fearless || peter parker

eleven || extenuating circumstances, and what's left behind

I woke up to curtains ripped wide open in my room, so the minute the sun crept to the pane's level, my sleeping in was doomed. I hated it when she did that. Madison must have opened them last night before I came home and I had been too tired to care to look.

I walked out of bed like a zombie.

In the living room, Madison's bedroom door was wide open, but it was deserted and she was long gone. Some mornings when she didn't work, she went on a run, on a bike, on a walk, whatever, just to get out of the apartment. Today was one of those days. I hoped it wasn't because of me.

The sun poured in through the living room window as well, illuminating every single speck of dust that floated over the bar. And, in my regular breakfast spot, were two pamphlets on drug use and one on safe sex.

I threw the one on sex in the wastebasket below the sink.

This was absolutely insane. Madison hadn't even showed signs of suspicion over me. I mean, sure, she was overly protective, but the fact that she knew I was sneaking out confirmed that I wasn't as slick as I needed to be. This was biology class all over again: now that there were new rules implemented, it was survival of the fittest. So, according to Darwin, I just needed to overcome this little boundary in order to succeed with Nightmare.

I needed to talk to Nitara. In real life, not over the phone. I had a missed call from her some time last night, probably the same time around when Madison had called her to interrogate the poor girl when she was with Harry, but that was it. And she could wait a few minutes for me to meet her at our street corners.

On my way down the stairs through the lobby, I felt eyes on me from the desk right to when I walked out of the building.

"It's humiliating," I told Nitara, once we had bypassed all major traffic lanes and were on a solid sidewalk to Midtown. "She literally took one look at me and decided drugs."

"You are being kind of weird lately," Nitara reasoned. "But talk about overreacting."

I shook my head as we crossed the street next to an alley entrance. Out of habit, my heart jumped as I looked down it, seeing nothing but pavement and a dumpster, farther down. "I didn't even think she saw me. It's not like I wasn't careful."

"I guess it's kind of anticlimactic that this whole thing ended before it ever really began."

Ambition struck me out of nowhere. "It's not over. I just have to figure a way around the lobby."

"Maybe you could lay low for a bit," Nitara suggested, shrugging her shoulders. "The city will still be here when you get un-grounded."

"In ruins," I seethed, clenching the fabric of my gloves. "And Vulture could be long gone and relocated by then. I need to keep an eye out."

Nitara's eyes widened slightly. "Woah. I know you hate him-"

I scoffed. "That's an understatement."

"-but he shouldn't be the reason you're doing this."

I almost raised my voice, but it would probably be within the people on the streets around us best interest if they couldn't hear what I was saying. "He kills people. Traps them in alleyways, throws them out of his warehouse. No secretary is going to keep me from having the chance of bringing him down."

Nitara took a breath. "I know," she said. "But if you do take him down, it needs to be for the right reasons."

"Not if," I corrected, appalled at my best friend's questioning. "When."

***

As it ended up, I did lie low for the next while. I didn't resurface as Nightmare for the next week, and no doubt did this raise some curiosity in Spider-Man. I did work once, and left the apartment with a side glance from the secretary as I did so, but nothing more. And, for Madison's sake, I managed to get home before midnight. I showed her my tip money for the week, and she was satisfied I never went through signs of withdrawal. To her surprise, at least.