Chapter Text
Spider-Man needed information.
Rumours had started to spread last month about a fresh face in Queens. A new gang, set on controlling the borough through the drug supply in the streets. Fronts, in place of local businesses.
Peter decided that this - this here, was what Spider-Man was made for.
He didn't believe in the whispers on the street at first. Sometimes, they were only whispers. He only caught drug-deals without webs connecting them to one another, stray fights in alleyways, unrelated cases solved and wrapped in a bow for the police to take on. Cats out of trees. Old ladies crossing streets. Scattered hotspots of friendly neighbourhood crimes, presented with a flourish and a Spider-Man themed thumbs up. The thumbs-up was trademarked, of course, according to Mr. Stark and his obsession with purchasing things that Peter didn't really need. Who could blame him? The man was a billionaire, although Peter hoped he would stop throwing money in order to solve his problems.
Anyway.
To Peter - word that a gang was forming was the explanation he was searching for. Why?
Curfew. That was why. Weeks of late nights that March had put him in the bad-books with Aunt May. He was dying out here. Scraping just along the edge of his curfew, taking care to wrap up an outrageous number of drug deals, and crawling into his room just before the clock hit eleven. Aunt May was giving him disapproving looks before she sent him off to school each morning, but crime did not have a curfew! Crime didn't have school in the morning!
He was so tired during his classes at Midtown trying to stumble through the material (although Peter had already memorised most of it. Except for Spanish. He was terrible at Spanish) - that he could not believe Mr. Harrington had not noticed. Neither had the teachers. The bags under his eyes were growing by the day, as he sagged further and further into his classroom chair. Neither had Flash, now that he thought about it. If he noticed, he probably would bully Peter harder.
MJ and Ned knew, but they were his best friends. Of course, they were well aware that it was because of his secret 'internship' programme with Mr. Stark. But they didn't approve of their phones buzzing at three AM about the details of due assignments, but crime was crime. And homework still had to be done.
So. The mystery gang.
This new gang had to be responsible. Popping up like moles in the arcade game, forcing him to stay out later and later to round up criminals and the strange escalation in drug abuse in low-income areas. He knocked one down - another took its place.
Of course, it was a gang. Why didn't he notice it earlier?
His first gang!
Peter believed he was moving up in the world, dipping his toes into organised crime. Queens was full of purse-snatchers and thieves, but never an organised gang. Rounding up a group of organised, professional criminals was another first for Spider-Man, if he didn't count The Vulture and the disaster that was saving Mr. Stark's plane.
He couldn't wait to take it down.
But, there was one problem he had been mulling over. It was Mr. Stark.
The man was generous. Caring. Looking out for Peter, so he could look out for the little guy. It felt like Peter was diving into something that was different from just looking up to his hero. He was learning who the man truly was without publicity. Without fame.
But Peter had decided one long night that it was a bad idea to tell Mr. Stark that he was hunting down a gang in Queens. Not until he had followed every lead, had closed the case and could show him that he was able to do it. Knowing the man and his baby-protocol he installed into Karen, the billionaire would stop him from trying before he even said the word 'gang'.
And Peter knew he was ready. He knew these streets, knew the people who ran local businesses. Knew the people suffering every day from drug addiction across town, searching for another hit.
If Mr. Stark even cared. That was another issue carving away at his chest (and maybe, something else contributing to the late nights. He wasn't going to tell anyone about that.)
Peter was, admittingly, still wary of admitting things to Mr. Stark after The Vulture, and the ferry. Sometimes, when Peter left the Tower after an internship evening, where they messed around in the lab and Mr. Stark had him build robot models or suit prototypes and buried themselves in a fresh project - Peter wondered how invested the man really was in Peter Parker, compared to the friendly, neighbourhood Spider-Man he was mentoring. He had apologised for taking the suit, and they had gotten closer, establishing a mentor and pupil relationship, true. Sometimes they ordered takeaway. Mr. Stark let him rant about school and they made jokes about everything and anything,
But something in Peter was screaming at his gut, late in the dead of night when he came home or finished a bust, if Peter was really worth the hassle for a guy like him.
After Uncle Ben, that part of himself was still raw to the touch.
The thought of the suit being taken away again, at any moment, made his heart sink in his chest. He wasn't going to risk it.
He wasn't going to risk the lives of the people of Queens, if that technology would help him save just a few more from harm.
If Peter was in over his head, then he would call back-up. Decision made. But right now, Queens needed Spider-Man to step up.
This gang. It was secretive. He had first taken this new gang news seriously when a struggling father came to him on patrol, panting and waving him down to the ground from his web-slinging. Confused, and a little hungry since he was heading back home, Peter swung down to meet him in the alleyway. He struggled to hear the man shouting over the distracting sound of the late nightclub next-door, music thumping in his ears. But he understood the gist.
The man was being blackmailed, his business taken over. He was worried for his family. He wanted to put his daughter through college.
An infection - into Queens, from Hell's Kitchen. Or so he claimed.
Peter sent him off with a promise to look into it. He pulled on one thread, and found a thousand.
They called themselves The Cranes.
He raided his first site of The Cranes on Wednesday. It was a phone repair store, and luckily, he knew the owners of the bakery next door for a few years. That advantage allowed him to stake the place out on the following Saturday (he had to wait until there was no school or Mr. Stark to stop him), stuffing his face full of sugar donuts and drinking far too much coffee for a spider-enhanced teenager. He sat there from noon to evening. Hat and sunglasses on. Like they do in the spy movies.
And the stake-out bore fruit. He tracked members leaving and entering, and gave himself a pat on the back for a job well-done.
The following Monday, when the sun had set, he broke in as Spider-Man and webbed them up. The three men were quickly incapacitated for the police. He had been right. It was a drug manufacturing den in the dusty, sealed basement. Plastic wrapping covered the walls, that Peter avoided touching, because they were frankly - gross.
Three down. Many more to go.
He had needed more information if he was going to strike again. Dismantle it, piece by piece. He had no idea who was in charge of The Cranes, or the extent of the gang, but he was keeping his patrols closer to Hell's Kitchen, where they had rumoured to come from, and was asking nicely to any criminal he happened to web up for more information. He even said please.
He would keep trying. But it wasn't until another week that Peter got word of a fresh lead.
It sent him on that Friday night to Henry Street. Across from that decrepit, abandoned warehouse that Peter still saw in his nightmares.
It was the warehouse that changed Spider-Man's entire career, and sent him rocketing towards meeting one of the darker vigilantes of New York. If anyone even called a man like that, a vigilante.
.
.
.
It was time for him to investigate the lead.
Peter arrived after the sun and long disappeared from the New York skyline. He monitored the warehouse he was directed to from the outside, perched on the roof of a neighbouring building and wind whipping against his back.
On first glance, it looked, at least to Peter, completely abandoned. Desolate. Rotting wooden scaffolding climbed the three-story building, where moss fought with the rust to cover the sides, and it was standing solitary on the right side of the street, where the only businesses nearby were few and far between. As if people had refused to make a home nearby.
Peter looked down on the corrugated warehouse with hesitation. It was not inviting, at all. Kind of gross. He was starting to see a pattern for The Cranes. Number one: things that he wouldn't want to touch without his suit on.
The nearest business was a car wash was far down the road, out of sight and around the block. He made a note to investigate it next. He didn't have a car to clean, but who knew. Maybe before going in, he could check with Mr. Stark about a tetanus shot despite his super-healing.
Just to be sure.
The lead that had lead him there that quiet, windy night had come from a prostitute who was furious that drug use was rising in her area. Her girls, she said, as she chewed her gum - didn't need more trouble. And the customers who brought it in came from this warehouse on Henry Street.
Squatting near the edge, he strained to hear if anyone was inside. He only heard the noises of Queens, echoing back at him. It sounded quiet indoors, but it would be hard for him to know if he was missing anything until he was inside. No rain to muffle his hearing. No foot-traffic, in or out within the last three and a half hours. No cars parked on the curb. His senses weren't sending him a warning of danger.
Huh.
Maybe it really was abandoned, and The Cranes were gone already. Or, it was never used to begin with. He bit the inside of his cheek, thinking it over.
He didn't want to stake it out for longer and not get anything out of the night, when he could be traversing his regular patrol route instead. It would be worthless to sit there and learn nothing.
Unless. A grin spread across his face.
"Time for detective Peter to be on the case," he mumbled to himself.
If Peter could take a look inside the warehouse from a safe distance, he could scope it out without alerting The Cranes. His eyes tracked the boarded up windows from the front of the building, haphazard wooden planks crossing the shattered window panes. Peter wondered if there was a window on the side or the back where the wood had rotted, just like the scaffolding seemed to have done. It would give him a clear view.
His spider-sense was quiet. The building was silent. All he could pick up on was the droplets of water damage leaking through the ceiling, and the stray scuttle of a rat hurrying along the ground.
If nobody was home, that meant more information for Peter to collect. Maybe he could go inside.
After debating with himself for a few minutes, checking the time before his curfew and tapping his foot restlessly on the brick, he made a decision. Slapped his cheeks and shook his head. It was game time.
He would take a quick look. For Queens. No matter how creepy or gross it was, looming there. If he heard someone or saw anything, or his sense for danger altered him - he would simply come back again during the daytime for a longer stake-out. Maybe even ask his Guy In The Chair to check the cameras. Ned would be ecstatic if he heard that Peter was finally taking down a gang!
Peter crawled down the side of the building and faced the intimidating warehouse.
He swiftly webbed across the road and meandered around to the rear, crouching low in the shadows of looming metal and corrugated iron posts. The beams seemed to be creaking as he passed near them. Falling apart from age. He shook his head, trying to remove the feeling of being crushed under a warehouse, unable to call for help, unable to breathe. Taking a deep breathe, he forced himself to continue, and crawled over some trash cans that were tipped over. Kept an ear out for any sign of trouble inside.
When he spotted a high-window, without glass, without wooden planks, and with pigeon nests empty in the frame, he called eureka. Finally! It was a story above him, bleak and dark.
Peter webbed silently to the crook of the roof and lifted himself onto the squat opening. He squinted downwards to see what he could find.
Well. Nothing.
No sign of life. No immediate sign of crime. That was disappointing. He cursed himself. It meant that this probably wasn't the base of The Cranes, or if it was, maybe there was more information on another section of the bottom floor, and he would have to traverse the space to get it. Find an office. Warehouses had offices, right?
The space was pitch dark, and eerily black, save for the pale glow of the streetlights from his position. Peter eyed the wooden crates, and his lengthened shadow, squeezed beneath the dark sides and lit brightly from behind him, like a shadow against a false moon.
To investigate, he had to take risks.
It was only when he had lowered himself down gently onto the crates and painstakingly crawled to the ground, did he realise the scent that had began to clog up his nose. He scrunched it up and flinched.
It reminded him of bruises and cuts after a night on the streets. Or his Spider-Man suit. Or bullies.
Most of all, it reminded him of Uncle Ben.
He gagged at the overwhelming, metallic scent of blood. Because that was what he had found. Blood that sent his senses into overdrive. The fumes were strong. Stronger than Uncle Ben.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
"Please," Peter whispered into the darkness. Not this. Not The Cranes. But there was no answer. Only silence. He squinted to see further ahead of himself, make out the shadows that cornered him in place, despite the wide open floor of the warehouse. Closing in on him. He was terrified of enabling night-vision in the suit. Somehow, he knew what he would find.
Peter knew exactly what he had stumbled into. Although, he had never experienced it in the suit. Not as Spider-Man.
The warehouse was devoid of life. But maybe - it wasn't empty.
"Karen," he whispered.
"Yes, Peter?"
"Can you," he swallowed, his throat dry. "Can you activate night-vision mode for me?"
"Of course. Activating night-vision mode now."
Brown and dark-red liquid seeped from the grates above, dripping like water onto the ground. Pooling around dips in the flooring. Not water leaking. Blood.
A shadow was laying directly in front of him, horizontal. Dead. He had thought it was a sack of - of something else. Another, behind it. A man, with a silhouette of dark hair, was collapsed across the room against the wall, a blackened spray against the metal. A fourth. A fifth. Small round bullet casings flung across the room, like afterthoughts.
A sixth man. A seventh. Eighth. A bullet-proof vest, but they didn't aim for his chest. The number was rising and rising, and the room was spinning, and there was violence in the act as if it was a painting. Peter noticed that much. Bloodied, gruesome. Definitely headshots. Clinging to a table. Laying in their own wounds. A gun, stranded at his own feet. Peter gagged again.
He didn't need a danger sense to find some. The danger had come, and clearly wrecked havoc on The Cranes.
"Peter, I am sensing an elevated heartbeat and high blood-pressure. Should I contact Mr. Stark?" Karen said to him, but it sounded like vague words without meaning. Muffled.
Peter opened his mouth to respond, but shut it again. His mind was racing.
Who could have done this - this murder? Were these innocent people, caught unawares by a mass murder on a rampage? Or were these really The Cranes that Peter had been looking for, as he was starting to suspect they were?
His eyes flickered across the room, counting bodies. Some were in suits. Many held guns. It was the only thing staving off his panic attack from rising up and drowning him into oblivion. Spider-Man didn't get panic attacks. Spider-Man was better than Peter Parker.
Ha. Imagine. Peter Parker, a year and a half ago, fourteen, thinking he would be here. Frozen solid, shivering in a warehouse, looking at a massacre that he was made to stop.
That wasn't funny. Not a joke. Peter was struggling to breathe.
"Peter?" said Karen, calm and resolute as always. As programmed.
"No, no no," Peter mumbled. "Not now, Karen. Oh my god!"
"Peter, I am sensing-"
"Karen, manual override, password; Underoos! Code 24!" he gasped, clutching his chest. "Shut up!" And the AI was silent.
The quiet helped. Peter took deep breathes.
He jumped in place when his hearing picked up on a car. It meandered down the street beside the warehouse and turned the corner. Peter could assume they were coming to finish the job. Coming to kill him. He was a witness, after all. But they never came, and he listened to the tires roll away and out of his range. He fought, then - not to throw his meatballs and spaghetti that him and Aunt May had for dinner up and onto the ground. She would kill him for losing calories.
Do not puke. Bad. Bad to throw up and leave DNA at a crime scene.
Peter rode through the attack in waves, trying to remember his breathing exercises. The breathing, and soon wrestling it under control, meant that he stumbled back to his feet in a matter of minutes. That was Spider-Man. He wouldn't let it get him down.
Spider-Man didn't have panic attacks.
Seventeen. There were seventeen bodies. Some had their brains -
He didn't want to think about it. Spider-Man was in work mode. And he had a job to do.
Peter creeped forward between the unmoving shapes. Like a shadow of himself. There was a crime to solve. That was it. These people, to Peter, seemed as if they were shot that very night, and the wounds were fresh. He made a reminder to come back for the casings, so he could identify the weapon. They had clearly died, however, before Peter had even come close to the scene. He would have heard breathing otherwise. Maybe a straggler, crawling to survive. Perhaps, if he had come earlier, he would have managed to spot the culprit.
Could he have stopped this?
Peter walked further through the bodies. He imagined some, like him, had families and loved ones.
Suddenly, his eyes caught an outlier. A solitary trail of blood weaved between the scattered mess of bodies. He narrowed his eyes at the trail, following it. It ran under his feet, dripping by between his legs and weaving through the collapsed men. Almost following how Peter had just tracked between the bodies.
Maybe the culprit was doing what he was. Checking to see if the men were dead. A shiver ran up his spine. He concluded that him and this person had both stood as still as a statue in the darkness, right on that spot under hit feet, and observed the display. None of the other bodies had trails. It had to be that.
His eyes followed it, lenses flaring to brighten the image of blood stains. The mystery pattern proceeded to drip, tiny splashes on the concrete, across to a fire exit door which was shut at the eastern side of the warehouse. Peter blew out a stream of air, and felt his clammy neck stick to his hair under the mask. A clue.
Was it a survivor? Or the killer?
"Come on, Pete," he said to himself. "Grow up and go after him."
And that's what he did.
Shaking the life into himself, Peter stalked towards the door and elbowed it open, fighting the disorientation that made his balance poor and his dinner threaten to come up. The night air relieved something of the scene he had just left behind. It brought him to the cluttered alleyway behind the warehouse, stacks of short rooftops and thin aerial poles ahead.
There. Another part of the blood trail used the squat dumpster to reach the low-lying gutter of the building ahead and climb upwards. Bloody palmprints stained the ledge. Turning off his night vision, Peter clambered up to the rooftop after it, hoping to find whoever it was alive and breathing. Thankfully, his shaky frame did not need to be good at climbing at that moment. His sticky hands did all the work for him and glued to the brick, and he heaved himself upwards and across to search further.
Listening.
The drip continued. He could hear it, now. Was it an injury, or had the man gotten personal with one of his victims for a murder? He ignored the stray cat yowling, a block away.
He followed the trail onward until he heard him breathing. And then he saw him.
A figure was hunched against the skyline, limping away from him and breathing quickly, as if he couldn't get enough air. It was the frame of a tall well-built man, with curled shoulders. A duffle bag rattled, slung over one shoulder. A bullet-proof vest cloaked in black. A semi-automatic straddled under his armit. A pistol in his hand.
An arm, clutched to his side. Blood leaked along it and leisurely let gravity bring it downwards.
Not giving himself time to doubt, Peter made a decision.
"Stop!" he called firmly.
The silhouette froze. Peter carefully walked forward. He approached, until there was nothing but open space and twenty paces between them. But it felt much, much closer.
"Spider-Man," the stranger said, in a gravelled, angry voice that struck something in Peter. That he was recognised before he was seen.
The man then turned around.
At once, Peter knew he had made a mistake.
It was The Punisher. And his pistol was raised to shoot.
"Punisher," he exhaled.
The confidence knocked away from his chest. It was The Punisher of all the people he could meet that night.
In his time patrolling the streets as Spider-Man, Peter had yet to even meet another vigilante of New York. They tended to stick to their own territories. Now, he was meeting a murderer, down the barrel of his gun. And he was embarrassed to be shaking like a jackhammer. The man glared at him. Peter jittered his eyes across the injury that he held onto to, and hesitated on what to say. The wind threaded between them, and the air-vents next door clanked and spluttered. Castle bet him to it.
"That's me," he said plainly, gesturing with the weapon. "Now. Spider-Man. Are you gonna do somethin' stupid?"
Peter gulped. He hoped the man couldn't hear it.
"You left - that, that massacre in the warehouse. You murdered them all."
Castle remained silent.
"Why?" Peter gasped. "The Cranes-"
"The Cranes? What about the goddamn Cranes?"
But Peter was rushing ahead, chasing a resolution, trying to make the world okay and safe and fair in his mind again "-did they do anything to you? Something that you couldn't forgive, to move in and instead you chose to - incapacitate?"
"Did The Cranes do anythin' to me, huh? What is this? You think this is some, uh, some fuckin' revenge story, Spidey?"
"Did they?" He pushed. "Drug deals, shady - shady fronts. I heard they came in from Hells Kitchen."
"Red cleaned them out before they could even breathe. The drugs ain't shit."
"Who is Red?"
Castle ignored his question. "Not drugs. Drugs are nothing. Human traffickers. Scum of the earth. I'm cleaning up the stragglers who thought they could try make a name for themselves again. Fucking idiots."
Peter frowned. That didn't make sense. None of it made sense.
"Wait. That's - no. They were smuggling drugs. I've seen it! Not people. I thought they were-"
"You have no idea about any of this shit, do you?"
Peter shut his mouth with the snap of his teeth. The man was right.
Human trafficking. The Cranes were human traffickers.
"The rest of them? Fuckin' vermin runnin' to the next borough, diluting the drugs they used to keep the victims controlled to sell. I bet that's what you picked up on, huh?" he sniffed. "Worthless pieces of shit. They'll break up by the end of the month. I'll make goddamn sure of it."
No. No way.
Peter refused to believe that the gang he had found were only the remnants of a scattered group that had already lost. That - that had been dealing and selling people. That he was too late already.
"Let me," he breathed, trembling. Finding another point to stabilise himself. Ignoring the bombshell the man had dropped about The Cranes. He came to a sudden decision, leaving his lips in a tumble.
"Let me web it. That injury. It will seal the wound."
"Back off," the man growled, but Peter couldn't let him bleed out. It wasn't right. The man probably wouldn't even make it down to the street. Neither was murder right, and the blood and guts spraying on the walls, and the brains that squealed under his feet, and his senses going haywire -
"Please," Peter whispered. His voice carried on the wind. "And then. And then you're under arrest," he swallowed.
The man let out a gruff laugh. It was slow, and it sent crawling shivers up Peter's arms.
"You scared?" Castle said. "Stuttering like a fuckin' car engine. Never seen a gun before?" He kept the pistol steady and controlled. It didn't waver from the centre of Peter's forehead.
That wasn't why he was scared. Uncle Ben was shot, but Peter was never scared of guns. He stopped people with guns in the streets every week.
He was scared of the scene left in the warehouse, and the man in front of him. He was even more terrified by the fact that the murderer was going to die before Peter could get him help.
He doubted the man would last long without pressure on the injury, wouldn't make it to wherever he was going to patch himself up. That scared Peter. Another body to add to the pile inside, another waste of life.
It was the next thought, that Peter would have to move before the man fired his gun, that scared him more. He couldn't guarantee that his web would make it before the bullet was fired.
"I'm scared," he shuddered. "I want to arrest you. Get you help, before you bleed out, man."
"God. You're just like Red."
"I don't understand," Peter said. "I don't know what you're-"
"You don't know shit," he spat. Peter recoiled. He suddenly felt very small. "And neither do your rich buddies up in their Avenger penthouses, and your fuckin' saviour complex, and I don't have to listen to this from you. Go back into Queens. Go back and save cats out of trees."
"Just let me help," Peter pleaded again, slowly raising his arms forward from his sides.
If he could just shoot his webbing over the wound, and rely on his sixth sense to miss any retaliation, they could both make it out alive from this. But even Peter knew that it was a foolish, childish idea.
"Don't try it," Castle warned lowly. Tense. Knew he was a fool. "I'm telling you now! Don't fucking' try it!"
But Peter had to try it. The man was too pale from blood loss.
The night gasped. Peter moved.
Because there was no playing hero about who deserved to be saved, or not. Spider-Man would risk his life, to save Frank Castle's life. To save anyone's life. Whether the man had morals or not. End of.
He dived to the side and aimed for part of the man's uncovered chest next to his bullet-proof vest. Webbing shot out like lightning. The crack of a pistol struck Peter like a whip.
The impact felt like death. Because The Punisher didn't miss.
"Fuck," the man said, hissing in pain and looking down at the webbing that now splattered at his side. "Fuck! " he snapped, turning to Peter.
And then, he froze. Stared.
Pain.
Peter was down, the night spinning around him. He winced and dug his fingers into the concrete roof that he now sat on, trying to ignore the feeling of his face burning like it was doused in fire. Pushed the feeling away.
He couldn't see anything out of his right eye because it stung with burning, aching blood. It made his heart do summersaults in his chest with the stress. Not knowing what had happened. How bad the damage was. All he knew was the pain of the shot, and the ringing in his ears, and the flesh taken out of his cheek.
The gun sounded like Uncle Ben.
Castle had taken a chunk out of his face with a grazing bullet. Peter, had almost just died.
His mask was crumpled to the ground beside him, partly torn. Ripped away from the bullet that had nearly buried itself into his skull in seconds. Karen was silent, still under override procedures from Peter's panic attack earlier.
God. Peter suddenly, desperately, wanted May.
"See?" Peter chuckled, turning his jaw weakly in order to garble out the words, despite the pain. Spider-Man was brave, despite the pain. "The web - the webbing sealed it off. I've done it before." He gestured to the site of Castle's wound, now wrapped in sticky web fluid that acted as a makeshift bandage, while blood ran down the side of his head and tangled into his hair.
Peter had glued the strap of the mans duffle bag along his side, against the stark bullet-proof vest that threatened with a symbol for a skull. "It dissolves in two hours."
The man said nothing. Peter had to laugh, or he would cry.
His face was exposed.
"Who's the scared one now, huh?" he croaked, his expression crumpling despite himself. It triggered something in Castle that set the man moving again, like a steam engine ready to blow.
"Fuck!" he barked out. Peter flinched. The man whipped his head back towards him at the movement.
"Shit, kid. Stay down." There was a wild, unfamiliar look in the man's dark eyes. Reaching out over a ravine. "Stay the fuck down!"
Peter stayed, wide-eyed. He wasn't moving to begin with.
Slowly, he lowered himself further down onto the roof of the building, until he was so low he couldn't seem more passive. He knew the warning wasn't a bluff. Blood seeped into his lips from his open cheek, tasting metallic and sour.
He pinched his lips to ignore the taste.
They were looking face to face at one another, but Peter had no idea what the man was seeing in his gaze.
Maybe he was seeing terrified Peter Parker. Or maybe, he was seeing the stupidly brave Spider-Man that Peter hoped to be. But something had changed in Castle, after the bullet rocketed out of the chamber and sliced into his skin.
"I'm down," he said, his voice hoarse. "Okay?"
The Punisher stared, his jaw clenched.
"I'm - I'm not moving."
Peter had a sense that he was prey, and this was a rattled hunter. He wasn't going to move an inch.
"Okay," Castle said, swallowing lowly. Raw. "Yeah, kid. Okay."
Peter gave him a curt, sharp nod. It sent another stabbing pain into his skull.
The man sniffed, and shakily scanned his surroundings. Inspected the webbing of his wound with a careful finger. The pistol was now down by his side, smoke rising. Peter was grateful he hadn't reached for the semi-automatic.
His wild eyes kept dragging back to Peter, every time. There was a message in them that Peter didn't understand. Like something had clicked into place. Like two worlds had breached into one another, and were ready to unravel, and he was saying something that fought against the two of them to be there, in the blackened night.
"Kid," he rasped. Then nothing.
"Ye-yeah?" Peter said, wary of the silence and what it meant the man would do next.
Castle inhaled. His head swung to shake from side to side, and his lips curled into a snarl, but he visibly hesitated to say another word, choosing to jut his head upwards and stare up at the night sky instead. His throat bobbed with an emotion Peter didn't recognise.
They sat there for what felt like a heavy burden of time. Peter, coiled up on the ground like a spring, watched Castle. Castle simply watched the stars.
An exchange - sealed in a gunshot wound to the head. Saved in a life.
"I can't blame you," he murmured at last. Calmer. A façade betrayed by his strained chin and flickering eyes that never settled. Seeing something that wasn't there. "Fuck, kid."
"I'm not a kid."
The man huffed, his bloodstained fingers clutching onto the webbing at his side. "Not anymore, huh. Old enough for shit like this." Castle grimaced. Gusts of wind blew at Peter's hair, waving the free curls gently to one side. He didn't know what to say.
"Old enough," Peter echoed, soft. Old enough.
"To see shit and do shit like this, kid?" Castle bit, pursing his lips, "You're never fuckin' old enough."
The man heaved his shoulders. Rising to an unknown peak. "And lemme tell you somethin'. Whoever on that - that fucking superhero bullshit that sent a goddamn teenager to these streets?" he said, "Soldiering? Playing pretend in fuckin' spandex for the Avengers?" he hissed in a gravelled whisper, in a vitriolic murmurs that sent shivers up Peter's spine. Peter blinked away the shame.
"That fuckin' bastard sure ain't old enough neither."
Castle spat onto the concrete. It landed next to his own blood. His piercing gaze sluggishly travelled back to Peter. The man, suddenly, was mirrored over the image of Mr. Stark like a negative of a photograph.
It never strayed when he began to stagger backwards and limp away, tracing Peters features, his tears mixing with blood down his jaw. Peter wondered what had happened to the man to make his gaze so sharp, but he knew. Oh, Peter had heard. He was aware of what exactly had happened to The Punisher and his family to create the violent man he had become.
The eyes. It was all written in the caverns of his eyes. They stayed on Peter's, looking for something, until the man had finally vanished from sight.
He waited until he could no longer hear Castle clinging down the building's fire escape stairwell and stumbling into the streets to release a long, shaky breath. He collapsed into a pile of loose limbs that was supposed to represent Spider-Man. Or, someone that the people of Queens used to recognise.
Only the night witnessed the rest of his breakdown on the rooftop.
Later, when he could lift his feeble legs and walk again, Peter sent out a tip to the NYPD about the warehouse. Waited, until he could hear sirens turning towards Henry Street before swinging home. Fleeing, home.
The rest was a blur. Heaving into Aunt May's flat at the brink of curfew, bruising himself on the lip of the windowsill haphazardly. Throwing up in the sink, over and over. And a long cold shower, while his cheek slowly began to knit itself back together, careful not to wake her up with his cries. The ugliest wound he had ever received, chipped out of his cheekbone.
Through the reflection in the mirror, Peter noticed that his right eye refused to focus. Only his left saw clearly. He didn't have the energy to care.
He stuffed his bloodied Spider-Man suit into the back of his closet and curled up in bed. It would stay there until the following day. Until he could deal with what had happened. Until he had the courage, if ever, to tell Mr. Stark.
Because The Punisher had seen his face. And from the look in Frank Castle's eyes at the sight - Peter had no clue what consequences would come of it.