Spider-Man: Duty and Loss Chapter 52: Missed Events

Peter sat quietly on the couch. The warm air of the room was putting him to sleep, not just that either, the warm bundle of heat that was snuggled up on his left was also too comforting. He stifled a yawn as he continued to watch the TV.

They had gone quite just over 5 minutes ago; they had been talking for the last few hours while Peter waited for Crystal to change the screen. It would only change though when something happened. Looking down at the time on the TV Peter felt a small frown come to his face.

The captain was cutting it close. Crystal had told him when the helicarriers where due to launch, there wasn't much time left. As Peter started to think to himself, he felt a shuffle from the person up against him.

Looking down into the beautiful eyes of Felicia Hardy, he cocked an eyebrow. "So are you going to tell me what all that was about or are we still going to wait?" The pouting expression she had at least made Peter feel slightly embarrassed. He had told her he would explain everything and Cap was taking his bloody time.

A lopsided smile came to his face as gave a small apology. "Just a little bit longer and you'll understand." She gave a small smirk as she turned back to the TV. "If you said that differently, you'd sound like a serial killer." A small giggle escaped her lips as Peter just rolled his eyes.

As they continued to watch TV they surfed to different channels looking for anything good. Stopping on the news channel for a second, a play back of the President speaking at a rally came up. Peter didn't think anything of it, he wasn't into politics too much, he preferred to look out for the little guy and let other people worry about the big stuff.

Not that he hadn't had to deal with some big problems in his time.

That did remind him though. 'Wasn't there an election coming up next year?' But it was what Felicia said next that caught his interest. "Even though I don't like what he says some times, he is one tough nut. Acting like nothing happened after that incident last year."

Peter once again turned his head down. "Wait what happened last year?" Hearing the genuine curiosity in his voice Felicia brought herself out of her nice spot and looked at him like he was an idiot. "What do you mean 'what happened?' The abduction? Tony Stark's house being blown up? 'The Mandarin?'"

Seeing Peters completely blank face, she was about to tease him about living under a rock. The smirk had already formed on her face before it disappeared and she remembered where Peter had been living for the past year.

That thought stopped her in her tracks. Peter who was still wondering what she was talking about; saw the look of pity that flashed across her eyes and realization dawned on him. 'Ahh so all this happened while I was on the streets.'

An awkward silence settled over them before Felecia snuggled up against him again. "Let's not think about that. I'll tell you what happened. I guess you also wouldn't have heard what happened with Thor in London then?" Peter just shook his head.

On the inside he was wondering why Crystal didn't tell him if something big happened. It probably didn't endanger him, but he still would have liked to know. 'I'll have to ask her later.'

So over the next 30 minutes Felicia started to fill Peter in on the happening over the last year. It mainly focused on things that happened outside of New York, because in the end Peter knew nearly everything that happened in his home town.

Mainly focusing on the avengers, who for some reason that Peter couldn't fathom, never asked each other for help. It seemed that Tony Stark, or Iron man had started a personal war with the Mandarin, a terrorist that had destroyed his House, kidnapped the president and destroyed an oil raft, plus multiple other acts of terrorism.

The fact that not one of the other avengers was sighted didn't mean that they didn't help, but from the information released to the public and some of the secrets that Felicia had gotten her hands on, it was all handled by Tony alone.

Honestly it was one of the stupidest things Peter had heard; with the whole Avengers together they could have taken down the terrorist in half the time, at the most!

Other than that, Thor had also been sighted oversees as he fought some type of aliens threat, a fricking space ship crashing into parts of London! That one was easier to analyze what happened because most eye witness accounts and recordings showed that it was just Thor himself, fighting some type of Elf.

Once again if the avengers had all been present quite a bit of the damage in Peter's opinion could have been avoided, though he could assume that it would take time for them to arrive, they could have at least tried, to get there.

And the worst thing out of hearing all of this, the fact that Crystal hadn't said a thing. When he had started out on the streets, he didn't really get time to look at newspaper articles and the goings on outside of New York. Hell triple JJJ and where he worked usually didn't cover national news, focusing mainly on Spider-Man sightings.

'Reminder, call into work to discuss job.' Peter hadn't shown up in a while, hopefully he still had a job.

Peter was churning through all the information as the screen finally flickered from normal television to show the image of a huge building built next to a river. It was about to start.

Chapter end