chapter two!
002. deja vu

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THROUGH THE window of a sweet, cozy and small apartment, there was a desk. On that desk, sat a laptop. A laptop that had stickers covering almost every inch of its lid: smiling cartoon faces, hot chocolate mugs, little inspirational quotes and pretty pink love hearts. It sat amongst framed pictures of a small family, a mother and daughter, two best friends slowly drifted apart and a moment of excitement as a teen held up her high school certificate the day she graduated. There settled a mug of hot chocolate, still warm and breathing steam up around celebration cards, ESU text books piled on top of one another, scattered pens and highlighters▬even an old plush toy in a skin-tight red and blue suit.

At this desk, tucked in amongst a blanket and sniffling away her allergies with the tips of a red nose was a young, intelligent girl. She tapped a pen against her cheek, reading the article she had up on her laptop and taking notes she deemed necessary onto her spiralled notebook for her Freshman College chemistry class underneath neat headlines and margins.

Nina Hart chewed her bottom lip, trying to remember what her lecturer had advised them to study in their own time to stay with the class. She could do the bare minimum, but Nina wanted to get a head start in her studies. She didn't speak much about it, kept her hand down in class and didn't answer many questions, but she stayed up late and spent her time in the library, quietly adding to her notes in a gentle breath of intelligence far brighter than many realised▬until she came back with top marks in practice essays, smiling at them to herself, proud of all the work she had done.

Teachers told Nina Hart she had a bright future. She hoped they were right. She wanted to do something right with her life▬right by her life. She wanted to change the world around her.

With a sigh, she sat back in her chair, still tapping away at her cheek as she took a sip from her hot chocolate (her third that night...).

She glanced at the time, wondering why she was so dry in motivation at the moment. She slumped forward, sniffling yet again. She's read the same paragraph of this article at least five times by now, and the lines were getting blurry.

In the end, Nina let her head fall down onto her keyboard and sighed, knowing these allergies were muddling up her mind. She needed a good night sleep, but she couldn't do that until she at least had an understanding of these lecture points for tomorrow.

But perhaps the universe had something else in mind when there was a loud crash! right outside her apartment window.

Nina's head shot up from her keyboard and she froze, starring at the blinds of her window. Her breath hitched, her heart began to race▬for a moment, she hoped she imagined the sound, and it was just something else. Perhaps a bird had flown into her window? Perhaps it was the neighbours from above?

Until she heard something else from outside. Something tried to shift, only to fall back down against her fire escape with what sounded like a very painful thud.

Nina jumped at the sound of it. Her heart continued to race. She didn't want to move. Should she call police? Should she grab a hairbrush or something? Could a hairbrush be a weapon?

In the end, she grabbed her pen. She could stab someone with it if she struck hard enough ... right? Either way, it was all she had as she slowly pushed her chair back and stood up. She couldn't breathe in the few seconds it took to make the journey from her desk to her window.

This is stupid and dangerous, she told herself, but continued anyway.

Nina reached her blinds. Heart pounding, knees quivering and breath trembling, she found the courage to grasp the string and with a tug, drew them up.

She let out a squeal at the sight and fell back onto her carpet. Nina brandished the pen in front of her at the sight of a body crumpled on her fire escape. A body wrapped up in a skin-tight red-and-blue suit with an infamous spider emblem spread out on his chest.

Spider-Man glanced over at the noise, and when he saw the young woman on her backside in her bedroom, he set his head back on the metal of the fire escape, lenses closing in exasperation. With a grunt of pain, he reached out and tried to knock on her closed window, but missed. Nina saw that movement had been too much effort enough, and he sighed, head falling back again. His lenses clenched shut.

Nina's brandished arm faltered at it. Her breathing seemed to calm down slightly as she realised he was hurt. Terribly, by the look of it.

She's heard differing things about Spider-Man. Some called him a hero, others called him a vigilante, and quite a few more called him a menace under the words of the Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson. Her father was one of the ones that believed those words in his own passionate distaste.

Nina was never sure what she believed. She's heard many opinions, heard the cheers and the shouts whenever he swooped past. But she never had an opinion of her own.

He didn't look like a hero right now. He didn't look like a vigilante. He looked nothing like a menace. He looked broken. He had fallen onto her fire escape, and couldn't move any more. He looked defenceless.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know whether to leave him, or to let him in. Did she call an ambulance? Or did she call the police?

Nina was nineteen▬how could she help a costumed hero who behind all of that, was nothing more than a stranger? And her mother warned her of strangers. Strangers could be the closest people you thought you knew, she understood that all too well.

But her feet moved before her mind made a decision. Nina left the pen on the carpet and crept back up to the window. Careful, her fingers still trembling, she unlocked the pane and pushed it up. She was met with a blast of the cool autumn air.

Once she pushed it up enough, Nina poked her head out to stare down at Spider-Man's body. Was he unconscious? Was he awake? Was he dead? How could she tell with his mask on?

"Spider-Man?" she whispered, unsure. "Spider-Man, are you awake?"

She received no answer.

Nina sighed and glanced around her. There was no one else outside their windows after hearing the crash. Either they didn't hear, or, they merely didn't care.

She didn't want to be one of those who didn't care. That wasn't who she was.

So, with a grunt, Nina crawled out of her window and onto the old fire escape that was not made to have two people on it. She winced at each creak, but ignored it, getting on her knees to slip her arms underneath Spider-Man's own. He was heavy▬she had trouble pulling him up and back towards her.

"Ugh, why are you so heavy?" she asked him, even if he couldn't hear her right now.

Somehow, she managed to drag him back into her room. Nina awkwardly set the superhero on her floor, grabbing a pillow she had by her window to set specifically under his head in a way that wouldn't cause any risk of blocking his windpipe. Once done, she closed her window and knelt over Spider-Man.

She checked his breathing, was very careful as she pulled up his mask just enough to check whether his airways were clear. Nina tried not to focus on the dimple on his chin▬Spider-Man had a dimple on his chin? When she was sure he could breathe properly, she checked around for anything that could tell her what happened. Her fingers pressed lightly against his ribs, his waist and his stomach, checking for tender skin and bulges from possible broken bones.

Nina gently touched the area underneath his ribs and gasped when Spider-Man jolted awake. She tried to stay still, watching his lenses jerk open and his hand automatically rise up to his mask. Realising he still had it on, he tried to move, only to wince and cry out a soft hiss of pain. Nina stopped him before he'd do more worse than good, quickly saying, "Stop! Stay still, okay? You're gonna make the pain worse."

Spider-Man's head fell back against the pillow. And he flinched at the feel of it. It only made him wince yet again, "Ow," he let out.

Nina knew that was a very small reaction in comparison to what she was feeling with her fingers. "Just stay still. You're covered in bruises."

"Yeah," the web slinger croaked. "The other guy had one heck of a punch."

"Probably a fractured rib."

"Eh ... wouldn't be the first."

His voice was muffled behind the mask, but all Nina could think about was the dimple chin behind them▬that and his lips moving to produce a voice that was smooth like honey. He sounded older than her, but not too older. Young, but not younger. Like he was in his early twenties.

Nina pursed her lips and just focused on what she was doing. As she did, Spider-Man added, "You know, I think there's a stab wound there somewhere."

She frowned at him, startled, "You think? Don't say that, tell me where it is."

However, she quickly found it. Her hands hovered around a gash in his suit on his thigh where the fabric was drenched with deep red blood around a wound that made her swallow harshly. Nina pulled back the shredded fabric to try and see better and had to be extra careful when the vigilante jerked his leg at the pain.

"That looks bad..." she whispered.

"You should see the other guy. Actually, probably not. He was huge. Super huge crime boss. Been a pain in my spider-backside since forever. Kinda sort of holds a spot in my heart these days, you know▬?"

"Do you ever stop talking?" she asked him, suddenly feeling a bit flushed herself at what she's just thrown herself into. When he didn't reply, Nina chewed her bottom lip with worry. "I▬I should call an ambulance. Just▬just wait here while I grab something to stop the bleeding▬"

But before she could walk away, Spider-Man's hand flung out and grasped her wrist▬so tight it almost hurt. "No," he croaked. "No hospital. Please."

Nina stared at him, incredulous. "You▬you need to go to the hospital with a wound like that."

But he shook his head. He winced as he did so. "No, I can't▬no hospital. Promise me, no hospital."

He sounded so serious, perhaps he ended up scaring her into agreeing with him that night. Either way, Nina swallowed harshly again and whispered a quiet, terrified, "O▬okay. I promise. Just ... just let me get my dad's kit."

Spider-Man seemed to believe her, for he let her go and Nina rushed out of her room. She was thankful her parents were at her younger brother's parent-teacher conference. It allowed her to rush around for her father's first aid kit: a box with everything he gathered and deemed necessary as a doctor▬everything he taught Nina as she grew up, never wanting her to be helpless if she ever got seriously hurt.

When she got back, she could tell Spider-Man was drifting off. She shook his shoulder and he lurched awake yet again. "You gotta stay awake, okay?" she told him, opening up her father's kit and pulling on the gloves he had in there. The vigilante's lenses narrowed in confusion at this nineteen-year-old girl searching through these supplies like she knew each and every piece like an old friend. "It's gonna hurt, but you gotta stay awake."

As she readied to clean the stab wound, hands still shaking as she tried to think of everything her father taught her, she felt Spider-Man reach out and take her arm, gentler this time. She looked over and saw those lenses staring back at her. Nina wondered what colour his eyes were.

"What's your name?" he asked her, surprisingly calm. Probably because this wasn't his first time appearing at somebodies window almost dead.

"Nina," she managed to say softly. "Hart. Nina Hart."

He nodded. "Okay, Nina Hart. I trust you."

And trust her, he did, from that night on.

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    NINA STARED at her computer monitor. Her day hadn't gotten much better since the morning. As her shift neared its close and Vinnie had left for the day, she found herself one of the few lab techs still around. The hour ticked by very slowly, as if it understood her glum breath and decided to keep it dragging on for longer. She was waiting for the chemical analyser to finish, wanting to complete her report on their lab mice for their ongoing tests. They were their diabetic mice, and they used them to conduct medical research. Their glucose handling is very similar to humans', which made them great to study the growth of diabetes, but more importantly, to try and find a permanent cure. Nina had called their current test mice Jimmy and Sammy▬and she slumped against her desk, watching them go about the rest of their evening in utter ignorant bliss. Even locked in a cage, it seemed as though they were living a better life than her with their own hamster wheels and all the food they could want.

Amity, one of the bio girls passed Nina by her desk before she left. With her gone, it would be just Nina in the lab. She slung her handbag over her shoulder, curious albeit a little concerned to see her sitting so miserably at her desk. "Hey," she said as she stopped, ginger bangs falling over her blue eyes, "you heading home soon?"

"Yeah," sighed Nina as she forced herself to sit up again. "I need to wait for this to finish, so I'll be a little bit longer. You head off though, I can close the lab."

She nodded. She went to go, but another thought popped into her mind. She spun back. "Look, I▬uh▬I heard about your project being side-benched. I'm sorry."

Nina forced a little smile. She shook her head. "It's okay," she lied. "Maybe next time."

Amity smiled, too. "Bye," she waved sweetly before exiting the lab.

When the door closed, Nina slumped back in her seat. She still had a good half an hour for her blood tests to be finished. She swung a little in her chair, just watching the time tick by at the bottom right hand corner of her screen. She stared at the little Spider-Man sticker she had placed at the edge of the monitor.

Vinnie's words murmured in her head, mentioning how she could ask Peter for help on the sub-stations. Little did he know how helpful her old friend could be. The problem was, Nina was too scared to reach out and ask. Her eyes wandered down to the file Holliday had returned to her desk, her little pink drive set neatly on top.

Peter hadn't even done anything wrong. Which seemed almost hilarious. For all of his chaos, and his faults and everything Spider-Man could have done that was out of his control, everything that had happened between them had been no one else's fault but her own.

He hadn't been the one that caught feelings. He hadn't been the one that romanticised every interaction they had. Peter Parker hadn't been the one that gotten too lost within the thrill of it all that when it all started to get too complicated, he ran away. That was her. His life was dangerous, and it put her in danger, too▬but the last straw had been something else entirely. Spider-Man had nothing to do with it. It had been Nina Hart realising that Peter Parker didn't feel the same way about her, and when they got so close that it got harder to hide what she felt ... instead of confronting the truth, Nina felt like the best thing for her to do was to push him away. And by pushing him away, she pushed Mary Jane Watson far away, too▬thinking that it would save them all from the pain.

Instead, in a way, it only caused more of it.

All she needed to do was call him and say she was sorry, but the longer she hid herself away, the bigger she knew the confrontation would become▬the more she would have to admit.

But this time, there was some impulse in her to pick up her phone. Nina held it and stared down at the picture of her smiling with her mother. She took a deep breath and unlocked her phone, tapping onto messages. She scrolled down and found Peter's contact. Then, as soon as she was staring at the old messages▬ones from him over six months old that she still hasn't replied to▬, Nina froze.

Each one slowly became less and less inviting▬less kind and less hopeful to receive an answer. First was a link to a video he thought she would enjoy. The second was one of his dumb jokes: Hey, Ni▬I'm afraid for the calendar, you know ... its days are numbered. The third was a week later. Hey, how are you? The fourth a few days later: Hey, Nina, you all right? A month later. Hey, whatever happened, I'm sorry. Two months. Do you wanna meet up and talk? Three months. Hello?

And then nothing else.

Nina stared at the file. She thought of all of Harry's dreams falling through the drainpipe and being forgotten. She took a final deep breath and tapped the message box. She started her message with: Hey, Tiger ...

"Oh, God no▬" Nina quickly backspaced it away. "That's a horrible way to start. What is wrong with you?" She tried again. Hey, Pete ... "No▬" backspace. Hey, how are you? She aggressively highlighted and removed all of those words. Nina gritted her teeth, frustrated with herself and stood up from her chair. She began to pace by her desk. "Come on," she muttered to herself as she did. "It's not that hard to send someone a text ... Even if it's to Peter, who you haven't seen in ages, who probably hates you now▬Oh, god what am I thinking?"

Nina spun around and cursed under her breath. She smacked her phone tightly against her other hand. "Come on," she kept encouraging herself. "You can do it, you can do it. It's for the greater good. You're doing this for the greater good..."

At last, she managed to type: Hey, Pete, it's Nina (Just in case▬you know▬he removed her from his contact list, she would) ... I know it's been a while but can we talk? Mick's, maybe?

She stopped pacing and stared at it for a second. And then a second longer. Nina pursed her lips. She hovered her finger over the send button, then it jumped down to the backspace and she was back to square one all over again.

Nina groaned and threw her head back. She smacked her phone against her forehead this time. "It's okay," she muttered once she did. "I can just call May. May will still love me▬she loves everybody!"

But before she could get out of her messages with Peter, Nina shook her head. "No, that's even worse."

In the end, she sighed one final time and gave up. Nina threw her phone onto her desk and slumped back into her chair. Head in her hands, she shook it. "Ugh, what was I thinking...?"

In the background, she heard the sound of the chemical analyser finishing. Nina let herself sit there for a moment before she decided she should open it up and finish her shift▬when she heard something else.

Her head shot up from her hands, a frown etched onto her face at the conversation that was passing just outside the lab. As it got closer, there was some part of her that told her to immediately duck down and out of sight▬and so she did. Nina crouched underneath her desk, her back pressed against the cold wood, hunched over so her head wouldn't hit the table top above. She held her breath, trying to be as quiet as possible so she could hear every word they said.

"Yes, Mr. Mayor," someone was saying in the hallway outside. "No. I can assure you▬we made sure the police didn't get close to that file. Fisk probably kept his own copy for blackmail, but now that he's locked up, he won't get any chance to release this information, Sir."

Nina's curiosity peaked. File ... memory from lunch struck her and she felt her heart jolt with a breath of fear. Those board members had mentioned something about a file and Fisk▬they were scared the police would find it. And here it was again. Nina pursed her lips and carefully peered around the corner of her desk to try and see who was talking. Her jolting heart turned into a paced race the moment she recognised one of the same board members from before.

Vinnie told her to keep her nose to herself▬that this was none of their business. And it wasn't. But this was the second time Nina has heard about it in the same day, and now that she was here, she knew that she couldn't risk being seen. Whatever this was, it was something no one else was supposed to know. And now, Nina knew she couldn't force herself to walk away as easily as she could the first time.

Nina narrowed her eyes to try and see better. Whatever Mayor Osborn was saying over the phone, the board member didn't like it. His eyes widened and he froze in his march, all of the sudden anxious. "W▬well, no ... we're not sure where the Kingpin kept the file ... B▬But▬But I can assure you, Mr. Osborn, we're on the look for it! It won't stay hidden for long▬"

It was then, at the worst time possible, Nina's phone began to ring.

"Shit▬!" Nina whispered to herself, scrambling to blindly search for her phone on her desk above as it continued its ring-tone.

As soon as she grasped it, she tugged it down underneath the desk and frantically turned it down. For a moment, she stared, furious to see his name on her phone screen. Ian Hart is calling.

Nina froze in her place, waiting with a hitched breath to try and hear what the man in the hallway would do. There was silence and so she risked a glance around. Nina ducked back faster than the blink of an eye the moment she heard the glass door of the lab open. She missed her brother's call. She expected him to leave it at that, but then he called again.

"Worst timing▬!" she whisper-shouted at her phone screen. Nina shut off her phone and listened to the man's footsteps. Her heart was pounding. She needed to get out of here▬she needed to get out of here quick.

Nina glanced around, searching for anything▬but she was stuck. He was getting closer and closer. Nina gritted her teeth and sat further back underneath her desk. She pulled her chair close in▬hopefully before he'd notice movement▬to make it seem like she had just left for the day, praying that it would be enough to not make him walk around.

The footsteps were right behind her, now. "Hello?" called out the man. "Anyone still working here...?" Nina heard him stop at her desk. She could see his shadow through the crack between the desk and the tiled floor▬his polished shoes squeaked on the surface. He froze in his movement. She heard the change in his breath as he leaned forward▬there was the sound of paper being lifted off the bench. The thud of the dive hitting the top.

Nina closed her eyes, realising that the file had her name on it.

She was done for. She knew it. But then, just as she thought the man was going to walk around to the other side of her desk, he stopped. He, too, received a phone call. And this phone call he could not miss.

The board member answered. "Mr. Mayor?"

Nina heard the sound of her file falling back onto her desk. Then, the squeak of his shoes swivelling on tiles. "No, Mr. Obsorn. Sorry▬" miraculously, the man started to walk away, "▬No. I thought I heard something. It's all good."

The lab door opened ... and then it closed.

Nina let out a long sigh of relief. She slumped back underneath her desk, wondering how she could have the worst luck and the best luck at the same time.

She glanced back down at her phone. Once again, Ian Hart was calling her.

That was four times, now. Nina realised whatever it was, it must be important. Annoyed she swiped her thumb across her phone and brought it to her ear. "What?" she whispered harshly.

"Nina, what's the password to Dad's Netflix account again?"

Nina sat there, shocked for a second. Then she sat back underneath the desk and snapped at her brother. "You called me four times for that?"

"It's an emergency!" her brother insisted. The nineteen-year-old was shuffling through papers on the other line. Most likely all of his homework for his psychology major. "I told this girl that we could Netflix and chill thinking I could just use dad's because, you know, that's smart. But I can't remember the password and she's literally in the bathroom right now."

"Shouldn't you be studying?" she countered, still whispering as she made sure that the board member was gone.

"Don't be a mom and tell me what the password is."

"It's your name and your birthday," grumbled Nina, frustrated. "You should know that."

"Oh, great! Thanks. So, what are you doing? Why are you whispering?"

She pushed her chair carefully back out with her foot. "Because I'm at work."

"I thought you finish by now?" Nina crept back out as her brother spoke. She heard him celebrate with a small cry when the password worked. If there was one thing about Ian Hart that hasn't changed since he was little, was his infuriating need to ask one million and a half questions.

"I'm working overtime," she lied quickly. Nina stood back up and glanced around. She slumped, happy to see that once again, she was alone.

Ian sat down on what sounded like his computer chair. "Oh. Yeah, hey, so▬How did that meeting go with your supervisors? Should we celebrate for Earth Day?"

Nina rolled her eyes. "No," she grumbled. She started to pack up her things. "They cancelled on me. It won't be long until we lose funding, now that Harry's in Europe. It's like they planned it. Besides," she glanced around briefly before dropping her voice. She moved over to open up the chemical analyser, "something else was happening, something strange▬I don't know, Ian, but I think it had something to do with Fisk this morning. Some of the supervisors looked a little shaken. They were talking about..." she dropped her voice even lower, eyeing the hallway once more, "... a file they didn't want police to find▬a file connected to Fisk."

Immediately, her brother slouched▬his computer chair squeaked. "Nina, what did you do?"

"Nothing!" she defended herself, her voice still low. She packed away her samples in the fridge for tomorrow. "Just ... can you do me a favour?"

He groaned. "What...?"

"Can you search something up for me?"

"Why can't you do it? You have a phone."

"Just▬" she slung her bag over her shoulder, "▬do it. Search up where that Fisk estate sale is going on."

"Why?"

"I'm thinking," Nina fished out her work keys. Keeping her phone between her ear and shoulder, she started to march towards the lab door, "that if I know Fisk well enough, if he were to hide anything, it'd be with his most prized possessions: his artwork."

She opened it up and slipped out into the hallway. She locked the lab door and fixed the alarm. Nina glanced around one last time to be sure that the board member hadn't hung around. As she did, Ian grumbled in disappointment, but she heard him type away at his computer.

"I thought you got yourself out of all that stuff," he said as he did. His disappointment had begun to lift into concern. "You know, going off and doing dangerous stuff with Spider-Man."

"This isn't connected to him," Nina argued lightly.

"Isn't it?" her brother countered. "Fisk ... strange files ... I mean, sounds pretty connected to Spider-Man if you asked me. Sounds like the stuff you used to do for him."

"I'm not doing this for Peter," she told him sharply. Ian was one of the few people in this city that knew Spider-Man's true identity. Never once did Nina mean for him to find out▬in fact, she tried everything she could to keep her younger brother away from it all. But he was incredibly smart, in his own way. And he also was good at putting his nose in places it didn't belong▬so much that he got himself caught up with a rough and tumble at The Bar With No Name, an infamous hang-out for any supervillain for any superhero one could think of. Peter had to swing in and join the fight in order to get him out. Ian will never stop boasting about the moment he knocked out Peter's once villain roommate over the head with a Jack Daniels.

"Then who else are you putting yourself in danger for?"

Nina didn't say anything at first. Because he was right▬why was she following this? Why did she have the sudden need to search this out? For six months she has done nothing like this, why did she want to throw herself back into it? What would she do once she found what she wanted? Who would she tell? There really was only one answer, but she wasn't prepared to admit it. "Just look it up, please."

"Fine," he relented. Though she knew this entire time, he had been looking it up for her. "He's got one being held in the Upper West Side under Rosemann's. I'll text you the address. But just ... whatever you're about to do, be careful."

"Thanks," Nina stepped into the elevator. She pressed the ground floor. "And I will. Bye, Ian."

"Yeah, bye."

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a/n: filler? filleerrrrrrr. I was gonna add the estate sale scene in this chapter but then I was like ... nah.

just cos of the way the plot is set out in the game, just know that there's gonna be an even pass out between the 'stealth' missions between nina and mj. mj will be introduced a little differently in this fic (aka, she won't be there at the estate sale) because I want this moment to be purely for Nina and Pete, and then to have another moment purely for Nina and MJ so I can focus on their relationship developments separately, but give then an equal amount of attention introduction wise.

but mj is still the best badass daily bugle reporter, and her stealth missions are still hers aside from a few because for those of y'all who know Nina, she would never be able to walk away from that shit without getting involved. we'll see how we go, cos I'm still working out some kinks in the plot later on just cos the game plot is so vast. like this is a 10 hour or something game when you do 100%. it will be broken up into acts etc. probably 3 for the main game and then we get into the dlc's and the miles game (which I think I wanna do a fic for, too, we'll see).

also lol I'm not a scientist, that should be a huge disclaimer. don't listen to my science shit it's most likely incorrect lolll.

(I'm a sucker for the 'spider-man showing up at the oc window hurt' stories).

oh and I have a playlist for this book. the Spotify code is in the intro chapter, be sure to check it out xx

(pete and nina reunite soon!!)