, door banging behind. A walk would do her good, long or short might it be.

Her phone rang forgotten on the coffee table.

Chapter Text

The kids and the adults were finally gone along with the dark, thankfully, and now Tony could allow himself the pleasure of collapsing listless on the couch after a night of approximately zero sleep.

In the kitchen Morgan recounted what she did during the party and the following sleepover—beautiful youthfulness of marshmallows and scary nighttime stories and things he thought were confined to stereotypes—and Tony could only assume that Pepper was trying her best to school her expression into what it was just a few hours prior. Funny, how it was just a few hours prior.

He, on the other hand, kind of gave up on it already after Rhodey pressured him into talking, during a quiet corner of the night when Tony instinctively gravitated towards the wine corner of the party.

That hadn’t gone well.

He didn’t notice Pepper coming back and sitting down next to him until she pushed an overgrown strand of hair behind his ear and sighed something about Morgan tidying up her room. Only then, with a thankful but forced smile, he spoke:

“That’s great. Are there any fun family activities in Indy you know of?”

“I’m afraid that’s not the reason why it’s famous,” Pepper returned the smile and the sentiment it came with, “But we shouldn’t bring her with us, anyway.”

No, Tony thought grimly, We really shouldn’t. Morgan didn’t deserve to be dragged hundreds of miles away to somewhere where people—her family—had complicated feelings about each other; especially when she, out of all of them, was the one that remembered Peter the least.

And, of course, she didn’t deserve to be abandoned days after her birthday. Days after ever, really.

He wasn’t that self-reflective yet to seriously wonder if that line of thinking stemmed from a fear of “see you later”s abruptly turning into forever “goodbyes”. He’d turn his back, leave his heart open in the hands of a world he trusted, and under his nose it went, dust in the air and on the ground and on his hands and in his lungs.

The stump where his right bicep abruptly cut in half itched irritably.

“You’re right, we shouldn’t. But I don’t like leaving her after her birthday, what kind of parents would that make us?”

“I don’t like it either.” Pepper sighed and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees, hands rubbing at her temples, “But we need to choose, here. My parents would gladly take her for a few nights, if her friends are busy. Which they are, by the way: I checked.”

“Would Morgan like it? You know how your parents are,” he purposefully stopped there.

Pepper hit him with a warning and tremendously tired stare, jaw ticking with the urge of saying something only Tony Stark would choose to utter, “I know this situation is hard, Tony, it’s hard for me, too, and I have a company to look after—”

She stopped. Breathed twice through her nose, Tony could almost visualize the count to ten flashing neon in her head, “Surely you see the order we have to approach…this from. Morgan will get other it, meanwhile May…”

May had been going through a hard time since 2023, and who the fuck knew what magnitude of bad Peter was doing.

Tony reluctantly nodded, slumping further into the couch cushions. The sun shined bright and unrepentantly hot outside of the window, soothed by wind in the grass. He wondered, this time with a peaceful kind of curiosity, what Peter was doing, and if his day was, at least, as pretty as theirs. Wherever he was. However he was.

“Fine, I see you.” He didn’t want to win this argument, anyway: a perfect exercise in pretending that he didn’t find the thought of never seeing anyone again terrifying. Pepper’s parents might be a little stuck-up and old-fashioned, but they do care about their granddaughter. That was probably why they didn’t bother coming to her birthday, except that when he said that to Pepper the day prior, she looked a little more on the side of sad, rather than mad.

Pepper nodded, stood up, and stretched idly, “Good, I’ll go make a few calls. Sort that beginning of a mess with MC, so at least we can go with our minds as clean as they can possibly be,” Murphy’s Constructions, MC. Tony didn’t know much about them, but he guessed it was a construction company dating a few decades back and started by a guy named Murphy. Just a gut feeling, accompanied by a loving weight of vague, ignorable and irrational guilt: Howard would hate what Stark Industries had become these days, which did give both him the confirmation that stepping back was the right choice and also an unshakable feeling of restlessness.

Not nearly important enough compared to this, Pepper was right. He watched his wife retreat, then closed his eyes. The sun beat his eyelids bloody red, nevertheless.

There are no words to describe the sunrise as it actually is: crawling upwards with a God-gifted elegance and elegantly killing all lesser lights around. So many, many colours; so many, in fact, that there haven’t been eyes capable of thought behind that worshipped them, yet.

Thus there are no words to describe the total glory of the Sun.

It burns fourfold, watching the sunrise, exponentially growing in brightness until bodies bake in It.

Grow with It.

Dehydrate with It.

Turn to ash in It.

Neutral, benevolent because It can be so,and so it is; never greeting back because Its presence alone is the World’s first Good morning: It’s an expression of a higher’s love, distributed with detachedness and equity, but loving all the same. Or at least, he likes to think it is, for but one incentive to love it back as It tears his skin off his bones.

And yet It appears so small when not aided by Its reflection on the rocks, and the ground, and the blue, bigger sky. Gas can shield the people away from it, water claims premature darkness—maybe, one day, It’ll never come back after the rains. He’ll love the day when It will inexorably disappear, too.

A behemoth in its own right, outclassed only by most of the Universe, and like most of the Universe it has yet to be fully described in a way comprehensible to humans. But he can see it; he can see everything, more than what has ever been seen before by anyone: and he’ll make up words to tell his vision to whoever wants to listen.

It is, of course and foremost, overwhelmingly beautiful.

He crawls with It, away from his Night.

It was Happy that drove them to May’s apartment. An hours-long trip through the night, but all in all just barely below his paygrade—not that his job title meant much of anything, when there wasn’t anything to bodyguard anymore, except maybe the shell of the company. Where they would be without him, Tony didn’t know. He did know, however, that Happy reacted about the same as they all did to The News, as Pepper retold: devastation, first, motivation, second. And, of course, an intense wish to meet May again. He offered to drive, too: faster than flying there, and probably less expensive, too. Not that they needed to worry about that part, even years after they stopped earning as much as they used to.

Tony wished he had been able to be there, too, when Pepper broke The News, before helping Morgan pack her belongings to go visit her grandparents; but he also knew that if he had been there, he would have wished he was helping his daughter instead.

Morgan, bless her heart that Tony could never have had at her age, chose to not ask too many questions, and Pepper’s parents neither.

Now they—Pepper, Happy and Tony—hovered tense before an unremarkable apartment complex in downtown Indianapolis, next to the reinforced door are the names of the tenants, disposed in columns, a No Flyers sign over the wall mail boxes, and the intercom. Third to last is a name tag covered with a strip of paper tape, the original name overwritten with May Parker’s. The overhead neon light flickered, but the sun was high enough already that the absence was barely noticeable.

It was a neutral building, one that Tony would feel pretentious calling sad, but its connotations were undeniable. Happy pressed the doorbell beside her name, and they waited in silence for ten, twenty, thirty seconds: no answer. He tried again, only to have a similar result. He nervously checked his wrist watch, and then looked back at them:

“You’re sure she isn’t at the hospital?”

Pepper shook her head, arms crossed in an attempt to keep them still, “No, but do you really think she would go to work now?” Happy pursed his lips and ringed again, and Tony thought he saw to it a light degree of contrarianism he himself believed in: no one should put anything above May Parker.

Another dozen seconds passed, yet no answer still.

“Maybe she’s sleeping?” Tony hypothesized, despite knowing quite well the impossibility of it for any of them, especially her. Still, perhaps and incredibly luckily, she managed to fall down at around…eight AM, now. Tony wished he could have done the same during the ride, but at the same time the chance of closing his eyes and being trapped behind them with his thoughts was unbearable.

“I’ll call her,” Happy took out his phone, and quickly dialed—Tony had never understood why the man preferred to memorize numbers instead of saving them, except maybe for some silly discipline methodology—like he had tried to do before getting in the car, and while he was in the car near the state border, and after he got out of the car. May didn’t answer, not to any of them.

The phone vibrated silently for six times. No one picked up.

Now, if Tony closed his eyes, alongside Peter’s corpse he could briefly see May’s—devastated by sorrow and frail hope, collapsed under the weight of the home she built away from home. He shook the thought out, but the concern remained.

“Okay, either she’s out and forgot her phone or she’s ignoring us, both of which are plausible and I wouldn’t put them against her. We are here without notice, after all,” Tony said, and none of them wanted to add a third and most voted possibility.

“Does anyone have a hairpin? I want to try something,” he patted his pockets out of sympathy, knowing well he didn’t have any. Why would he have any? Why would Happy have any? He turned to look at Pepper, who looked back with something akin to agitation and a lowly hissing voice.

“Are you out of your mind?! We aren’t breaking in, that’s—”

Tony held up his hands, “Woah! Woah! Who talked about breaking in? I wanted to get in the lobby, and then…Look, I don’t even know how to lockpick with a hairpin, okay? Just, well, if she isn’t answering, we might as well…” He trailed off, suddenly aware of how ridiculous he sounded: nothing about his plan couldn’t be disputed with hard logic, and the same thinking used to justify their worry for May could be used to not trust his plan.

Happy, who had been silent up until that point, tugged Tony to the side to let an elderly man with a walking cane access the door, who smiled kindly at them as he struggled to fit his key inside the hole with his perpetually shaky right hand.

“Thank you, son,” The old man smiled at Happy, finally unlocking the door, “Are you waiting for someone?”

“A friend, yes. Did you happen to see a woman named May Parker today? She lives here, too, and she isn’t answering” Pepper stepped up.

“May Parker…Ah, yes,” The man’s eyes lit up, and turned to them despite the door now being open, words flowing out like air out of a pressurized chamber:

“Such a sweet lady, even if a little lonely. When she first came here, she cooked up one delicious cake and left it for me—” That was around Peter’s birthday, Tony thought grimly, “—she said she didn’t like it, and I couldn’t understand why! Such a good cake, and good thing my doctor told me to not go crazy on sugar, cholesomething, you know, because otherwise I don’t think I could have stopped! Except she didn’t want half a cake back, obviously, so I ate the rest, too. Oh, the blood tests afterwards! Very bad, me and my doctor agree that we never want to see them ever again. I do them every two months in the same hospital she works at, only I never see her leave since she starts at such an early hour…I wonder how she wakes—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Happy cut in, his intonation clearly not that sorry but still decently respectful, holding the door open with his foot after the man, in his excitement, stopped gripping the handle, “But have you seen her today?”

“Why, yes, I did see her…no, not today, yesterday evening. I think she was going for a walk, which is weird because she rarely does that, and I can’t invite her with me since I do them in the morning, as you can see. There’s a really pretty park near here, I usually do two laps around it before the morning noise comes. Maybe she got tired of the hospital…the hospital, yes, you’ll find her at the People’s Hospital by now, it’s…” He glanced at his wrist watch, metal and gray and analogical, “Good God! It’s already nine! Can I offer you tea? I have…umh…carca…carcadey, I think it’s called. My niece loves it, she sends me a pack for every holiday. I know coffee would be better, but caffeine mixes with my heart medication.”

They said no.

It was a lonely request, and Tony felt bad refusing it, polite as they may have been. Alas, priorities. The door closed after the old man and a little too many Byes, but at the end they still weren’t any closer to finding May Parker.

The Sun is unforgiving and it chases him to the end of the Earth.

He digs, the sand is scorched by the sun.

He finds a shade, and yet it eventually evades him again, shortening and withering.

It goes, and Its absence is as felt as Its presence.

He tries, and tries, and tries to love it still, and above that he tries to think he succeeded in doing so.

They decided not to split the search, being there only one car and three of them. It would have only led to many, many more complications they didn’t have the time for along the way, and it wasn’t like they had enough time already.

Or it felt like they didn’t have time. Supposedly, nothing happened yet, but the feeling of imminence remained, apathetic and cruel and assured.

They search the streets to the hospital, then the streets to the nearest grocery store, then the streets in the general area, then the streets to the park.

It was obvious from the principle where they eventually found her, of course.

May Parker sat lonesome on a wooden bench, lazily watching a couple of ducks swim in the brutalistic-inspired fountain. She didn’t bring anything to feed them, but it didn’t seem like she wanted to do so, either.

It was Happy that jogged towards her first.

“May!” He boomed, catching up at the same time she looked up, saw them, and ran through seven different emotions. Grief, of course, then surprise, joy, bemusement, and finally old, sour wounds and old, sour love. When she spoke—and Tony didn’t know what they would have done if the opposite was true—she didn’t sound angry:

“What are…what are you doing here?”

“For...for you, obviously. It would have been insane of us to not come. We tried calling you, because of—” Happy explained, just as Tony and Pepper reached them, and he could see the moment hesitation hit his former bodyguard: reduce this meeting to Peter, who, albeit the cause, was only that: limited to the role of catalyst.

Luckily, that was all May was preoccupied about, the way she spoke, looked like, and how she looked at them: all desperation and persistent intelligence.

“Because of Peter. That's why are you here? Did he call you? Do you know anything?”

“Not yet, still. The police have to test if it actually is him, before anything,” Pepper explained, brief, before pulling May in a hug Happy probably wasn’t sure he should have initiated.

And Tony stood to the side. He had never felt more out of place in his own skin than then.

“God, May, it’s so good to see you,” Pepper continued when, eventually, the other woman returned both the hug and the sentiment behind it. Arms crossed behind her back, eyes fixed on nowhere at all in the effort to stay together.

What followed were more questions, answers without much substance, uncomfortable stares and more questions: Tony was suddenly struck by the feeling that he shouldn’t be there, not after what happened years ago, benefitting from the dispersion of pain via sharing. The air was thick, the silence that fell as the questions subsided was thicker, and the bench was just wide enough to sit them all. Not that they stayed long. Post-lunch joggers and dog-walkers were starting to flock around the park, despite the growing heat.

It was then that May offered to eat something at her place: frozen pizzas and strictly water, which she, Tony noticed, had to awkwardly fill a disused carafe with.

The apartment was naked, even if decently kept; or maybe it was decently kept because there wasn’t much to clean. It was jarringly obvious May tried to busy herself with passion projects that, also jarringly obvious, physically couldn’t have much passion behind: a centrepiece made with pinecones, holly leaves, and red beads for berries; a blue handmade scarf hanging by the main door; painted, abstract woodwork hidden behind unopened boxes—the boxes themselves were, in some cases, worn at the wings, like they were many times examined thoroughly to the bottom, then locked again under the weight of other boxes, before being taken out to be eviscerated anew. Out, in, out, in, out, and in: conveniently disguised as a sporadic routine.

In the pantry, there were crackers, instant noodles, and coffee. A bag of peaches dumped in the sink was attracting flies and gnats. Nothing holistic was brewing in this apartment.

May offered them the coffee, as a dessert.

One step, another after, and then, if he can manage it, one more. It was getting hard to both see and think at the same time: his brain has holes in it, and he is leaking through them.

There is surely something to fill them with. He has to be the more something to fill them with.

They talked, that was about all they did for the following hours.

Talked, discussed, and tried very hard not to hypothesize, famously something Tony Stark was very good at. All he needed was a confirmation that the man was Peter, and then he could let his mind run free and sure and not afraid at all of hurting himself further: he could check, he could call, he could patrol, he could investigate, this time knowing that Peter was moving from somewhere to somewhere, and not being moved by someone to nowhere at all.

It didn’t exclude others working for him until then, though.

But this wasn’t the time. May and Happy were catching up on the balcony—connected to the living room and shielded only by glass and horizontal blinds—almost managing to not be sickeningly bittersweet, Pepper was busy trying to look busy, and Tony was brewing another kettle of coffee.

They drank another round over the kitchen counter, then talked some more—now with a unanimous need to act normal.

“How’s Morgan?” May asked over the brim of her cup.

“She’s—”

“Oh, she’s fine—”

Tony and Pepper spoke together, and when May stared at him with a complicated light in her eyes, he coughed awkwardly and turned to look back to his mug.

“Where is she staying?” May continued.

“She’s with my parents, now. Not too far from here, we dropped her off on the way. She says hi.” Pepper explained, a short and sad smile fleeting over her face.

“And her birthday is in…two, no, three…”

“Two days ago,” At that, May paled a little in what would have been a flush had the passage of time meant less than it did then. She chuckled nervously, then sipped a mouthful out of her standard beige mug.

“Right, right. I’m...I’m so sorry, I mean…Twelve already?”

Pepper smiled, “Yeah, I pretty much had the same reaction, she—” Her phone purred in her pocket, and she apologetically took it out. Tony leaned to the side to spy the caller’s ID, but could only make out the reflection of his wife’s face, who always kept the luminosity at the lowest setting. However, what Pepper had seen pushed her into formal aggravation, which usually meant work troubles.

“God, not him again. If this is because of that guy I swear—” She sighed, then stood up.

“Excuse me, I really, really hope this won’t take long,” Without waiting for a response, she turned around and walked barefoot to the balcony, the glass door sliding shut behind her.

“Don’t worry, Pep,” Tony piped, straightening up again, answering May’s and Happy’s bemused stares with one more nonchalant of his own.

“Work again?” Happy’s eyes trailed after Pepper until they couldn’t anymore, stopped by the interposition of the outer wall between them.

“Yeah, I give it good chances it’s work again.” Tony shrugged, then added as an afterthought he felt needed, “Unfortunately.”

“Again?” May echoed, “Poor woman, at least I’m not being followed by it.”

Without Pepper and with his presence, silence fell over them again like a slipknot. Each took a turn in fiddling with their fingers, twisting their thumbs, glancing at the nothing of interest on their phone; Tony spent the large part of those minutes observing what he had already observed of May’s apartment. Cataloguing, analyzing, trying to find a justifiable reason to express his worry: there were no alcohol bottles in plain sight, but there weren’t water ones, either, and May wasn’t the type to throw away reusable plastic; the few photographs on the walls were stock images passed down from tenant to tenant; the colours were mostly dull, cheap, new, and the few creative items weren’t coordinated in any way, done without thought behind; there was a faint smell of mold in the air.

Those wouldn’t really work, would they?

Tony sighed inwardly. The atmosphere wasn’t easing any on their backs, he should probably excuse himself to the bathroom, or something.

And then Pepper walked back through the glass door, steps wide, eyes carefully neutral.

“Tony,” She said, and they all perked up, “Can you come outside for a moment, please?”

Great, exactly what he needed. Even the lack of distinct emotion on her face wasn’t more threatening than the air choking his lungs inside: the smog and difficult conversation were so preferable that he didn’t even rifle through the last fifty years to try and predict what he did wrong.

Of course, he stood up and met Pepper halfway, not even glancing back at May, or Happy, or his empty mug of coffee.

“Yes, yes, sure. Anything for you. Is everything alright? Did anyone...do something? Am I anyone?”

They stepped out in the wet summer air, the door sliding shut behind. The balcony could definitely use some renovations, or at least hydraulic cleaning. Pigeon's favourite dump.

Pepper held up her phone, and Tony took it like a time bomb—so without much consideration at all, actually— and turned around to shield it from the sun’s reflection.

It was a quite viral and even more recent TikTok video titled Please help my friend Tyrell’s hospital fees at https://gofundme.com/f/help-save…etcetera.

Above, a blonde kid with protruding ears and teary eyes was speaking in pure anguish, and Tony distantly heard the words:

“—tark’s bribe money to shoot Tyrell because he took out his license wrong, and I don’t—I don’t know if I should sue him, because no one believed—”

He feared something went terribly wrong with his plans.