Chapter Text
Peter’s been trying. He really has.
But he can’t deny that he likes being Spider-Man more than Peter Parker. Peter Parker is nothing. Nobody knows who he is or cares about him, other than his landlord who refuses to fix his heater.
Everybody may have forgotten about Peter Parker, but they never forgot about Spider-Man. Most of his time is spent as his alter ego, which is feeling more and more like his primary life than his civilian life. He swings faster and faster, letting himself fall more before throwing up a web. He punches harder and knows he’s becoming more bitter, more hardened, but loneliness does something to your soul.
He tries to deny that he’s lonely, but when the only time he speaks is to tell off criminals all day, it’s hard to come up with an argument against it.
He tells himself that he deserves this, that it’s worth it to keep MJ and Ned safe, but when he goes into the cafe once a week and sees no hint of recognition in their eyes, it feels like he’s back under that building the Vulture threw on top of him.
Come on, Spider-Man.
He’s tired of trying to stay positive, of lying to himself that he’s okay.
But May didn’t die for nothing, so he keeps going, keeps pulling on the suit even though his ribs hurt and he feels like one giant bruise, keeps getting through the day.
After a while, it doesn’t feel like living. It just feels like coasting through.
But it’s worth it when he saves someone’s life, when someone cheers him on. He indulges excited civilians a bit more, takes the lost cat cases a bit more with less impatience, takes the time to speak to people more often to silence the dark thoughts in his mind.
He does it because he remembers when the entire world was against him. He remembers the vitriol and jeers everyone gave him when he tried to do simple things like going to school or the grocery store, the bricks thrown through his window, the smear campaigns on Twitter before May had forced him to delete all social media.
Sometimes very late at night- or early in the morning, he supposes- when he’s laying in bed, he thinks about a life where he never went to Doctor Strange. He’d be putting up Christmas lights with May and scouring the internet for the perfect gift for MJ and having his annual Star Wars marathon with Ned.
But then he’d find himself choking back sobs and his next door neighbor pounding on the wall telling him to shut up. He’s decided not to think about those things. He’s decided that he won’t think of his past life, can’t think of it. It only hurts too much, to think about what he had and how easily he had fucked it all up.
But sometimes… just sometimes, he wonders if this, too, is all Beck’s illusions. It mostly comes to him after nightmares of red dust, May and Tony’s lifeless eyes, and the feeling of a train hitting him. He never had time to adjust to being betrayed like that, of his equilibrium being compromised so much he wasn’t sure if the people around him were illusions.
Sometimes he wishes that all this was one huge illusion and that Beck isn’t actually dead because that means he has more time to fix things, to save May and MJ and Ned. He’d do anything to go back to those days…
Yeah, he tries not to think about these things.
So, instead, Peter carries on with his life. He got a crappy apartment that has no heating and a stove that only works by using a lighter, he got a freelance photography job with the Daily Bugle because he needs a little irony in his life, and he’s been working towards his GED.
He couldn’t go back to Midtown Tech. Not only because he’s been erased from the system, but because being with friends and classmates who wouldn’t recognize him is something he’s not ready for.
He’s been trying, really. That has to count for something… right?
Harry’s pissed off.
He didn’t even get a choice, coming here. Death weaved Her way through the broken pieces of his soul and whispered lies in his ear as he was thrust into this new world.
Not being with Hermione and Ron is like losing a limb; he doesn’t know how to act, how to be with himself. He finds himself going to whisper a snide remark to one of them only to find the only person next to him is his own shadow.
How can he be alone after everything he went through?
He knew he wouldn’t survive. He walked to the forest set in his way, with his parents and father figures guiding him along, to save the little family he had left. He knew that he was saying goodbye to Hermione and Ron, to the Weasleys, to Luna and Neville and everyone else who had been the only source of strength in the darkness that was life.
What he didn’t consider was surviving. Not only that, but surviving in a world where magic doesn’t exist, where he doesn’t exist.
Nobody in this world knows who he is. Gone are the titles such as Boy Who Lived or Number One Undesirable or Boy Who Lied. Gone is the public scratching at him in every way they can so they can see him break, see him fail just to get a glimpse of their savior.
He isn’t a savior here. He didn’t save this world, never even attempted doing so. He’s just a displaced seventeen year old wizard that shouldn’t even be alive.
In the month he’s been here, he’s found out little. Death gave him his trunk filled with all his old school supplies, clothes and heirlooms such as the Marauder’s Map and his father’s invisibility cloak. The map doesn’t work anymore. How could it when Hogwarts doesn’t exist?
He has his holly wand that settled the panic in his bones of being in this new world. He has the bloody Elder wand which he hasn’t even touched. He also has the Resurrection stone, but he hasn’t used it- couldn’t use it, not wanting to see if Hermione and Ron died.
He found a bag of galleons that had been converted into American muggle money, only coming to less than a thousand dollars. So much for his family fortune.
Harry got a dingy flat that’s still better than living in the forest in a tent, got a job as a secretary at a small law firm, and started working towards his GED.
He’ll be fine. He’s used to surviving. It’s all he’s ever known.
Those long days in the forest when he had nothing better to do than daydream he wondered what- if he survived the war by any grace of Merlin and Morgana and Magic- he would do as a job. He thought of becoming an Auror with Ron, but the thought of working for the Ministry in any capacity gave him a stress headache, no matter the plans Hermione had for it. But it’s what his father did, and Sirius before the mess that became his life, and what everyone expected him to do. Fight the dark, evil wizards just as he’s been doing for most of his life.
But then he’d turn on the wireless and hear static and be reminded that most likely, he wasn’t going to live through seventeen. It didn’t matter what dreams he had, he had a prophecy to fulfill.
Looking back, he wonders if a small part of him knew. He catalogs every interaction he had with Dumbledore, with Snape, to figure out what they weren’t saying, what they were hiding. It hurts to know that Dumbledore didn’t really care for him but instead he was just a soldier to fight a war he wasn’t prepared for. It makes sense, looking back. Why Dumbledore never trained him before sixth year, why he never seemed concerned about Harry’s role after the war, why he ignored him all of fifth year, why, why, why.
He was raised to die.
So what does a kid on stolen time do now that he doesn’t have anything to fight for… no one to fight for?
It will be Christmas soon. He won’t even be able to visit his parents grave.