The secure medical facility is quiet in a way that feels deliberate. Not peaceful—enforced. Like silence is a prescription they're administering alongside the IVs and monitoring equipment.
Peter Parker stands outside the observation window, mask tucked in his pocket, still in costume because he came straight from the debrief and hasn't had the energy to change.
Inside, Bruce Banner sleeps.
Not unconscious anymore. Just... sleeping. Regular human sleep, the kind with REM cycles and dreams that doctors can monitor on screens displaying brain activity in soft blue waves.
The room is reinforced—walls triple-layered with gamma-resistant alloys, glass six inches thick, backup containment protocols hidden behind ceiling panels and floor hatches. But there are no restraints. No chains. No obvious cages.
Just safeguards.
The difference matters.
Bruce looks smaller than Peter remembers. Older. The kind of tired that sleep can't fix because it goes deeper than exhaustion, down into the bones, into the places where guilt lives permanently.
Machines hum softly. Heart monitor. Respirator on standby. Gamma radiation detector reading safe levels but still active, always watching, always ready.
Peter presses one hand against the glass, breath fogging slightly.
*The Hulk didn't disappear,* he thinks. *He just ran out of room to scream.*
Behind him, footsteps approach. Measured. Familiar.
He doesn't turn.
Tony Stark stands beside him without announcement, hands in the pockets of civilian clothes that look wrong on him—like armor he can't quite make fit.
They watch Bruce in silence for nearly a minute.
Then Tony pulls something from his pocket.
An empty bullet casing.
Gamma-calibrated tungsten. Biometrically keyed. One of five that Bruce designed specifically to kill himself if nothing else could.
The casing gleams dully under fluorescent lights, catching reflections of the monitoring equipment, of Bruce's sleeping form, of Tony's expressionless face.
All five bullets are gone now.
Used.
One fired. The others... Peter doesn't know. Doesn't ask.
Tony turns the casing over in his fingers—not fidgeting, just... acknowledging. The physical weight of a choice made, a trigger pulled, a friend shot to save him from himself.
"He's alive," Tony says quietly. Not celebration. Just fact.
"Yeah," Peter replies.
"Could've gone differently."
"Yeah."
Tony pockets the casing again. Silence settles.
No one talks about the shot. Not in debriefs, not in reports, not in the quiet moments between Avengers who were there and know what almost happened.
The silence is an agreement: *We survived, but we don't get to feel good about it.*
Tony leaves without another word, footsteps fading down the sterile corridor.
Peter stays.
Watches Bruce breathe.
Wonders if survival counts as winning.
---
The Avengers disperse one by one over the following days.
Captain America returns to the monumental task of rebuilding trust—coordinating with city officials, S.H.I.E.L.D. oversight committees, civilian advocacy groups demanding accountability for the destruction. He moves through it with the same quiet determination he brings to everything, bearing weight that would break most people without complaint.
Peter catches him once in a hallway, exhausted but upright.
"You okay?" Peter asks.
Steve Rogers gives him a tired smile. "We endured. That's something."
It doesn't feel like enough, but Peter nods anyway.
Natasha Romanoff vanishes before anyone can organize formal goodbyes. One moment she's coordinating intelligence reports, the next she's gone—no forwarding location, no check-in schedule, just absence where a person used to be. It's her way. Peter's learned not to take it personally.
Quicksilver jokes too loudly, too fast, filling silence with manic energy that doesn't quite mask the tremor in his hands when he thinks no one's looking. He'd pushed himself past safe limits during the evacuations, burning through metabolic reserves that should've killed him, and his body is still paying the price.
"I'm fine!" he insists when anyone asks, grinning too wide. "Totally fine! Never better! You should see the other guy—wait, we were fighting WITH the other guy, that doesn't work—"
He blurs away mid-sentence.
Iceman lingers.
Peter finds him standing in the ruins of the bridge they'd fought to save, staring at cracked pavement and scorch marks that ice can't erase. His hands glow faintly with residual cold, frost patterns spreading and melting and spreading again in unconscious repetition.
"You did good," Peter offers.
Bobby doesn't look at him. "We almost didn't. I almost wasn't fast enough."
"But you were."
"This time."
There's no good response to that, so Peter just stands with him until the silence feels less heavy.
Nighthawk finds Peter on a rooftop the night before he's scheduled to leave for reassignment.
"You didn't quit when it mattered," Nighthawk says quietly. Simple. Direct.
Peter doesn't know how to respond. Doesn't know if "I thought about it" is honest or just pathetic.
"Thanks for being there," he manages finally.
Nighthawk nods once, wings already deploying. "Next time the world's ending, call me."
"You'll be busy."
"I'll make time."
He launches into darkness, wing-lights fading quickly.
Peter watches him go and thinks about the people who show up when it matters, who fight even when winning seems impossible, who stay standing when everything says fall.
He thinks about being one of them.
Hopes he is.
Isn't entirely sure.
Peter catches a glimpse only once—entirely by accident, wrong corridor at the wrong time.
Thor and Doctor Strange stand in a secured conference room visible through a narrow window. The door is closed, soundproofed, warded with golden symbols that flicker along the frame.
Their conversation is hushed but intense. Strange gestures sharply, mandalas forming and dissolving around his hands. Thor's grip on Mjolnir is white-knuckled, lightning dancing faintly across the hammer's surface.
More symbols flicker briefly—magical, ancient, nothing Peter recognizes.
Thunder rumbles outside despite clear skies.
Peter doesn't hear the words.
Doesn't try to.
Some conversations aren't meant for friendly neighborhood Spider-Men who punch muggers and save cats from trees. Some threats operate on frequencies he can't perceive, requiring powers he doesn't possess.
He walks away.
Leaves the gods and sorcerers to their cosmic chess game.
Tries not to think about how small that makes him feel.
---
News reports roll in constantly over the following week.
Damage estimates climb into billions. Casualty lists update hourly. Debates about accountability rage across every platform—cable news, social media, city council meetings that devolve into shouting matches.
Some call the Avengers heroes.
"They saved countless lives. Without their intervention, the Hulk would've leveled half the city."
Some call them dangerous.
"They created this situation. Tony Stark harbored a weapon of mass destruction. Where's the oversight? Where's the accountability?"
Some call for regulation.
Some call for gratitude.
Nobody agrees on anything except fear.
Peter watches from a rooftop at 3 AM, mask off, listening to a city that can't decide if it loves him or wants him gone.
Car horns below. Sirens in the distance. A helicopter circling with searchlights, probably news crews looking for footage.
The city breathes. Bruised. Exhausted. Still here.
He pulls his mask back on.
Swings toward nothing in particular.
Just movement. Just being present in case someone needs help.
Night patrol becomes routine again.
No fights this particular evening. No emergencies. No robberies or fires or cats stuck in trees.
Just wind and web-lines and time to think.
Peter swings between buildings with practiced ease, letting muscle memory handle the physics while his mind processes everything that happened.
Bruce's face, small and tired in that hospital bed.
Tony's empty bullet casing, carried like penance.
Thor's arrival—too late to prevent the disaster, just in time to name the enemy.
Strange's grim certainty that the real threat remains unseen.
The Avengers dispersing, each carrying their own weight, their own trauma, their own guilt about choices made and not made.
He admits something to himself, hanging upside-down from a web-line three hundred feet above the street:
"I can't punch what's coming."
The words feel heavy. True.
Whatever Loki's planning—whatever ancient magic weaponized Bruce's grief—that's not something spider-strength and web-shooters can solve.
And that scares him.
More than Vulcan. More than Taskmaster. More than any mugger or carjacker or supervillain who operates on a level he understands.
This is gods and magic and cosmic manipulation.
And he's just a kid from Queens who got bitten by a radioactive spider.
Peter stops on a familiar ledge.
The same rooftop where he'd watched the storm gather days ago, where everything started spiraling toward catastrophe.
The city spreads below him—lights and movement and eight million people living their lives, most of them unaware how close they came to annihilation.
Bruised. Exhausted. Still here.
He thinks about Bruce Banner, sleeping under heavy surveillance, recovering from wounds inflicted by his best friend to save him from himself.
He thinks about Tony Stark, carrying an empty bullet casing like proof that mercy and violence aren't opposites, just different weights on the same scale.
He thinks about storms that don't end—just wait.
About brothers who move unseen.
About ancient magic that feeds on grief.
About threats he can't punch.
And he thinks about staying anyway.
Not because he's strong enough.
Not because he has a plan.
Just because someone has to.
Someone has to stand on rooftops at 3 AM waiting for disasters that might not come but probably will.
Someone has to swing toward danger when every instinct says run.
Someone has to endure.
*We didn't win,* Peter thinks, watching the city breathe.
*We didn't lose.*
*We just... endured.*
And maybe that's what being a hero really is—not the victories or the saved-the-world moments or the times when everything works out and everyone cheers.
Maybe it's the standing back up after the thunder fades.
Knowing it'll come again.
Knowing you're not strong enough, not smart enough, not powerful enough.
Knowing cosmic threats laugh at spider-webs and good intentions.
And choosing to stay anyway.
Choosing to swing through empty nights waiting for emergencies that might not come.
Choosing to care about a city that can't decide if it wants you.
Choosing to be present when the next storm breaks, the next monster rages, the next impossible choice demands more than you have to give.
Because endurance isn't glamorous.
It's just... showing up.
Again and again and again.
Even when you're scared.
Even when you're small.
Even when gods and sorcerers are playing chess with human lives and friendly neighborhood Spider-Men are just pieces on a board too complex to fully comprehend.
You show up anyway.
Peter pulls his mask down properly, adjusts his posture, and launches himself into the night.
No destination.
No emergency.
Just patrol.
Just presence.
Just a kid from Queens who refuses to quit, even when quitting makes sense, even when the odds say fall, even when thunder promises to return and gods whisper warnings about threats he can't punch.
The city doesn't notice him swinging overhead.
Most people never do.
But he's there anyway.
Watching.
Waiting.
Ready.
Not because he's strong enough to save everyone.
But because endurance—real, stubborn, exhausted endurance—is the only superpower that actually matters when the thunder fades and you're left standing in ruins wondering what comes next.
The answer is simple:
You stay.
You endure.
You show up tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.
And maybe—just maybe—that's enough.
Even when it doesn't feel like it.
Even when victory seems impossible and the weight crushes and the storms gather just beyond sight.
You stay anyway.
Because that's what heroes do.
Not the gods or sorcerers or thunder-wielders.
Just the friendly neighborhood ones.
The ones who web-sling through empty nights.
The ones who endure.
Peter disappears into darkness, web-lines catching city lights, silhouette barely visible against the stars.
Below him, the city sleeps.
Above him, clouds gather slowly.
And somewhere between earth and sky, a spider keeps swinging.
Choosing to stay.
Again.