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New York was loud. That was no secret. It was a city with 8 million people, and it was the main city of the U.S. It has 5 Burroughs, and Miles just so happened to live in the most populated one. Brooklyn was his home, even when he was trying to escape it.
Miles grits his teeth, keeping his mouth closed as his father yelled at him. Whatever wisdom he was trying to impart was lost on the teen, all words bouncing off his head before they could hit his ears.
‘He’s gonna hit you.’ Miles bit his lip, hackles raised by the voice whispering in his ears. It’d been there for weeks, telling him his greatest fears and repeating words he’d heard before. He shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets, hiding the fact that they were shaking.
Your spider-sense is not going off. He is your father. You are not in danger.
“You know what? Go to your room!”
Miles stared at his father, puffing out his chest. His face scrunched up and he smacked his lips. “Fine.” He hisses and flounces off to his room.
“Don’t give me that attitude!”
Miles closes his door— closes, not slams, slamming will make it worse— and slides down the door. He can hear his father groan and go to his own room, and then he’s out of earshot. Miles reaches over and flips on his speaker, blasting music. Unfortunately, no amount of Post Malone could put him at ease today.
Miles’s heart spikes and his face heats up. He scrambles to grab his phone and his headphones, almost tripping over himself in his rush. The pressure of his headphones snaps over his ears in an instant, loud music drowning out the thumping of his heart.
It does not, however, drown out the echos of his mind.
“You’re the best of all of us Miles.”
Please no.
“You’re on your way.”
Not again.
“Just keep going.”
“Shut up!” He snarled to himself, throwing off his headset, leaving him alone with his rushing thoughts and sniffles. When had he started crying? He stood up and shook his hands, wailing and shrieking in risen grief and anger. His hands flew up to his face, sneering tears and snot and blood from his overgrown nails. He stumbled over to his closet, curling himself up in the small space like a dead spider.
That's when he found the spider-suit in his closet.
That's how he ended up here, standing above the loud New York City streets. Lights danced under him and cars honked and swerved around each other. It was perfect. Loud enough to drown out the brain that dared to play tricks on him.
(Somewhere in his mind Miles knows that’s not how it works. Somewhere in his mind, he wonders when it’ll switch to visual.)
Spiderman edges closer to the edge, toes dangling off the edge of the roof of the City Point building, ready to jump.
And he does.
Web-slinging has never lost the joy and whimsy it first had when Peter taught him. The cold wind rushes through his ears and hits his face, barely covered by the spandex of his spider-suit. Spiderman laughs, letting go of his webs and allowing the momentum to carry himself up.
He stops a purse nabbing that night, as well as the robbery of his favourite convenience store (which he gets a free bag of candy out of). He stops a few kids from running into the streets, and pauses to feed the same stray cats that he always does.
Soon the sun has set over the horizon and Spiderman is sitting on top of a random building, snacking on now-and-afters until his teeth hurt. It’s when he hears yelling from the alley over that he decides to check. He webs his way over…
And promptly loses control of his webs when he hears a gunshot.
Miles free falls down into the alley, only barely managing to grab the wall beside him before he goes splat! on the pavement. He frantically rakes his eyes over the scene and clocks two street hooligans running away, leaving a middle-aged black man in the alleyway.
Fuck.
Almost immediately his hand comes up to his ear to silence voices that aren’t even there yet, but certainly start whispering as he runs to the man’s aid.
“No, Miles, I’m sorry.”
Miles presses on the man’s wound, trying to stop the bleeding but there's so much of it— god please don’t let this man die— and it coats his hands in milliseconds. Blood pools on the ground and he realizes that the bullet went straight through the man’s chest.
(Just like Uncle Aaron.)
Miles pulls his hands away from the wound, realizing that it’s an exit wound. He's been shot in the back.
(Just like Uncle Aaron.)
“I wanted you to look up to me.”
(“Exit wounds are bigger than the entrance wound.” His father explains one day when he was nine. A baby Miles stares up at his father in rapt fascination. He is still happy, and fulfilled, and has too many friends to count on his chubby little fingers. His worst worries are about what to wear to school so that the pretty girl with the Bantu knots notices him. Everything has not gone to shit yet.)
“Anyone!” Miles screams, voice raw and aching and he doesn’t bother to disguise his voice. “Someone call 911!” He turns to the man but doesn’t look at his face, scared he’d see Uncle Aaron's face— or worse, the Prowler’s— grafted onto his.
“It’ll be alright.” And he has to believe it. “It’ll be alright.”
“I let you down, man. I let you down.”
“Please! Someone! Anyone!”
The universe is cruel. It makes sure you get bitten by a genetically modified spider. It makes sure your favourite person is trying to kill a you that you are only now stepping into. It makes sure that person dies in your arms. It makes sure that you hear his voice every day, outside your head and surrounding your world. It makes sure that even the thought of a gun makes you nauseous. It makes sure you see your Uncle’s face on a dead man.
He gives his final death rattle, and he still. Miles sobs under his mask. He is suddenly thirteen, and he is so, so afraid. His neck is aching from being strangled, and his ears are ringing from being so close to a gunshot. He is kneeling in the Queen’s suburbs near Aunt May’s house, and his world is crumbling between his fingers. In a few hours, his world may be sucked through a black hole, and the only people that truly know him are going to die if he doesn’t get his shit together. He is thirteen with a dead Uncle and parents that don’t understand him, and he is so, so, alone.
“You’re the best of all of us, Miles.”
He stands up, body limp at the shoulders, and stumbles out of the alleyway. His hands are soaked in blood, and he follows the prints of the men that did this.
It takes five minutes, and he corners them, silent as he beats them bloody. They beg, and Miles does not listen. He is not Spiderman right now, nor is he Miles. He's fueled by rage and that's something that the sweet art kid from Brooklyn, New York would never be. Miles Morales died when Uncle Aaron did. He moves to leave the thugs where they are when he hears the click of a gun. His Spider-sense does nothing when he’s drowning under the weight of his own delirium.
Pain blooms in his back and he crumples to his knees. Vaguely, Spiderman feels the hot liquid of blood run out of his body and pool on the ground. He’s covered in it. Spiderman shakily taps his watch, and orange light fills the night.
“Please…” he slurs, and his eyes roll up into his head.