The first sensation was its absence. No rubble in my teeth, no searing pain in my ribs, no shriek of stressed metal. Just darkness. A thick, velvety nothing that pressed in on all sides, a silence so profound it felt louder than any explosion. I was floating, a ghost in an endless void, my body a distant memory of aches and bruises. My spirit, however, felt untethered, drifting on a current I couldn't perceive.
Then, a sound cut through the absolute quiet. It wasn't loud, but it was clear, carving a path directly to the core of my being.
"Peter."
A pinprick of light bloomed in the distance, warm and inviting. It didn't burn or blind, but expanded softly, like dawn spilling over a horizon. A figure took shape within it, not with sharp edges, but as if being painted into existence by the light itself. The familiar tweed jacket, slightly worn at the elbows. The gentle slump of his shoulders. The hands, strong and calloused from a lifetime of work, folded calmly in front of him. And the face… the face that had been seared into my memory for half my life, etched with kindness and lines of quiet laughter.
Uncle Ben.
The sight shattered the strange peace of the void. Strength, whatever spectral form of it I possessed, fled from my limbs. I collapsed, not onto hard ground, but onto a plane of pure emotion, my knees hitting the floor of my own soul. A sob tore from my chest, raw and ragged, a sound I'd swallowed for years.
"I'm sorry," I choked out, the words stumbling over each other in a desperate rush. "Ben, I'm so sorry. I lied to you. About the library. I—I was showing off, trying to be popular, famous. To become someone. You were waiting for me, and I just… I let you wait. If I hadn't… if I had just been there… you'd still be alive."
The confession, the poison I'd carried for so long, spilled out into the quiet space between us. I braced for the anger, the disappointment, the judgment I knew I deserved. Instead, I felt a gentle pressure on my shoulder.
Uncle Ben knelt beside me, his touch a phantom warmth that felt more real than anything. There was no anger in his face, only a deep, bottomless well of compassion that made my guilt ache even more.
"You think my life was stolen because you weren't there," he said, his voice the same calm, steady baritone from countless bedtime stories and late-night talks. "But Peter… my life wasn't yours to save. It was mine to live. And it ended because of a man with a gun — not because of my nephew."
"But I could have stopped him!" I insisted, looking up at him, my vision blurred by tears I couldn't physically shed. "If only I wasn't blinded by my ego ,of thinking I could become anything but Peter Parker. A superhero. It's my fault. It's all my fault."
The dam of my composure broke completely. Every sleepless night, every shadowed alleyway that looked like that alleyway, every villain I'd failed to stop in time—it all came pouring out. I told him about the mask, how sometimes it felt less like a symbol of hope and more like a shroud to hide the broken boy underneath. I told him how his words, the ones that were meant to guide me, had become a cage, each failure another bar locking me inside.
He listened. He didn't interrupt, didn't judge. He just waited until the storm in me had passed, leaving behind a hollow quiet.
Then he spoke, his voice firm but gentle. "With great power comes great responsibility… I remember the day I told you that. You thought it meant you had to carry the world, that every mistake, every life lost, was yours to bear. A cosmic ledger where only your failures were written in red."
He sighed, a soft, wistful sound. "But Peter, responsibility isn't about carrying the weight of every death. It's about carrying the courage to keep saving lives, no matter how many times you fall. It's not about perfection. It's about persistence."
He reached out and gently lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. His eyes, so full of warmth, now held a fierce pride that stole my breath.
"You've honored me, Peter. Every single day. Not by punishing yourself… but by getting up after every blow, by fighting to be better, by saving people you don't even know. That's all I ever wanted for you. To be a good man."
The light around him began to intensify, growing brighter, softer. He started to recede, stepping back into the glow that had birthed him. A panic seized me; I didn't want to lose him again.
"Don't go," I pleaded.
He smiled, a final, radiant expression of pure love. "My boy… you were never my burden. You were always my blessing."
The gentle light vanished, but the darkness that returned was different. It felt… sharper. The soft void curdled, taking on the harsh, orange-grey tone of a battlefield haze. The air grew thick with the phantom smell of ozone and burnt concrete. I looked down at my hands, and my blood ran cold.
They were covered in it. Thick, damning, and still horrifyingly warm. It wasn't a memory; it was a sensation, the ghost of a weight I could never wash away. I was back there, on the scorched pavement of downtown Manhattan, cradling what was left of him as Vulcan's energy attack painted the sky with fire.
A figure strode out of the swirling smoke. He was battered, his costume ripped and charred, but the grin was the same. That familiar, insufferable, confident grin. His stance was cocky, a hero's swagger that not even death could diminish. 3D-Man.
My legs, still weak, stumbled as I moved toward him. The words caught in my throat, tangled with a different, sharper kind of guilt. "Adrian… I… I should've been faster. I saw Vulcan charging up. I should've webbed him, tackled him… anything. I watched him tear you apart."
3D-Man just shook his head, the grin softening into something more genuine. He clapped me on the shoulder, a solid, brotherly impact that felt shockingly real. "Spidey, you always were too hard on yourself. Jesus, Parker. You think you're supposed to win every fight, save every friend? That's not heroism. That's ego."
I flinched at the word, but he wasn't finished. His gaze was intense, cutting through my self-pity.
"You were there when it mattered. I didn't die alone in some gutter. I died knowing I was standing with someone I trusted, fighting the good fight. My last sight wasn't some cosmic monster; it was my friend. That's what being a hero means, man. It's not about living forever. It's about making the moments count."
He smirked and tapped his chest with a bloody thumb. "You think Vulcan killed me? Nah. He just stopped my heart. Heroes don't die when the fight takes us out. We live on in the ones who keep swinging."
The truth of his words hit me, simple and profound. But the ache remained. "But I miss you," I whispered, the admission sounding childish and small.
His expression softened completely. "Good," he said, his voice losing its swagger and filling with a raw sincerity. "Then take that missing piece of me and make it strength. Don't let it be an anchor. Let it be a goddamn engine. When you fight, I fight with you. When you swing, I swing too. That's how you honor me. Not with guilt—with guts."
He offered me his hand, the one that wasn't caked in his own blood. I hesitated for a second, then took it. His grip was firm, alive. The moment our hands clasped, a strange clarity washed over me. I looked down at my own hands, and the sticky, phantom blood was gone. They were just my hands again. Empty. Clean.
The haze around us began to dissolve into a pure, brilliant light. Both Uncle Ben and 3D-Man were there now, standing side by side, their forms fading into the radiance. Their voices echoed, not as two separate sounds, but as a single, powerful harmony that resonated within my very bones.
"Rise, Peter. Not for us. For them. For everyone who still needs Spider-Man."
My eyes snapped open with a gasp.
The world crashed back into me. The grinding taste of concrete dust. The coppery tang of blood in my mouth. A pain so sharp in my ribs it felt like I was being skewered. I was back in the rubble of the construction site, half-buried under a pile of rebar and shattered cinder blocks.
I took a breath, expecting the familiar, crushing weight of guilt to settle back onto my shoulders. But it wasn't there. The space it had occupied for so long felt… different. Not empty, but filled with something new. The memories of Ben and Adrian weren't chains anymore, dragging me down into a sea of failure. They were a foundation, solid and unshakeable beneath me.
This isn't where I fall, I thought, the words a silent vow. This is where I rise.
A new clarity burned behind my eyes. It wasn't about atoning. It was about honoring.
Not for me. Not for the ones I lost. But for everyone who still has a chance.
With a groan that was part pain and part pure, unadulterated resolve, I pushed. Rebar scraped, concrete shifted. I felt muscles tear and bones protest, but the pain was just noise. I forced my body upward, planting my feet on the unstable ground. I stood, staggering but unbroken, my battered body screaming in protest.
Across the debris-strewn clearing, Taskmaster lowered his shield slightly, his skull-faced mask tilting in confusion. He'd seen me go down. He'd thought it was over. But as I straightened up, my eyes blazing with a fire he couldn't possibly understand, I could almost feel his realization through the air between us.
"You should have stayed down," his filtered voice cut through the silence. Cold. Clinical. "I won't show mercy a second time."
My throat burned, but I managed a laugh, hoarse and ragged. I straightened my back, legs screaming, and met the red glow of his mask.
"You don't tell me what I can or can't do," I spat, words laced with every ounce of defiance I had left. My chest rose and fell unevenly, but for the first time in months, the weight on it wasn't guilt—it was resolve.
Taskmaster's head tilted again, the faintest twitch of curiosity in his stance. Slowly, he raised his sword in a duelist's salute.
"If this is what you want," he said, voice low, almost reverent. "Then show me your strength. Prove me wrong, Spider-Man."
The wind shifted, carrying the sharp tang of iron and cement dust. I flexed my bruised fingers, web-shooters still intact, my muscles coiled tight despite the pain. My heart pounded not with fear, but with something new—clarity.
"Fine," I whispered under my breath, feeling Uncle Ben's warmth and 3D-Man's grin echoing in the back of my mind. I raised my fists. "Let's finish this."
Spider-Man wasn't finished after all. He was just getting started.