Chapter Text
Somehow, mostly through some sort of trickery or perhaps the full weight of Sue Storm’s intimidation skills, Peter found himself standing on his campus and not heading for a jail cell that afternoon. And he didn’t even have to use his third condition that he’d saved!
The fact that Tony had left the Baxter Building before the interrogation had even ended had both hurt and relieved him. Complicated emotions that Peter would not be unpacking any time soon, thank you very much. He would take what wins he could.
“Thanks for walking me back.” Peter turned towards Johnny. He attempted a half smile.
Johnny’s blue eyes watched him. Peter pretended not to see the worry in them. It was easier that way.
Peter glanced up at his dorm building. Three stories above them, he could see the broken window. It hadn’t been boarded up yet, which meant that he would have to deal with that. Filing a utilities request wasn’t the worst thing he’d done that day, but given he had to be at the library in an hour to start his shift, it was just another thing he didn’t have time for.
“I’m telling the school that was all you by the way.” Peter pointed up towards the window still not turning his head back towards Johnny. “I’ll claim emotional distress and kidnapping.”
Johnny winced. Peter saw it out of the corner of his eye, and yeah, that probably wasn’t the best joke to make at the moment given, well, everything they’d just sat through.
Agent Woo’s questioning had taken another hour after Carisi’s accusations. Agent Carisi had asked a few more barbed questions that Peter had somehow managed to dance around, but it’s Agent Woo that worries him more. He can handle Carisi; he’s dealt with enough cops like her. Woo, on the other hand...
His questions had been prying. Peter had to give up more information than he’d wanted to. Information that could poke holes in his story, his life story not just his cover for Spider-Man.
Speaking of that had been a surprise. Seeing those lab reports had been a shock to the system. He’d been lucky to remember most of them. Peter had placed so much trust in Tony’s program, but clearly, he should have looked deeper at the code and tried to fix the holes the spell created. Which he would now have to do. Great. Another thing to add to the to-do list that never seemed to end.
He would do that at work. Instead of his lab report. Which was due on Tuesday. So, at least he had some time.
Small wins.
Peter sighed. Next to him, Johnny shuffled his feet.
“I better get up there.” Peter said.
“Pete,” Johnny started, but Peter shook his head.
“Johnny, I really, really can’t right now. Thanks for your help and your sister’s help too. But I...” Peter trailed off lamely. “I need to not think about any of that for a bit. Just, I’ll text you.”
“Okay Pete.” Johnny said accepting Peter’s excuses. “I’m here for you, you know that right?”
“Yeah man. Appreciate it.” Peter turned back towards his friend. His smile this time at least didn’t feel entirely fake. “See ya.”
Peter waved once before scampering up the steps to his building. He could feel Johnny watching him, but he forced himself not to feel guilty or look back until in the stairwell. Taking the steps three at a time because no one was there to see him do it got him to his dorm in record time.
The hall is empty when he pushes through the stairwell door. Peter walks towards the broken window instead of his dorm room. Someone had swept up the glass, but that was where the clean-up ended. With a sigh, he pulled out his phone to take a few pictures. Much as he dreaded it, someone had to file a request with facilities, and it definitely wouldn’t be any of the freshman on the hall who thought he was facilities more often than not. Hopefully the school wouldn’t take the costs out of his paycheck, but Peter knows better than to hold his breath on that.
Part of him wonders if the school will get angry enough to fire him as a RA. It’s not a great thought to have considering how much he relies upon the job, for you know housing and food, but he doesn’t worry too much. The school has enough trouble getting RAs to stay, especially in this building, and there was a reason Peter with his spotty attendance record had managed to hold down this job until spring semester. Hopefully their desperation would mean his continued housing.
Pictures secured and worries mostly assuaged, Peter headed for his dorm room. A checklist slowly comes together in his head of all he has to do, and he retrospectively crosses off taking pictures of the broken window.
Thankfully, he’d kept hold of his keys in the trainwreck of events earlier, so he doesn’t have to break into his own dorm room. His door, neon green and just as monstrous as always, slams shut behind him. Peter breathes in then out then he gets to work.
Next item on the to-do list, look for anything out of place or messed with. He has no idea what happened after Johnny made his great fiery escape with him as unwitting passenger number one. Tony or Agent Woo could have come in and ransacked the place or left a dozen bugs behind.
His first sweep is clean. Nothing looks touched. He checks everything anyway. On the desk, under it. In corners and lamps. Even lifts up his bed to check in the mess underneath it. Finally, he grabs his bookbag and rifles through it. Everything is still there, the stolen lab report, the stolen Spider-Man mask, and his regular suit. He tosses that onto his bed and keeps searching.
His second sweep turns up much the same, and only after his third does he admit that he might be freaking out a bit. Which is fine. He mentally ticks off another item on his list and moves on.
Work. He needs to get ready for it.
First step shower. Peter has always been glad that as RA he gets his own private bathroom, but today he’s extremely grateful. The ten minutes he spends disassociating in the shower don’t matter because he’d technically allotted fifteen minutes for that. He’s choosing to believe that it's great that he didn’t use all fifteen minutes and moves on before he can think too deeply about that thought.
Peter changes into a mostly clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. The library isn’t too fussy about employee dress codes, but he grabs a sweater to wear overtop anyway. It’ll help combat the freezing air conditioning at least. Another check off the list. Peter moves towards his fridge.
After his shower, the world felt slightly less awful. After two slices of cold pizza and a yogurt cup with a few fistfuls of granola mixed in, the world felt manageable. So, Peter chose to settle on that.
Stuffing a few snacks into his bag and ensuring it had everything he’d need to work out the problems with Tony’s program, laptop, charger cable, the nanite canister that was battered and beaten after years of use, his mask, and, of course, his keys, was easy. Seconds later, Peter ducked out of his dorm. He waved to the few freshman that had chosen to congregate at the couches at the end of the hall. He didn’t see anyone on the stairs down, and his walk to the library was made mostly on his own as well. Apparently, most students preferred to spend their Saturday nights not doing work. Go figure.
The walk to the library was one that Peter could take blindfolded. He’d worked there since his first semester at ESU, and hopefully, he’d be able to work there the rest of his years here. It was the only place on campus that was open twenty four hours and didn’t mind his crazy schedule. Not to mention it helped his financial aid status working on campus.
ESU was a good school. When Peter had originally looked at schools back before everything, it’d been on the list as a safe, affordable option. It was no MIT nor was it close to it, but it was a good school that offered scholarships for kids affected by the Blip and kids coming out of foster care. Scholarships that Peter desperately needed because even if he qualified for in-state tuition he still had to pay for it.
ESU also allowed him to stay in the city which was needed for Spider-Man.
Peter sighs. He walks through the campus green to the library’s side doors. Waving his student ID at the security scanner, he slips into the library, immediately getting hit by a wave of cold air. Checking his watch he sees he’s a minute late which he’ll take as on time as he’ll ever be.
Peter is aware that everything could be a hell of a lot worse. He could have never graduated high school. He could have never gotten into college, let alone one that he could afford to actually go to. He could still be where he was right after everything, lost and alone with no paperwork or idea what to do. He could only have Spider-Man.
Granted some days it feels like he’s more Spider-Man than Peter Parker, and honestly? Being totally, completely, and utterly honest? Those days are better sometimes, in spite of how they run him low. Spider-Man is known. Spider-Man is remembered. No one has forgotten him.
It’s just hard sometimes. The weight of Spider-Man's responsibilities never gets easier.
Peter shakes his head clearing his thoughts. Focus. He's at work.
Gwen’s already at the main circulation desk when he walks up. A small smile comes to his lips without any effort.
“Hey Gwen, didn’t know you were working today.” Peter greets as he swings around the desk. Dropping his bag on the ground, he takes over one of the computers to clock in, but he doesn’t miss how she jumps in her seat.
“Peter!” She almost shouts not even wincing when a student at a nearby study table shushes her with a glare. Instead, she smacks his shoulder.
“Ow, Gwen! What the hell?” Peter scoots away from her. Still leaning over the desk, he tugs on his sweater already freezing in the overwhelming AC.
“What the hell me? What the hell you!” Gwen smacks him on the shoulder again before she runs her eyes over him. The student shushes her again but gets ignored again. “You get arrested, and I have to find out from my dad?!”
Peter winces. “I wasn’t arrested! They just wanted a witness statement.”
“Peter Parker, don’t you dare lie to me!” She hisses. Peter immediately feels guilty. “My dad told me you ran from the feds too! And Iron Man!”
“Okay, that might be mostly correct.” Peter trails off seeing the look on Gwen’s face.
“Then you decide to lose your phone or something because that’s the only explanation for why you weren’t answering any of Harry’s or my texts!” Gwen crosses her arms, and Peter finally sits down at the desk.
“Yeah,” Peter winces, “I sort of got caught up today. I was gonna answer both of you when I had the time.”
In reality, Peter hadn’t even noticed that his phone was blowing up with texts until after Woo and Carisi had left the Baxter Building. Most of them had been from Gwen then Harry once she’d told him what Captain Stacy had told her. A few had been from his dorm mates, Bobby Drake had been extremely concerned which was nice.
Anyways, Peter had been spiraling, and he’d ignored his phone. He’d really been planning on checking it. Eventually. At least, he was planning to do so after he’d fixed the problems with Tony’s program. He’d definitely been planning it between that and studying his blood. It had been on his to-do list for sure.
Gwen stares at him. Peter wilts even further under her gaze.
“Tell me what happened. The whole story.” Gwen demands, and Peter glances around the desk looking for anything to do except that.
“Doesn’t one of us have to do the reshelving?” Peter tries to divert, but that blows up in his face.
“Excellent idea, Parker!” Gwen grabs his arm to drag him to his feet. She places a placard announcing that the desk attendants will be back soon primly straightening it out before dragging him to the overstuffed reshelve cart. Apparently, the morning shift had left all of it to them.
Peter looks around hopelessly. Where's their supervisor when they’re needed? Surely, they couldn’t both leave the desk unattended even if it was a Saturday afternoon.
“Well, if you have it taken care of-hrk!”
“Nuh-uh, you’re not getting out of this.” Gwen drawls as she drags him away by the collar of his sweater. Peter makes eye contact with the student who’d shushed them earlier and finds no mercy or pity in their eyes. “Let’s go.”
Peter lets himself be dragged towards the shelves. Gwen pushes the cart with one hand and holds onto the collar of his sweater with the other. Their supervisor was still noticeably nowhere to be seen.
Explaining to Gwen what had happened in the last day took about three floors, mostly because Peter kept trying to downplay what happened and Gwen kept asking followup questions that wouldn’t let him do that. Never let it be said that Gwen wasn’t her father’s daughter. Her interrogations skills were brutal. By the time they headed up to the fourth floor, Gwen was stuck in thoughtful silence, and Peter was stuck period.
“So,” Gwen starts as the elevator opened with a faint ding. Peter already dreaded how she was going to end that sentence. “Tony Stark, huh?”
“Don’t.” Peter answered. Grabbing the cart, he stepped off the elevator. The four floor seemed just as empty as the past few had been.
“I’m just saying-.”
“Well, stop.”
“That you have always-.”
“Seriously Gwen?”
“Had a weird thing about Stark.”
“What?” Peter nearly trips over a stray chair from a study table. He catches himself and whirls back around to face Gwen. “I have not!”
Gwen sends him a look. “Uh, yeah, you have. I thought you hated him for a bit and that was the real reason Harry became your friend.”
Peter winced. His friendship with Harry had gotten off to a rocky start, a trend he’s very aware of when it comes to his relationships these days. Freshman year move in had certainly not been fun when he found out that his randomly assigned roommate had been the son of the man whose alternate self had killed May. He’d been brusque, and it hadn’t helped that Harry had been a dick at the time either, spoiled and mad that his dad was forcing him to room on campus.
“I don’t hate Tony Stark.” Peter replied lamely. “And Harry and I became friends because we both hate you not Stark.”
Gwen rolled her eyes with a huff. Silence fell over them. Peter didn’t want to break it, and he knew Gwen was trying to give him some space. They worked in silence carefully stepping around each other. Its only when they’re headed back down, cart now carrying books they’d clean up and needed to log back into the system, that Gwen turns to him.
“Hate him or not, you’re going to have to choose what you want to do about Tony Stark, Peter.” Gwen leans against the cart. “Do you even know what you want to do?”
Peter’s shoulder slump.
“I don’t know.” Peter shuts his eyes and leans back against the wall. The elevator lurches downward. “I know I don’t want to deal with him. Does that count?”
“Nope.” Gwen pops the ‘p’ sharply. Peter opens his eyes to stare at her. “Not how the world works, weirdo.”
“I’m not weird.” Peter scrunches his nose. “You’re weird.”
“I am taking that as a compliment.” Gwen lifts her chin all imperious and haughty.
Peter snorts out a laugh. The elevator finally lands at the first floor. The doors open, and Gwen struts out leaving Peter to manage the cart. The student from before looks deeply unamused by their return.
Gwen takes over the main desk, but she keeps an eye on Peter. They don’t talk much the rest of their shift, but the silence is helpful instead of charged. His head clears, and he’s able to get some work done, lab reports and papers not anything Spider-Man related. He puts in the utilities request to facilities in between assignments. It’s calming, and almost enough to keep his head from combusting.
Peter’s shift ends at midnight. He’d have loved to work longer, make some extra cash, but the university’s pretty strict about how long students can be scheduled. He was pushing it already by working an eight-hour shift. Gwen had left two hours before him with a reminder to text her and Harry back; her shift much shorter than his.
He heads up to the roof the moment he clocks out. Technically, the roof is off limits, but everyone knows that the security door up there is never locked and the cameras don’t cover it. This time of night on a weekend, no one else is up there, and Peter just breathes in the night air.
In the distance, he can hear the general night noises of the city. No sirens for now. It’s calming.
“Okay,” Peter breathes out, “time to get to work.”
He wanders over to the ledge of the roof. From the ground you can’t see him with the way the arcade pathway is built at the building’s entrance, but he can see across campus here. The brick buildings and campus green at odds with the city next to it. Pulling out his laptop and charger, Peter gets set up. He plugs in his charger and boots up his computer. The nanite canister is next. He examines it while he waits for his computer.
The canister is beat to crap, evidence of its nearly four years of use. The Stark Industries logo was scratched off, his work, but you could just see the S in the right light. He drags another cable out of his backpack, connecting it to his finally online laptop.
“Okay, Karen, pull up the Spider-Man protocols.” Peter murmurs. Karen jumps to do so taking over his laptop screen. Peter’s eyes trail over the lines and lines of code that pop up. “Show me the coding for the DNA protocols, please.”
The nanite canister was his sole connection to Karen and the Stark Industries server. He’d severed a number of her functions, mostly the check-in protocols Tony had built into her, but she still ran fine. He’d even managed to reprogram the nanites for the Iron-Spider suit too which he was more than a bit proud of despite his reasons for it. Nowadays, he mostly used the nanites for the lenses of his suits. It kept Karen connected to him on patrol and ensured he didn’t destroy them too quickly.
“What are we looking for Spider-Man?” Karen asked, her voice tinny from his laptop speakers.
“Reasons why my blood isn’t being erased from the police’s database.” Peter answered her.
He’d figure out why his DNA kept getting mixed up with Niccolo Stark’s next after he figures this slightly bigger problem out. Hopefully fixing this issue will fix that problem too, but Peter knows his luck isn’t that good.
Peter had his own ideas as to why, had mulled over it his entire shift, and he’s kicking himself for not realizing it sooner. The suit’s system and Karen recognized him as Spider-Man but not Peter Parker. There was a secondary profile where Peter’s information should be, but it was corrupted by the spell. He’d assumed that the identity and safety protocols would still work, and that’d been yet another mistake of his.
The section that went in and erased Spider-Man's DNA and presence from databases like the NYPD’s was working just fine. He couldn’t find any issues there. The problem was that was it. The section that should have been programed to erase his, not just Spider-Man's, presence the moment anything of his, blood, fingerprint, anything, was empty. Deleted when the user Peter Parker was wiped from existence.
Peter sat back. With the protocol running halfway, it made sense. Woo had said that there’d been no mention of Spider-Man in the files. With the user Peter Parker gone, the program had only been running when Spider-Man had been mentioned.
Fuck.
How can he fix this? Peter doesn’t let himself sit in despair. He doesn’t have the time. The longer the protocol runs halfway, the more likely people are to connect Peter to Spider-Man, or worse, the more likely they are to see the differences in his blood.
He can try to reestablish the Peter Parker profile, but he doubted he’ll have any more luck this time around. He’s tried hundreds of times in a hundred different ways. Even if he manages to add his name to the system, it disappears again. The spell and Tony’s systems are both too strong.
“Could I offer a solution, Spider-Man?” Karen asks breaking the silence he’d fallen into staring at the code.
“Of course, go ahead.” Peter nods.
“If you can’t restore the lost user information and profile, perhaps you could begin anew by adding a new user.” Karen suggests.
“And what would that require?” Peter asks. He leans closer to his laptop, brow furrowed. On the screen, the code moves to a different section that he recognizes. It’s the parts he’d altered to cut Karen’s connection to Stark Industries. Useful then to keep SI from looking too closely at him, but now it appears to be biting him in the ass.
“Adding a third profile would require reconnecting to the Stark Industries mainframe.”
Double fuck.
“How would I do that?” Peter asks even though he mostly knows the answer.
“Given my current system capabilities, connection to the mainframe would require physical presence within a Stark Industries building.”
Triple fuck.
In the distance, Peter can hear sirens racing across the city, a sign that the world won’t stop for his breakdown. A quick glance at the clock, and he’s reaching for his backpack. A few hours of patrol won’t fix anything, but he really needs to move after the day he’s had. If he could get some light recon done too, that would be helpful.
He just has to make sure not to get cut while out. At least not until he can figure out a plan. Peter pulls his suit on and leaps off the library rooftop. Turning towards Park Avenue, Peter hopes he’s making the right decision.
In the distance Stark Tower shines like a beacon he’s been ignoring for too long.