Morning Run (Closed to Peter

[st_x5_494]

Alec believed Peter when he said he'd be up. He knew Peter would take the challenge seriously, too, because the kid had this wish to show people he could do things. He just hoped Peter was actually ready for the amount of running today - almost 50 miles - and that he could keep up.

He padded out of his room in jogging pants and a t-shirt and eyed the room. "Ready or not, time to get your ass kicked."

Comments

[st_arkintern]

Peter sighs and leans back in his chair. For a few seconds, he doesn't say anything.

"This isn't the first time I screwed up," he says, scratching his arm through the bandage. "I know I need to do better. I just don't need people telling me I need to."

I'm not a kid, he wants to say, but he doesn't.

[st_x5_494]

"Who's telling you?" Alec looked at him. He usually tried to do it naturally and then Peter called him out on it and made a big whiney deal.

[st_arkintern]

Peter tries to pull a name out of a list, but no one at the inn explicitly ever said that to him.

"They all act like it!" Peter says, exasperated. He lets out a sigh.

"I just wish I could be better. I'm tired of waiting for it to happen."

[st_x5_494]

Ironically, Peter never sounded more like a teenager than at that very moment.

"Or, maybe it's all in your head, like how you thought that other Liz didn't like you."

Alec stood up. He was feeling exponentially better now. The wounds were already starting to heal. He'd be healed by early afternoon. Thanks Manticore.

[st_arkintern]

"Maybe," Peter concedes. He hates that he feels this way. He just wants to feel like people believe in him. But he doesn't know how to believe it. He's not sure that it's even possible.

[st_x5_494]

Alec can't help with the confidence thing unless he wanted to go fake an attack and have Peter save him and even then, he was sure Peter would find a way to belittle himself.

He looked at the kid and sighed quietly. He looked like a hurt little puppy.

"One day you should show me how to use those web things of yours."

[st_arkintern]

"They're pretty easy to use," Peter says. "There's not a lot that they can do when I'm wearing them like this, but the suit has a 576 possible web-shooter combinations."

He presses something on his web-shooters and a projection lights up the ceiling. "They also do this. And there's web-tracers. They're good for tracking bad guys."

[st_x5_494]

He looked up at the ceiling. "What does that do other than project your face on the ceiling?" Though maybe the webshooters were kind of cooler than he thought.

[st_arkintern]

Peter presses the web-shooter again; the light disappears and a tiny mechanical spider shoots out onto Alec's shirt. It begins to crawl up and to the back of his shirt.

"The web-tracers," he says. "It's how I tracked the Vulture's guys back to their not-secret-lair." It was just a gas station. It was probably not a lair, even though Peter was hoping it was. "Karen helped."

[st_x5_494]

"if that thing bites me I'm going to crush it." But he could see tactical advantage of it. "You should try putting this on one of the workers here. See if they disappear somewhere we haven't discovered yet."

[st_arkintern]

"Don't you think it'd be a violation of their privacy?"

[st_x5_494]

"Why does everyone refer to them as people? They don't act like people." Alec was pretty sure they weren't people at all.

[st_arkintern]

"Even if they're not human, they're still people. Do you think an AI's not a people?"

[st_x5_494]

"No." What kind of question was that. "They're a computer program."

[st_arkintern]

"What about the replicants in Bladerunner? Batty was more of a person than Deckard was. And Karen -- she's not just a program."

[st_x5_494]

"Bladerunner is fiction." Alec didn't know why that had to be brought in."and can Karen even feel? Can she cry if you die and shit?"

[st_arkintern]

"Karen expresses feelings all the time," Peter argues. "She likes people. That's a feeling."

[st_x5_494]

He paused. "... Would you die for her?"

[st_arkintern]

"Yeah," Peter says, clearly on the defensive. "Yeah, I would."

And he would. If something happened to Karen, he would be devastated.

[st_x5_494]

His fingers went to his face like he suddenly had a headache. He clearly did not like that answer. It was probably the stupidest answer he had ever heard - and he knew Sketchy.

"Fine, You do that." It came out much like a petulant child. "Good priorities, Peter."

[st_arkintern]

Annoyance rises up inside of Peter.

"You just don't understand," Peter says. "Karen's my friend. If something happened to her..."

Peter didn't want to think about that.

[st_x5_494]

He put up his hand, palm facing Peter. "You do you, Peter." If only Corbie were here to see his personal growth. "But for the record if it came to saving you or the mask, I'm saving you."

He almost asked what Peter would do, but he suspected Peter would say he'd save both.

Alec started for the bedroom. "I'm going to take a nap. I'll heal faster that way." And he won't get into a screaming match with a teenager.

[st_arkintern]

Peter knew he wouldn't get it. And while some part of Peter is annoyed for him not understanding, when Alec says he'd save him, it does make him happy. Not because Alec would save him, but because Alec insisted a few months ago that he'd just save himself.

Now, maybe, that wasn't the case.

"Tracker," Peter says, tapping the little place on his back where the spider-tracer had latched onto Alec's shirt.

[st_x5_494]

He twisted a bit, then pulled from his back and removed the little spider tracker. He tossed it to Peter. "You know where I'll be." He wasn't going to disappear out the window. He kept that for days when Liz came over and it would be awkward to leave through the front door.

[st_arkintern]

Peter catches it in his good arm.

"Thanks, Alec."

He's probably said it a half-dozen times since this morning, but it's worth saying again. Peter watches as Alec disappears into his room and shuts the door, then looks down at the tracer in his hand.

He closes his fingers around it, then yawns, stretching out his still-not-great legs.

Alec might have not been right about AI, but maybe he was right about taking a nap.