Chapter Text
“Mo, here. What about this one?”
The pine tree Peter stops next to is no different to the others he’s pointed out over the past hour and a half—just as tall and green and full, its spindles tipped white with the late afternoon frost—but something about it tells him it might just finally be the one. Then again, maybe that’s just wishful thinking on account of the growing lack of feeling in his toes.
At his side, Morgan purses her lips, frowning up at the tree and giving it far more scrutiny than is probably fair. “Nope. It’s too wonky,” she decides after careful contemplation and turns to bound ahead to the next contender. Peter catches her by the hood of her coat, spinning her back round as he squints at the current tree, almost offended on its behalf.
“What? No, it’s not. It just looks that way from where you’re standing. Trust me. I’m taller, so I can see better.” Morgan casts a dubious glance his way. Peter throws his own look back. “C’mon, Mo. Would I lie to you?”
“Last week you said chocolate milk came from brown cows. That was a lie.”
“Ah. Well yeah, but that was— okay, yeah, that’s fair, I guess. But I wouldn’t lie about anything important. Not about a Christmas tree. So.” He sweeps his arm out once more to the one in front of them.
"No."
"No? Really?"
Morgan huffs, sagging into his side and latching onto his arm, where she hangs like a heavy little monkey in a pink puffer jacket. “Peter." She drags his name out, a testament to her suffering. "I said I don't like it, already. Come on, let’s look at the next one, okay? Come on, come on, come on. Please.”
Peter shakes his head but lets himself be dragged all the same. “Okay, okay. But you’re gonna have to like one of them eventually, or we’re gonna go home empty handed. I’m pretty sure this place is closing soon.”
“Then we can come back tomorrow,” says Morgan, letting go of his hand to skip ahead. “And the next day and the next day and the next day. It has to be perfect .” She throws her arms out dramatically to emphasise this, and Peter can’t help but grin. There’s a whole lot of pressure out there for the holidays to be just right this year, a desperate need to celebrate with gusto after five years of grief and misery and absence of cheer. The world is trying its hardest to act as if nothing ever happened, and in doing so is only succeeding in drawing attention to the big purple elephant in the room. All Peter sees in the frantic eyes of every person queuing round the block for a store or desperate social media post appealing for a hard-to-find item are reminders of what the world is trying to overcome. All he senses in the fights he’s had to break up in the city over who was waiting for the parking space first, or who had hold of the last toy is grief. In light of all that, he’s glad to see that Morgan’s quest to find the perfect tree, at least, stems from pure enthusiasm.
“Whichever one you pick will be perfect,” he says as they weave between trunks. He points to a particularly majestic pine, but Morgan shakes her head, no. “You know that, right?”
“I know. That’s what dad said, too.”
“Yeah? Well, your dad’s a smart man.”
“No.” Morgan rubs a mittened hand over her nose, now flushed red with the cold. “He’s silly . He tried to feed Gerald carrots, and Gerald hates carrots. Everyone knows that.”
Peter nods sagely. “You’re right, that is silly.”
“Exactly. And he had to ask for my help with my legos ‘cause he didn’t know you have to use the big ones at the bottom of the house if you want it all to stay together. That’s like, the first rule of Lego.”
Peter has to stifle a laugh at the thought of Tony Stark, the man who built a super suit out of scraps in a cave pretending not to understand how to build a lego house, but he isn’t all that surprised. Tony’s pulled the same trick on him more than a few times in the workshop, albeit with circuitry and mechanisms rather than colourful plastic blocks. Where does this piece go, Pete? How does this fit together? That part connect here, or here? “He didn’t, huh? guess you must be the smart one in the family, then.”
Morgan shrugs. “Yeah. That’s what mom says.”
They carry on through the lot, stopping intermittently to scrutinise the trees that seem particularly promising, though these are few and far between. That one is too short, this one isn’t green enough, this one looks sad, whatever that means. Morgan seems unfazed by the chill that creeps in quicker by the minute, but Peter finds himself tucking his hands under his arms and burrowing down into the warm collar of his jacket as they march on, trying to decide whether it’s particularly icy this December, or if he’s just gotten more sensitive to it all. He can’t remember much liking the cold before getting bitten, though growing up in New York he’s sure he must have been somewhat used to it. These past few years, however, he’s begun to hate it, and the steady drop of temperature as he and Morgan trudge through ankle deep snow is beginning to push the limits of his endurance.
His breath fogs in front of his face as he looks up at the sky, at the indigo creeping in to the east as the sun sinks below the horizon opposite. They’ve been here longer than he intended, though he probably should have guessed from what he knows of Morgan’s decision making skills (or lack thereof) and her inherited stubbornness that they’d be here for the duration. Either way, it’s getting late, Peter’s freezing, and it’s clear to him at least that they’re not going to find their tree today. Time to call it.
“Okay, Mo, moment of truth. Any of these you like?”
“No,” Morgan says, shoulders slumped. “Maybe there’s better ones over there, though?”
Peter shakes his head. “Uh-uh, sorry, not today. It’s late, and your mom and dad are going to want us back soon. Besides, look, your nose is getting all cold.”
Morgan endures his boop to said nose with an adorable scowl. “I’m not cold,” she says.
“Who’s lying now, huh?”
“Please, Peter? It’s not that late. Plus there’s all these we haven’t looked at yet!”
Her eyes are big and round and Peter almost, almost gives in. But now that the seed of heading home has been planted and they’re no longer distracted by looking at trees, he realises just how far they’ve wandered from the entrance. He can’t even see the string of multi-coloured lights that decorate the welcome archway anymore. He realises too that it’s been a while since they’ve seen any other customers browsing the lot, either, and between one moment and the next, the place suddenly feels altogether too quiet.
“They’ll still be here tomorrow,” he says, brushing off the flicker of unease that sweeps through him. “We can come back and look then, okay? Here, c’mon.”
He reaches down to clasp Morgan’s mittened hand in his own. Thinking of warmth, and the copious amounts of blankets and cocoa waiting for them back at the cabin, and decidedly not thinking about the creepy figures the trees are starting to cast in the twilight, he pulls her gently in the direction of the car. Morgan grumbles about leaving and drags her feet, but the promise of another re-watch of Frozen II soon puts that to bed. Together, they start the trek back to the road.
Peter’s just slipped his phone back into his pocket from firing off a quick text to Tony—On the way back now. No tree :(((— when Morgan suddenly puts on the brakes beside him. Peter stops, instantly alert. He looks down at her, at the trees, back at her. “What? What is it?”
He doesn’t catch her answer, mumbled as it is beneath the fabric of her scarf.
“What?”
“I need to pee.”
Peter blinks. Relaxes. “Oh.” And then he realises the problem. He looks around. Trees. Nothing but trees everywhere. “Uh...I don’t think there’s any bathrooms around here, Mo. Do you think you can hold it til we get home?”
Morgan puffs out her ruddy pink cheeks, shaking her head. The bobble on top of her hat wiggles wildly with the motion. She won’t meet his eyes.
“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. You gotta go, you gotta go, right?” Where, though, is the issue. “Umm. How about behind that tree there? Quick though, Mo, we want to get going before it’s dark.”
Morgan nods and hurries off behind the tree. Peter shifts just enough that he can still see a sliver of pink coat through the branches in his periphery. There’s a moment or two of rustling, and then silence.
“You have to turn around,” comes a small voice from behind the tree.
Peter’s face flushes. “I’m not— I’m not watching. I’m just making sure you’re okay.”
“Turn around!”
He blows out a breath. Fog curls up into the air as he turns to face the other way. “Fine. There. Okay?”
There’s no response. No telltale sound of tinkling, either.
“Morgan?”
“You’re too close,”
“Morgan, come on.”
“Peter. ”
Trying not to let his frustration show, Peter takes a half dozen steps away from the bush. It wouldn’t make any difference if he took a hundred with his hearing, but Morgan doesn’t know that, and he isn’t going to tell her.
He stands there, blowing tepid air into his cupped palms and humming All I Want for Christmas under his breath out of courtesy while he waits for her to be done. It might be an old song, but it’s a classic for a reason, and he and MJ had watched Love Actually the other night (although ‘watch’ is a loose term—they’d spent most of the film cringing over all the problematic parts that really haven’t aged well) so the tune’s stuck in his head.
“Are you finished?” he asks when a long enough time seems to have passed without Morgan returning. Longer than he’d have thought it would take for a little girl to pee, but what does he know?
No answer comes. Without his humming the clearing is deathly quiet, snow glinting on the ground in the half-light of dusk.
Peter’s neck prickles.
“Morgan? Quit messing around, all right? We really have to go.”
Silence.
“Mo?”
The prickling across the back of his neck ups its intensity, and panic bursts like lightning through Peter’s veins. This isn’t just general unease now; it’s a warning. He spins on his heel, mouth forming an M, ready to shout for Morgan to stay where she is, for her to stay hidden.
And his voice locks up in his throat.
They are no longer alone in the clearing. More specifically, Morgan is no longer alone. She is pulled tight against a pair of combat-clad legs. A thick forearm holds her firmly across the shoulders and—
There’s a gun pressed to the side of her head.
For a handful of seconds, Peter’s brain is nothing but white noise, static screaming through his skull. And then the adrenaline kicks in.
“Morgan. Morgan, hey. Look at me. It’s going to be okay, all right? Nothing’s going to happen to you, I promise.”
He shifts his attention from Morgan’s bone white face to the man standing behind her, eyes widening as he takes in the sheer size of him. He’s huge, dressed like special ops of some kind, and maybe he is. The way he holds both himself and the gun speaks of training and discipline, not to mention that he managed to get the drop on Peter’s inbuilt warning system—something that Peter has no time to be furious at himself about right now, but will be later.
“What do you want?”
“Peter Parker?” The man’s voice is gravelly, his speech accented, though Peter can’t pinpoint its origin.
“Yeah?” he answers without thinking, thrown off for a second at being addressed by name. Things like this are usually (and he hates that that’s a word he can use to refer to this kind of situation) a result of something related to Tony. A disgruntled ex-employee, maybe. Someone with an unfair bone to pick with Iron Man. A chancer hoping to make some quick cash off a billionaire. Somewhere under his panic, Peter had already assumed this was much of the same—that Morgan was the target here, for ransom or something. But it seems like he’s misjudged.
The man nods once, satisfied by the confirmation. He shifts his gun into his other hand, careful not to loosen his grip on Morgan, then reaches into his jacket pocket. The item he withdraws gets tossed onto the ground in front of Peter and Peter glances down at it quickly; back up again as the gun changes hands once more, the barrel realigning with Morgan’s temple.
“Put it on.”
Peter blinks at the man, then reluctantly lets his eyes fall back to the object on the ground. It’s circular, a hoop slightly larger than a CD in diameter, and his brow furrows as he looks at it. What does the guy mean, put it on? Where? It’s too big to go around his wrist—it would just fall straight off, and—
It’s then that he sees the thin split in the metal, the concealed hinge on the opposite side of the circle, and realises what it is he’s actually looking at.
Not a bracelet.
A collar.
Dread curls through his stomach, as dull and as heavy as the fear that spikes in his veins is sharp, because he knows, without asking, exactly what kind of collar this is, and he knows, without asking, exactly what it does, too. Wanda had warned him with haunted eyes; May had warned him with fearful, pleading ones. Don’t get caught. Don’t let them take you in. Look what they do to mutants. Look what they would do to you.
He doesn’t move, only raises his eyes to meet the man’s. “Why?”
“Because I am holding a gun to this little girl’s head, and I told you to. Now, put it on.”
Peter looks at Morgan, who looks right back, her eyes huge in her blanched face. He swallows. “What’s going to happen if I do?”
“I would be more concerned about what’s going to happen if you don’t.”
The slip of the man's index finger into the trigger guard is enough to send ice through Peter’s veins, to pull him forward a few panicked steps. He doesn’t reach for the collar, though. He can’t. Never mind his own fears, if he puts it on he knows he’s essentially rendering both himself and Morgan defenceless, and the latter is something he can’t allow. He would be powerless to stop anything that came after. Who knows what could happen to her then?
He lets his eyes slide in the direction of the road, trying to calculate how far they are from the entrance now, how far they would need to run, but his brain won’t move past the pounding beat of dangerdangerdanger screaming in his skull. His phone is a heavy weight in his back pocket, all but useless for how close it is. He doesn’t have his web shooters but he’s fast, and he’s strong. Maybe—
“I can see you thinking,” says the man. “Let me assure you I am a very quick shot. You will not make it in time.” Slowly, almost gently, he pushes the gun harder into Morgan’s temple, forcing her head to the side. Her lower lip trembles. Fat tears cling like dew to her lashes, threatening to spill. She whimpers, barely audible, and the naked terror in the small sound is a spear straight through Peter’s heart.
“Okay. Okay I get it, just— Look, please, she doesn’t need to be involved in this. Just let her go.”
“I don’t think so. She is a very useful shield. Helps me to complete my job. Now.” The man nods to the floor. To the collar. “Put it on.”
Peter can hear Morgan’s heart fluttering hummingbird fast against the fragile cage of her ribs, an echo of his own, thundering in his chest. He doesn’t know what to do , and he must hesitate a fraction of a second too long, because the man growls in frustration, the first real fissure in his calm facade. “Nothing is more important to me than being paid, do you understand me? I will paint the ground with this little girl’s brains and think nothing of it if that is what it takes!” He punctuates his words by giving Morgan a harsh shake. She yelps, and then she starts to cry.
“Okay!” Peter jerks forward, throwing his hands out in front of him. Morgan’s stifled sobs cut right through to his core. There are no options here. He has no choice. With shaking hands he crouches down and picks the collar up off the ground. “Okay, just please , please don’t hurt her.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “Put it on.”
Peter nods. The collar is freezing in his hands, the metal dragging in the chill of the air around it. It’s heavy, too, which seems fitting, considering the weight of dread it instils. He swallows thickly as he pulls the contraption open, the two halves of metal parting like a yawning jaw, priming for its prey.
Every instinct flares against him as he lifts the collar to his neck. All except one. He keeps his eyes on Morgan, trying to convey to her that it’s going to be okay, that he’s okay, even though his hands are trembling with a cold rush of terror. Blood pounds under his skin. His bones thrum in warning. There’s a sharp mechanical beep as the jaw snaps shut around his throat, and then—
When Peter was first bitten by the spider, the transition had been gradual. He’d hardly had any reaction at all in the immediate aftermath, save for a clipped, “Ow,” and it wasn’t until he got home from school that he had begun to feel feverish or unwell, and even that had been mild. He’d slept fitfully that night—vivid dreams interspersed with somewhat-delirious periods of wakefulness—and when he’d awoken, it had been in a body that, while foreign to him in its strength and sensitivity, somehow still felt adjusted, right.
This by contrast is so quick and sudden that despite being stationary, he stumbles, dropping to his knees in the snow. He gasps as everything that makes him Spider-man—all the abilities and enhancements he’s come to rely on over the past two years—comes flooding out of him in one great rush. He feels weak, like a newborn colt struggling to stand; he can’t see more than blurry shapes; his lungs ache when they drag in the frigid winter air. It feels wrong.
“Peter!” he hears Morgan call distantly, high and sharp and scared. It sounds like she’s underwater, or like he is. Everything is dulled. Grey.
His palms are pressed flat to the ground, his trembling arms the only thing bracing him from planting his face straight into it. He takes a few shallow, steadying breaths, and then with a monumental effort, he raises his head. Squints. “‘m okay, Mo. It’s okay,” he says to her cloudy outline. Then to the guy’s similarly murky shape, “I did what you wanted. Now let... let her go.”
“Gladly,” the man responds with a shrug. He shoves Morgan away from him, where she lands hard on her side in the snow. The gun swings from pointing in her direction to pointing in Peter’s, though the man holds it loosely in his hand now, lazy with the reassurance that Peter is no longer a physical threat. His other hand goes to his pocket, and he draws out something small and black, the edges of which Peter can’t define through his blurred vision. Unlike the gun, this object, the man points toward him with purpose.
Peter has a brief moment of confusion, followed by one of startling realisation. He sways, trying to climb to his feet. “Wait,” he breathes, panicked. “Wait. Wait!”
The man pushes a button. There’s a warmth at Peter’s throat, a heady rush, and then everything around him dissolves into nothing.