Peter bought a sandwich and sat eating it by the broadcast antenna at the top of the Empire State Building. He didn't wait long. Cindy silently climbed up and sat beside him.
Just like with Mysterio, Cindy understood Peter was waiting for her. After all, no one just sits motionless on top of the Empire State Building.
"Want some? I bought you one."
Peter picked up the sandwich next to him and offered it to Cindy. Cindy hesitated before taking the sandwich. She didn't eat it, just held it in her hand, pulled off her mask, and lowered her head. After a long while, she spoke hesitantly.
"I'm sorry..."
"Nothing to apologize for, you didn't do anything wrong. If anything, your timing was perfect. Scorpion was strong; if you hadn't arrived when you did, I might have been too late even if I had gotten there."
Peter comforted Cindy. In truth, from the whole incident, she hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, she'd performed quite well, aside from getting beaten up by Scorpion, which was a bit of a letdown. Cindy still kept her head down and then said, "Thank you."
She did indeed need to thank him. Peter's urgency and concern in this matter were probably no less than Cindy's own. Upon realizing that someone close to him might be in danger, he immediately rushed to the scene, even calling the Avengers to seal off the area to prevent Scorpion from escaping. In the end, he even called in a telepath to handle the aftermath.
"No need to thank me. I just... I've always been very concerned about the safety of those around me—my aunt and uncle, Gwen, Harry, and them. That's why I'm so focused on this kind of thing." Peter didn't think it was anything to be thanked for. "But when I realized what was happening, I was actually... terrified. Because you're a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, your information couldn't be guaranteed safe, and your family was threatened by Scorpion."
Peter was very worried that Scorpion might have also figured out that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. If Scorpion had succeeded, would the next step be to go after the Parker family?
So he was scared, and he was angry. He completely threw himself into the fight with Scorpion, and Scorpion was probably as disgusting as Carl King among the people he'd met. If Cindy hadn't stopped him, Peter had genuinely wanted to slam him to the ground repeatedly until he was dead.
"I'm not sure what S.H.I.E.L.D. will do, but you can probably relax. Emma Frost, the telepathic X-Men, erased all clues about you—er, our identities—from Scorpion's mind, and he'll never investigate us again. To be precise, he'll never be able to deduce anything from information again."
If it were possible, Peter even wished the White Queen could make Scorpion senile, but the White Queen didn't do that. As compensation, she told him about Kingpin, Scorpion, and Mysterio's plans, and Peter finally found out who was behind Kingpin's funding, who provided the Chitauri parts for modification, who modified Scorpion, and who provided the high-tech theft coordinates—Doctor Octopus, Otto Octavius.
But now, Peter had a different problem to solve.
"I waited for you here because I felt you weren't in a good state. At school, and just now... what exactly were you thinking just now?"
Cindy lowered her head, hugging her knees, silent for a while before giving Peter a somewhat unexpected answer: "I wasn't thinking anything."
"Huh?"
"I... I don't know. I've never known what I should do. It's just, Mom and Dad said I should go to a good school, so I studied hard. They thought I should participate in the science fair to get more credits, so I went, and then I got bitten by that spider."
Cindy, after gaining her spider abilities, was also at a loss. She didn't know what to do, so she accepted her parents' arrangements as usual, notified the government, and S.H.I.E.L.D. came to persuade Cindy's parents, leading to Cindy joining S.H.I.E.L.D.
"I... I didn't do it because I thought my mom and dad were always right. It's just because... because I didn't know what to do. I got these powers, and then what?"
Peter Parker, driven by his own will, wanted to help others. Carl King, driven by his own will, wanted to be a bad guy. As for Cindy Moon, she found she had no purpose of her own. She had no idea what she should do, or what she wanted to do. She was the kind of child who would just stare blankly when a teacher asked what they wanted to be when they grew up.
"Dad thought you didn't need to kill for someone like Scorpion, so he told me to stop you, and I listened. But I'm not entirely sure. That guy wanted to hurt my family, and I felt... ah, I don't even know what I should have felt at the time."
Cindy sighed, "At least by joining S.H.I.E.L.D., they can tell me what to do."
"Or, to put it simply. You must have something you want to do, right? You really like reading; I saw you reading David Dickens, or maybe Balzac or something else... We were bitten by a spider. Maybe we can't immediately decide what to do with these powers. But at least we can figure out what makes us happy and unhappy."
Peter quietly looked at Cindy: "Perhaps you can think of something that would make you happy, but your parents wouldn't approve of?"
Cindy scratched her hair. Something her parents wouldn't approve of, but might make her happy? Not stopping Peter from killing Scorpion at the time? Would that make her happy?
She looked at Peter Parker, the boy she had been watching and knew what he was doing since that day, the person who appeared when she and her family needed him most. If Coulson asked that question again, Cindy's answer would still only be "kind" person.
She actually envied Peter, not because Peter saved many people or was a successful Spider-Man, but because he always knew what he was doing.
"Can you take off your mask?"
"Ah ha, revealing Spider-Man's true identity, a good choice."
Peter smiled, took off his mask, and looked at Cindy, still smiling. Cindy looked into Peter's eyes; they were black, like his hair, quite rare.
"I... when I was stopping you, I was thinking, I couldn't see your eyes. How were you looking at me then?"
"Perhaps just like now...?"
Cindy did something her parents wouldn't approve of, though she herself wasn't sure if she'd be happy about it.
She simply wrapped her arms around Peter's neck, and then, she covered his mouth.
She let go, stared into his eyes, then quickly averted her gaze, turning her head away.
"Uh, I didn't expect, this..."
"It's just... thank you. I wanted to say thank you."
"Perhaps... we could change clothes, go get some coffee on the street, and then talk more..."
Peter Parker watched Cindy pull up her mask and then leap from the tall building as if escaping. Peter could only nod, speaking the words he hadn't had time to finish: "What else do you want to do? That sounds like hitting on someone."
"Alright, Parker, it's getting late. Go home and give Uncle Ben and Aunt May a hug." Peter put on his mask, just about to jump off the building, when a spark of light appeared out of thin air in front of him.
Hm? A spark?
The spark flickered, drawing a circle taller than a man. Then, a cloaked wizard with greying temples and a goatee emerged from it, staring at Peter.
"Peter Benjamin Parker? We need to discuss the twenty-three multiversal rifts you opened in one minute."