Chapter Text
There is not much now that can catch Peter off balance.
Super powers aside, Peter’s lived through more in the past nineteen years than most ever have in a lifetime. His parents. Ben. Tony. May .
In a way, it’s become less of a shield and more of a layer– a way that he understands his reality and the world around him that no matter what happens to him, no matter what he does or what he faces, he’ll be able to bounce back.
Shuri, the Princess of Wakanda and also the Black Panther , stares at him serenely– knows his fucking name– and for the first time in a long time, Peter wonders just how the hell he’s going to get through this.
“Who’s Peter Parker?” he asks, because he’s still in the spider suit and foolishly, he wants to believe he can pass it off. He’s made an ass of himself too many times, been far too willing to share more about his identity to people lesser than her and it’s only ever come to bite him in the ass.
The look that Shuri gives, raising an eyebrow appraisingly tells him that he might not be able to successfully dissuade her but fuck it, if he’s not going to try.
“Do you really want to go that route?” She asks and the fight to do so dwindles, feeling himself deflate as he grits his teeth.
“How did you find out?” He asks, only to get the same expression magnified– Shuri letting out a soft laugh as she tilts her head. “Yeah, alright.”
It goes against every instinct that he has, at least now but there’s no point in trying to fight it– reaching for his mask and pulling it off, Shuri’s expression not changing as he stands up straighter.
“So,” Peter says, shrugging as he waves his hands around. “You know who I am. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Like I said,” she says patiently, as if she was talking to a child, “if Peter Parker could find a way to disappear–”
“Say it louder so all of New York can hear you–” he mutters.
“Then surely you must know of ways that the weapons could have.”
Peter makes a face, furrowing his eyebrows as he asks, “do you think I took them?”
“ No ,” Shuri responds with just as much indignation. “Why would I think that?”
“Honestly, I don’t really know. You could’ve just asked for help without the whole, you know,” he motions between the two of them, “outing my identity or anything.”
“Were you this nervous with the Avengers?”
“I told you,” Peter says, “I’m not an Avenger.”
Not anymore , he thinks but doesn’t say– Shuri looking thoughtful before she changes gears.
“I do not have any desire to out your identity , but I am curious. How is it that someone like you went from being a part of the Avengers to…” she trails off, appraising him in a way that makes him frown. “This?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, feeling like he’s been slighted as she purses her lips.
“You had a partnership with Iron Man, of sorts. I can only assume that he knew who you were under the mask.”
Peter doesn’t confirm that and Shuri doesn’t wait for it, continuing on.
“However there is no record of you anywhere, not just in Stark’s servers but anywhere.”
“You hacked into Mr. Stark’s servers?” He asks incredulously, Shuri not even bothering to reply as she shakes her head.
“It doesn’t make sense, for someone to have so wholly and completely disappeared. Except, you didn’t ,” she says in a way that makes Peter feel as if he’s on edge. “You attended Midtown School of Science and Technology then dropped out, with no photographic evidence to prove you were there in the first place.”
Peter says nothing, grinding his teeth as she presses forward– taking a step forward as she does.
“There’s no family, no connection, traces of you that exist that are all but eliminated. You pay your rent month to month and work part-time at a diner called Sal’s,” she says, all information that was true and yet makes him feel small. “It’s as if one day you woke up and were able to eliminate any trace of you,” she snaps her fingers, “like that.”
Peter presses his lips together, Shuri eyeing him carefully.
“Do you have… other powers?”
“No,” Peter says, taking a deep breath then exhaling slowly. “No, that’s– no.”
“Then?”
He sighs again, closing his eyes and trying to find a good enough lie to pass this on.
“Something… happened,” he says, opening his eyes and looking up to Shuri. “Something that was going to put a lot of people in danger.”
He thinks of May and the ache in his chest grows tighter, grinding his teeth before saying, “I couldn’t let anything else happen to them so, I fixed it.”
“Fixed it? How?” She asks, as if trying to uncover a mystery. “Would that fix be something that others could do?”
Peter huffs out a laugh. “Not unless Bleeker Street is open for business.”
Shuri raises an eyebrow but Peter just shakes his head.
“ No ,” he says more definitively, “that’s not– I don’t think that’s what’s happening with the weapons.”
Shuri presses her lips, almost disappointed it seems with that piece of news. Peter couldn’t blame her, smart as she’s seemingly supposed to be and yet can’t figure out the details of what was happening.
“So they’re Wakandan?” He confirms, though he already knows the answer as she nods. “And you don’t know how they got here?”
“If I did,” she says with an amused expression that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, “I would not be talking with you.”
Peter frowns but doesn’t push, a tense silence falling between them.
It was clear that Shuri believed that he had some kind of information that could’ve helped her and now that he doesn’t, she has to figure out what to do next. It oddly reminds him of Tony and the way he looked when he had a problem in front of him, Peter biting the inside of his cheek of the few memories he has.
It wasn’t wrong to say that he didn’t know much of what it was like to be an Avenger since the first– and last – time he had ever really acted as one, it had all gone to shit. So much of his life in the past year has been in treading water, trying to keep himself afloat and pay his rent without really thinking or being aware of all the other things that were happening in the world.
He thinks of May and what she would want him to do in this scenario, offering the only thing that he knows to do– the only thing he can do as he clears his throat.
“Well, if you still need my help,” he says, shaking his head, “I’ll do whatever.”
Shuri lets out a sound in the back of her throat.
“Really?”
Peter makes a face. “Look, you don’t want these weapons here,” he says, pointing to her. “ I don’t want these weapons here. I don’t know how to get rid of them but if the offer stands…”
He trails off, Shuri looking thoughtfully at him as she folds her arms over her chest.
“You would do that?”
“Weren’t you just asking me for help?” He asked as she presses her lips together.
“For information, not action,” she says. “The Black Panther does not need anyone’s help.”
“You sure about that?” He asks pointedly, folding his own arms over his chest. “What exactly do you plan on doing?”
He knows he’s caught her, the slight shift in her expression telling him as much.
“They’re your weapons but this is my city,” Peter says more definitively, “If I can help you get them out of here then…”
Shuri appraises him once more, quirking her lips to the side.
“My brother never mentioned anything about Spider-Man. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, he talked about them, but never you.”
Peter smirks, seeing the tightness around her eyes at the attempt to joke.
The last time that he’d seen T’Challa, and Shuri for that matter, had been at Tony’s funeral– being neither mentally present nor in a place to talk amongst the who’s who that had been there. Shuri wouldn’t remember him, just as no one else did. He settles for the closest thing to the truth as he says, “I never really had the chance to talk to him.”
Shuri’s eyes study him before she nods, Peter thinking of May and of how she raised him, thinking of what he wishes someone would say to him as he continues, “He seemed like a great guy.”
“He was,” Shuri says, voice thick as she stands up taller, something clicking for Peter as he stares.
There weren’t many people in the world who understood what it was like to put on a mask, even fewer who lived the kind of life that he had– orphaned and left behind, over and over again.
Peter didn’t forget that the reason T’Challa had become king was the death of his father, the loss of T’Challa after the Blip and now of her own mother a weight that he can see that she carries despite trying so hard to withhold it.
Maybe to anyone else, they’d believe it– the cool and unaffected persona that she’s giving being just that, a front that Peter can see right through.
Mostly because despite their respective histories being worlds apart, looking at Shuri’s face was in its own way like looking in a mirror.
“Now that you’ve basically stalked me, you know I’m not a threat,” Peter says, attempting not to let the fact that his identity was so easily figured out get to him. “How did you figure out I was Spider-Man anyway?”
Shuri looks at him in amusement, raising an eyebrow as if it wasn’t obvious considering who she is.
Only to say the one thing that makes his stomach drop, innocuous as a response it is, as replies, “I’m especially observant.”
If Shuri notices the way he feels like his throat tightened, she doesn’t say, Peter nodding before taking a deep breath and saying, “so. Where to?”
Shuri purses her lips before tilting her head, her mask materializing again as Peter shoves his over his face.
“Follow me.”
There is something different about Peter Parker.
Shuri makes her way across the city with ease, Peter following in tandem with her with his webs and flips. The scientist in her wants to know what those webs are made of or if, disgustingly, this was somehow coming out of him. But she doesn’t ask questions and Peter doesn’t answer any, chattering it seems to himself and to her simultaneously as they move together.
“Why can’t I ever just have a normal night. Just a long day and ready to get some sleep but no , I got the Black Panther telling me name and accusing me of stealing their weapons–”
“I did not accuse you of stealing our weapons,” Shuri says as she lands on a rooftop, correctly guessing that Peter could hear her as she sees his head flick to her out of the corner of her eye. “That was all you.”
“Yeah, alright. Where are we going anyway?”
“Just up this street here,” she says, hearing Peter huff under his breath.
“ Great .”
“You know this place?”
“Hell’s Kitchen, should’ve guessed. If another guy in a red suit shows up, I’m not here,” Peter says, before swinging forward– Shuri keeping up with him with ease.
“I thought you said that you weren’t an Avenger anymore.”
“I’m not. Neither is he. It’s– never mind, it’s not important,” he says, Shuri’s curiosity piqued but not enough to press. She hadn’t anticipated for him to join her on this venture though there was something about the way that he looked at her when she had said as much that affirmed that it would be an unsuccessful endeavor.
He never said just how he was able to disappear in plain sight, though Griot’s programming no doubt had already searched for whatever could be found on “Bleeker Street” around the world. She has no way of checking it now with the super hearing he clearly seems to have, though the reminder that whatever they do might prove more difficult if they were coming into a fight.
“Here,” she says, landing on another rooftop as Peter easily lands beside her— Shuri plucking off a kimoyo bead and handing it to him.
He takes it, Shuri reading the hesitancy as he does as she laughs under her breath.
“It is not a bomb.”
“What… is it exactly?” He asks, holding it carefully between his fingers as she motions to his ears.
“Put it in your pocket,” she says as she waves a hand over her own, fiddling with the settings as he does as he’s told. “Now you should hear me.”
“ Whoa, ” he says, stepping back in surprise— Shuri hearing him in stereo as he must hear her. “That’s… so fucking cool.”
“Thank you,” she says before tilting her head out towards the warehouse where the weapons were last seen. “We are close.”
Peter kneels down against the ledge, Shuri withholding the urge to laugh at how much of a spider that he looks like.
“How do you know they’re still here?”
Shuri flicks her wrist, Griot projecting the surveillance that she has captured in front of them.
“Damn,” Peter says quietly, watching as some textbook looking henchmen bring a cart into said warehouse. “Really not being subtle about it, are they.”
“No, they are not,” Shuri replies, waving the projection away as Peter hums.
“You know who it is?”
“The French,” Shuri replies with a shrug as Peter stands, “or so it seems.”
“ Sacré bleu ,” Peter mutters, an awkward silence falling between them before he laughs under his breath.
“Sorry.”
Shuri bites her lip to stop herself from laughing, thankful that the Black Panther mask prevents anything from showing when he asks, “so is that how you found me?”
Shuri just stares, Peter laughing under his breath as he walks the line of the rooftop.
“Yeah okay, that’s what I figured.”
“Do you always do this?”
“Do what?”
“Idle chatter,” she says, the voice of Okoye coming out of her instead of her own. Peter laughs, Shuri thinking that maybe in a different world that they would’ve gotten along as he shrugs.
“Gotta fill the time somehow. Which, speaking of time, are we waiting for something or…?”
“I have a… colleague meeting us,” she says, though that feels small to the extent of her affinity to Riri. She’d been eager to help, saying she’d come as quickly as she could and by her estimation that would be within the hour— glancing around as Peter continues to pace.
“So let me get this straight,” he says, back to her as he walks the length of the rooftop, “the ‘Black Panther works alone’ schtick was just for my benefit?”
“I am not working with you or with anyone,” Shuri says as he turns around, walking towards her as she continues, “she will be a distraction.”
“Didn’t think that was really your style.”
“Extenuating circumstances,” she says, despite Peter being right— wondering if she had made a mistake in inviting Riri along. Okoye had said she shouldn’t have to do things alone but this really wasn’t something that required her assistance— Peter’s mere presence throwing her off as he turns again.
“What kind of circumstances would–”
Peter cuts himself off when he turns in the opposite direction, Shuri’s own hearing picking up the familiar whine of a pulsar that makes her smile underneath the mask.
“And this is what happens when Wakandan tech is modified.”
“It ain’t modified, it’s improved ,” she hears Riri say as her comms begin to come into range– Peter stiffening as he watches as Riri flies up to them.
It’s a belated realization of how this must look to him, an Iron Man suit with a voice that was decidedly not Iron Man. Shuri doesn’t know the extent of the relationship that had been between the two of them but she can guess from his body language that this wasn’t a pleasant reminder– thinking now of the funeral of Tony Stark and the wonder why Spider-Man had not been there.
She files it away for a thread for another time, turning to Riri while she landed.
“Hey,” she says towards Shuri. “Hey Spidey, nice to meet you.”
“You too,” Peter says warily, Riri moving forward.
“So what’s the plan?”
“There’s been movement in and out,” she says, pointing towards the warehouse behind her, “once I go in–”
“ We go in–” Peter interrupts, Shuri glaring at him under the mask as she continues.
“The problem will be resolved. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Okay, cool. Cool, so… what do you need more? Distraction? Flashing lights?”
Shuri smiles.
“Your best."
They move quickly– at least, she and Peter do. Riri’s suit roars to life, Shuri muttering under her breath of the noise and the whine of it as Peter stays oddly silent– Shuri looking back over to him as they get to the top of the warehouse.
“Are you sure you are ready for this?”
“What, couple of goons hired by a foreign government, looking to steal advanced weaponry from a sovereign state? Yeah sure, just another Friday,” Peter rambles, Shuri hesitating– Peter seemingly noticing it as he shakes himself.
“I’m fine. Really, just–” he waves a hand to where Riri had flown off to, confirming Shuri’s own suspicions and making her even more curious as to why he hadn’t been at Iron Man’s funeral. She searches her own memory and comes up empty at it, going to ask when Peter stiffens yet again– head whipping back to where Riri had been.
“That’s…” he begins and then he’s gone – Shuri following after him immediately as he send a web out and dives towards where they are.
“ Spider-Man ,” Shuri has the presence of mind to say, keenly aware that RIri is still on the comms as Peter moves fast.
“Who’s there with you?” He asks, Shuri aware that the question is not directed towards her though it takes Riri some time to respond.
An answer that Shuri is also curious of, gaining ground to Peter and peering out over the edge to see–
“Friends. From MIT, I needed– ok yeah, this was probably a bad idea,” Riri says, sounding guilty as Shuri’s grip on the edge tighten– seeing two people who couldn’t be much older than she, a tall girl looking determined with the other guy shorter and looking around nervously.
“ Riri ,” Shuri warns, Riri stammering on.
“Okay yeah, look I know it looks bad but I swear, they’re good for it. I just– I was lonely alright, and tired of lying so I needed to–”
“What are they doing here?” Peter damn near hisses, Shuri feeling the same agitation that there were civilians here but her interest piqued more towards the fervency of how he says it.
“This is dangerous,” Shuri says, RIri hovering above them as she sighs.
“Yeah, I know, I–”
Riri’s cut off with one of the guards coming back out, immediately stopping in place at the sight of RIri– or more of her in what would no doubt look like an Iron Man suit– hovering in the middle of the street.
“What the–”
“Hey, big guy. Come on over here,” Riri calls out as Peter swears under his breath, going to move towards the civilians as Shuri puts a hand out.
“We need to move.”
“I’m not going to leave them—”
“ Look ,” Shuri says, watching as the guy and the girl begin to run, the guy having a cell phone out and tapping something furiously out. A light goes out on the street, Peter hesitating and that’s all that Shuri needs. “Riri brought them for a reason.”
“What– they can’t just–”
“ Spider-Man .”
His head snaps up, the white eyes of his mask boring into her as something nudges at the back of her mind– something specific there that she can’t put a finger on and doesn’t have the time to.
“We need to go,” she says and then she turns back to the warehouse, needing to deal with the problem at hand before their window of opportunity closes and it’s too late.
She is not sure if she is surprised when a few seconds later, she hears Spider-Man’s steps falling into place beside her– voice hard as they land back onto the skylight that they had gone to for their entrance.
“What’s the plan?”
“Bad plan. This is a bad, bad fucking plan,” MJ huffs out as they duck into an alley, pulling Ned with her so that he’s facing across from her. “What the hell are we doing?”
“ We are helping,” he says, still furiously typing as he shakes his head. “I should’ve brought my laptop.”
“We shouldn’t even be here, Ned. What the fuck does she need us for?” MJ asks, looking out to see Riri flying about as gunshots ring out.
It had seemed unreal on the train ride here and it’s even more so now, MJ questioning her own sanity to have willingly put herself in this kind of position again for someone she barely knew– and with almost no skills to speak of that could really help.
Ned was clearly hacking into something, the electrical grid from the way the lights flickered on, off, and on again but there was nothing for her to do here– nothing that she could give or support without just being a potential for collateral damage.
It reminds her again of all the different times she had put herself into harm’s way for Spider-Man, with a mace at the Tower of London and running towards a fight on Liberty Island. There was no rhyme or reason for it, nothing that made sense about those memories and even more so to do be repeating the same mistakes now – heart beating fast and wondering just what the hell the Princess of Wakanda needed Riri’s help for, much less what Riri needed of her .
Moral support maybe as Riri’s voice crackles into the earpiece that she’d given the two of them.
“New plan, I’m gonna take them up this block. Ned, can you signal out?”
“Already on it,” Ned says as he types– MJ pressing her back into the wall as gunshots ring out.
“Okay yeah, whew that’s close.”
“ How close?” MJ calls out, but Riri doesn’t respond– MJ gritting her teeth as she glances to Ned.
For all the anxiety that she feels in that moment, the wonder of how fucking bizarre it is that she’s here again– there’s something that feels so instantly right when she looks at Ned– his own eyes lifting from the screen and sharing a knowing look with her, one that’s been so familiar to all the different ones they’ve shared in the past year without either of them being able to explain it.
He’s in his element and, despite all logic or reasoning, so is she– right in the thick of things and in a situation that was bigger than her own.
It didn’t make sense. MJ couldn’t make sense of it.
She also couldn’t explain just how right it felt to be there as she takes another breath.
"What do you need?"