Work Text:
Peter Parker is Spider-Man. This statement is true.
Spider-Man is Peter Parker. This statement is false.
Peter Parker’s Spider-Man is red and blue, costume hand-sewn from two different, worn-out tracksuits found in the local Goodwill. This statement is true.
Spider-Man’s suit is any suit that bears a spider as its insignia. This statement is false.
(”It is not the suit that makes you Spider-Man,” a Peter Parker with curling black hair and smiling eyes tells him. His suit is not made out of tracksuits, but out of spandex, scavenged from the gymnastics studio he lives above with his aunt Meilin. It’s red, and orange, and pink, and green - sparkly and ever-shifting, because the team gives him their old pieces when they see him but they recycle them between themselves first, so he never quite gets the same colours to repair it with.
The spider is there in the middle of his chest still, no matter how the rest of his suit changes - the exact same placement as Peter’s, and Earth-7912 Peter’s fist taps on it softly. “This is here because it represents the heart. You cannot be a hero if you don’t have heart. But it’s just a representation, Spider-Man - the real thing’s in you, all the time. Costume or no costume.”)
You cannot save everyone. This statement is true.
But does that mean you shouldn’t still try your best to?
Peter Parker goes with Tony Stark to Berlin because he wants to save people. This statement is true.
Peter Parker goes with Tony Stark to Berlin because he thinks the Sokovia Accords need to happen. This statement is false.
(”It always starts that way,” Peter Parker from Earth-90214B tells Peter Parker from Earth-19999. “They write down your name, your address, and you think it’s fine to give ground because they might not like you but the world’s eyes are on them so they won’t dare do anything too extreme, and then they’re breaking down your door and dragging you and your family off to get locked up, and nobody does anything.”
That universe is black-and-white like an old-school film, like one of those documentaries they’d been shown at school about World War II. Out of focus, pixelated, faces blurry in the harsh gray-scale of the tape, a visual short-hand to delineate how different things were then than they are now. Those people’s suffering doesn’t feel real; they’re not bleeding in colour, therefore they cannot be human as the people here and now are.
This Peter Parker, Jewish and unafraid to put a bullet or ten in any Nazi in New York, is living the history Peter Parker knows his grandparents fled.
“How do I stop it?” Spider-Man asks.
“The thing is that you can’t,” Spider-Man answers. “The only thing you can do is fight against it and hope others will follow, that you will be enough together to make the ones in power feel threatened enough to stop, or to make them change this.
“There is no one answer to this question, Peter. Never was, never will be. All you can do is save people from this, as many as you can, and hope it’s enough.”)
Peter Parker puts on a mask in order to save people. This statement is true.
Peter Parker needs a mask in order to save people. This statement is false.
(There is a working girl three blocks from Peter’s apartment, fifteen and from a country that no longer stands tall, Sokovian accent humming under her every word. There is a Spider wearing her face, from Earth-772; she’s from Georgia in West Asia, and her country doesn’t stand tall after the Avengers’ enemies are done with it either.
Spider-Man has never talked to his version of Vardo Abkhazava, doesn’t even know her name; but Peter Parker walks her to the closest F.E.A.S.T. community centre every Wednesday, where she’s getting English lessons, where she’s learning first aid, where she smiles at Aunt May whenever she sees her and firmly refuses to spend a night in the communal rooms.
Peter Parker shares a sandwich with a girl whose face he knows; he helps out in the community kitchen, shoulder-to-shoulder with working girls and gang runners, Spanish and Mandarin and Thai mixing together into a cacophony of sounds; he lifts the heavy machinery used for cooking, drags together furniture, gives piggy-back rides to one of the few homeless kids that brave the communal sleeping quarters in this area. The cops don’t pay him any attention while he leans at the mouth of an alley with his phone in hand, hiding from view Gonzales from three floors down who’s been pickpocketing rich tourists for weeks now to pay his rent on time.
Spider-Man does not need to do these things; Peter Parker has been doing them for years. He does not need Spider-Man to help him do this. To help others.)
Tony Stark made the Iron Spider suit. This statement is true.
Tony Stark made the Iron Spider suit in order to help Spider-Man save people. This statement is false.
(”Y’gotta stick it to authority, bruv,” Spider-Man, Earth-138B, says. “Don’t get fooled by bread and honey, ‘s better if you do your own thing.” His piercings catch the sunset from where they’re perched on top of the Throgs Neck bridge; there’s deep shadows beneath his eyes, but he still swings his legs in the air in time with Peter’s. The shoelaces on his duct-taped boots are blue.
“But with my gear the way it is,” Peter stares out into the horizon, “I will fail more people.” And he means: no A.I. to help him think up alternate plans of engagement, no interface to help him scan for heat signatures, no open channel to all police precincts and the Avengers’ database. It’s just him, now: just Peter Parker with his too-big heart and the heartbeats he can clock with his too-sharp hearing, with the information he can glean off of government sites with his half-assed hack-jobs.
“You will always fail somebody,” Hobie Brown says, because he’s never been one for platitudes. Only cold, hard truths. “Tech or no tech. But like this, ‘t least you’re not failing y’self, are ya?”
Because when the gear is only Peter’s, it cannot be taken away at someone else’s whim. When it’s just his own, Spider-Man cannot be stopped from going where people need him, doing what needs to be done.
“Yeah,” Peter says. Spider-Man says. They’ve always worked alone, even with the other Spider-People available as back-up. Because other Spider-People will never get in the way, the way others and their agendas will. Peter Parker isn’t here for world peace.
He’s here to save people.)
Tony Stark takes the Iron Spider suit from Peter Parker. This statement is true.
Tony Stark takes Spider-Man from Peter Parker. This statement is false.
(Spider-Man cannot be taken away. Given away, yes. Passed on, of course. But taken away? From someone who has never, will never, wear the spider on his chest?
Spider-Man swings from the rooftops in his home-sewn tracksuit; there’s tech shielding his eyes, more sophisticated than what was there before; his suit has actual armour underneath it now, bullet-proof and protection-weave, acid-resistant. There’s a rebreather sown into the mask, a voice-changer capable of both goofy and menacing voices.
A Spider-Suit is not a suit built for Spider-Man by people. It’s a suit built by Spider-Man, for the people, because Spider-Man doesn’t need a suit to be Spider-Man. But the people need Spider-Man to feel protected. To see tangible proof that somebody out there wants to save them.)
Spider-Man is a hero. This statement is true.
Peter Parker is a hero. This statement has always been true.