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His body makes no sound when it lands.
Later, she’ll realize it’s because his bones were less dense, more like a bird’s than a human’s. Despite not being enhanced herself, she’s still a City kid born after 2000; she knows a thing or two about enhancements, okay? Spider-Man can fly through the air like he’s made of it.
Could fly.
She doesn’t hear him land but she does hear the sobbed hiccough directly after. It’s a small thing, not too much unlike him. He had never seemed small to her before, not on her parents’ giant TV screen at home, nor on the tiny one her and her roommate share.
He seems very small now.
Molly stumbles between the debris toward him, no more mindful of it than she had been of the terror in the back of her mind when Doc Ock had thrust a tentacle through the coffee shop window not five minutes ago. She had gone straight into crisis mode—grabbing her gangly, boring date by the back of his neck and pushing his forehead toward the table top just as the tentacle had retracted, making the small hairs on the back of his neck and her arm flutter.
“Stay down ,” she had ordered tightly between her teeth, and he had listened to her, looking as scared as she felt but trusting her in that moment to know what she was talking about, even if she didn’t entirely trust herself.
She hadn’t stayed with him long though, making her way to the family of tourists parked at the booth next door. The dad had been just getting out of his seat when Doc Ock had appeared outside. He hadn’t had anyone to pull him down, and now he was laid out on the floor, dazed and bleeding.
The kids were screaming and the mom was panicking and Molly had to be calm for every single one of them as she tended to the man they all loved most.
She missed the moment Spider-Man made a wildly stupid mistake.
Because he had to have made a wildly stupid mistake, she knows. Spider-Man routinely dives and dodges and dips like he has a death wish, but he always comes out on top. He makes regular mistakes, sure, but he survives them. She’d watched enough Youtube and Instagram Live videos of him - literally hundreds, maybe thousands by now - to know that.
Anyway, she’d been tending to the dad when something snagged on the corner of her eye. The tiniest flicker, her mind reflexively supplying feather but it had been falling too fast.
She’d gotten to her feet just in time to see him hit the pavement.
And then she’d gone stumbling, cutthroat shards and broken rebar and smoldering metal be damned.
She has to bite back a gasp when she gets close enough to see the damage.
Spider-Man’s mask is partially shorn off, revealing half of a pale cheek and a lone bloodshot eye. A tuft of curly brown hair peeks out from the remaining fabric across his forehead, and Molly has to restrain herself from pushing it back.
He’s still a little alive. It’s the kind of little that is bigger than his own body, lungs pressing upwards with tiny gasps, relentless and wet. Like a butterfly beating their wings too hard.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she tells him when another hiccough breaks through from between his covered lips, little beads of blood soaking into the mask above his mouth. “Shhh. You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”
The one uncovered eyebrow raises incrementally at her reassurance, and just that movement is enough for Molly to hear the liar loud and clear.
It is a lie, she knows. She hasn’t looked too closely at the gaping hole in his middle but she knows it’s there, bigger than her fist and deeper than her wrist. Somewhere stories above them, one of Doc Ock’s tentacles is almost certainly covered in gory viscera.
Molly thinks about trying to staunch the wound with her shirt, but it would be futile. The pool of blood surrounding Spider-Man has already reached past her sandals where she’s kneeling at his side, and it’s still growing.
Carefully she crawls forward the last two feet until there’s no more space between them, cradling his head in her lap. If he wasn’t enhanced, Molly knows he’d already be dead. As it is, it’s just a matter of time. A minute or two, maybe only seconds… and the only person he’ll have by his side is some useless stranger who wants nothing more than to be back in the coffee shop listening to her boring, dull date go on about his Revolutionary War-era coin collection.
A stranger who would rather be doing anything else besides comforting one of her heroes while he dies in her arms.
Molly finally gives in to the desire to push the tuft of hair back before grabbing at the edge of the torn mask fabric with a small tug, giving him a look. Between gasps he manages the tiniest of nods, a clear permission, and she pulls the rest of the mask off.
“Th–’oo,” Spider-Man tells her, real gratitude in his eyes even as they grow glassier with each strained gasp. Molly hastily wipes at the tears on her own face—he’s dying, he doesn’t need to deal with her having a breakdown on top of everything else—before cupping his cheek and looking straight into his eyes and telling him the only thing she can think of.
“Thank you , Spider-Man.”
His lip turns up, waves of emotion fleeting across his face too fast for her to catch them all. Blood trickles out of the edge of his mouth, a smile flickering there as he whispers, “Puh–’ter.”
Molly’s brow shifts in panicked confusion. “What?”
He coughs, holding back a gasp before trying again. “Peet–’er. M’name.”
“Oh.” Molly gives him the kindest smile she can muster, trying and failing to stifle her trembles as she rubs his dirty cheek with her thumb comfortingly. “Thank you, Peter.”
Peter answers with his own bloodied grin, an unexpected serenity in his eyes as he gazes up at her. They sit like that until his chest goes still, and the peaceful look fades away into an eerie blankness.
Spider-Man is dead.
I’m sorry , Molly thinks as she stares down at his slack features. Then, he’s so young. She always figured he couldn’t be much older than herself, a few years at best, but he looks even younger, and she’s only twenty-one.
They’re both too young for this. Yet right now, her breath hitching with tears as she cradles the body of the bravest, kindest superhero in the world , let alone New York City–
Molly feels very, very old.
Lorena takes a deep breath, stabling herself and her hands on the steering wheel.
There wasn’t a lot about her life and her work that took her by surprise anymore, nearly twenty years on the force and living in the same city that the Avengers decided to call her home– Lorena’s long given up any idea of normalcy when it comes to dealing with the things she does in New York City.
Lorena takes a breath and then another, unsure if she’s fully equipped to handle the situation laid out in front of her.
Behind her being more accurate, seeing the flash of red and blue lights coming up behind her as she glances over to the backup that she hadn’t needed but that the chief insisted on, taking another breath before unbuckling her seatbelt and exiting out of the car.
“Fucking mess, huh?” Jerry says as he gets out of the car, Lorena pursing her lips and nodding once before looking back to the ambulance that was behind them– watching as it backs up towards their entrance.
Lorena can see out of the corner of her eye the people that are gathering at the parking lot’s edge, the decline of the garage they’re in and the blocks that they have for people doing little to keep them away for a glimpse of what’s happening.
“We should get them out of here,” Lorena says, mostly to herself but to get a read on Jerry who looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here– something Lorena doesn’t understand since he’s been at this job longer than she has.
Shouldn’t be nearly as agitated as he is now, as the M.E. gets out of the truck.
“Hey Lor.”
“Hi Jamie. You got it?”
“Yeah,” he says with a nod, his assistant coming in to open the doors as Lorena braces herself for what she’s seeing– not visually since it was a standard black body bag, but the meaning behind it.
Spider-Man, finally taken in for custody, but not in the way Lorena had ever thought he would.
Jerry mutters something under his breath as Jamie and his assistant move the body to the back, Lorena glancing up to the people watching and seeing the reporters and cameras– a mix of concern, curiosity and even some tears that flares up some instinct in her as she moves to block them.
“Vultures,” Jamie says under his breath as Lorena presses her lips together, barely catching Jerry’s eye roll as they follow after him into the garage and towards the station.
“Only vulture we got is the one on the slab,” he says, Lorena’s head snapping up in surprise as Jamie does the same– the latter to his credit still moving forward as Lorena frowns.
“You fucking serious with that?”
“Been a damn pain in my side for the past decade, Martinez,” Jerry says with a scoff, motioning to the black body bag and missing the glare that Jamie gives him. “Good riddance.”
“Did you see the same body I did? Spider-Man is– that’s a fucking kid there, Wilson.”
“Exactly, where’s his fucking parents? Now we got him, maybe we can finally get those bastards for–”
“That is enough , Wilson,” Lorena says, standing tall despite the height difference between them. Jerry might have worked longer in this job but there’s a reason Lorena is the superior, barely contained anger and disgust rippling through her as she grits her teeth. “Can you keep your mouth shut so that our guys can actually do this or is that gonna be a problem?”
Jerry glares at her, staring down menacingly as if he could do something– a small part of Lorena wondering if she was making her life more difficult for someone who, in life, had just done that.
Lorena couldn’t call herself a good cop and say that she liked Spider-Man or any of the Avengers, constant and endless debates about their jurisdiction– or lack thereof– making her sit through more morning meetings that could’ve been emails than she’d ever want to relive.
But Lorena as a person felt sick to her stomach at the knowledge that this vigilante the NYPD had spent the past few years– a decade in Jerry’s perspective, non-Blipped and all– chasing their tails after was just a kid.
He barely looks old enough to drink, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as Jamie and his assistant make their way into the building of what this means for Spider-Man.
He couldn’t be more than nineteen? Twenty years old? Lorena remembers the exact day Spider-Man came onto the scene, working the “freak beat” and seeing him in person herself in what her report later described as “red and blue pajamas.”
They probably were , Lorena thinks to herself as Jerry plods alongside her– the two of them walking in silence as she thinks of the meaning behind that.
If Spider-Man was nineteen or twenty now, he couldn’t have been more than fourteen when he started.
A teenager has evaded them for years.
A teenager got shot at, chased after by other freaks and the NYPD.
A teenager helped save the universe.
And now he’s here in a black body bag, Lorena trying very hard not to think about that.
“We can take it from here,” Jamie says, nodding to her and then sparing a glance to Jerry.
“You doing an autopsy?” Jerry asks, Lorena eyeing him carefully as the assistant finally turns to him.
“You– we know the cause of death,” he says carefully, sharing a glance with Jamie, Lorena and then back to Jerry. “You saw what happened to him.”
“Might be worth doing anyway,” Jerry says and Lorena already knows where he’s going with this, frowning once more as he continues, “Freak like that could–”
“That’s enough , Wilson. Get back to the pit,” she says derisively, Jerry scowling at her but then doing what he’s doing what he’s told– Lorena watching him as he goes.
She waits till he’s gone before looking back over to Jamie, seeing the neutral expression on his face.
“He’s an ass but he’s got a point,” Jamie says quietly. “Commissioner’s been wanting–”
“If the Commissioner wants an autopsy, he can order one,” Lorena interjects, cutting him off as she shakes her head.
He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid. He’s just a kid, rolls around in her brain like an anthem— all the things she’s seen since she’s been on the force not quite measuring up to the knowledge that a one-time Avenger and one of NYPD’s most wanted became all of that before he could even vote . “He’s– you saw what happened to him. The kid’s got a fucking hole in him, J.”
Jamie nods, Lorena nodding in agreement before saying, “If he orders one, I’ll let you know. Anyone else try to come down here, you make them come to me first, alright?”
“Alright,” Jamie says as Lorena takes her leave, walking towards the double doors that Jerry just passed through.
She might catch hell for this later, but Lorena doesn’t give a shit– her own conflicted feelings about vigilantes being replaced for the vivid mental picture she has in her mind now of what Spider-Man had looked like.
A kid , couldn’t be much older than her own son.
Vigilante, criminal, whatever he is— whatever he was – Lorena wouldn’t be the one to rob him of dignity in his death.
Not when she, and the NYPD, had done so much against him in life.
There’s the small patter of familiar footsteps down the hallway before the office door creaks open, a small head poking through. “Hey, dad?”
“I’m busy,” Leon replies with a small sigh, not even bothering to look up from his paperwork.
It’s not just an excuse. Tomorrow’s the first of the month and he needs to get all his accounts sorted—figure out who paid rent in full last month and who didn’t—so he has his ducks in a row when he inevitably ends up having to track down a few of his less reliable tenants next week. He’s willing to give a grace period of a few weeks—he’s not a total monster of a landlord, despite what pop culture teaches—but once someone gets behind more than a month, even his own patience grows thin. He runs a business, not a charity.
“Dad–”
Another deep sigh, and Leon pulls off his glasses and leans back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes. “What is it, Karina?”
“It’s—I think it’s Peter.”
Leon frowns, his distracted mind taking a few seconds to catch up before it comes to him. Peter Parker, apartment 608B. Been in the building for three or maybe four years now. Chronically late with his rent but otherwise no trouble for Leon. Also someone who takes time for Karina when he can, which is something that shouldn’t matter on a practical level but makes a big difference all the same.
In the privacy of his own head, Leon can admit it to himself: he likes the kid. Maybe he’s late with his payments most months, but Leon can still tell he’s a good one.
“Peter Parker?” Leon asks, and Karina nods. “So he actually decided to pay his rent early for once, huh? Well, send him in.”
“No, Dad, he’s not here ,” Karina replies, yet despite what her emphasis would imply, there’s none of that newly-developed sass in her ten year-old voice like there usually is these days. No, instead Leon detects something sad, maybe even pained and hurting in the soft tone, like she’s about to cry. It raises all his Protective Father hackles at once, and he’s on his feet and by her side in an instant, paperwork forgotten as he places a hand on her shoulder.
“Kare-Bear? What’s wrong?”
Karina wipes a bit at her cheeks, taking a shaky breath before putting on the bravest face she can manage. “Spider-Man, he’s… they’re saying on TV that he’s dead. But the camera, it’s kinda far away but they keep showing this same shot of his face over and over and—it’s Peter. Peter’s Spider-Man.”
Leon freezes, staring at his daughter for a few long moments in shock, mouth falling slightly open before he shakes himself out of it. “Show me.”
A minute later they’re standing in front of the living room TV, Leon forced to confirm not only his daughter’s words sharing Spider-Man’s demise, but also that it is Peter Parker. The news channels and probably the cops don’t seem to have figured out his identity yet, but even from a blurry shot taken from a helicopter—Leon knows it’s him, just like Karina did.
The shock comes back, and Leon collapses down on the couch, putting an arm around his daughter when she comes to sit next to him, burrowing into his side.
Sure, Spider-Man is a hero to damn near everyone in the city. But in the Popescu household, he’s held up in a place of almost religious prominence.
Over a decade ago Leon had been riding a city bus, on the way to his old job as a guard at the Queens Correctional Facility, when an early-in-his-career Spider-Man stopped a speeding car from crashing directly into the side he was sitting on. A lot of people would have been hurt—would maybe even have died—had it not been for the vigilante, Leon among them. Instead he got a second shot at life and a reverential respect for a hero who, unlike so many of the other superheroes in this world, truly looks out for the little guy.
It’s a story Leon’s told his daughter countless times, vowing after each recounting that if he ever meets the hero, he’d make sure to thank him for what he did that day. Thank him for every single day Leon’s had with his family ever since.
To hear now that he’s dead, and that Leon will never get a chance to share his gratitude, is a blow. But to hear that he’s Peter Parker , someone who as far as Leon could tell had few friends, and even less family… someone who despite how busy he must have been managing a regular life and a secret one, always managed to smile and say hello to Leon, and to play hopscotch on the sidewalk with Karina… someone who was just a damn kid , one who deserved protecting of his own…
Leon doesn’t even know what to do with that. Actually, that’s not true. He knows exactly what to do with that.
Leon can’t thank Spider-Man, not anymore. But he can help to protect Spider-Man’s legacy.
Because he worked for the city for years, and in that time he knew plenty of cops and watched plenty of enhanced people come and go through the system. He saw how they were treated, the way the cops and DA alike would only stop just short of total corruption in their schemes to further public support for the Accords.
Not even Spider-Man—someone who helped the Avengers save the goddamn world nearly five years ago—will get any respect in death, Leon knows. To the cops and the government he’s still just a pesky vigilante, one who never cooperated with them and even seemed to outright detest them at times. That made him a folk hero in the city, of course, but didn’t win him any love with the NYPD. Anything they can find to smear the dead hero will be fair game.
The cops might not know Spider-Man is Peter Parker yet, but they will figure it out soon, and their first stop will be Leon’s building doorstep, demanding entry into Peter’s apartment. He could kick up a fuss but they’ll get a search warrant if they need to, and that will be that.
Or, it would have been, Leon thinks determinedly. Too bad for them that they’re not gonna find anything even potentially incriminating when they finally get inside.
He kisses the top of his daughter’s head, says, “I’ll be back in a little while, Kare-Bear.” With a final squeeze he lets go of her, standing up and going back to the office, grabbing his set of master keys from their ring. On his way upstairs he stops at the storage closet, grabbing one of the extra cardboard boxes he keeps in there.
He makes his way to 608B and unlocks the door, only to find himself pausing in the threshold as he holds the box, looking around at all that’s left of his hero—the young man who saved his life —before stepping inside and getting to work.
Spider-Man protected Leon.
It’s time to return the favor.
This can’t be happening , Amira thinks as she stares at her phone screen– sitting alone in her bedroom.
Her family’s in the living room, talking and laughing and completely oblivious to how the entire world had changed– typical, she thinks since it’s not the first time this has happened.
You can’t keep blaming them for not being here , a voice that suspiciously sounds like her therapist says in the back of her mind, Amira ignoring that as she scrolls through her Twitter feed and then jumps to Reddit– scrolling and scrolling and trying to find some kind of proof that all of this is just some elaborate prank.
No matter where she looks and no matter what she finds, all Amira can see is what’s right in front of her.
Spider-Man, a twenty-year old from Queens named Peter Parker, was dead.
Amira’s whole life has been defined by loss, the horror of watching her mom, her dad and her two older brothers turn into dust right in front of her eyes permanently imprinted on her memory.
There were very few things that could be more life altering than to watch half the universe disappear at seven years old, especially when her own universe left her alone in the cold.
Five years without them and just under five years having them back and yet Amira feels a lot more like that seven year-old girl again, bringing her comforter over her head as she curls up into the fetal position and keeps scrolling.
Spider-Man’s name is Peter Parker. Spider-Man was twenty years old.
Spider-Man is dead .
It doesn’t seem real, just as terrifying and impossible as it was when the entire world came back – feeling the same kind of disorientation she did when she moved out of the group home that she lived at during the Blip and back into her family’s home as she switches towards her news app.
The story’s the same, giving the same details, but Amira wants to know more – wants to understand something that her brain is giving her a hard time accepting.
He’s twenty years old which in another life would’ve sounded old but for her just feels young , thinking that Spider-Man should be older if he hadn’t been one of the Blipped– thinking of how or why Spider-Man– Peter Parker – could’ve ever lost a fight to actually die .
Amira feels cold, scrolling on her phone under the covers– hearing her dad’s laughter and her mom’s jokes through the door.
She wants to ask them if they know, if they care– if they even understand what it’s like to keep living when someone else doesn’t.
She wants to ask if they remember what it was like to be dead.
Amira burrows herself further into her blankets, eyes still on her screen, scrolling and scrolling to try and understand something she doesn’t think she ever will.
The funeral home is still dark when Deja gets in. Even on a morning like this—arguably the start of the most important day in the family-owned home’s history—Mrs. Ahmed still won't arrive a minute before eight o’clock. Luckily Deja has a key, though she’s never had to use it to open the place until now. She can take care of a client in less than an hour, usually.
Peter Parker deserves more care than her usual.
She makes her way to the basement, setting up her kit carefully before heading over to Freezer Three, finding her fingers lingering on the handle.
It’s not typical of her to pause like this. She’s been a mortuary cosmetologist for nearly two decades now, and dead bodies—even the really messy ones—quit making her so much as blink twice years ago. They’re just people, people who although deceased still deserve respect just the same as the living do. It’s that principle that makes Deja proud of her work—proud that she is able to give her clients the dignity of looking as close to how they’d appeared in life as possible, often giving their surviving loved ones some comfort in the process.
With a deep breath and a shake of her head, Deja opens the freezer and rolls out the body. She takes off the sheet, gaze lingering on his slack, bruised and cut features.
“I’ll get you looking good, baby, don’t you worry,” she assures her client, pulling her kit closer.
Normally this is where she would put on headphones, singing to herself as she washes and curls hair, tapes eyelids down and glues lips together, adds foundation and blush and lip color to bloodless features. Somehow today just doesn’t feel like a day for music, and so Deja leaves her headphones in her bag, settling into her work in silence.
Technically, Peter Parker has no loved ones. Deja had looked over his file the night before, and there was no listed family, not even contacts for arrangements.
Mrs. Ahmed had taken this client on because the city had asked her to, not because a loved one called. But Deja knows from her life’s work that having loved ones and being loved aren’t always the same.
Peter Parker isn’t just any young man. He’s Spider-Man, and that means he’s beloved the entire city over.
If Deja hadn’t known that from living in New York City since she moved here at eighteen, she’d certainly know by the GoFundMe Mrs. Ahmed’s son Ayan had set up to cover the large public funeral’s costs. Typically the city gave a small stipend for every unclaimed client Mrs. Ahmed agreed to take, and they had done the same for Peter Parker too. But there was no way that meager stipend—barely enough to pay for a small funeral, a casket and a cemetery plot placement, typically—would cover what was needed for the city’s most loved superhero, and so the Ahmeds had taken a chance with the fundraising platform.
By any measure it had been an astonishing success. The goal of ten thousand dollars had been surpassed in an hour, and within twenty-four it had hit six figures.
In response Mrs. Ahmed had gone all-out, and Spider-Man’s funeral would be one of respectful but hardly immodest luxury for the young man. Whatever was left over Mrs. Ahmed had already pledged to donate to Queens’ F.E.A.S.T. program at Deja’s recommendation, knowing Spider-Man had publicly supported the nonprofit for years. There were many ways to use your talents and fame for good, and the friendly neighborhood hero had taken advantage of nearly all of them, never once asking for credit or even a thank you. Despite his notoriety and bright costume, he hadn’t seemed to like the spotlight very much.
That fact fit with what Deja had read about Peter Parker in his file and also online, and she isn’t confident a decadent and massive public funeral would have been his personal choice. But she does believe he would have been honored by the outpouring of grief and the city’s need to do something, anything, to thank him for what he’d given them over the years. Even if it’s just a few dollars individually donated to make sure he gets a worthy sendoff.
It’s certainly an honor to have him as a client, Deja thinks as she sets to work preparing him. The coroner’s office had cleaned his body and packed the wound in his abdomen before his transfer, so all that was left for Deja to do was hair, makeup and the suit.
Even with the extra care she takes, hair and makeup are completed fairly quickly. It’s the suit that stops her up short, Deja opening the large hanging wardrobe bag expecting a typical, if atypically expensive, funeral tux only to find what can only be one of Spider-Man’s actual suits. There’s a note in Mrs. Ahmed’s handwriting taped to the chest.
Mailed to us by an anonymous donor. Call Ayan if you need help with dressing.
Deja runs her fingers over the fabric, noting the clean, careful sewing lines and the dozens of small patches that had clearly been hand-mended. On a closer look she can see small brown stains in certain places. How many times Spider-Man had been wounded and gotten up, she wonders, before he had fallen his last?
For the first time since she’d gotten to the funeral home that morning, Deja feels her stoically professional demeanor crack a little. Over the years she’s learned how not to let the job get to her too much, doing her best to focus on the comfort aspect—the good she does for grieving families and friends—and to push away the devastation that can gnaw at you when you do a job that all too often involves heartbreak and tragedy.
Peter Parker is by no means the youngest client she’s had, not even close, and so it’s not his age that hits her like a physical blow now, although there is no doubt that in a perfectly just world he wouldn’t have been laid out in this basement for another fifty years or more.
What causes her eyes to tear up is the thought that this young man had probably pulled on this costume thousands of times, day and night and the short twilights in between.
He was only twenty, Deja remembers. Too short of a life to begin with, and yet he had lived so much of it for everyone but himself. For Deja, and Mrs. Ahmed, and Ayan. For his other neighbors. For the world.
It takes over an hour to get everything adjusted right, but eventually, Spider-Man is ready—suited up for the very final time.
Only one thing left to do now.
She takes the mask from where it’s hanging inside the wardrobe bag. She runs her fingers over the lenses, then across a few of the long, thin black spiderweb lines. With considerable care, Deja sets it on Peter’s stomach, before arranging his hands on top of it, fingers just barely clutching at the handmade symbol of red- and blue-hued hope—a symbol that in his death speaks to years of sweat, blood and tears, and to a sense of impossible duty, and to never-ending sacrifice.
Deja’s had thousands of clients in her many years of work. Most she forgets, an inevitable byproduct of such a long career in her chosen field.
As she carefully covers the body of Spider-Man with the sheet again and rolls his table back into Freezer Three, now ready for this afternoon’s funeral—Deja thinks that she won’t forget Peter Parker any time soon.
“LET US IN! LET US IN! LET US IN!”
“SHUT UP!”
“Have some respect!”
Seth pushes through the crowd, ignoring the voices of everyone around him as he tries to get closer to the front.
Trinity Church wouldn’t have been the place Seth would’ve thought they’d bury Peter Parker, not from all that he’s learned from him in the few days since his death.
Peter Benjamin Parker, twenty year-old Midtown school dropout, born and raised in Queens– Seth shouldering past some person who’s sobbing like they knew him personally as he gets closer and closer to the barriers keeping the crowds out.
Seth is currently skipping class to be here, curiosity driving him more than any kind of love or loss for the fallen superhero. Seth was from Oregon, a long way away from New York City and far enough removed from living with the Avengers in his backyard that his own feelings about everything were distant– objective, despite what his boyfriend tried to say.
“ Everyone knows who Spider-Man is,” Kawhi argued the night before, to which Seth had just shrugged as he kept scrolling through Reddit.
“I know who he was but he’s– I mean he’s younger than us. Was younger than us? I don’t know how you talk about a dead superhero now.”
“ Dude ,” Tyler had said, Seth’s roommate and someone who, from the Captain America poster plastered across his wall, clearly liked superheroes more than Seth ever would. “He’s not just some superhero. He’s– he’s fucking Spider-Man.”
“ Was Spider-Man,” Seth pointed out again before getting a wadded-up paper thrown at him, keeping quiet as his boyfriend and roommate commiserate over the loss of someone that Seth is having a difficult time understanding the real importance of.
Seth understands the gist: guy gets powers in a world where Norse gods and aliens exist, probably saw the Battle of New York through his own eyes and decided to suit up for himself. What Seth doesn’t understand is why this Peter Parker guy would keep doing this– everything that Seth’s been able to find about him in the days since Spider-Man died indicating that for as many good things that Spider-Man seemed to do around the city, Peter Parker had almost nothing to show for it.
His parents were dead. No family or any kind of friends who seemed to know that he was living with a dual identity. A GED and a part-time job at the Daily Bugle, which made Seth laugh at the irony of Peter Parker making money from the same publication that talked shit about him constantly.
Empty social media profiles, a shitty apartment that a Redditor on the threads that Seth was lurking through tried to break into before they got arrested– an ask blog on tumblr that claimed to be Spider-Man’s neighbor answering so many questions that it made Seth think it was either scarily accurate or just someone with too much time on their hands making shit up.
There were more questions than answers, more things Seth wanted to know about what kind of person would keep doing the superhero thing and keep it a secret– to keep taking hit after hit with no kind of reward or any kind of credit except for whatever paycheck J. Jonah Jameson seemed to give him.
More to know about the person and not just the superhero in a way that he can only hope that the funeral will actually give him, watching the people who walk in and frowning as he sees who they are.
“Is that–”
“Fucking celebrities are let in but not US? NOT THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE SPIDER-MAN!?” The guy next to him yells, Seth’s suspicions of who he is watching confirmed as he scans the incoming crowd– looking around for anyone that he doesn’t recognize or just anyone who isn’t famous .
“Has any of his family showed up?” Seth asks, the guy who yelled shaking his head furiously.
“Who fucking knows when we got a fucking ACTOR showing up again! YOU’RE FROM CALIFORNIA YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SPIDER-MAN!” he yells, Seth rolling his eyes and taking to scanning the crowd– the curiosity he’s had in the last few days just magnified now as he glances around.
Seth knew that Peter Parker didn’t seem to have any kind of family but for no one to show up for him felt odd, not having to have grown up with the Avengers in his backyard to feel a semblance of empathy for someone younger than him to not have anyone here for him .
The yells and the cries of the people around him echo around in his mind, cheers and jeers from adoring fans and protestors alike fading out in the background as he looks to the front of Trinity Church.
Seth hadn’t been to mass since he left Oregon but he finds himself saying a little prayer for Peter Parker then.
He had enough fans as Spider-Man.
Seth could be here for Peter Parker too.
“Late as usual then, eh Murphy?”
“Oh shuddup, Danny,” Siobhán says playfully, finally stepping through the doorway of Spider-Man’s apartment, where she’d been watching the proceedings until Danny had finally noticed her. “You know I had to take my gran to the doctor.”
Danny gives her a smile that tells her he was just playing around too. He’s at the other side of the apartment, which isn’t saying much since the place is the size of a shoebox. Siobhán taps one of the boxes already packed—seeing the NYC Department of Unclaimed Funds & Property logo emblazoned on the tag taped to the top, and just below it Danny’s neat handwriting that simply says Books —with her foot.
It’s certainly a unique job to help locate next of kin of the dead or missing, in order that they could receive whatever legal property or funds had been left behind. A job that, while it had existed in some form before the Blip, had been a whole different beast in those five years before everyone had come back, and then an entirely new one again when everyone had returned. Not many stayed at the Department for more than a few years. After nearly seven, Siobhán was a bonafide veteran.
She wasn’t always sure why she stayed. It certainly wasn’t the pay. She supposed at the end of the day, it was probably the hunt more than anything—that satisfying feeling when you were finally able to find someone who knew someone who knew the person who died or disappeared, or when you found the one record you need amidst tens or even hundreds of thousands.
That’s what had made this case so frustrating, honestly. Siobhán is good at her job, and someone like Peter Parker, all of twenty and with no shortage of posthumous notoriety and fame— they should have found at least a relative within a week, tops. Of course, if there’s one thing this job—this life —has taught her, is that what she expects and what actually happens are all too often, not the same thing.
“I’m still not sure why we’re bothering with this at all,” Danny says, more a musing than a complaint—grunting as he lifts a half-full box of what sounds like cheap dishes onto the tiny kitchenette counter, opening another cupboard and beginning to wrap the accompanying glasses. “It’s been nearly three months. If Parker had any surviving relatives, they’d have come out of the woodwork by now even without us finding ‘em.”
“Regardless, you and I both know the records were tampered with,” Siobhán replies, grabbing an empty box from by the door and heading over to the desk. “Maybe we can’t prove it but the fact that there’s nothing connecting him to anyone, not at the Department of Records or Health? Someone had to have gone in and deleted the information, Dan. Probably Stark before he died, or maybe it was that sorcerer’s doing. Wally Weird, or whatever.”
Danny snorts. “It’s Stephen Strange. And I know you know his name, so don’t even try.”
“Maybe so,” Siobhán banters back, “but you know why we’re doing this, so don’t even pretend about that, either. Just because nobody knows what to do with Parker’s stuff right now doesn’t mean it won’t be claimed or even part of a museum exhibit someday.” She picks up a little Lego figure of Palpatine, making a face before putting it in the box. “Okay, well, maybe not all of this would make the cut for an exhibit, but I bet they could make some of it work.” When Danny glances over she gestures to the sewing machine. “That old thing at least, probably.”
“Yeah,” Danny agrees, and it’s an innocuous enough reply but for the maudlin note in his voice. Siobhán watches as he looks around the apartment again. “It’s kind of sad, don’t you think? Parker saved what, probably ten thousand people as a vigilante? A hell of a lot more, if you count the Battle upstate. But you wouldn’t know it, to look at this place.”
“I think we can blame the landlord downstairs for that,” Siobhán dryly replies, now starting to pack a stack of notebooks, ones she knows from looking for clues in this apartment before are filled with nothing but unsigned drawings—good ones, at that. She wonders not for the first time if they’re Parker’s work, or someone else’s. Only after she fills the box—having placed the kid’s framed GED on the very top—does she continue, “Popescu said he never came in here before the cops and us did, but I know a liar when I hear one. Probably sold all the best Spidey stuff through some underground market already.”
“Nah,” Danny says dismissively, and when she raises an eyebrow at him, “I mean, I think the guy was definitely lying. But I don’t think it was about money, I think it was about—well, about looking out for Parker, in a way. You heard the guy’s kid during our interview. Parker used to play games with her, and Popescu said he was always friendly enough to him too. Plus that mention that people keep stopping by wanting to see the place, and that he never lets anyone in. If he really wanted to make a buck, he’d be arranging tours. Nah, it’s not money. I think he feels some kind of loyalty to Parker.”
Siobhán sighs, not arguing even if she’s still not entirely convinced. It doesn’t really matter what happened to the Spider-Man stuff, if some shady cops took it or Popescu or someone else with access to the place they never found out about. They’re here for Peter Parker’s unclaimed property, as little as there is.
And there really isn’t much, Siobhán thinks with a pang of melancholy as she looks around. It’s not unusual in their job to have cases where people leave behind few belongings, but something about this place—the way it’s free of photos or even any kind of personality—makes her sadder than most. What if the kid really had had nothing else in his life except Spider-Man? And if that was true, had that calling alone been enough to sustain his soul?
They’re questions she’s likely never to get answers to, and she tries to put them out of her mind as she and Danny finish packing up the kid’s place and taking boxes to the truck until there’s nothing left but empty shelves and uncovered furniture.
“Alright, last two boxes,” Danny announces on their last trip upstairs, picking them up and turning back toward the door. “You coming?”
Siobhán takes one last look around the place. Parker’s property will sit in one of the Department’s massive warehouses just over the border in Jersey for a minimum of five years unless claimed, at which time the Department will decide once more whether to continue to hold on to a life’s worth of unclaimed possessions, or sell them at auction.
If it’s the latter, well. That’ll be that, for everything that ever belonged to Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
She wonders if Parker would even mind. Maybe not so much, she lets herself imagine—a rare moment of indulging in optimism for her. Maybe this place is barren not because he had no life at all, but because Spider-Man was the most important thing in his life. Maybe that was intentional, even; a choice that didn’t just mean blood and sacrifice, but what he truly got the most purpose and joy from.
It’s a nice thought, even if she doesn’t entirely understand it herself.
Because maybe Peter Parker did.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” she tells Danny, shutting off the one overhead light and following him out into the hallway, making sure to lock the door behind her.
“Wanna get some Thai before we head over to Jersey to drop this all off?” Danny asks. “I know a place not too far from here that has the best larb in the city.”
Siobhán smiles, leaving behind the mystery of Peter Parker and Spider-Man alike.
“You’re on.”
Gary feels the snow crunch under his feet, hands behind his back as he scans the courtyard.
There weren't a lot of visitors today, a first for the season– the freeze that had rolled in through the city the night before, keeping out all but the most determined guests.
It was honest work, quiet in the way that Marjorie never understood.
“I just don’t know how this doesn’t depress you. You don’t find it depressing?” she’d ask, dithering around their small and cramped kitchen as he’d shrug.
“It’s quiet,” he’d say in response every time– quiet with good pay, enough that while their kitchen was small and cramped, it was theirs .
Gary’s thinking of that kitchen and the smell of soup that had lingered the night before, already looking forward to the homemade tomato he has waiting for him when he looks up and sees people standing at one of the more popular graves he’s kept watch for in the last few months.
Gary keeps his hands behind his back, quietly walking up behind– the wide array of balloons, stuffed animals, and cards that were crowded all around the headstone serving as a backdrop to the two quiet people standing side by side.
They don’t look like tourists, not least of which because the ones who usually made the pilgrimage out here always wore some kind of Spider-Man memorabilia.
Poor taste, if you ask Gary, to come and step on the grave of a kid with a commercialized logo that neither he nor any family seemed to gain from.
It seemed from the city that there wasn’t any family for twenty-year old Peter Parker, not the youngest in his courtyard by far but one of the more tragic– to be laid to rest adored by millions and yet to have no one to claim as your own.
To have no one to claim you as theirs.
Gary is quiet, pausing his morning walk through the cemetery to keep an extra special eye on the grave of Peter Parker– committed that if no one else would claim him as his family that Gary could do his part in keeping watch for himself.
This , Gary thought, was part of the job.
It’s only a few minutes before the two seemed to whisper something to themselves before stepping away, Gary nodding at the two of them as they glance up to him.
Kids, though he would guess they wouldn’t call themselves as much– curly hair that’s stuffed under a beanie with those pom poms his granddaughter always liked to wear, the boy beside her in a blue and gold letterman jacket.
They nod to him in silence, hands shoved into their pocket and walking away from the gravesite– Gary watching the two of them before silently making his way up to where they’d been, curious now and part of his routine.
If Peter Parker had no family to visit him then Gary, like he did for all the unclaimed or left behind, would become that for him.
He takes another few steps, eyes scanning the gifts that are settled around the grave.
Not much since the day before, seeing the display of handwritten notes, cards and childish drawings– nothing to signify that the two kids had left anything at all.
Tourists then, or maybe just the curious– the influx of people who came by the cemetery to pay their respects to their local neighborhood Spider-Man.
Gary pays his own, a quiet moment in a quiet cemetery– a chill through the air in thinking of the life and the death of Peter Parker. No one to claim him, and yet that wasn’t true– a city of strangers that called him theirs.
Gary doesn’t consider himself a particularly philosophical man, but it’s a philosophical idea he’s reminded of then: that of the three deaths.
Spider-Man had completed his first death months ago, when he’d died in battle. The second had come shortly after, when he had been buried by a group of mourners. But the third—it’s the third that is of most importance, and that Gary thinks about now.
The third death, they say, is the last time your name is spoken aloud.
For most people, those who live quiet lives like Gary, that isn’t long after their first and second deaths. Maybe decades, or a hundred years if you’re lucky. But for Spider-Man, for Peter Parker, Gary can only imagine it will be much, much longer.
He looks back, watching as the car the kids had shown up in turns on its ignition, then slowly pulls away. It’s the ones like that—the ones who are in mourning, who clearly aren’t just going to move on to a new celebrity or hero to obsess over in a few days or weeks—that tells him his hunch is right.
Only once the car is out of sight does he turn back to the grave, tipping the brow of his hat.
“You live on, Peter Parker,” he says by way of goodbye before walking away, off to resume his guard duties for the night.
Once more to the gray, cloudy sky.
”Spider-Man lives on.”