Pain and Power

--__-_-_Chapter 7_-_-__--

Peter felt like shit when he woke up again. His aunt was still asleep, leaning her head on his bed and holding his left arm.

His sleep wasn't great. He had a dream; a dream that started with his mom singing softly to him in something that was decidedly not English, and ended in his falling to dust in his mentor's arms — not the most enjoyable thing ever.

It took a second for him to remember that he was awake again, and remember what had happened last night.

He had amnesia. He met Morgan Stark. He thought Mister Stark was his father. He remembered.

He lost his right arm.

Peter was having some trouble wrapping his head around that — he was now an amputee. He only had one arm. Peter Parker lost his dominant arm, so now he couldn't write properly. He couldn't punch or eat cereal normally, or text comfortably.

He couldn't be Spider-Man.

Swinging and fighting wouldn't be possible with just one arm. Even if he could somehow manage to protect Queens with just one arm, people would start to connect the dots; that Tony Starks personal intern, Peter Parker, blipped and lost an arm, and that Spider-Man, another close associate of Tony Stark, blipped and lost an arm. It would be a dead giveaway to his secret identity.

A part of him — well, all of him, really — didn't want to accept that he had to give up Spider-Man. That he alter ego had essentially died, leaving just Peter in his place.

Spider-Man had become an integral part of his life; his identity. Peter didn't know who he would be now if he didn't have Spider-Man anymore, and the thought of losing his vigilante persona — part of himself — was beyond terrifying.

He would just be... a normal high schooler. A normal high schooler, who hadn't been made an Avenger while on a giant spaceship with Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and had lost his arm in some made-up accident, not by stopping a psychotic alien from destroying the universe again.

And Mister Stark — would Mister Stark even want anything to do with him, if he wasn't a hero anymore? His mentor had been so... well, he'd seemed happy when Peter woke up — but would that eventually fade if they no longer had the Avenger thing in common? Would his fake sister want to see him? How would Ned react?

Peter shook his head slightly where he lay and tried to think positive.

May was here. May was here, and he knew that his aunt would always love him, no matter what. She'd shown that time after time; their relationship barely faltering through everything — through Ben, and Spider-Man, and through the awkward emo phase he went through when he was thirteen. Their only rough spot had been in the eight months that he was hiding Spider-Man, but other than that, the past four years (if she had died with Thanos — if she'd survived, it would've been nine years since Ben died, for her), it had just been them against the world.

May wouldn't care if he was just a normal, one-armed teenager now.

His aunt's hair was messy and matted, tied in her easily recognizable 'I'm lazy and stressed' bun, and she was in baggy pajamas — sweatpants and a big shirt that used to be Bens. Peter smiled.

He didn't really know what to say, because he felt bad waking her up, and it seemed like she needed it, but... well, watching his aunt sleep was a little bit creepy — watching anyone over the age of three sleep was creepy, really — so he carefully pulled his hand from her grip, and shook her awake.

"May!" He whispers yelled. "May! May, wake up!"

It took a moment before May woke with a start, and started blinking rapidly, looking around the room for a few seconds, clearly disoriented, before her eyes landed on Peter. Hey, eyes widened.