Chapter Text
— *TW; rape & abuse mentioned briefly* —
As Spider-Man stood on top of the Stark tower, he couldn't help the anxiety eating at him because of what he was about to do. There would be no going back after this, It wasn't something he could just take back. Not that he thought he would, in a million years, ever do that. Or even regret this in the slightest, maybe. But it's not like any of that made this any less scary.
As he sat with slightly uneven and shaky breath looking out at the bright orange sunset, it was late in the evening and he knew that he was currently attracting the attention of several people that he'd been pretty desperate to escape the last few months.
He heard the two sets of thrusters go off even before they left the building. 'The stress is probably making my senses go crazy..' he thought to himself. He started subconsciously taking in shaky long breaths from his mouth and felt his chest tighten up as he heard metal feet clank harshly onto the building. He knew he wasn't being very quiet, but he really hoped that they couldn't tell he was panicking right now.
"Here to discuss your surrender spider-guy?" The sarcasm was easily detectable in the billionaire's voice.
"This is a bold move, even for you." He heard Iron Patriot say from next to him.
"This is your last chance to come quietly, Nick wants your identity and he already called in Cap and his band of criminals from who knows where to get it. They get here tomorrow and you won't stand a cha-" still facing the other way, the arachnid took a deep breath before interrupting him, trying to sound as stable as possible.
"Cool your jets Tincan. I just want to talk." The Web-slinger disregarded their previous words, not paying attention to or processing them due to his impending doom distracting him at that moment. The two iron men were surprised to hear the stark contrast of shakiness and obvious negative emotion in the usually chipper vigilante's voice.
"Jeez, what happened to you? Sound like you discovered an underground convention that murdered puppies." Colonel Rhodes stated with a raised eyebrow, though no one could see it. Although team iron had been hunting down Spider-Man for quite some time now, they had all sort of developed a love-hate relationship with the spider, in a heated mid-battle banter between two very sassy superheroes (whom I will not name right now,) kind of way. The two men were, to a degree, actually somewhat worried.
"I want to talk to Fury," Spider-Man stated firmly ignoring the question. Tony and Rhodes looked at one another both thinking the same thing, What?
They didn't really want to hurt the spider, and this was exactly the kind of thing that they had been hoping for the first few months, but... it's just seemed so, so wrong. Spider-Man had made himself very clear on the whole ' I'm super secretive, nobody can know, the mask stays.' thing, and this just seemed... well, frankly kind of suspicious.
"A-..." Tony started, but he wasn't very sure how to respond.
"Are you sure..?" He asked slowly, the confusion evident in his voice. Rhodes gave him a look, not that it was visible underneath the helmet.
"You gonna take me or not?" The spider said snappily, but he really just wanted this to be over with as soon as possible. The Ironmen looked at each other one last time before making up their minds.
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A man in a white bland square room sat in front of a desk opposite the door to the room, he was wearing all black and a trench coat and had an eyepatch covering his left eye. He sat there with his arms crossed and resting on the table staring very intently at the door as if he were waiting for something. Not after very long, there were footsteps heard from outside of the room, suddenly the door was opened, it wasn't slammed or forced open, just your average billionaire holding the door open for a vigilante dressed in bright blue-and-red spandex. The darkly dressed man raised an eyebrow.
"No cuffs?" He asked suspiciously.
"He came to talk, willingly. Didn't want to scare him off." The billionaire spoke with a small shrug. The eye-patched man's glare quickly shifted from Tony Stark to the spider.
"Oh really?"
"Yup!" Said the vigilante in a surprisingly chipper voice. But then he tilted his head slightly, before revising the previous statement.
"Well, willingly is stretching it. It was more something of a," He paused thinking for a moment,
"Mandatory obligation for the people's overall wellbeing. Not sure anybody willingly goes and talks to creepy pirate men in dark cloaks who run secret government agencies." Hiding his near mental breakdown, He decided, if this was going to suck as much as he thought it was, and it was, he might as well take as much pleasure as possible now in annoying a certain man with pirate-like features. The man stood there silently gazing in vehement annoyance at the spider boy as if trying to decipher what could possibly be going on in his head, but after several minutes seemed to give in and gave a nod to the resident billionaire, signaling for him to take his leave.
And so, now with the room only occupied by two of them, the eye-patch man let out a condescending growl.
"Take a seat, Spiderman." He was taken aback by the seeming complacency of said superhero as he did so with far less hesitation than expected. There was an awkward silence for several long moments, as Nick was unsure of how to go about this, due to his residing distrust of the superhero. Finally, it was spiderman who spoke first and it was exceedingly unsettling as Nick could hear the obvious nervousness radiating off of the Spider's voice.
"I- uh, um yeah, so- I've, well, never actually, really, done this before, how-, er, what's supposed to be happening?" Nick's eyebrows rose, Spiderman, Spiderman whom he had been trying to capture for months, Spiderman who had oh so many times given snarky back and forths, Spider-Man, who gave irritated strings of colorful language when caught off guard, Spiderman- was sounding, sheepish? Not just sheepish, but, highschool students at a school conference when they've been lying about their grades to their parents since the start of school level of nervousness.
Talk about an alter ego. Even the avengers weren't that different when they were on the field. Nick regained his cool demeanor quickly and responded coldly.
"You're supposed to take off your mask is what's 'supposed' to happen." His eye glowering down at the resident bug-boy.
Peter's Pov.
Geez, it was so much easier to talk to villans, you don't owe villans anything, at least they aren't better than you, or they don't try to act like they are, and when they do it's laughable. This guy practically wafts off an "I'm in charge and I am superior to you in every conceivable way possible" aura. I subconsciously tried to fumble with my sleeve, only noticing what I was doing when my hand seemed to realize there was no sleeve to fumble with.
Stop making yourself look like an idiot! I thought, Just hurry up and get this over with. I took a deep breath. Thankfully Fury had just given me the perfect opportunity to voice my reasons for being here. "I have conditions," I stated, feeling dumb and irritated with the fact that my voice was far shakier than I would've liked it to be.
Eye patch only raised his eyebrow but didn't deny me this so I took it as a sign to continue. I took another deep breath trying in vain to calm the shaking of my entire being. It got worse. Dammit, why did this have to be so hard?
Fury's Pov.
This... Was strange.
I could see Spiderman's body shaking, The floor was as well due to his nervously bouncing foot. And to be frank, I was uncomfortable.
"Was that a question or a statement?" It was obvious the man didn't want to be here, I hid my desire to be elsewhere far better than he did at their moment. I only received a bug-like glare in response to my question.
"I want out of my current living situation." So we're getting straight to the point, are we? Well okay then. My first thoughts were Ex-convict in hiding, homeless, or under some kind of house arrest. Possibly actually still living in a prison, but escaping regularly without being noticed? The last one was unlikely but not ruled out.
"Done." I nodded my head seeing as I was ready to do just about anything after these past few unbelievably frustrating months. I expected him to calm down at my lax agreement without even asking questions, but to my utter befuddlement, He only seemed to be more on edge. What was making him so damn nervous?
"I get to keep being Spider-Man after this." I paused, unsure about this. "Keep being Spider-Man" could mean a variety of things, and why would that be an issue in the first place? Ex-convict, house arrest, and that last option surfaced in my thoughts, that could make sense. Anyway, I stated my agreement, though with slightly narrowed eyes and a displeased grimace- why was this necessary to be asked?
"I want it so no one, ever, is put with who I live with right now." So he did have somewhere to live. This led me to believe the illegal ex-convict theory or the regular escapist one. A possible inmate he lives with or escaped with? Perhaps one void of sanity or putting him at risk, that maybe drove him crazy or was a danger to society? what would make it so he didn't want anyone else near them? Out of the goodness of his heart didn't seem to be a likely option.
"I'll see what I can do." This answer earned a more suspect look from the one making the demand, but he didn't seem to be in any state to argue or put up a protest with that answer, so he ended up just eyeing me cautiously and continuing.
"I want as few people to know as possible- about my identity. I don't want to be put into the shield system, I hacked that thing ages ago, Nicholas. It's not as protected as you think." I scowled raised my eyebrow at this, and although extremely irritated by his comments, begrudgingly agreed to this condition as well.
"I'll know your name and information, you will provide it to me verbally and I'll keep it down on paper somewhere, one file only. Nothing digital. Shield will refrain from having any done research on your identity in their databases or history. Deal?" I bargained a little on this one, wanting to be able to provide this information to those I trusted without having only my mind to trust to keep the information. He seemed to consider this for several long minutes mulling it over before finally adding
"I want a part in making sure I'm not in there, and I want to make firewalls for it. I don't trust your digital network." To this I raised another eyebrow but ultimately understood, the only person in this building he trusted was himself. I nodded.
"I need a place to stay. I won't be able to get one on my own." I raised my eyebrows, a tad surprised. But when I thought about it it made sense. Since/if he was an ex-convict, it was probably hard to do anything official, including getting a house or a place to stay, without certain people picking up your trail. especially if you were on the run. And so, I nodded along to that too.
Spider-Man took another deep breath, he was shaking more than he had been previously, if that was possible. He took a minute to collect himself before finally stating what seemed to him to be his most stressful condition yet.
"I want someone arrested, I don't care what you do. I don't care how you do it. I don't want him to ever see light as a free man for as long as you can make it fucking possible." Spider-Man paused and took another shaker breath.
"his name is Steven Westcott." He said this in barely a whisper.
I took his quiet tone to be him trying to control his rage. Again, the ex-convict theory made its way to my mind, someone who had sold him out? Hurt him before he got convicted? Possibly hurt a close friend and he couldn't get revenge while being in prison but lost track of him after he got out? I then spoke curiously, what would he like to frame this person for?
"On what charges?" I was all for it, of course, the only thing that had been on my mind for months was getting Spider-Man's identity, and I was sure he could break or fight his way right out of here the moment I disagreed with something.
What happened next was possibly the most shocking experience I have ever had in my entire life. It gave new meaning to "don't judge a book by its cover", and it made me rethink every thought I had ever had about someone, every decision I had made, every assumption I had allowed myself to perceive of a person I had no knowledge of. To say the least- everything I had thought about Spider-Man since he walked this room, had hit far, far, from its mark.
My eyes widened as Spider-Man grabbed at the fabrics at the beginning of his mask- just around the base of his neck, and pulled it off from there. He was also shaking horribly as he did so. Along with a sad attempt of a shrug.
"Domestic violence, sexual assault, child molestation. Take your pick."
Fin~
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