When the people ask "Who was Spider-Man?", they mean it in a sort of yearning way. Nobody really knew him. He barely got his feet off the ground. But they know he had so much potential.
They whisper his name in awe. In sad adoration. In this AU, the people of New York don't turn on Peter Parker when they found out he was Spider-Man. Which I feel like would be a really nice, sweet thing, if any one else were writing it. But they're not. So, the people of New York don't turn on Spider-Man because he never really got to exist. Jonah can't bully a kid but he can turn on the man who killed him.
...Okay, so I try to write in a very grounded reality.
And I know reality.
Reality is cruel and senseless. Humanity relies on mindless violence to pass the time. It happens over and over again, it happens weekly. Maybe it's because we're animals, at the end of the day. "How could anyone do this?" I don't know, how could a mother eat its young in the wild? Human mothers eat their young in the middle of the city.
So how long do you think it'll take for the pictures to leak online?
People are incompetent. Or openly malicious. A lot of the time I like to think (hope) that we're just overwhelmed. Let's consider the time of day this tragedy took place, guys, wasn't it like, the middle of the night? Another mysterious passing in the dead of night, we watched it unfold in real time, nobody heard his screams. They need to take pictures. They need to investigate.
Part of me doesn't want to say it. Like, I'm in control of the narrative, I don't need to incorporate this part of reality. But another part of me screams "Worse has happened." It's honestly haunting. I know it's a possibility.
People can be cruel for no reason. I think some things are better left unsaid. I want to believe in a world where everyone left his family alone. I'll make it canon that Peter Parker's death is New York's best kept secret. Horrific events try to unfold, but Peter's hope was enough to hold up the world, and his hope continues to protect his family after he's gone. So the people of New York find out about the horrific things people do online, find them, and kick their ass. In this reality, justice exists, and good people do good things for the sake of it.
I have no clue how Tony would react. So I'll just write that into the story.
I can stretch seconds into hours. Tony hears the news immediately. You best fucking believe that he knows what that looks like. He knows what he did.
God.
I try not to think about these sorts of things. But, like, I'm kinda cursed with a brain that thinks in movies that also moves really fucking quickly. And this singular thought kind of inspired me to make this entire post. Even if the first half of it can be it's own separate thing, I only wrote it to get to this point.
I don't know how to describe to you the feeling. It's like every single time my world sorta just... flips upside down. It's dread incarnate. It takes you to a different reality. There's you before you know about it, then there's you after. I feel like everyone kind of gets that, they understand it, but what I think they forgot to tell us is that once those two separate entities exist, you live with both of them.
I don't know what people do with it. But I chose to mourn the dead. I chose to mourn strangers. So, that's what Tony does. Because let's not pretend this asshole knew Peter. He met him.
It's a gruesome sight. It's a horrible, sickening, disturbing, horrible image. And Tony sees it. Do you really think he wasn't on the internet obsessively reading everything at the time? He spends the rest of the night obsessively scrubbing whatever platform this is of it.
Maybe there's a singular day where shit doesn't hit the fan. The calm before the storm, I don't think people would immediately connect Stark to the scene of the crime. I'll allow him to mourn for one day. But the people demand a performance from Stark. It's the least he can give them, as if this involved them at all. As if he took something precious away from them.
For now, as he grieves, we'll ignore the bottles hitting the wall. The stench of cigarettes, too. Let's try to understand.
grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)
rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it
look at tony stark and see ego. and underneath the ego is insecurity. and under the insecurity is fear. And under the fear is a desperation to be loved. and under the desperation to be loved is a resignation that love cannot save him. And there’s nothing under that resignation, at least not since he was a little boy
"cool, half of the world's population fucking died btw." What the FUCK was I thinking????
God. Imagine being sent away to die in space only to learn that half of the people you saved died like halfway through the mission anyways. Imagine learning that before learning how to save the world.
Everyone imagine with me if you will a world where Grace is up there, alone, slowly dying in space. And he comes across this weird looking spaceship. He runs away only for it to chase after him, and the ship parks itself right beside him before Mary can tell Grace she doesn't have shields. He goes to investigate, and to his complete bewilderment, he finds another person trapped in space. Despite how odd and terrifying it is that for some reason humanity felt compelled to send two people away to their doom, Grace can't help but feel relieved. Maybe with both of their resources combined, they can extend their lives for a couple more years. He thought that until he got a good look at the guy.
Imagine meeting another person after being isolated and afraid in a hopeless situation for god knows how long, and this is the state you find them in.
