The rooftop was quiet—save for the distant hum of the city and the occasional crackle of a loose power cable somewhere nearby. The tension had simmered down enough for two figures to sit shoulder to shoulder on a concrete ledge, overlooking the dusk-lit skyline.
A paper bag sat between them, half-crushed, filled with half-eaten gyros and fries still steaming faintly in the cool evening air.
Spider-Man—mask rolled halfway up, revealing his mouth and jaw—chewed slowly, eyes darting toward the man beside him.
Gerald Weston didn't eat with urgency. He didn't eat like a man trying to enjoy a meal, either. He consumed it like someone fulfilling a biological contract—efficiently, without distraction. He'd downed the warm energy drink without a grimace, which told Peter everything he needed to know.
"You've improved," Gerald said, still chewing. "Fewer wasted motions. Your new suit keeps up."
Peter grunted, wiping his mouth with the back of his glove. "Well, you kind of gave me an advice. So I figured I'd evolve or get vaporized."
Gerald nodded. "A healthy motivator."
Silence. The wind carried sirens from a few blocks away. Both ignored it.
Peter swallowed the last bite of his gyro, staring down at the flickering lights of Midtown.
"You didn't have to kill them," he said quietly. "Osborn. Toomes. I could've helped. We could've—"
"No," Gerald cut in, not cruelly, but with finality. "You couldn't have."
Peter tensed. "You don't know that."
"I do," Gerald replied, turning to face him. "Because I watched them. I studied them. Osborn was already breaking under the weight of a mind he couldn't control. Vulture had traded redemption for spite. They weren't threats to be contained. They were rot. Left unchecked, they would've dragged others with them."
Peter didn't respond right away.
Gerald took another bite, chewed, then asked:
"So… how are you doing?"
Peter blinked. "After you killed two of my worst enemies?"
"Yes."
"Gee, let me check," Peter said, mockingly pulling up an invisible notepad. "Emotionally compromised. Slight trauma regression. Lost appetite for five minutes. Mild existential whiplash. Oh, and a new addiction to Szechuan sauce."
Gerald raised a brow. "Only five minutes?"
Peter side-eyed him. "I grew up in Queens, man. We process trauma in under ten and crack jokes about it in fifteen."
Gerald gave a single, small laugh through his nose. "Nice."
The wind rustled.
Peter leaned back against the metal scaffolding and looked up at the blue sky . "I didn't like them. Osborn and Toomes. I don't miss them. But I still think about what it means when we stop trying to save people."
Gerald didn't reply immediately. When he did, his voice was lower—almost thoughtful.
"I never stopped trying," he said. "I just stopped waiting for permission."
Peter frowned. "Sounds lonely."
Gerald leaned forward slightly, hands folded between his knees. "It is."
They sat in silence again, sharing the view of a city that never slept—held together by crumbling bricks and stitched-up ideals.
Peter finally broke it, softly.
"…So. You gonna kill anybody else I know?"
Gerald raised an eyebrow. "Depends. How's J. Jonah Jameson's threat level these days?"
Peter chuckled. "Extremely high. But he's mostly bark and no bite."
Gerald smirked. "Then he's safe. For now."
They both laughed, quietly, the sound drifting off into the wind like ash and old grief.
"Tell me your adventures," he said. "Being Spider-Man. Just the missions. The fights. I'll tell you mine after."
Peter tilted his head, as if surprised. Then he smirked and leaned back, bracing himself with both hands behind him.
"All right," he said. "You asked for it."
He began casually, like recounting street-level brawls was no more complicated than reading a grocery list.
"There was that one time I fought Rhino in Times Square during rush hour. Crushed five cars, wrecked two taxis. I webbed him to a digital billboard. His face glitched through an insurance ad for three hours."
Gerald nodded, listening.
"Then there was Electro at a power station outside Brooklyn. That one was rough. He overloaded the grid, caused a blackout in five boroughs. I had to swing blind—like echolocation with web tension and panicked screams."
Gerald raised an eyebrow. "Impressive."
"Oh, and the Sandman thing," Peter said, waving a hand like it was nothing. "He turned into a building-sized wave of glass and came crashing down Sixth Avenue. I had to kite him into a construction site and trap him in wet cement. Took three fire trucks to hose him solid."
Gerald nodded again, still watching. "And Avengers-level?"
Peter gave a small sigh. "Now that's a list."
"I fought beside Cap when we took down a rogue Sentinel in Manhattan. Massive thing—designed to adapt mid-fight. I had to climb inside its skull cavity, disable the neural core, and ride it down like a falling elevator. Cap called it a 'learning opportunity.'"
"Another time? Space station. Kree sleeper ship fell out of orbit. I was web-swinging through zero-G corridors while Tony rerouted life support. We barely kept it from burning up on re-entry. I still have titanium webbing stuck in my boots from that."
Gerald took a slow sip of another can, seemingly having pulled it from nowhere. "You've been busy."
Peter nodded. "Fought with Thor once too. Giant frost-wyrm broke out of an artifact vault in New Jersey. We argued for fifteen minutes about strategy while the thing was eating highway signs. I ended up slinging a web net between overpasses and let Thor hammer-toss it back to Helheim."
Peter chuckled. "You know, they never really train you for this stuff. One day you're trying not to fail physics, the next you're webbing up a Doombot that hacked into a UN satellite."
He looked at Gerald. "Your turn."
Gerald stretched his shoulders with a sigh. "Well… mine's slightly less cooperative."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"—And I twisted his head," Gerald said flatly, his voice devoid of drama.
There was a long pause.
Spider-Man let out a soft, breathy exhale and wiped an invisible tear from the lens of his mask.
"That's… honestly one of the saddest stories I've ever heard," he muttered.
Gerald gave a nonchalant shrug, looking out over the skyline as the last traces of sunlight dipped below the skyscrapers.
"Eh. It was satisfying when I killed him," he admitted, tone calm. "Only regret? I ended him too fast. Worst father figure imaginable. Should've made him watch daytime television for a year before I snapped his neck."
Peter didn't say anything at first. Then:
"…Y'know, I keep expecting you to say something redeeming after lines like that. But nope. Just straight into emotional war crimes."
Gerald looked over, genuinely confused. "Was I supposed to lie?"
"No, no," Peter said, holding up his hands. "Honesty's good. It's just—most people I hang out with usually don't say stuff like, 'Should've tortured him with cable TV' while we're casually eating food on a rooftop."
"I wasn't eating," Gerald said matter-of-factly.
Peter gave a dramatic sigh and leaned back against the parapet. "Great. Now I feel weird eating my burrito next to a guy who casually assassinates people with bad dads."
Gerald didn't respond right away. Then:
"…You gonna finish that?"
Peter stared. "The burrito?"
Gerald nodded once.
Peter handed it over with a defeated grunt. "Take it. You've earned it, apparently."
As Gerald took a bite, Peter leaned back and gazed at the clouds above.
"So. You ever think about stopping?"
"Stopping what?"
"You know… the killing. The lone-wolf thing. Going full Batman if he had no moral compass."
Gerald chewed slowly. "Sometimes."
Peter waited.
"But I don't think the world can afford to be gentle with monsters anymore," he said. "Some things don't need saving. They need ending."
Peter was quiet again. "Yeah. But sometimes… sometimes the kid underneath the monster just needed someone to listen."
Gerald looked at him, the rooftop now silent but for the buzz of a passing drone overhead.
"I was that kid," he said quietly. "And no one listened."
Peter didn't reply.
He didn't need to.
They sat together, not as enemies, not even as friends—but as two men who carried too much weight in a city that never slept.
And beneath the neon glow of signs across Manhattan, Gerald finally said:
"…Thanks for the burrito."
Peter exhaled a small laugh, tapping the edge of his mask. "Yeah. You still owe me a soda."
"Next time," Gerald replied simply, waving over his shoulder.
Then, without hesitation, he stepped backward off the edge of the rooftop.
Peter blinked—still not used to that part.
There was no flare of tech, no grappling hook, no web line. Just a quiet whumph of air as Gerald vanished into the wind below like a ghost fading out of the city's pulse.
Peter shook his head with a faint smile. "Dude's got all the dramatic exits and none of the wardrobe changes."
With a practiced motion, he fired a webline, and launched himself forward, weaving between rooftops with ease. The city below hummed with late-night life—honking horns, blinking lights, flickering signs in ten different languages. And for a moment, just a moment, it felt like peace.
Then—
KRACK–
A violent rip of air cracked behind him. The sound of a blade slicing the atmosphere itself.
Peter's Spider-Sense exploded like shrapnel through his skull.
"Whoa—!"
He twisted mid-swing, barely avoiding a streaking projectile that split the air where his spine had been a heartbeat ago. It struck a rooftop HVAC unit, shearing through metal like paper and exploding in a burst of embers and steel.
Peter flipped twice and landed on a vertical wall, clinging to the side of a high-rise as his lenses narrowed. The night air was suddenly heavier. Tense. Charged.
Then he heard it.
"SPIDER-MAN!!!"
A shriek—feminine, furious, and familiar.
His eyes widened as a blur of crimson and gold descended from above, trailing arcs of kinetic energy. Red alloy wings hissed open with a mechanical screech, haloed in sharp, glowing light. A golden visor glared like the eye of a hawk, reflecting back the entire city skyline.
She landed on a rooftop nearby, cracking the surface with the force of her impact.
Her boots hissed with repulsor pressure as she rose to full height—poised, trembling with rage.
Adriana Toomes.
The granddaughter of Adrian Toomes. The new Vulture.
Her armor was sleeker, more aggressive than her grandfather's crude flight rig. The wings flared open like blades, each feather a high-frequency vibro-wing. Her fingers were tipped with talon-like gauntlets, each calibrated for mid-air grappling and armor piercing.
"YOU KILLED HIM!!" she screamed, voice cracking beneath the modulator.
Peter's stomach dropped.
He hadn't expected this. Not tonight.
"Adriana—look, I didn't—"
"Shut up!" she screeched, stepping forward, her wings twitching with fury. "You let him die! You watched that psycho tear him apart!"
Peter's fingers clenched into fists.
"Gerald killed him. Not me. I tried to stop it—he—he didn't listen."
"Liar!" Her voice echoed across the rooftops. "You didn't try hard enough! You let that thing erase him!"
Her wings snapped back into assault position, charging. The rooftop beneath her glowed faintly—kinetic energy building. Her eyes were burning now—not with justice, but grief wearing the mask of vengeance.
"Adriana, this isn't the way," Peter said softly, raising his hands. "I get it. I know what it feels like to lose someone. But you don't want to cross this line."
"I already crossed it the moment you let him die," she growled, and launched forward in a sonic burst.
BOOM.
Peter was gone in a blink, flipping into the air as her talons shredded through the wall behind him. Sparks flew.
"Dammit," he muttered. "Why do they always want to kill me after I eat?"
He twisted again mid-air, webs flying, as Adriana screamed through the night sky like a red arrow of vengeance.
A/N:Is anyone still reading this? If you are, feel free to check out my new story: [GMod in Another World?! Chaos Ensues!]