Marvel All-Tales

A/N: As of now on, anything I write that is Marvel goes here unless I make an exception or so. Also, just because I wrote these things don't mean they've actually happened, so take them with a grain of salt.

Disclaimer: This ain't a bashing fic, but don't let that stop you from commenting and voting. Honestly, after seeing bots making bargains to get information on real users, it would feel good to see real people comment.

Act I: The Ordinary World & The Broken Watch

The fluorescent light over the corner booth didn't just hum; it vibrated at a frequency that made Peter Parker’s teeth ache.

He sat with his mask yanked up just past his nose, staring at a plate of cold, congealed pancakes. Outside the streaked glass of the 42nd Street diner, 2:00 AM in Manhattan was bleeding into the pavement. Rain came down in thin, needle-like sheets, turning the neon sign across the street into a smudged red streak on the asphalt.

Peter’s fingers were twitching. On the formica table between a salt shaker and a bottle of watered-down ketchup lay the guts of a pocket watch. Tiny, brass teeth, a bent hairspring, and a balance wheel no bigger than a raindrop.

"Come on, you stupid little..." Peter muttered under his breath, poking at the escapement with the tip of a bent paperclip. "Just mesh. Just for five minutes. That’s all I’m asking."

The spring slipped, pinging off his thumb and skittering across the table. Peter winced, catching it with a web-sticky fingertip before it hit the floor. He dropped his forehead into his hand, letting out a breath that smelled of stale syrup and exhaustion.

His rent was four days late. The Daily Bugle had turned down his latest set of Spider-Man photos because Robbie said they lacked "warmth," which was a polite way of saying Peter looked like he was barely hanging on in every frame. But worse than the money was the tally keeping him awake. Three people this month. A woman on 10th Avenue whose apartment caught fire two minutes before he hit the block. A kid named Joey who took a bad turn into an alleyway crew despite three weeks of Peter trying to steer him straight. A street vendor whose entire life’s work was crushed under a rogue car during a fight with the Rhino.

The diner's door chimed a flat, tinny sound.

Peter didn't look up until the air in the booth shifted. The smell of wet wool, damp canvas, and cheap coffee filled the space. A broad figure slid into the vinyl seat opposite him.

Steve Rogers wore a faded leather jacket that had seen the bad side of three decades, a flannel shirt open at the collar, and a dark cap pulled low over his eyes. No shield or stars, which is odd. Only a man who looked like he’d walked five miles in the dark because he couldn't sleep either.

"You're trying to fix a balance wheel with hands built for throwing cabs, Peter," Steve said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that barely carried over the hum of the light. He gestured to the waitress with two fingers, pointing at the coffee pot. "You can't force grace into gears that were forged to break."

Peter blinked, pulling his mask down an inch out of reflex before remembering who was sitting there. "Cap? What are—how did you even find me?"

"Police band," Steve said smoothly, taking the thick white mug the waitress dropped on the table with a nod of thanks. "Not the main dispatch. The lower frequencies. The calls that don't get routed through the Avengers Mansion monitor room. The broken windows, the water mains, the noise complaints."

"I don't need a babysitter, Steve," Peter sighed, resting his chin in his palms.

"Didn't say you did." Steve took a slow sip of the coffee, grimacing slightly at the taste, but drinking it anyway. "I came because I recognize the look in your eyes. It’s the same look fellas used to get in the Ardennes when they spent three days in a foxhole waiting for artillery that never stopped. You’re trying to carry the whole grid on your shoulders."

"Someone has to," Peter said, his tone sharpening just a bit. "If I miss a beat, someone doesn't go home."

"And if you snap, Peter, who picks up the pieces?" Steve set the mug down with a soft clink. "Put the watch in your pocket. Put the mask back on. Walk with me."

Act II: The Anatomy of a Forgotten Corner

The Lower East Side smelled of wet garbage, ozone, and old brick. They walked side by side, their boots clicking against the wet stone. Steve kept his hands jammed deep into his jacket pockets, his shoulders square against the cold wind whipping off the East River.

"When I was a kid," Steve began, his eyes scanning the dark fire escapes above, "these were all tenements. Eight families to a floor. No hot water after six in the evening. You learned real fast that the world didn't care how hard you pulled on your own bootstraps. The city just kept grinding."

"Sounds familiar," Peter muttered, hopping up onto a fire hydrant, balancing effortlessly on one foot before dropping back down. "Only now the grinding comes with plasma cannons and goblins."

"The scale changes, the math doesn't," Steve said. He stopped at the corner of Grand and Essex, looking down into a darkened basement grating where steam was rising in thick, white plumes. "You spend a lot of time up on the spires, Pete. Looking down at the geometry. But down here, between the foundations... this is where the joints rub raw."

"Is there a point to the tour, Cap? Because if this is the 'with great power' speech, I’ve got the unabridged audio version permanently playing in my head."

Steve offered a rare, slight curve of his mouth—not quite a smile, but close. "The point is perspective. You think every fire is yours to put out. You think if a man stumbles three blocks away from where you’re standing, it’s because you weren't swinging fast enough."

Before Peter could answer, the streetlights flickered once, twice, and died.

The sudden darkness was absolute, stretching out across six blocks in a silent cascade. The ambient hum of the neighborhood, air conditioners, refrigerator compressors, the low buzz of neon, vanished, replaced by a heavy, unnatural quiet.

Peter’s spider-sense didn't scream; it just gave a low, dull thrum at the base of his skull. "That wasn't the grid blowing a transformer."

"No," Steve observed, pulling a heavy canvas duffel bag from under his arm that Peter hadn't even realized he was carrying. He unzipped it, revealing the dull, painted rim of the vibranium shield. "That was a draw. Someone’s pulling a massive current from deep underground."

"No flashy entrance? No theatrical manifesto broadcasted on all channels?" Peter pulled his mask fully down, the white lenses narrowing. "I’m almost disappointed."

"Don't be," Steve said, strapping the shield to his forearm with a crisp snap of leather. "The quiet ones are usually the most desperate."

Act III: The Battle in the Water Works

The basement level of the abandoned municipal water treatment plant was ankle-deep in murky, stagnant water. High-voltage cables, thick as a man's thigh, snaked across the concrete floors like black vipers, humming with a sound that made Peter's fillings throb.

In the center of the main vault, surrounded by rusted valves and massive iron pipes, a group of five men in greased-stained work jumpsuits were frantic. They were hooking crude, heavy-duty transformers directly into a city main trunk line. At the center of the operation stood a hulking, jury-rigged exo-suit built from industrial hydraulic cutters and scrap steel.

"Faster, damn it!" the man in the rig yelled, his voice echoing off the wet concrete. "The grid authority’s gonna trace the dip in five minutes! Get the capacitors charged!"

Steve and Peter stood on the catwalk above, looking down.

"Roxxon logos on the jackets," Peter whispered, leaning over the railing. "Or what’s left of them. Scraped off with a wire brush."

"Laid off," Steve said quietly. "After the AIM mess in Midtown. The company restructured, cut the pensions, and walked away."

"Doesn't give them the right to freeze out six blocks of housing projects in the middle of November."

"No," Steve agreed. "It doesn't. But remember who you're looking at, Peter. They aren't conquerors. They're drowning."

Cap dropped from the catwalk first, landing with a heavy, echoing thud on the concrete deck. "That's enough, fellas! Turn off the siphon!"

The men jumped, pulling heavy wrench-spanners and arc-welders from their belts. The guy in the mechanical rig, Arthur Owens, according to the faded nametag on his chest—swung his heavy hydraulic arm around, his face pale and slick with sweat.

"Stay back!" Owens screamed, his voice cracking. "We earned this! Ten years we gave 'em! Ten years building their power stations, and they throw us out like trash! We're taking what we're owed!"

"I hear you, Arthur!" Steve raised his shield, stepping forward slowly, his boots sloshing through the water. "I know what it’s like to be discarded by a system that moved on without you! But you’re cutting the heat to families who have nothing to do with Roxxon!"

"They don't care about us either!" Owens roared, bringing the heavy hydraulic claw down toward Steve.

Peter swung in, snagging the claw with a line of webbing and yanking it off-target. The steel jaws slammed into a concrete pillar, showering the room with sparks. "Hey! Tin Man! Cap was trying to have a moment there!"

The fight was messy, cramped, and dangerous. Peter moved like fluid, weaving between the technicians, webbing their weapons to the walls without laying a heavy hand on any of them. But the equipment was too unstable. A stray arc from a cracked capacitor jumped, hitting a high-pressure gas line running along the ceiling.

A deep, violent THOOM shook the facility.

The ceiling cracked. A twenty-ton section of reinforced concrete and iron rebar sheared off, plunging straight toward three of the technicians pinned against the back wall.

"Move!" Peter yelled.

He didn't think so.

He clearly didn't calculate the load. just immediately threw himself under the falling slab, catching the rough concrete across his shoulders.

The impact forced him down onto one knee, the concrete floor beneath his boots cracking like dry ice. A sharp, agonized gasp tore from his throat as his spine compressed.

"Spidey!" Cap called out.

"Got... got it..." Peter gritted out, his teeth grinding together so hard he tasted copper. The weight was crushing, relentless. His arm muscles tore under the suit, white-hot fire screaming up his back. "Just... get them... out..."

Owens froze in his rig, his eyes wide as he watched the masked kid in the spandex suit hold up twenty tons of structural collapse to save the men who had just been trying to fry him.

Steve didn't waste a second. He didn't try to lift it—he knew the math. Instead, he hurled his shield at the ceiling strut directly above Peter. The vibranium disc wedged into the structural seam at a precise forty-five-degree angle, absorbing the kinetic transfer and taking the brunt of the shifting load.

Steve bounded across the wet floor, shoulder-charging the primary support beam, wedging his own impossible strength alongside the shield.

"I've got the weight, Son," Steve grunted, his face red, veins bulging along his neck as he held the line. "You just hold the structural tension!"

With a synchronized surge, Peter whipped two lines of high-tensile webbing up to the ceiling struts, creating an emergency block-and-tackle harness that pulled the slab back two inches—just enough. Steve reached down, grabbing two of the technicians by their collars and dragging them clear, while Owens scrambled out of his rig to pull the third.

With a final, explosive shove, Peter and Steve leaped backward together as the rest of the roof collapsed in a mountain of rubble and dust.

Act IV: The Stand on the Bridge

The rain had stopped by the time the blue lights of the NYPD cruisers began flashing against the red brick of the water treatment exterior.

Two officers were leading Arthur Owens away in cuffs. He wasn't resisting. He looked small now, stripped of his steel rig, his head hanging low.

Steve stood in the middle of the street, blocking the precinct captain’s path.

"He’s being charged with grand larceny and domestic terrorism, Captain Rogers," the precinct captain said, tossing his notepad into his squad car. "S.H.I.E.L.D. wants him in the Raft."

"He’s not a terrorist, Captain," Steve said, his voice flat, solid, and utterly immovable. "He’s a laid-off electrician who made a catastrophic choice. He goes to a municipal holding cell. And he gets representation from the Stark Legal Defense Fund. I’ve already made the call."

The precinct captain stared at Steve for a long moment, opened his mouth to argue, took one look at the resolution in the old soldier's eyes, and slammed his car door shut. "Fine. Municipal. But you're writing the report, Rogers."

Steve turned and walked up the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge, where Peter was sitting on the iron railing, his legs dangling over the dark water of the East River.

His mask was off, lying in his lap. He was gingerly touching his right shoulder.

Steve walked up behind him, reached down, and with a swift, practiced motion, popped Peter's dislocated shoulder back into the socket.

Peter let out a sharp "Agh! A little warning next time!"

"You wouldn't have relaxed the muscle if I warned you," Steve said, leaning his forearms on the cold iron rail beside him.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the dark water chop against the concrete pylons below.

"I almost dropped it, Steve," Peter said quietly, looking down at his bruised hands. "Back there. For half a second... I thought about letting go."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because there were people under it," Peter said simply. "That's the stupid part. It doesn't matter who they are or why they were down there. My arms were working, so I had to hold it." He leaned back, letting his head rest against the iron beam. "I just... I feel like I'm drowning, Cap. All the time. I fix one thing, two more breaks. I saved one person, three more slipped through the cracks."

Steve looked out over the skyline as the first pale light of dawn began to paint the clouds in shades of bruised purple and grey.

"When you carry a shield, Peter, people think the job is to block the bullets," Steve said, his voice quiet, almost gentle. "It isn't. The job is to make sure the people behind you don't spend their lives ducking."

He turned to look at the younger man.

"You don't fight because you can win every time. You fight because if you stop, the dark wins by default, giving them one more morning. That's the contract."

Steve reached into his leather jacket pocket. He pulled out a tiny, polished piece of metal—a brass gear, perfectly preserved, pulled from the debris of the treatment plant's control panel before the roof fell. He dropped it into Peter's open palm.

It was the exact diameter of the missing balance wheel for Uncle Ben's pocket watch.

Peter stared at the gear, turning it over in his fingers. "Steve... where did you—"

"I used to work on old clocks with my dad," Steve said, stepping back from the railing and pulling his cap back down low over his eyes. "Sometimes a machine doesn't need a whole new engine, Peter. It just needs one piece that fits."

Epilogue: The Ticking Watch

The morning sun came through the dirty window of Peter’s apartment in Queens, cutting across the cluttered desk.

Peter sat in his undershirt, his shoulders aching, a pair of fine-point tweezers in his hand. The watch sat open on a white paper towel.

Carefully, breathlessly, he guided the small brass gear into the mechanical housing. It slotted into place with a tiny, soft click.

Not using either webs or force, Peter just let the teeth align.

Peter picked up the small silver stem, turned it three times to the right, and closed the back of the case.

He lifted the watch to his ear.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Peter closed his eyes, sat back in his chair, and let out a long, slow breath.

Outside, the city was waking up, horns honking, sirens wailing in the distance, millions of people starting another day in the grid.

He pulled his mask back over his face, stood up, and stepped out onto the fire, escaping into the light.

A/N: So, what do you think?

A/N: Anything you like in particular?

A/N: After seeing the damaging BS Marvel’s doing to Pete, I'd say fans probably needed to look at something to cool their heads off from the crap.