Chapter Text
Lately, Peter had started to believe that nothing good ever lasted around him. That anyone who stood too close would eventually get hurt. Or worse.
He had tried to be strong. To do the right thing. To carry the weight of great power with the responsibility it demanded. But every time he fought to protect someone, life took something else away. His parents. Uncle Ben. Tony. And now Aunt May.
She is gone now. May is gone.
The last piece of his family, taken from him in the fallout of a war he never asked for.
After everything, after sending the villains back to their worlds, after watching two other versions of himself disappear into their own broken realities, he was left standing in the ruins of his own.
No Avengers to turn to. No more Stark to guide him. Pepper had left the city with little Morgan, seeking peace somewhere far away.
Ned and MJ was only friends that was left. Last pieces of normal life he had, and…Peter should leave them for their own safety.
'But just keeping distance is not enough.' Peter thought as realization came.
He finally saw it then: it wasn’t the villains. It wasn’t the battles. It was him. Peter Parker was the thread that tied everyone to the danger. He was the curse inevitably leading everyone to either miserable life or death.
So he made a decision. He tried to fix all the mistakes he has done in his life, and it lead him here. Now he will take totally different approach.
This time, there would be no half-measures. No exceptions. He would erase himself completely, from everyone’s memory, thus from their life. As if Peter Parker had never existed at all.
They would live normal life and there would be no Spider-man in their live who would put their live in danger by his secret identity. And they wouldn't even miss him. 'but I will miss them-' Peter shook his head at the thought. He should stop being selfish. It is fine if he is sad as long as everyone else can be happy.
So, he found Doctor Strange in battlefield, while he was trying to clean all the mess Peter made. He asked sorcerer to cast the spell again. With no exceptions this time.
Strange hesitated. There was a long silence between them, haunted by shared memories that would soon be lost. “If I do this,” he said quietly, “I won’t remember you either.”
Peter only nodded.
Strange saw the look in his eyes. Tired, yet certain. So, with a heavy breath and a flick of his hands, he began the incantation.
He was blinded by light and for solid ten seconds was disorientated. He stoped hearing sounds of the city, his friends voices, Doctor Strange or anything from surrounding world. Then he felt as he was falling before hitting the ground.
Once he collected himself, he looked around. Right now, Peter was sitting in a dim, unfamiliar alley, his suit torn, heart hollow. No one in the world knew his name. No one remembered his face.
There was nothing left of Peter Parker.
Only Spider-Man.
And maybe, that was how it was always meant to be?
With a quiet, rasping breath, Peter pushed himself up to his feet. His muscles ached, his head still buzzing with the remnants of magical static. He looked around, eyes narrowing against the dimness. A dirty alley stretched out between two brick buildings. Trash bins lined the walls, overflowing. The only light came from a flickering streetlamp overhead, barely pushing back the night.
The last thing he remember he felt the spell. Disorienting, blinding and deafening spell.
He felt how he was falling in strange space and then how he 'landed'… there.
But where this there was, exactly?
Peter took a cautious step forward to the streets and whispered, “Karen?”
To his relief, her familiar voice replied almost instantly, calm and composed despite the chaos.
“Hello, Peter.”
“Where am I?” he asked. “What’s the status on the suit?"
“The suit is damaged,” she reported. “Nanobots are functioning at 42% resources critically low. They’re unable to maintain full surface coverage.”
That was expected. He could feel the torn gaps in the 'fabric', the cold air pressing against his skin where the nanolayer had broken down. But it was what she said next that unsettled him.
“I cannot determine your location. GPS signal is unavailable. No satellites found. I am unable to establish coordinates.”
Peter’s brows furrowed. If Karen couldn’t access a satellite, even Stark satellites, it meant one of two things. Either something was wrong with her… or he wasn’t anywhere Stark technology had ever reached and there is almost no such a place on earth.
He took a slow breath, focusing. He could breathe. Good. He could hear heartbeats around him, normal ones, steady and human. Not enhanced like Mantis, or irregular like Drax. That meant, at the very least, he was still on Earth. Somewhere.
“Karen,” he asked, keeping his voice low, “what about network access? Can you connect to anything?”
There was a pause. Then:
“No familiar networks detected. I also believe I’ve lost connection to my base memory archive, my central system is unreachable. My processing is currently limited to the version stored inside this suit.”
Peter blinked. “You mean… right now, the suit is the only place your memory exists?”
“Yes, Peter,” she confirmed. “At this moment, I have no access to any external systems. I am entirely local.”
Peter stood in the shadow of that thought, letting it settle. No memory archive. No backup systems. No network. If something happened to the suit, or to him, Karen would be gone too.
He was alone. 'Shouldn't you be happy? You wanted to be alone, don't you? That was your wish.', he thought as his throat felt tight and his eyes watery.
Peter forced the panic building in his chest to quiet down. He didn’t have time for it.
Not now.
If the spell had gone south again, then he needed to understand how and why. And to do that, he had to figure out where he was first.
"Karen," he said, his voice low and controlled, "what functions do you still have access to?
Karen responded instantly, listing off her remaining capabilities. Just as Peter expected, most of them were stripped down to essential protocols. Vital monitoring, internal diagnostics, basic HUD display. Everything else: communications, scanning, navigation was either disabled or inaccessible.
As she spoke, Peter finally stepped out of the alley, the cracked concrete under his boots giving way to a narrow, shadowed street.
“Switch to stealth mode," he asked quietly. Immediately, his suit shifted seamlessly, fading into a matte black shell, nearly invisible in the night.
It felt strange, walking through the streets like this, exposed yet hidden. The city around him was unfamiliar, and his spider-sense had been humming since he arrived. Not screaming in alarm, but constant, uneasy. Like something was off just enough to keep every nerve alert.
He was painfully aware of how suspicious he must look: a masked man in a skintight black suit wandering the city in the middle of the night. No wonder that when he turned a corner and noticed a man pacing nervously near a car, things escalated fast.
“Hey,” Peter called softly.
The man jolted, spinning on the spot with wild eyes, clearly startled. He scanned the shadows until his gaze landed on Peter, who stood several steps away, hands raised, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible.
“What do you want?” the man snapped, eyes darting, posture rigid.
“I’m not trying to start anything,” Peter said quickly. “I just… I’m lost." He quickly tried to find a reason and excuse to get information and maybe connection from the man without scaring him off. "My phone’s dead, and I was hoping I could borrow yours for a second. Just to get directions.” He said uncertain if the man will believe him, but if he actually can get his phone to connect Karen it will be nice.
He carefully watched the man. He didn’t move. Not an inch.
The man narrowed his eyes. “I’m not giving my phone to some freak in a mask.”
Peter heard him mutter under his breath, “Should’ve never cut through this cursed city…”
He hesitated, then tried another approach. “Is something wrong with your car?”
The man blinked. “What?”
Peter took a careful step forward. “Your car. It looks like you’re having trouble with it. I know a thing or two about engines. I could take a look. If you want, of course.”
It was true, he wasn’t the best driver in the world, but years spent fixing up junk with Uncle Ben had taught him a lot. Add to that the time he’d spent around Stark tech, and Peter had developed a solid knack for mechanics. His passion was always in chemistry and bioengineering, but he never minded learning new, practical things.
The man stared at him, clearly torn. Peter kept his hands up, waiting. Finally, with a tired sigh he looked at his car first and then at Peter, “I’m gonna regret this,” the man stepped aside and nodded at the car.
“Fine. Knock yourself out.”
Peter nodded, carefully approaching, already scanning the car for issues as he rolled up his metaphorical sleeves.