3

Chapter 3: maybe the streets alight, maybe the trees are goneNotes:

1) In the next chapter there will be action!!

2) Enjoy the chapter and leave a kudos and comment!

Chapter Text

Overcast clouds slowly started to cover the sun as they reached Ned's house, Ned switching on a couple of lamps before quickly explaining to his Lola that they were working on Decathlon stuff as Peter and MJ sat down on the plush sofa. She quickly pulled a notepad out of her backpack as Ned sat down, placing two bowls of crisps onto the wooden table before sitting in the leather chair on the opposite side of the table.

"So," she said as she took out a pencil from her pencil case. "Have you two planned anything you want to change in the future?"

"We need to sort out Vulture," he replied, Ned nodding along as MJ jotted it down. "If it goes anything like last time then can I stay here for the night?"

"Sure dude. My parents will still be away so no one is gonna ask questions."

"Wait, what do you mean 'like last time'?" MJ asked, feeling him tense beside her as he and Ned exchanged glances. "How badly did you get injured from the plane crash?"

"Well…" He bit his lip. "I was banged up from the plane crash and had a few cuts and bruises." He excluded the malicious burn on his side that had stung viciously once the adrenaline made its way out of his system, but if Ned didn't know, MJ didn't need to either. There were a few secrets he would take to his grave and the extent of his injuries was one.

He batted away the idea of telling them about the warehouse collapsing on him; they would immediately tell him not to go and he didn't want them to worry about him more than they already did.

"And?" MJ prompted.

"What? There was nothing else."

"Ned's slightly traumatised look suggests otherwise." She wasn't wrong. Ned had pressed his lips together at the memory, doubt and worry in his eyes as he glanced at Peter before looking back at the paper. He knew about the warehouse but had agreed to keep it a secret, knowing how badly Peter had suffered after his fight with Toomes and how embarrassed he had been.

How could the Avengers face such difficult threats and seem relatively fine (he knew it was a façade but the sentiment remained in his mind) when he freaked out at being in an enclosed space for too long.

In a way, this was why he hadn't wanted anyone to know about his experience with Toomes. He couldn't imagine how bad it was for the people who loved him to find out if his PTSD gave any indication of how bad the aftermath of the fight had been.

He couldn't stand the sound of leaky pipes and he refused to let dust gather anywhere for too long, sometimes checking the top of the bookshelves to see how bad the layer of dust was. Sitting on the train was a grievance for the first few months after the warehouse had collapsed on him, his lungs tightening as he simultaneously curled into himself to make the space feel bigger.

He avoided lifts with a passion; MJ had noticed how fidgety he was for the 30 seconds they were in the lift at the mall, only commenting on it once they exited. He had avoided it by saying he was excited for the ice cream they were going to try but he knew he hadn't fooled her.

Ned wasn't any different. He always checked if Peter was okay whenever he was on a particularly stressful patrol around a derelict area with a high crime rate, hacking into the cameras in Peter's lenses and Spider-drone (he had incorporated after a very successful internship Friday) to keep an eye out for any compromises in the structural integrity of the buildings he was in, warning him of anything that could give way.

He was grateful that Ned looked out for him as much as he did, but he often worried that he would tell MJ in a bid to help him even though he didn't want her to know. Whatever happened during Homecoming stayed between them.

Tony hadn't known until a pretty bad evening when he had fallen asleep on the sofa while watching a movie and endured a nightmare of him being stuck under a pillar and he couldn't use his strength to escape when in reality he had entangled himself in the blanket he had draped over himself two hours prior.

One very shaky conversation later and Tony had offered him a comforting hot chocolate and the number for a therapist, saying he would foot the bill to make up for not being there in the first place.

Yeah, he needed to accept that people would be concerned no matter what.

He sighed. "Okay, and a couple of fractured ribs, but they had healed by the next evening. My healing factor takes care of a lot of things."

"You can't rely on that for every situation," she pointed out, brushing her hair out of her face as her eyes softened at his dismayed expression.

He knew he couldn't rely on his healing factor for everything. Almost everyone who had known he was Spider-Man had pointed it out from Ned and May to Tony and Natasha Romanoff.

Tony had made many internship afternoons about making improvements to his suit to protect him from the many threats he encountered on patrol, ranging from a stronger material to protect against really sharp knives -a nasty encounter with a robber had left him with a bad stab wound in his side- to an update for Karen to identify the threat of alien-tech and follow up with safety protocols to avoid the side-effects.

"Well for Vulture I will. I can't contact Tony and Happy doesn't believe me."

"How many times have you called him?" Ned asked. "That reminds me, I don't have his number on my phone yet." He gestured to Ned to give him his phone, typing Happy's number into Ned's contacts as he replied.

"A couple of times. They go to voicemail and Happy won't listen to them until the end of the day, but I doubt he'll listen to them until I earn my suit back from Tony."

"Which is…?"

"A couple of days after I fight Vulture if everything follows our past timeline."

"Speaking of the timeline…" They both turned to face Ned, watching as he drew a line on the scrap piece of paper he had found. "Don't we need to worry about the butterfly effect?"

Peter groaned as he thought Ned's comment through. If they made any changes to the timeline then it would come back to bite them later, wouldn't it? If he was going to avoid going to Homecoming, he was going to change the sequence of events.

He wouldn't steal Flash's car -hopefully it saved him from dealing with any future gloating- and more importantly, he wouldn't ask Liz out, not when MJ still remembered everything and they were basically dating a lot earlier than before.

He wasn't going to ask Liz out, he wouldn't meet Toomes in his 'civilian' state and hopefully Toomes wouldn't work out his identity – he needed to be careful though, there was a chance Tomes would rip off his mask during combat and make everything a hassle.

"Any change we make now will affect the future and if I want to be honest, it sounds like a pain. How did the Avengers time travel and avoid the butterfly effect?" He groaned.

"I mean if they time travelled, there's a chance they went to a different timeline and changed that one instead," Ned replied, sketching something onto the paper and showing it to him and MJ. There was a line marked 'previous timeline' and another line extending from it that was labelled 'current reality?'.

"Considering we can't go back to our previous reality -I wouldn't want to anyway- we have two obvious options: alter this timeline or do nothing and hope the butterfly effect doesn't catch us. I don't think the second option works though because in the previous timeline, we weren't friends and Peter had a massive crush on Liz."

"Dude!"

"It's not like I didn't know. You were super obvious about it with your puppy eyes whenever she passed by," MJ said.

"But it's different now," he said in a futile effort to defend himself.

"I know." She reached out to him, gently holding his hand and squeezing it in an attempt to assure him that she didn't doubt him. "So our only option is to change the events in this reality?"

"Probably," he replied as Ned nodded. "But won't there be a point where we can't predict what will happen? If we make too many changes too early then we won't be able to plan."

He wasn't going to lie to himself: the idea of reacting to the unknown instead of planning for what they knew would happen made his blood freeze. Being sent back to 2016 was a blessing in the sense that they could change things and anticipate the future, but that was all the power they had.

Once he reached the point where he could change nothing and simply had to sit and wait until he needed to react and fight inevitable threats (read: Thanos) it felt like the balance of reality was teetering on a thin platform, waiting for one tiny mistake to tip it over and screw everything up again.

The worst part was the knowledge that he was a tiny force in the grand scheme of stopping Thanos. He didn't know how Thanos found the Power, Space and Reality stones and he wasn't on Vormir to retrieve the Soul stone - he hated the idea of having to find it because he knew a sacrifice was needed but he didn't know how the person was sacrificed.

Would he need to kill someone or sacrifice himself to get the stone? Peter Quill had fallen into a rage and screwed up the plan to defeat Thanos when he found out Gamora had died, and assuming Thanos had sacrificed Gamora for the stone, he really hoped he didn't need to do that. He found out the same happened to Black Widow when he overheard Hawkeye talking about her sacrifice to Thor and it sounded so devastating that he couldn't imagine doing it.

Would he sacrifice himself to save the entire universe?

"I think planning will be useless if Thanos is defeated. We don't even know what happened within the five years we were Blipped," MJ said, cutting through his dark thoughts.

"Yeah, but we have two years to fix stuff until then. One thing at a time," he replied, quelling the anxiousness swirling in the pit of his stomach. As long as he focused on dealing with Toomes and earning back Tony's trust, the timeline would remain similar to what they knew. If push came to shove, it wouldn't be impossible to wing everything else.

"Also, you still haven't explained how Strange messed up the spell."

"Honestly, I don't know and I don't think he does either," he chuckled. "I thought he was super composed when he cast his spells but he said something went wrong with the runes. He never went into more detail."

"Don't you think that sounds weird?" Ned asked, frowning as he stared at the table. "Wasn't he meant to be the Sorcerer Supreme if he didn't get Blipped?"

Peter tilted his head slightly, thinking back to when he had first visited Stephen and Wong had been there and had declared he was the Sorcerer Supreme even though as far as Peter had seen, Stephen was more technically skilled. Maybe there were more technicalities in the process than he had thought.

"Yeah. Maybe there's some weird election process they have," he suggested. "Anyway, we need to focus on how to deal with Vulture. I don't want to let anything spiral out of control."

He hoped his words wouldn't backfire on him.

After a long debate of how they would deal with Toomes, he walked MJ to her house before catching a bus home, checking the weather forecast as the clouds became darker and hoping it wouldn't rain. As nice as summer rain was, he didn't want his books to get wet because of his poor-quality thrifted backpack. It was one of the few things he had meant to replace but hadn't found the time to do – he couldn't be blamed in this circumstance because he had literally just time travelled and was gathering his bearings.

He called out for May as he closed the door, instantly picking up the delicious smell of cheese and pepperoni pizza in the oven. One of the few things she had mastered was making homemade pizzas and there was no chance of him passing it up. She often laughed at how quickly he finished his pizza, knowing how much he loved cold leftover pizza and would have eaten it for lunch if he didn't eat like a starved man.

"Hey hon, could you set out a couple of plates when you've put your stuff in your room?" She asked as he passed through the kitchen.

"Sure," he replied, leaving his bag on his bed and dumping his keys on his desk. By the time he had returned, two pizzas were on the pizza board on top of the stove, heat radiating off of them as May turned the oven off.

"It smells amazing," he said as he pulled a couple of plates out from the cupboard and left them on the table before retrieving two glasses and filling them with water.

"I hope it does. The crusts are filled with cheesy pesto this time."

"I love you so much."

He relaxed as he ate and listened to May's day at FEAST and how Martin Li had promoted her to one of the senior roles because of how much work she did, absently thinking about how he wouldn't know how to cope with May's death if he had stayed in the timeline and let everyone forget him. He'd had such a great support system and he would have let everyone forget him to save the world.

The burdens of a hero weren't to be taken lightly.

"Also, I'll be coming back from the shelter late on Friday. You're okay with that, right?" She asked as she finished one of her crusts.

"Um, about that…please can I sleepover with Ned?" He knew May was concerned over his disappearances and he wasn't sure if he had earned her trust back, especially since they would have talked about him losing the 'Stark internship' and she wouldn't trust him as much as before.

"We want to finish re-building the Lego Death Star and we decided to stay up all night if we're not tired after Homecoming." He let some excitement seep into his voice to sound more convincing, hoping there was still some childish excitement left in him and he didn't sound like he was blatantly lying.

In a way, he wasn't actually lying. If everything went well with Vulture and he escaped with fewer injuries than before then there was a high chance he and Ned would actually build some of the Death Star to keep him calm. The systematic process often helped him stop thinking about what he had done wrong and could have done better and sent some serotonin to his brain to help deal with the exhaustion of post-fight adrenaline.

May hummed, finishing her water before replying.

"Honestly, it would make me feel better if you did stay with him if I'm not home, but I want you to text me whenever you go, okay?"

God, words couldn't describe how much he loved May. Even when he had messed up she still cared so much.

"Yeah, of course I will!"

He hated lying to her. He needed to tell her about Spider-Man as soon as possible after he fought Vulture, ideally once he could contact Tony and give him a warning that May would be hunting him down to ask why he had brought Peter to Germany to fight the other Avengers and then enabled him to be Spider-Man with an even more geared up suit, but they did have the argument that Tony's suit made him even safer than when he fought in his 'onesie'…speaking of which, he needed to check his gear.

"Dude, no offence, but why are you scavenging in the dumpster again? I'm pretty sure you have a draw filled with old tech," Ned said as he rested against the alley wall opposite the dumpster he was searching.

"None of the tech I have in the draw helps me conduct current. I'm so close to making taser-webs but I need some silver or copper," he replied, voice echoing around the dumpster. "Aha!" He pulled out a bunch of tangled chargers, the rubber casing torn in some places but he could see the wires weren't damaged.

"MJ would call you lame if she saw us right now."

"I'd hope she would call me resourceful. There's only so much you can do on a budget of $5 and I'd rather save that for a sandwich from Delmar's."

"Honestly, same. You wanna go now?"

"Sure," he replied as he stuffed the wires into his bag, shrugging it into place as they exited the alleyway. MJ had needed to go home and complete her homework so she didn't need to focus on anything during Homecoming, and when he asked her why she didn't want to go, she had said she'd already been and mumbled it would be boring without them and she'd rather help him fight Vulture.

He pushed down the guilt that came with the fact that he couldn't take MJ to Homecoming, choosing to brainstorm ideas to make it up to her as he remembered that she had mentioned looking forward to senior prom and, as awkward as he was when it came to dancing, having one cheesy slow dance.

He'd find a way to make it up to her.

Blushing when his stomach rumbled and Ned chuckled, he opened the door and waited in the queue as Ned found a quiet place to sit, ordering their usuals and buying a couple of lemonades before he sat down.

"So," Ned said as he pulled out a worksheet from chemistry as Peter pulled out the wires from his bag. "How are you going to deal with the Scavenger?" Ah, yes, their stupid codename for Vulture that didn't seem too obvious but probably was. They would work on their codenames in the future. "Wait, dude, what about that guy with the alien tech that made you fly into a bus?"

"Who- oh shit, you're right! Umm, I think his name was Schultz or something."

They paused when their orders were placed in front of them, thanking the waitress before continuing.

"Didn't he use a gun that used shockwaves or something? We could call him Shocker!" Ned said excitedly as Peter ate, enjoying a few bites of his sandwich before replying.

"That's a good name, I'll see what he thinks of it if I fight him. Scavenger doesn't know I'm going to fight him though, so I could avoid Shocker."

"Won't you need to arrest him if he isn't arrested by the police?"

"Yeah, probably, but I'll deal with him when it comes to it." He opened Google Maps on his phone, finding the area where Toomes' hideout was. "If you manage to get through to Happy or Tony and I'm still around this location, tell them there's plenty of evidence for them to arrest Toomes. If I fail and Toomes manages to get into the air and hijack the plane, tell them to get damage control ready for somewhere."

"It'll be very obvious if there's a plane falling out of the sky." He chuckled at that despite the morbid reality of it. He couldn't let people get hurt but he really didn't want to let the fight with Vulture escalate to something worse than before.

He would deny it to most people who asked, but his nightmares about his fight with Vulture were vicious and the most common. Sometimes they merged with nightmares about Beck, horrific images of Ned and MJ trapped in a circle of fire as Vulture hovered over them as Beck surrounded him with tall graves plaguing him most often. He couldn't let his nightmares become a foreign reality, not when there were no do-overs.

"Peter?" Ned gently poked his arm with a pencil to grab his attention, looking at him with a concerned stare. "What's wrong?"

His tongue felt like a deadweight in his mouth as he clumsily figured out what to say, pushing back the horrible memories of the roar that sounded from damp warehouse collapsing, thundering cracks deafening him as pillars crushed his stomach and legs and dust filled his mouth and darkness filled his vision.

"I- I don't want the warehouse to happen again," he choked out, hating how he hadn't gotten over it. He hadn't thought he'd need to confront Vulture again, not when he was locked away in the Raft, but he couldn't keep his nerves in check when there was the possibility that he would need to lift a shedload of rubble off of himself again in just over 24 hours.

He was a kid. He had tried getting through to Happy and Tony for the whole week he had been back in the past and hadn't managed to get through and the responsibility was on him to be better than last time. Ned and MJ could only do so much when he was the main player. They trusted him to arrest Vulture and hopefully come out of the fight with fewer injuries but he couldn't promise them that. Hell, he could die if something went horrifically wrong.

"You know what's going to happen this time, you can predict what he's going to do and escape. MJ and I will be on call with you and I can tell you where every exit is, okay?" Peter nodded, letting out a shaky breath before eating some more of his sandwich to give him something to do with all his anxious energy. "You'll be okay."

"I hope so."