Chapter Text
Peter alighted on a thin wall running the length of the rooftop, glancing briefly down at the not insubstantial drop to the street and buildings below, before looking back to the man a few meters away from him. Close enough to catch him should he fall, far enough away to dodge should he prove hostile. He had spotted the guy from down the street, felt a tingle of something strange and come to investigate.
Instead of the typical suit and tie of a tired Queens accountant that frequented the halls of the building below, this guy stood in some weird jedi-looking robes and a long green cloak muttering to himself as the wind billowed in his clothes.
Peter inched a little closer. “I know it’s a nice view and all, but do you always dress up to take it in or is today a special occasion?”
As the stranger turned, something strange happened. His senses tingled all the way down his body in time with the man’s graveyard stare looking him up and down, making Peter shiver in the cool morning air.
Seeing nothing worth his time, the stranger returned to staring out over the city and harbor, reaching out with his hands and continuing to mumble and mutter under his breath, coal-dark eyes sliding half closed.
“Rude,” Peter muttered. “I was just trying to make polite conversation. It’s kind of part of the job you know, you’re up here, looking a little villain-y, I gotta make sure everything’s within the guidelines. I had a run in with some magic not long ago, and it didn’t end all too well, so if you’re not hatching some evil plan, could you just tell me? It’d put my mind at ease and I could get back to more pressing matters. Like laundry. Who would have thought one person could need so much laundry. Dude.”
“Enough,” the figure spoke, his voice inhumanly deep and sharp, reverberating inside Peter’s bones in a way that made him want to shake himself. “You insects are all so chattery.” Something in the way he turned had the hairs standing up on the back of Peter’s neck. “I prefer silence.” He raised a hand and the world around Peter warped. For a split second, all he could see were those black eyes. “I know your curse. No one will miss you.”
In a wave of dizzying vertigo, his feet lost contact with the wall and a sudden rush of wind whipped about him as he accelerated backwards through the air. He didn’t have time to react, didn’t even have time to realize what had happened before he smashed through a wall of windows, glass shattering ringing in his ears the last thing he heard.
-
Peter gasped awake, immediately flinching as pain flared all over him, breaths devolving into shallow rapid puffs. He blinked and blinked, but the dark spots in his vision stubbornly remained.
He had joked with Ned sometimes, that he got hurt often and healed too quickly to show it off, but the truth was there weren’t actually that many people about who were willing to stab or shoot someone over a few jewels or a handbag. At least not once he got talking to them. Talking usually helped.
So, Peter recognized the hot tingling of shock-induced adrenaline, but he still hadn’t expected it. The guy hadn’t – how had he – there had been no warning and–
His hands were shaking. All of him was shaking. He noticed because it was starting to agitate whatever was broken and with the spike of chemicals beginning to recede, he was becoming more and more aware of just how much that was.
His right arm was at an angle, his hand throbbing and beginning to redden; his adjoining collarbone was definitely broken, if not both. The splitting headache and the fact he had passed out hinted at any number of skull fractures; his pelvis – god, even trying to move made him shriek in pain, tears streaming down his face as he tried and tried to find his breath over more broken ribs - was shattered in at least two places, no doubt his coccyx had fared no better either.
Warmth at his foot had him spying down, the right subject to a large gash in the suit and a not insignificant amount of blood oozing from ankle to tibia, the bone protruding out through the skin.
He had turned slightly during the fall, or the crash through the windows, landing mostly on his right side, the left bearing less weight and less injury. Still, glass shards had wedged themselves under his skin in all manner of places and trying to find purchase to lift himself or even just adjust his position revealed the sharp burn of them in his muscles.
He let his hand sink to the floor again slowly, gulping down small breaths as he cried, far too overwhelmed by the pain to try to stop himself and aware once more of just how far in over his head he was now that he was alone. With no one to miss him, as the stranger had pointed out. No one to notice him not returning home, no one to call his phone when he missed an appointment, no one to worry when he didn’t pick up.
Peter cried. “H-help,” he called. “Help.” His voice didn’t carry, not enough air in his lungs to achieve any volume and the dark space he was in echoed only enough for him to know it was big and mostly empty.
-
“Are you even listening? Matt?”
“I told you to only call me at this time when it’s really important.”
“It is really important! We could lose the case over something like this!” Foggy cried.
Matt turned his head again, listening intently, trying to block out the usual sounds of the city. He frowned. “Foggy I’m going to have to call you back.”
“Matt, don’t you dare. Matt–” he hung up. Rising from his crouching position, he started to hurry towards the strange sounds he had picked up on. It was outside Hell’s Kitchen, but not outside his range of hearing. It would take him a while, running across rooftops, but he had a feeling it was necessary. It wasn’t often you heard someone fall from a building and survive.
The night air got a bite to it as soon as he entered the district, scents of Ozone, gasoline and Sulfur fighting to cover the smell of blood. It was clear there was more going on, he could hear something – someone high on one of the buildings, the wind whistling strangely around them, but he focused on the whimpered gasps of pain and the thready heartbeat in the building next door. Broken glass crunched under his boots as he entered, and he heard the hitch of a breath. Hurrying past some large construction vehicles, he found him.
A teen, based on the pitch of his uncontained whines and his estimated size. Matt crouched down next to him and reached out. “It’s alright,” he said. “I’m here to help.” He pulled back quickly when the kid gasped in pain at his touch. “Sorry,” he muttered quietly.
“I didn’t wanna–” the kid cried, muffled, through some sort of fabric. “I was just talking and he – he just – I need to stop him, I – ah!”
“Stop moving!” Matt snapped, hearing the crunch-grind-crackle of broken bones shifting, blood trickling, lungs struggling to inflate. “I’m calling for help.”
“No – no hospitals,” the kid stuttered.
Matt reached out again, just briefly, to lay a hand on his head, confirming his suspicions. “No hospitals, Spider-man. But I have a friend who might be able to help. You need help.”
The smell of sea-salt filtered into his nose as more tears soaked into the young hero’s mask. “Y-yeah… th-thank you…”
“It’s alright, you’re gonna be alright,” Matt repeated. He stepped a few paces back and pulled out his phone, telling it to call Claire. It rung twice before she picked up.
“Matt.”
“I need your help.”
“What happened? You sound fine.” He could hear the suspicion in her voice.
“I found–” he bit his tongue, unsure how much he should say over the phone. “Someone else in need of help.”
“Someone else from your line of work?”
He could hear the background noises on her end recede as she found a place to talk more privately. “Yes and it’s urgent. I’ll send you my location, can you meet me here? Fast?”
“You realize I’m on shift, yes? I can’t just always run out.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t call if it weren’t live or death. Please. He’s just a kid.”
“Shit… alright. I’ll be there as fast as I can. What do I need to bring? What happened to him?”
“He was pushed off a thirty-story building.”
The silence on the other end stretched for a few seconds, and Matt felt for Claire. She dipped her toe into his world, but things like this didn’t happen often.
“I’ll – I’m on my way.”
He tucked his phone away and went back to the kid. “Hell of a mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” He was met only will the sound of short, shallow breaths and the rustle of trembling limbs on concrete. “Spider-man?” The kid mumbled something unintelligible. Matt turned his head this way and that and located what he was looking for. They were in some form of large storage garage and he pulled the tarp off one of the vehicles to drape it gently over the shivering body. “Just a little longer. We’ll get you out of here.” He found the boy’s left hand and squeezed it gently, careful not to hurt him further.
The sound of screeching tires a few minutes later had Matt’s head snapping up. He hurried to the large service door to let Claire in. “Thank you,” he said earnestly.
“Where is he?” she asked, concern thick as ever in her voice.
“Through here.” He led her past the large machines, glad she had her pack of supplies and a stretcher with her already.
“Oh my god,” she muttered, not slowing as she knelt down and assessed her patient, already rummaging in her oversized bag for what she would need and gently pressing along Spider-man’s body, drawing out gasps and whines. “He needs to go to the hospital. He needs emergency surgery now otherwise he will die.”
“No h-hospital…” Spider-man whispered out, barely audible even to Matt.
“Spider-man? Spider-man, can you hear me? My name is Claire. I’m a nurse, but I am not a surgeon. I can’t do enough to help you. Do you understand? You need a proper doctor. Spider-man?”
“He comes in and out,” Matt said, worrying his gloves against each other.
“Matt…” Claire pleaded. “It’s going to be difficult enough to move him with just the two of us, but we need more help. I have a friend, Samantha, she’s on shift with me right now, she can help us get him into Metro General. He won’t make it much longer.”
Matt hesitated, listening to the feeble pump of an overstrained heart. “Alright.” They’d figure out the details later. Right now, saving his life was priority number one.
Claire readied the stretcher at Spider-man’s side and dug back into her bag. “I’m giving him something for the pain before I try to immobilize his breaks and we try to move him.”
“What is it?” Matt asked, listening to the needle fill up with liquid.
“Ketamine. It’s fast acting and strong, but it burns off quickly. We won’t have any time to waste. Ready?”
“Ready.”
Claire injected the young hero and safely discarded of the needle, getting to work placing a neck brace and temporary splints on his arm and leg. There wasn’t too much she could do for the other breaks at the moment. She instructed Matt on how to help her get him on the stretcher and together they managed, surprised at how light the nimble hero felt. They hurried him to Claire’s car, folding down the back seats to accommodate him and rushed to Metro General.
“How are we doing this?” Matt asked as they arrived at the rear loading bay.
“Quickly and discreetly,” Claire said, throwing open the car doors as her friend rushed out to meet them with a gurney.
“Oh,” she said, stopping abruptly as she spotted Matt in full gear.
“Samantha, Daredevil, Daredevil, Samantha,” Claire introduced. Then she motioned to the inside of her car. “Samantha, Spider-man.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Help me,” Claire ordered.
The three of them hauled the red and blue hero out of her car and onto the gurney. Claire draped a blanket over him and reached up to remove his mask.
Matt caught her hand. “What are you doing?”
“It’s going to have to come off either way.”
He let go reluctantly and she peeled away the blood drenched fabric. The two women must see something he couldn’t sense as they both tensed and picked up their pace, wheeling him inside.
“It would be a lot more discreet if you didn’t join us,” Claire reminded him.
He ground his jaw but relented. “Let me know where you’re taking him and open the window. I’ll meet you there.”
Matt headed up to the hospital roof and paced a while as he waited for the call, then made quick work of getting into the right room when he got it. “Where’s Samantha?” he asked, noticing her absence.
“Trying to convince one of the off-duty surgeons to come in and break the law with us,” Claire muttered, fussing around Spider-man’s bed. She uncovered him and began cutting off his costume, swearing under her breath with each new injury she found. “This kid shouldn’t even be alive… What happened, Matt?”
“I heard him fall and I found him like this. He said something about a man on the rooftop… I don’t know. It smelled weird.”
“Smelled weird?”
“Like magic.”
The door opened and Samantha entered again, Matt melting into the shadows as a doctor came in after her. “I was about to clock out, what – jesus.” The man glanced between the two women and the body on the gurney. “Is that really him?”
Claire nodded. “You can see why this can’t be official.”
“But–”
“Entirely off the books,” Matt said, stepping forward and making the man jump and clutch his heart.
“Please, Chris,” Claire intoned. “Look at him, look at what he’s done for this city. He needs us now.”
It took the man longer than Matt liked to reel himself back in, but that might have just been because he was counting the kid’s uneven breaths, grinding his teeth with every grind of broken bone.
“Okay. I’ll need you to scrub up, but I’ll do it.”
They didn’t have time to sigh in relief. Spider-man’s breath was starting to catch in his throat and given his grimace, the pain meds were wearing off quickly.
They wheeled him back out into the hallway and Claire stopped Matt once again. “I’m sorry. I’ll call you when we’re done. Get some rest, it’s going to take a while.”