Chapter Text
“You told me once that the Baby Monitor Protocol officially stops sending all recordings to FRIDAY when I turn twenty-one. So in five minutes, this will be, like, the last recording you ever get of me. Not that you- obviously. Never mind.”
Cars drift slowly along the dimly lit roads, their engines a white noise from such a distance. Traffic’s lighter at this hour, on this day. Perhaps it’s apt: no muss, no fuss. No need to make a thing of it. Besides, Sunday nights aren’t particularly booming. It’s a balmy August 9th, minutes left until the 10th. Five minutes, fifty five seconds, and thirty one milliseconds to be exact. The clock blurs in the foreground as he focuses on the streets below, dangling feet acting as a frame for his view. He wonders at the distance of the hard pavement before taking note of a rat scurrying along an old building. He’s ruefully amused by it, and the previous thought goes. The rodent (Peter’s already named him Remy) reaches a corner of the apartment and slides into the drainpipe, bumping clumsily along as he ascends. Only from its flicking tail can Peter guess Remy’s made it to the gutters; he can no longer see his little friend, but he’s grateful for the distraction. In the distance, far behind Remy’s home atop an aged, dimly-lit building, vast skyscrapers soar overhead, aglow all hours of the night.
And it’s there – far, far away the Stark Tower stands. A beacon of strength and fortitude to the worlds, an anchorage of home and safety to him. Now – right now – in these final moments, a safe space is what he needs. But he keeps his distance, stares at it longingly. He wonders if Pepper and Morgan are there; he remembers reading in the paper a few years ago that the duo had repurchased the Tower and were living in the city, likely for its prestigious schools. But maybe they’re up at the cabin for summer break…
There’s hesitation when Peter chances fate and looks at the time. His heart skips a beat.
“T-minus four minutes, Mr. Stark, and I’ll be twenty-one. Or twenty-six, depending on your point of blip.” He snorts. Pauses. Then sighs. “Twenty-one…” the age feels weird on his tongue. He feels so much younger yet so much older. “Man, twenty-one, Mr. Stark! I’m, like, an adult, you know? I can drink now, smoke weed, gamble…” he pauses, thinking. “I could potentially go to prison for life, too. I mean, I don’t plan on committing any serious crimes. Just, you know, good crimes. Like stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Classic Robin Hood.”
Silence takes over and the half quirked smile on his face droops. It feels like a lot of work to keep it on. Heaving another sigh, Peter looks down at his lap and begins to fidget. He watches his fingers squeeze and twist other fingers in distracted fascination.
“You know, when I was a kid, I thought I’d be Iron Man by the time I was twenty-one.” His voice comes out quieter now, plunging the remaining minutes into delicate air; everything becomes a little less safe. “I thought I’d have made my own suit – not so much like yours I’d risk copyright infringement or anything, but enough like yours that maybe we’d be seen as, like… I dunno, a team? Is that weird?” Shoulders shrugging, he sighs again. “We’d fight like one, anyway. An epic duo; like Chewie and Han, or Kirk and Spock.” Then, he adds, grinning fondly: “Dum-E and U,”
In his periphery, he sees the time change. A sliver of panic wiggles through his stomach. “Three minutes.” A chuckle is forced out of him, perhaps an attempt at lightening the heavy air or maybe he’s just laughing at the absurdity of it all. “I don’t know why but this… this feels like some sort of goodbye. And I’ve had-” too many, so many but he can’t fixate on it, can’t breathe life into it. “I’ve had… just, some really bad years without you, Mr. Stark. It was getting better, you know. I was getting better. But then…” Tears prickle at his eyes and the lump in his throat, a sensation of which he grows increasingly weary, returns. He tries to swallow it back, push it back. A shuddering exhale escapes him.
It’s just me and you–
He wastes time trying to collect himself.
‘Peter,’ his AI’s voice calls, sounding far away in the dense fog of painful memories. ‘If you would like, the Baby Monitor Protocol expiration date set by Mr. Stark can be postponed.’
He frowns, sniffing. “Huh?”
‘Once you turn twenty-one, you have full control over to whom recordings and alerts are sent. If you want to continue informing Mr. Stark’s AI of your patrols and whereabouts, it can be arranged.’
Blowing out a breath, Peter asks: “Why would I do that?”
‘Maybe now isn’t the right time for you to say goodbye,’ Karen replies, in what sounds too much like a human voice.
He tries to be unbothered, rolling his eyes. “It’s not actually a goodbye, you know,” yet his heart belies the tone as it clenches painfully when his display flicks to 11:58. “It’s not like he’ll ever watch them.”
She goes silent.
Fingers are now twisting aggressively together as the seconds count up to the moment he’s not sure he’s ready for. “Ninety seconds,” he breathes. His knuckles crack from the forced undulations and pulls. A voice like May’s wonders if he’ll break a finger this way, so he forcibly stops himself and clasps his shaking hands together. It’s starting to feel like Titan all over again. Just a waiting game and either he’ll blow away or remain. It’s anyone’s guess.
“I really wanna make you proud, Mr. Stark. That’s all I’ve ever wanted… you and M-May–”
‘Peter, your heart rate has elevated by–’
“I know, Karen.” Peter forces out, noticing the herculean effort required to keep his breaths even, to keep himself alert instead of zoned out. He needs to say this, though; he has to say something – anything – even though he knows none of it matters. Maybe because none of it matters, he needs to say it.
‘You appear to be showing early signs of–'
“Yeah, I got it.” He grits out, frustrated by the amount of energy needed to keep himself under control. A few tears leak out, catching quickly in the lycra of his suit. “I got it, okay?”
Through years of learning and data acquisition, his AI knows enough now to stop talking. She’s silent as he pulls his mask forward and slips a gloved hand in to swipe at his face; she’s silent as he bites the inside of his lip to force a sob into submission. And she’s silent when her readings detect rapid firing of the amygdala and rising levels of adrenaline in her charge’s system: an attack is coming.
“I’m gonna make you proud…” he repeats. Maybe more to himself than anyone else. “I-I can do that, make you all proud. I just–”
I wanted you to be better
“I just miss you so much,” his voice breaks. Sobs burst from his throat as his ribs constrict to contain them. Reel it all back in. He can’t find it in himself to say any more than that; the time has switched over and it’s now his birthday.
And in the fog of his anxiety and the comforting knowledge that it’ll never be seen, he breathes further life into his fears: “...what’s the point if I don’t? What am I even doing?…What’s wrong with me?” Hands balling into fists, he brings them up to his masked eyes and presses in hard. Drags them up to his head. “I can do it… make you proud. I-I can do that…”
--------------------
He can’t.
He’s twenty-five and his senses are telling him something is happening. The tingle is deep set, rooted in a sort of anticipation in feeling something subtly come into existence. It’s inevitable, whatever’s occurring; the surge of energy he feels is Mystical in origin, no doubt, but there lies no threat. Those over at Sanctum Sanctorum will likely deal with something like this. All in all, it’s not something Peter has to jump into action for. But the warning rouses him nonetheless, and he’s conflicted over how annoyed he feels at being disturbed. Once upon a time he would’ve loved being among the first to predict something, to have such abilities. Now he’s regretful that his sensitivities have interrupted his sleep.
Rolling gently onto his back, he pinches his fingers between his brow and sighs. Looking over at his bedside, the analog reads 5:29 in the afternoon of October 17, 2032.
He could start patrol soon.
He could work on his thesis.
The mid-autumn season pulls the sun down earlier nowadays. There’s a spark of excitement in the air as Hallowe’en draws nearer, but Peter finds little to look forward to. He doesn’t care for these annoying holidays much; people use them as excuses to be cruel, to push things too far.
An old cup of water sits next to his clock, specks of dust lying on its surface. He drinks it, grimacing at the taste.
He should start patrol soon.
He should work on his thesis.
Rolling back over, a soft groan leaves him.
He doesn’t start patrol.
He doesn’t work on his thesis.
He doesn’t make anyone proud.
--------------------
It doesn’t just suddenly arrive, this weight. He doesn’t wake up one day completely unable to find joy in anything. The abject sea inside him starts off as a mere trickle, rising in volume slowly, quietly. It doesn’t form overnight. It’s a slow, gradual thing; so mutely acquired that it barely affects anything until it’s too late. Until he feels no longer like he’s floating, but swimming. Then treading, sinking, and, eventually, letting go.
This isn’t like you, Pete
It takes time, this insidious process.
Family only
It takes time to succumb to the waters.
For now, they merely reach his calves; he drags his feet, moves slower. Walks heavier.
For now, he doesn’t notice the difference; everything has been non-stop since he pieced back together, he hasn’t had time to check in, to breathe.
For now, he’s sixteen and trying to adjust to being that age in 2023, when technically – mathematically, chronologically, linearly – he should be twenty-one, nearing twenty-two. He’s trying to adjust to needing more vaccines; there are more forest and bush fires; more floods and landfalls; and…
No Tony Stark.
The world is fuller in so many ways but it’s never felt more empty to Peter than in the moments when a mural takes him by surprise, or when a news segment brings up the immortalized Iron Man: Saviour of the Universe. It’s meant to uplift people, remind them of the incredible sacrifice one man made to keep everyone safe. But, selfishly, Peter doesn’t want to remember. He doesn’t want to be reminded of
“...it’s me: Peter…”
“…we won…”
These days, he feels more and more like he lost.
He’s trying to adjust.
It’s not going so well.
–
He’s sixteen and yelling at Happy, storming across the plane to stop himself from lashing out because he’s so angry – he takes it out on him because there’s no one else, it feels like there’s no one else. It feels like his whole world has been blown apart countless times, smashed into bits the moment Beck revealed his true nature, the second that iron arm plunged from the grave, the instant that train struck his body and splintered his ribs. When he collapsed on those stiff, velvet seats, Mysterio’s words came back to mock him:
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
Branded into his subconscious, his voice echoed behind the silhouette of a broken mask, accusatory eye slits flickering like a strobe.
When he awoke, the words were still there. And they wouldn’t go away.
—
He’s sixteen and yelling at Happy, taking it all out on him because it’s the first time he really feels Mr. Stark’s absence. Even with those murals and commercials and posters and movie adaptations haunting every step, he’s been holding onto the hope that maybe he can manage without such a Pillar in his life. Now he knows he can’t.
Beck’s gotten to him; his words have struck something inside him and now Peter’s not so sure he was ever meant to do this. He can still hear Mr. Stark, six years ago for some but only one for him:
I wanted you to be better
He can still feel the way that sentence punched him in the sternum, chest cracking, then caving from the blow.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
He feels as lost now as he did when his suit was confiscated. Feels his body ache and his head splinter – hears the words swirl in his mind as Happy digs the needle way further than necessary into his shoulder, cinching his skin together with the roughness of an oaf – and he wonders if he was ever meant to be Spider-Man.
“Okay, hold still…there we go.”
A sharp twinge of pain pushes the “ouch” from him.
“I thought you had super strength.”
“It still hurts.” Peter counters as he stares at his good arm, fidgeting through the worst of it. But then the needle digs in and he suddenly wishes May were here to fix him up. Make him whole again. “Happy, oh my god,” he grits out.
“All right, relax...”
Peter’s trying to keep calm, trying to both replay everything and forget it at the same time but then (“...just a few more, there we go-”) the needle buries in too far again and he’s twitching away from the touch. “Ooh my god, Happy-”
“-Relax,”
“Don’t tell me to relax, Happy!”
He yells and launches himself across the room, the urge to just scream overcoming his senses. He’s so angry: at himself, at Beck, at Mr. Stark.
“How can I relax when I messed up so bad?”
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
I wanted you to be better
“I trusted Beck, right?” God, he’s so stupid. There were signs – there were signs, you idiot. “I thought he was my friend. I gave him the only thing Mr. Stark left for me, and now he’s gonna kill my friends and half of Europe, so please do not tell me to relax. ”
He feels his emotions pulling him, far far away – there’s a desire to give into them and let them dictate his next steps. Beck’s cruelty, both physically and emotionally, have rendered Peter so tired that allowing himself to shut down and let autopilot take over seems oddly enticing. He inhales, running a hand through his hair to steel himself. It’s an odd temptation, one he’s never experienced before.
“I’m sorry, Happy. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t shout.” He tries to reel it all in, bring himself under control before he starts openly weeping in front of the man who’s just begun dating his aunt. The tears come anyway. “I just really miss him.”
After a beat, Happy softly admits: “Yeah, I miss him too.”
Their shared confessions, and the resulting exchange, breathe further life into the begrudging truth Peter hasn’t been able to bring himself to accept: Mr. Stark is gone. He knows, topically, he’s gone. He does. But in that moment, his whole person feels the lack.
He doesn’t feel the waters rise, doesn’t know these grim realities are taking a toll on him. But he will later. Once his shoulder heals, once Beck’s mind manipulations have subsided to a monthly or bimonthly nightmare, he’ll feel it… that weight. Maybe it’ll be dismissed as aches from physical exertion, at first. But it’ll linger. And it’ll become his new normal.
There’s a weariness in processing Tony’s death. It’s both familiar and unwelcome to him. He felt it with his parents, with Ben. It’s clear, in the air, in his gaze, that Happy knows it well, too. It’s comforting to know he’s not alone. At least, not in this.
“...I don’t think Tony would have done what he did if he didn’t know that you were gonna be here after he was gone.”
Those words relieve and ease. They push against the rising doubts that seem to multiply with each second-guessing step Peter takes. Having someone there, someone who understands, helps more than he thought it would.
He still has Happy. He still has May, Ned, MJ, and Pepper and Morgan.
He’s sixteen and his best friends are in danger.
He’s going to kick Beck’s ass.
I wanted you to be better
He will be.
–
He thinks he understands –
danger danger danger
– just before the gunshot pierces his eardrum, just as his senses register the barrel next to his temple, he sees in Beck what made him so easy to trust, what drew Peter to him:
He reminds him of Mr. Stark.
He’s got a warmth like him, with similar, intelligent eyes.
And maybe, in handing E.D.I.T.H. over to him, Beck served as a sort of placeholder. Maybe that familiarity provided Peter with that feeling of security he lost when he collapsed in Mr. Stark’s arms on Titan all those years (months) ago. He just wanted, wanted
I wanted you to be better
to have someone there for him. To have Dad, Ben, Tony, someone helping him, encouraging him, reassuring him that he isn’t messing everything up.
But the illusion shatters when the shot fires. He limps away, somehow victorious yet defeated at the same time. It’s over, his mind supplies.
“...we won…”
As he slowly hobbles his way across the bridge, body aching and exhausted, the adrenaline wanes and his body begins to shake. Hyper-focus blurs into the retrospective and Peter’s mind is awhirl with unprocessed emotions and events. Again, that pull to let these feelings take control nearly overcomes him. He wants to cry, wants to scream, wants to hurt –
MJ’s rushing to him, pulling him close to her in relief and suddenly, the storm inside eases. Things calm, settle. They fuss over one another, injury-searching hands soothing at every touch.
When they kiss, Peter feels, for the first time in a long time, like he’s won.
—
When Beck reveals Spider-Man’s identity, that feeling vanishes.
He’s meeting MJ this afternoon. A few weeks have gone by now without Beck making an appearance in his dreams; after his fifth night terror in a row, May had sat him down and demanded to know every detail of what happened in Europe.
When Peter finally – tearfully – revealed the truth, he felt almost liberated. There was relief in her sharing those horrible nights with him, when his chest felt like it would explode from the pain taking up so much space. On one particular night, when Beck’s words became the only thing he knew, when waves of sobs overtook him, he confessed to May just how much he missed Tony, just how lost he felt without him. Just how
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
fragile his whole existence felt. His pain, pushing and pulling and thrashing inside him, built up inside him like a pressure cooker until May’s hand pressed on the rattling cage of his chest. Until she soothed and listened, cried with him and told him how strong he was.
He doesn’t suffer a nightmare without her again. She mollifies him, grounds him, brings him back into his body. And what was an almost daily occurrence has ebbed into a monthly one, thanks to her.
He’s sixteen, things seem brighter, and he’s spending the afternoon with MJ. Everything else is just detail.
Humming and jiving through the kitchen on his way to the door, swallowing down the last of his hastily made breakfast, he does a twirl and kisses a seated May on the cheek. Her morning coffee enriches the apartment in its comforting aroma, casting a contented hue around them both. “Gottagoloveyabye!” he makes for his exeunt.
“Peter,” he’s called by his aunt, whose smile at her nephew hasn’t left since his performance.
“Yeah?”
She gets up from her seat at the table and meets him at the front of the door. Cupping his face, thumb swiping across his cheek, she meets his eyes and says warmly: “I’m really proud of you.”
It takes him off guard, of all things. Of course he knows she’s proud of him; May’s said it many times before. But there’s something deeper in her words. Something weightier. And it’s that he’s surprised by. “Wh-what? Why?”
“Because I am,” she chuckles softly. “I’m so proud of you. How you’ve managed the last few years. Honey,” her hand leaves his face and then she’s gripping his shoulders, “you’ve been through so much and I know it hasn’t been easy. But look at you now. Look at the man you’re becoming.” Eyes shimmering, May fondly shakes her head. “I’m so proud of you. And I know they would be too. All of them.”
Peter swallows over a lump in his throat and clears it. His chest feels like it will burst, but in a delightfully pleasant way. In a good way. It’s been a long time since he’s felt this happy.
He’s sixteen and he’s happy.
Crashing into her, Peter wraps his arms around his aunt and holds back a sob. “Thanks, Aunt May.” he mumbles into her shoulder, fearing his voice will break if he speaks any louder. She smells like peonies: it’s the perfume Pepper gifted her for Christmas last year. It suits her, wraps around him and soothes like a balm.
“I larb you.”
They giggle together and he can’t even be embarrassed by nuzzling just a little closer. “I larb you, too.”
They stay like that for a while.
He’s running late now, but it’s fine – worth it. It gives him an excuse to jump into his suit now rather than later. Front door abandoned, he leaves through his bedroom window instead.
Mood elevated, flying through the stratosphere, Peter swings around the city. Heart pounding, cheeks hurting, body buzzing, he flips and uses almost any addition he’s programmed into Karen that will get him soaring just a little longer. If this is what sixteen is like, Peter finally gets the hype.
Heading toward Grand Central Terminal, he texts MJ his two minute ETA. He takes selfies while flipping through the air. He feels good. He feels really really good.
–
It’s short-lived. Parker luck, and all.
He’s sixteen, and all of New York City (including MJ) is staring at him. “What the fuck?!” Peter yells, hands flying to his head. Protectively, his fingers grip the lycra in case anyone tries to unmask him. Crowds of people swarm them, each murmuring in judgement and fear. They push in on MJ and he’s instinctively jumping down to protect her. “Whoa whoa whoa, please don’t touch her!” he says and wraps his arm around her waist.
“You’re just a kid?” Someone says.
“You murdered Mysterio?” Another asks, accusing eyes flicking from him to MJ. “You helped him murder Mysterio?”
Dread pools in his stomach as he takes note of the horrified looks, disgusted looks, aimed at him. Because of him. Because of Mysterio’s near perfect manipulation of the truth. Peter knows how quickly one can go from hero to zero. He saw it with Mr. Stark, with nearly all the Avengers. Immediately he knows he’s not prepared to handle what he’s just been thrown.
“Uh… no, I didn’t–” he offers weakly. Too entrenched in this spiral is Peter to assertively stand his ground.
I wanted you to be better
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
A hand reaches for him – an iron arm plunges from the grave – and Peter has to leave, has to get them out of this mob. He swats the hand away and webs off, gritting his teeth against the rise of humiliated tears as the woman’s yells reach him:
“He hit me! Spider-Man hit me!”
So quickens the rise of dark waters. His secret identity has always been the most important thing to him because without it, his friends and family aren’t safe. Without it, he can’t live the life he’s supposed to live. Beck’s managed to implode his world not once, not twice, but three times and Peter’s never felt so mortified, so betrayed: Spider-Man is someone to fear now, a threat, a villain. And Spider-Man is Peter Parker.
Peter may have won in London, but Beck is victorious overall .
“...we won…”
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
No – it’s not supposed to be like this. Peter Parker is supposed to be Peter Parker. Spider-Man is the friendly neighbourhood hero, a goddamn Avenger. He fought against Thanos for fuck’s sake and these people, the very people he’s dedicated himself to protecting, have no problem believing he’s a murderer.
Panicked, he lets his body take him anywhere he can be alone to take a second and breathe. He thinks he has a conversation with MJ about her dad, only vaguely recalls her covering his eyes, sees the jumbotron of Spider-Man’s mask split by his very - secret face… a terrorist? … emotions are boiling to the surface and he can’t get his mind to be quiet – everything blurs by him quicker than comprehension. He’s only aware they’re atop the Queensboro Bridge when Ned’s shouted “DUDE!” jolts him into the present.
“DUDE!”
“DUDE!”
“DUDE!”
He’s sixteen and the whole of New York City is watching him. He’s still yelling with Ned, the vice in his chest squeezing desperation into his voice. “DUUUUUUDE!” and flailing arms in his periphery remind him of MJ’s fear of heights. She’s enough to pull him out of his spiral, momentarily, and focus on her.
“Ah! I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“No, not really. Uh…” she replies, her embarrassed and troubled reaction to the gondola full of spectators further upsetting Peter’s stomach. Shit – he shouldn’t have brought her here.
“Yo, Peter!”
Instinctively, he whips his head toward the call of his name and regrets his stupidity. Fuck, you’re so stupid.
I wanted you to be better
A news helicopter hovers too close and suddenly Peter freezes. He stares at everything around them, still not fully comprehending this new reality. “We should go,” MJ’s words pull him out, pull him closer “we should go, come on!”
“But you said you don’t want to swing.”
“Swing me. You should just swing me, yeah!” Her look of forced determination is really kind of cute so he focuses and thinks.
“Okay – we can take the subway.”
As he guides them through the winding tunnels of the underground system, he passes a mural of Iron Man: Tony Stark’s spray-painted face half covered by his emblematic mask bears down on him. The Universe’s Hero. And Peter’s… nothing.
May said he’d be proud.
He doesn’t think he would be, now.
So the waters rise.
--------------------
He’s seventeen when he sees what not having a secret identity can do; one by one, he opens college rejection letters. And he watches, with each rejection letter MJ and Ned receive, what associating with a known terrorist does.
They were shoo-ins. There is no possible way their rejection is not political – not because of Beck.
Because of Peter.
And maybe he’s imagining it, maybe he’s hypersensitive because of all that has happened lately, but he’s starting to feel his friends retreat. Ever so slightly, he begins to feel them pull away. They look at him apprehensively, maybe even accusingly.
It’s not an unfamiliar sensation, being afraid of losing the people he cares for. But what strikes him differently this time is the desperation that grips around the fear of losing Ned and MJ. He did nothing to rescue Tony; he just stood there when Ben got shot… but he can do something about this. He can fix this: he has to. He needs his friends. He doesn’t think he can make it without them.
And so, wading through the knee-deep waters, his heavy feet carry him to Sanctum Sanctorum.
He can fix this.
–
He manages to fuck it up.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
Because of course he does.
I wanted you to be better
Parker luck, and all.
–
He’s seventeen and May’s dead.
He knows he’s talking to her, urging her to stay. He knows the devastation and fear shaking his voice say more than his questions. And he knows that she’s dead. But he pleads for her anyway. Needs her to come back.
“May? ...May? What are you doing, May? Please, will you just wake up and talk to me? Please?”
Instantaneous conclusions come to him — there’s no inner dialogue taking time to realize this, there’s no processing of any kind. They become facts so utterly known they don’t require questioning, akin to knowing one's own name, to knowing the colour of the sky:
He did this.
It’s his fault.
May’s dead and he did it.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
His name is Peter. The sky is blue. He got Aunt May killed.
Distantly there’s a commotion, and he’s looking up and seeing tears, seeing blood, seeing –
Happy, whose perceptive-turned-weary gaze understands immediately. Whose body slumps in sadness, in not again. They’re right back on that plane in Holland, mutually despairing for what will never come back. Tony, May – they’re dead when Peter could’ve
I wanted you to be better
done something. His Truths burn into his bones, searing through the chest in such agony he’s looking back at May’s body and feeling control slip away. No longer is there an option to pull back – his grief engulfs him, a black tar rising in dangerous speed. He can’t command himself to breathe, can’t command himself to pull it together. Peter needs to leave now, not only to avoid imminent arrest, but to avoid what he might not be able to restrain. There’s a dense, abject fog that won’t let up, endless white noise echoing with you did this you did this you did this as the window to escape grows smaller and smaller. “It’s just me and you, okay? It’s just me and you,” he whispers, maybe to reassure himself more than anything else. And he presses one last kiss to her forehead, endlessly apologizing to her as the cacophony in his mind grows louder.
I wanted you to be better
If you were good enough, maybe May would still be alive
Outside of himself, away from his body, he can’t feel the tears and spit on his face, can’t feel his lungs inhaling and exhaling with dangerous rapidity, can’t tell that he’s sobbing. He just knows it’s happening after it happens. His mind tells him May smells like her perfume and blood, but he can’t smell it. Vaguely, he’s there, but he’s unable to escape this tunnel vision. He’s not sure he wants to.
It’s the bullet to his shoulder that sends Peter running, made to scurry away like a pest. With one more look at the flames, the rubble, May’s body, he’s propelled to sprint far away from the shower of gunfire, the call of his name, Happy’s distant shouts of run, Peter! He says a silent goodbye, as his feet stumble clumsily on the pavement, spider-sense telling him that he can never go back. And born in that is the realization that he’s the last Parker. The very last, left behind.
He’s seventeen and well and truly orphaned.
“...we won…”
It’s just me and you, okay?
After that, the mind takes a while to register anything else.
–
Each passing block blurs into the other. It won’t stop, this feeling building inside him – there are too many losses tearing into his person now, how can he contain them? How does anyone carry on after this? How can he be expected to find his way after losing three guiding lights in his darkening sky? It’s empty, he’s empty, he’s –
“What else can I call it? What more need be said?” The jumbotron glares at him, a neon leviathan J. Jonah Jameson, appearing bereft, reveals the scene left behind by the Green Goblin. By Peter. “The damage, the destruction, you saw it with your own eyes. When will people wake up and realize that everywhere Spider-Man goes, chaos and calamity ensue. Everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin. And we, the innocents, are left to pick up the pieces…” Distantly, he knows his body is shaking, mind moving numbly. “J. Jonah Jameson reporting. Good night… and god help us all.”
He lets himself be taken somewhere – anywhere. For a long time, he and the black tar are one. Him and his Truths. His name is Peter. The sky is blue. He got Aunt May killed.
Ben is dead.
Tony is dead.
May is dead.
Your fault.
Your fault.
Your fault.
–
He’s seventeen and falling apart on top of Midtown; it’s the only place he belongs right now. Anything resembling control has left him as he wails, keeled over folded knees and screaming into the gravel.
Karen is saying something but Peter can’t hear it, can’t hear anything except the pounding rain and the echo of
It’s just me and you, okay?
so many heartbeats stopping, too many lights going out. Sobs grip him so violently that his lungs burn for air, but he can’t stop crying, can’t stop the pain, can’t stop –
Stuttering through a piss-poor inhale, he sees that his good hand is outstretched in front of his nearly-prone body, clawing at the gravel in supplication. Something dark wryly acknowledges the many failed attempts at asking for help. When has that ever worked out for you?
I wanted you to be better
If you were good enough, maybe May would still be alive
He wonders if it takes minutes or hours to get it together. He wonders if it will rain forever. He wonders why his shoulder doesn’t hurt. He wonders if he’s real – if any of it is real.
‘Peter,’ Karen’s faint voice calls through the void. If it’s real, he wishes it weren’t. ‘Incoming call from Mrs. Stark.’
For a moment, for a sliver of a moment, he thinks he hears ‘Mr. Stark’ and hope jumps into his heart milliseconds before reality aggressively tears it away. Sighing, he considers not answering. But he knows Pepper; she’d get FRIDAY to force it through.
Accepting the call, Peter presses his knees and shins into the gravel to haul his torso up. “Hey Pepper,” he greets wetly, too tired to force a pretence: no doubt Happy has filled her in about this. Maybe Karen has too, now that he thinks about it.
“Peter,” her voice sounds just as devastated as his. He can hear the news on in the background of her call, can hear the earlier report repeating its findings. Then it’s silent, just the two of them breathing. Moments pass. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry, sweetheart.” Pepper’s emotions trigger another wave of his, and he can’t
“Pepper-” he sobs,
hold it in. “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m right here with you.”
Together, they cry. He knows Pepper’s also lost someone dear to her. He’s reminded of the two women, tipsy on Christmas Eve and laughing so hard they both snorted. Intermingling with smells of pie, gin and tonic, and May’s recently gifted perfume (peonies – “it suits you,” Pepper had said), the air was warm and heady. Their contagious laughter got Peter and Morgan keeling over too. It’s a good memory, a cherished memory, a never-again memory.
He knows he’s stuttering out sobs as the fight for air begins. He feels so abandoned, he’s been left behind again – he’s lost in the pain gripping him like a vice. “Sweetheart, breathe.” Pepper gently instructs. “You’re alright, Peter, you’re okay.”
And that’s wrong, so so wrong because she can’t understand that he did this, he did it and she doesn’t know.
You’re okay. You’re alright.
he wasn’t then; he isn’t now
He cries harder, shaking his head in dispute. “Pepper, I can’t-can’t, I can’t do this without her, I can’t–” and the admission pulls a hiccup from him before he dissolves into more tears. “She’s gone, she’s gone, Pepper. I’m alone-”
“-You’re not,” she interrupts, “you’re not alone, honey. You have me, you have Morgan. You have your friends.”
It doesn’t feel like enough anymore – and that thought makes Peter feel worse. So alone are we in this absurd universe that merely one person should be enough but for Peter it’s not anymore. Why does he have to be the one constantly losing and rearranging family?
The rain’s pattering continues, puddles forming around him. “We’re all here for you, Peter. Always.” Pepper says fiercely.
The rainwater has accumulated past his knees, obscuring his legs in mud and polluted water. If his skin is wet, he doesn’t feel it. If he’s cold to the touch, he doesn’t feel it. Looking to his outstretched fingers, he sees the cuts but doesn’t know if they’re stinging anymore. And he still can’t feel the bulletwound, either. Is this it, he wonders, does this go on forever?
“Pepper,” blood and water drip to his lap. Ripples dance across the puddles, outward movements breaking into another and reforming, smaller, “do you ever…” and breaking into another and reforming, even smaller. Until their momentums slow to nothing. People always mention ripples moving outward to affect more change in the water, but they don’t mention the inevitability of larger ripples stopping that motion dead in its tracks.
“Do I ever what, Peter?”
He blinks owlishly. “Do you ever feel…” he wants to reawaken his awareness, to find sense, but can’t. “I don’t know… untethered? Since-since then? Like,” he grasps for an explanation but it’s hard when everything is so numbingly loud… “just not really on the ground anymore?”
It’s silent, Pepper’s oddly silent, so he continues, “it’s stupid, you know, it’s – really, really stupid, but I…” voice pitching to a rasp, he confesses: “I guess I just thought somehow he wasn’t gone… you know? I-I really thought, somehow, he’d come back… right when I needed him the most…”
“Peter…” she sounds pained.
“And now it’s like May’s gone now, you know? If-if he’s not coming back for that, then he’s… he’s just not coming back. They’re gone. Tony and May are gone and it’s-”
Your fault
Your fault
“-I don’t feel like I’m really here anymore, you know? I’d never felt that way before, not even after Ben... But then Tony died, and now-now May… and it-it’s like I don’t know where I am.” His voice cracks, the weight of grief crushing the air from his lungs. “I don’t know, Pepper, I think I might’ve come back from Titan wrong or something.”
“You didn’t-”
“Do-Do you think he’d be disappointed? For messing up this bad? Like, would I be a huge disappointment to him now?”
Somewhere, distantly, maybe from an idle car, he hears J. Jonah Jameson’s segment again , the vicious but maybe, probably, actually truthful rant that “everywhere Spider-Man goes, chaos and calamity ensue. Everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin…and we, the people, are-” and he suddenly doesn’t think he can keep speaking anymore.
“Oh, Pete- no sweetheart, Tony-”
“-left to pick up the pieces.”
“Uh, Pepper, I need to go. I, I just need to-”
“-Wait, Peter, I need to tell-”
He rips the mask off and inhales as fully as he can manage. But his chest feels like it’s going to fracture, going to break open and spill out the sea of his misery. Burning tears trail unbidden down his cheeks as he hears it over and over again (“everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin”) and what if it’s true – maybe it’s true – it’s like he’s overloading with the sheer size of his emotions, the betrayals of his thoughts. With a whimper and a sniff, he presses a hand into his chest (like May used to), gentling the seismic shifts in his sternum.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
He pushes a little harder, trying to rein it in.
It’s just me and you, okay?
A little harder. He remembers her strength, her terrible cooking, her perfume, her smile…
It’s not the same. Of course it’s not. But remembering her this way, her pacifying touch, her kind words… he manages to regulate his breathing. Eventually. Her memory is as clear as if she were alive. He knows that will fade, as life goes on. So it’s now that he needs to cherish her. And all she stands for. Stood for.
When MJ, Ned, and… himselves arrive, Peter remembers Pepper’s promise that he isn’t alone. And maybe he still selfishly feels like it’s not enough right now, but he will always fight for them.
So he does.
He’s seventeen and fighting alongside the two coolest guys ever. They understand his struggle, understand him, empathize with him. And it’s good to be heard in this way.
He’s still got people to fight for.
–
And then they all forget him.
--------------------
On a cool August morning, the day MJ and Ned leave New York for Massachusetts, he perches atop the Throgs Neck Bridge, hoping to catch a glimpse of a yellow car crossing into Manhattan. After half an hour of quiet anticipation, he instantly spots the clunky hatchback Ned’s parents gifted him; it was given right after all three of them sent in their MIT applications. They had talked about going there, squeezing in together with all their stuff, in that car. The moment the licence plate is registered, Karen zooms in and follows its movement. Peter sees Ned singing and dancing at the wheel, sees MJ’s feigned annoyance and obvious amusement. She interrupts him with something, he laughs, and they begin talking animatedly. A new chapter of life is about to begin for them – it’s so clearly written on their faces how excited they are.
The turbulent wind is the only thing he can hear; cars and trucks blare by without a sound. He has the option to tune in, to listen to them, but this moment isn’t for him. It’s for two friends, who deserve the whole world.
In the silence, as the car carrying the last two people who knew him blinks out of sight, Peter sighs. “I guess now, Mr. Stark, I really am nothing without the suit.”
--------------------
He’s eighteen and standing before May’s gravestone, staring at its garnished snow and letting the cold sting his fingers and toes. Winter has never been his favourite, but he makes a point of visiting her and Ben when he can no matter the condition.
He doesn’t really have anyone to talk to, these days. After setting MJ and Ned free, safe to live their lives – safe, happy, fulfilled lives – at MIT, the weight of the whole mess he’d made had sapped the energy out of him. It took him weeks to recuperate; he couldn’t even bother eating for a day or so. Only when a profound wave of dizziness and anxiety crashed over him did Peter emerge from his bedroom, shaking, sweating, to eat half the contents of the fridge. He slept in May’s bed for a few days after that, spending the few hours of paralyzed consciousness wondering why he was so tired; when Toomes dropped a building on him, he was back to patrolling within the week. But this time, it was like Peter’s feet couldn’t find the bottom of the rising sea inside him. At some point in the quiet aftermath, he became acutely aware of the water, of the thick tar weighing him down. And its presence became a constant. The waters surpassed him; he had to swim all the time, and he was tired .
When he was able to come out of the mist, he found a rundown apartment in the middle of Queens. The landlord, Brian, is a true Boomer in that he has no technological savvy. So Peter bargained his rent down by twenty-five percent by being the go-to guy for software development, updates, and repairs. Sometimes it’s for the building, other times it’s for Brian’s own personal devices. Right away Peter learned some very shocking things about his landlord and his tastes, but for now he manages somewhat comfortably.
Most of May’s stuff he sold online and earned a bit of cushion money – he didn’t want her stuff around, reminding him of what he lost. He couldn’t stand the pain, the smell of her perfume… Nearly everything, including himself, had to leave for Peter to feel like he could begin thinking straight.
Standing, staring at his united aunt and uncle, he finds he’s still struggling for breath, lapping up restless waters. Finally aware of them, of the thick tar oozing inside him in the darkest moments of his exile, he can’t remember a time he felt rested. The only thing he can do to prevent himself from drowning completely is try to not think about it – try to build a wall between the pain of the past and now. His best friends are in another state, and life has once again moved on without him. Nothing ties him to before so it should be easy.
But then suddenly there’s Happy.
Happy, staring, bereft, at May’s name. Happy, who’s asking him how he knew May. Happy, whose questioning of what’s really gone makes Peter want to scream. Damn, he’s so angry with them. And he really fucking misses them.
The power of memory is something Peter believes in strongly: it’s how he keeps May alive. And Tony, Ben, his parents… And now, he supposes, his friends. But it’s also how
It’s just me and you, okay?
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
he can’t stop avoiding certain memories, the appointed phrases that remind him of things he wants to forget . It’s exhausting to keep these thoughts at bay, to replace them with his GED textbook or study materials. It’s exhausting to focus on anything at all when his only activity as of late has been sleeping or trying to separate himself from something that doesn’t exist anymore.
But Happy’s much more capable than Peter could ever hope to be.
So he’s eighteen and trying to give Happy hope about the future because at least someone has to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Turning away, Peter thinks it’s unlikely he’ll ever see Happy again. The exchange, the “good to meet you” severs something inside him as he retreats; it crushes the little bit of hope he had that maybe he’d be remembered – perhaps his visage, his character, his words, would be enough to trigger in Happy a memory. But it doesn’t. The “good to meet you” is sincere but wrong.
With languid steps he walks to his sad apartment, that weight pushing just a little further down on his chest. Sometimes it’s heavy enough to keep him in bed for days. Sometimes he thinks he doesn’t fully inhale. Sometimes he feels the resistance of the waters as he fights through.
And sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes, for a bit, he’s able to forget he’s waterlogged. And that’s something, right?
He’s eighteen and starting anew, completely wiped clean. Maybe this is what he needs to move on.
--------------------
He’s nineteen when he starts to think something might be wrong with him.
At first it was easy to blame May’s passing on his newfound behaviours, habits, regressions… but now he thinks there’s more to it than that.
I wanted you to be better
It’s an innocuous thing that shouldn’t have any effect whatsoever: as he passes a stranger on the crowded streets of New York City, he accidentally bumps their shoulder. Their snarling “fuck you” shouldn’t bother Peter, but it does. The tone, the aggression, the malice – it’s stupid, he’s being stupid, but it stays with him. And it remains for a long time. He’s confused by it; it feels as though, lately, he’s an exposed nerve, raw and sensitive. What’s wrong with him?
–
After finishing watching his Friday night movie marathon of Star Wars, he looks down at the two boxes of pizza stacked before him and realizes he’s only eaten three pieces. There was a time when wolfing down two pies was a cinch (“The Joey Special,” he’d say, pulling a chuckle from May). But here he is – he just can’t stomach more.
It goes on like this now, a new habit acquired from nowhere. Some days he can cook himself and stomach three or five square meals. Other days, the days when sleeping becomes his sole existence, he barely eats… if at all.
He’s nineteen and there may be something wrong with him.
–
Blasting through the early spring air, whooping as he flips and somersaults, he feels unburdened by gravity. The smile on his face is wide and painful, like an unused muscle suddenly thrown into a marathon. There are pockets of moments, like this one, where he feels like himself, feels connected to life. They’re rare and precious, cherished in his mind like memories.
But later that day, when Karen updates him on her monthly findings, she reports more moments of tearfulness and anxiety; a decrease in his serotonin levels; and a minute increase of his resting heart rate. She recommends he download breathing exercises for the moments of heightened panic. And the pocket is sewn shut. His mood plummets, strictly obeying the laws of gravity, and he becomes conscious of his shaky foundation.
-
He thinks there might be something wrong with him when he loses his first kid. He’s almost twenty when, despite his best efforts, he hears the awful rattle leave a little body too prematurely. Yes, he lost a kid and that’s what’s wrong with him – that’s clear as he keels over on the pavement, hands pressing into his mouth to keep the sobs at bay – but it’s more than that.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
He knows he lost that kid because there might be something wrong with him.
–
Peter instructs Karen to download those exercises after battling against his mind three nights in a row. After feeling his existence shrink down exclusively to
I wanted you to be better
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
It’s just me and you, okay?
You’re not alone, honey. You have me, you have Morgan. You have your friends.
–
Sometimes the breathing exercises help. Sometimes they don’t.
--------------------
He’s twenty when he decides that something is definitely wrong with him.
Having been enrolled in college for the better part of two years, he’s a struggling sophomore-soon-junior, only barely passing most of his classes. Of course that wasn’t his goal when he decided to pursue a degree on top of being Spider-Man, but that may be because there’s something wrong with him.
His interest in school is still there, but the motivation is not. In every class, for every assignment, every paragraph he reads needs to be reread, then reread again. His mind wanders, drifts, sometimes to May, sometimes to Tony, or MJ, or Ned… Any report he can pull himself out of bed to work on is scrutinized, judged, not good enough, and
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
subsequently scrapped by him. He tries to change his surroundings, seeks counsel from academic advisors, experiments with music... But it doesn’t matter; regardless of the setting, his eyes glaze upon opening the study material. He can’t focus. He can’t understand. He can’t figure things out anymore.
Come exiting the final exam for this year, he isn’t sure about any of his work in the last semester. Why did he even enrol? What was the point in putting himself in debt if he was just going to slack off? What did he think he would possibly achieve? Tony Stark had already finished his undergraduate degree by the time he was Peter’s age: at this rate, he’ll take three years to get his degree and who knows how many for a PhD…
I wanted you to be better
He’s twenty and perplexed at himself. He loves learning, loves to be challenged, to work his way through complex problems, to experiment with different formulae and make magic with chemicals. Peter loves this, so what is wrong with him?
He wonders if it’s burnout. Maybe, now that he has four months to himself, he can rest and come back and do better – be better –
But there’s something wrong with him. His better is mediocre at best: look at his messy apartment, his pathetic social life, his shitty schoolwork. If this is all Peter can manage, then maybe he’s not meant to be a hero. Maybe he’s not the person Mr. Stark made him think he could be.
--------------------
He’s nearly twenty-one when he meets his new neighbour, Gwen. Opposite his apartment, she’s a Master’s student studying psychology. The two exchange handshakes and pleasantries, Peter introducing himself in return and briefly touching on his majors. He excuses himself after a short time, however, because he’s excited to read up on the James Webb Telescope. More echoes of the Big Bang have been captured, with detailed findings and additional documents having been published by NASA. Peter’s geeking out, beyond excited and with no one to talk to about it.
While waiting for the article to load, he recalls a fond memory of him and Tony deciding one night to look up the blueprints of the Hubble Space Telescope. Fifteen-year-old Peter had secretly hoped they would build their own, but Tony had seen enough of space by that point. He was only interested in its design, a fan of Richtey-Chrètien variants.
Now that the successor of Hubble yields so much more, he really wishes Tony were here. They had a countdown for the launch of the James Webb, begun in 2016 when they bonded over it. In the end, Peter missed the launch; he was dust, in a rock, blissfully unaware of his absence.
Text appearing, Peter begins his read – Korsch Telescope detecting orange to mid-infrared, orange to mid-infrared, orange to mid – but finds that
I wanted you to be better
he’s unable to fully process the words. He reads them, understands them as words, but not their connection to one another. And the small amount he can truly absorb is promptly forgotten. Blinking a few times, he clears his eyes and tries again. But
It’s just me and you, okay?
he can’t focus. He can’t understand. He can’t figure himself out anymore.
There’s something wrong with him.
Slamming his laptop closed, Peter crosses his apartment and opens the door. He peers out to his new neighbour, still rearranging boxes and furniture, and awkwardly stands there for a few seconds. “Need some help?”
When she pokes her head up from behind some totes, smiling in greeting, he feels a little better. “Oh! You’re back!” She says excitedly, reaching behind her and taking out a crate. “I just unpacked the most precious cargo.” She reveals a grey and brown cat, stoic looking and perceptive, and Peter’s in love. He doesn’t know how she got Brian to budge on the no-pet policy, but he has never been more thankful to see a cat in his life. “Meet Lord Eddard Stark,” Gwen says proudly, beckoning Peter in and walking the VIP to her bed. Gently, she coos to him as she places the crate next to her pillows, opens the door, and plops down a few treats. “He’ll have to get used to the new surroundings, but he’ll manage; he’s bold.”
“Hence the name,” Peter concludes, fondly watching Lord Stark sniff and regard his unfamiliar domain.
“Hence the name.” Gwen confirms, offering pets and words of affirmation to her companion. “I got him during a really hard time in my life – I went to the shelter, and this little guy walked right into my hands and started purring.” She smiles, eyes crinkling at the sides. “Studies have shown that the vibrations from cats’ purrs have healing qualities. I think Ned knew I needed someone just as much as he did.”
Ned. Peter smiles fondly. “I had a friend named Ned, once.” He blurts out, and regrets it instantly.
Turning to him, Gwen raises her eyebrows. “Not anymore?”
He shakes his head slowly, “not anymore,” and offers nothing else.
Gwen, astute enough not to pry, and a happy chatterbox, changes the subject. She directs them both on unpacking structure and policy, and, over the next few hours, her mirrored bachelor apartment starts to become a home. It serves as a happy distraction from the distractions in Peter’s head. Her questions and jokes keep him rooted in the present. He finds out she’s the middle child of five, dabbles in sketching, and is an avid reader of fantasy and sci-fi. She tells him she’s looking to pursue a PhD, hoping to specialize in the psychology of trauma and its effect on youth. Peter likes her, finds her level-headed and calming.
“What about you?” Asks Gwen, opening a box and pulling out a handful of books. “What’s after a chemical engineering degree?”
“Hopefully a PhD,” Peter says lightly, although that hope seems less and less likely as time goes on. He shrugs. “Maybe not. We’ll have to see.”
“And then?”
“Well –”
Suddenly something rubs against Peter’s back, warm and firm. The cat, or, rather, Lord Eddard Stark slowly circles back and forth, rubbing his sides against the cotton of Peter’s oversized plaid shirt and purring loudly. The two gush over how cute Ned is, how quickly he’s taken a liking to Peter, and just how perceptive his sage-green eyes appear. They talk about Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. When it’s late, Gwen orders them pizza as thanks for the help, and Eddard the cat sits and purrs on Peter’s lap the entire time he eats. When he says goodbye at around midnight, Peter enters his own apartment feeling better than when he’d left it.
–
A few days after meeting Gwen, Peter receives his marks from the Winter/Spring semester. They’re mostly mediocre, but the gut-wrenching forty-eight percent he sees in one class sends him reeling.
I wanted you to be better
He isn’t.
Of course he isn’t – how could he possibly think he would be? All he’s been doing is sleeping. If he’s truly honest with himself, what space did he make for reading, for lab reports, for assignments when
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
the noise
It’s just me and you, okay?
is sometimes all he can hear. Some days they’re all he concentrates on, all he thinks about and he often finds himself walking home in a trance before escaping it all in a three-hour long nap or a brutal ten-hour long patrol… He really hasn’t made any room for academic achievement.
I wanted you to be better
Pathetic.
There’s definitely something wrong with him.
--------------------
He’s twenty-one when midnight rolls around, when Karen stops sending videos to FRIDAY, when he brokenly utters “...what’s the point if I don’t?” He thinks of how much he sleeps, how little he reads, how awful he feels. “What am I even doing?…What’s wrong with me?” Hands balling into fists, he brings them up to his masked eyes and presses in hard. Drags them up to his scalp. “I can do it… make you proud. I-I can do that…”
But when he thinks of the prospect, when he thinks of all that has happened in the last five years, the last half decade, he’s gutted at the fact that there is absolutely nothing to show for it. What has he actually accomplished? Tony Stark had already graduated and taken over Stark Industries by twenty-one, whereas Peter has failed a class, barely passed the others; he’s been sleeping far too much (he knows it’s not healthy to sleep days at a time, he knows that, he does, but sometimes it’s all he can do), and eating far too little. Simply that is a challenge for him: no wonder he can’t do anything right. Fuck, Tony led Stark Industries at twenty-one after the loss of both his parents, and Peter can’t get over the death of an aunt and a mentor who meant more but never knew it – and he didn’t get a chance to tell him…
“...it’s me: Peter…”
“...we won…”
He didn’t – they didn’t. Yes, of course, he isn’t dust in a stone but there was no conscious awareness of his own absence, so what loss was there, really? Now, presently, all his losses
It’s just me and you, okay?
are so consciously felt, so awarefully there that he isn’t ready to spend this momentous day all by himself. When he was younger, he thought he’d turn twenty-one and feel liberated. Indeed, in some ways, he is free – but now he is also loose. He is free like a balloon is free: floating away and taken by the wind. Drifting, he’s adrift, further and higher away so he
I wanted you to be better
ends up finding a late night liquor store, grabbing the largest and cheapest bottle of vodka he can find. The cashier checks his ID and wishes him a cheerful ‘happy birthday!’ and it crosses Peter’s mind that no one else will say that today.
It only takes a quarter of the bottle to get him delightfully buzzed; his metabolism may be fast but his limited meal intake makes for the quick absorption of his liquid luck, desperate for anything.
The bachelor apartment spins, warm and pleasantly lit. Peter craves fries but settles on cereal since it’s faster, and he’s laughing hysterically at an episode of Brooklyn 99 that he’s seen many times. But it is so much funnier, he feels so much lighter, and after eating a chocolate cupcake (Gwen coincidentally made cupcakes just before his birthday and wanted to share), he decides he might as well drink more to carry on the party.
The rest of the vodka, four more cupcakes, and another five episodes down, Peter flops onto his bed and errantly thinks it may actually be possible to make people proud if he were to stop taking life so seriously. If he were more like Jake Peralta – clearly troubled but fine with it. He thinks, if he can manage to sleep less, if he can just get himself up in the morning, he could make everyone proud. Make their sacrifices worth it.
But he’s twenty-one and hungover as fuck now, waking to pounding temples and a rolling stomach. His body is trying to push out the poison in every way possible; it oozes from his pores, reeking of vodka and regret. Unable to reach the bathroom in time, he’s clambering out of bed and stumbling to the kitchen sink to vomit up last night’s shame. He turns on the faucet, rinses off the sick, and holds his mouth under the spout.
When it’s safer, he staggers to the bathroom with a groan, yanks the shower curtain aside, and turns the water on high heat. That’s enough movement to render him ill again, and he’s dropping to his knees before the toilet and bringing up the rest of his birthday cupcakes. After moaning into the bowl, he flushes and slowly eases back up, catching his reflection in the mirror. He looks wrecked: sweaty, bags beneath red-rimmed eyes, a permanent frown, bits of his own spew still present around his mouth…
I wanted you to be better
Nausea overpowering him, he sits on the shower floor, letting the beating hot water become the only thing his senses register: he hears the spray, tastes the water, feels its heat, smells the light chlorine, sees it catch in his lashes and force his eyes closed. For a time, only this exists for him. But
I wanted you to be better
there are just some things he can’t seem to avoid.
He acclimates to the temperature too quickly, so Peter twists the knob further, hotter. It’s too far; it burns like it’s cold and reddens his skin but so caught up in all this-this
It’s just me and you, okay?
inside him, twisting from the inside out and changing his form, his shape – he ignores the pain and waits to get used to it.
Your fault
Your fault
Your fault
He feels so incredibly empty as the last hurl of the morning splashes between his bent knees. Ashamed, disgusted, he forces it to the drain and washes it down. There’s nothing to explain the vacuousness inside him, nothing to point at and say ‘that’s why’; he just feels hollowed out. His chest is heavy and stiff, the thoughts continue their assault, and he can’t get out.
He’s twenty-one and really wishes Mr. Stark were here instead of him. He would’ve made more of his time in this life than Peter has.
It’s a quick, passing thought, but it plants seeds that reach down and up, back and forward, everything touched by the stem and leaves felt, too, by the roots.
Until the hours tick into the late afternoon of August 10th, Peter remains in his bed. Sleeping off the hangover turns into sleeping off the shame. And that takes time when
I wanted you to be better
his mind replays his failures, his stupidities, his ineptitudes
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
over and over again. August 10th turns into August 11th. He thinks maybe he’ll get up now, maybe it’s time. Start his twenty-first year off right. But then
It’s just me and you, okay?
he lifts his arm to push himself up and feels the waters’ pressure, feels the galleons building up inside him. Filling up, overflowing his veins, he’s weighed down and too heavy to move.
Pulling his laptop to his side, he begins an episode of some sit-com to drown out the rest. Tears gather and fall as he numbly watches something amusing happen.
August 11th turns into August 12th.
He’s twenty-one and something is wrong with him.
--------------------
He’s twenty-two and bleeding out in an alley, too weak to do much right now. Lungs heaving, he tries to force breath and focus on the task at hand. Get up, his mind orders. Get the fuck up.
“Okay,” Spider-Man breathes out, light and encouraging. He grunts in pain as he brings his hand to push into the wet pavement. “Okay, okay, okay Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-M - ahh!” He gasps as his arm gives out and sends him crashing into the ground. Abdomen searing, his injuries spasm painfully. He grits through it, scrunching up his face and breathing slowly.
Around him lie the bodies, the aftermath of a futile situation, doomed before it escalated. It’s unclear who started it. Spider-Man only jumped in to de-escalate, first and foremost. But even in that he wasn’t successful; shortly after the echoes of gunfire subsided into stunned silence, he heard the rattles of many last breaths. He failed. Again.
Eyes obscured by his own blood – when did he hit his head? – he sees a woman’s motionless body. His vision swims, the alley swims, and he knows he’s concussed.
Multiple times he tries to get up, but his legs will not coordinate with his brain. Finally taking stock, he looks down and sees his knee, popped out at a wrong angle. He then notices the gunshot wound in his abdomen. The blue of his suit is already soaking red, older parts turning brown as it pools and oxidizes. Pungently, the tang of iron fills his nostrils and intensifies the growing nausea.
Vision blurring, he futilely places his hand over the wound and tries to add pressure. But he’s weak – he’s tired, and thinks
I wanted you to be better
he might not make it this time.
He doesn’t know how to feel about that thought: he craves the absence, the silence. Who knows, maybe, somehow, in some way, he’d be reunited with
Please, will you just wake up and talk to me?
May…
He only feels the vibrations in his chest – doesn’t hear himself call to her, but he distantly knows he does. He’s
It’s just me and you, okay?
hoping, praying, against all odds she’ll show up, pick him up, and put him back together again. Tell him she’s proud. Place her hand on his chest to calm the quakes shaking his sternum. He whimpers through the pain, suppressing gasps that might quiver too harshly. He can still hear the screams as he dove in, scared gasps afterward…
“May…” he weakly adds to a careful exhale, breathing only halfway because any more and his bullet wounds will pull and agonize. Something catches in his trachea and he coughs, sobbing as his body seizes with pain. Blood, wet and congealed, bubbles up to his mouth and fills it with that sickening taste. Still, he’s not used to it. He
I wanted you to be better
doesn’t think he ever will be.
“Tony,” whispered words over red yield no phantom, no angel. Just as it’s been these last few years, no one is coming to help him. No one is even thinking of him.
He feels so incredibly let down by them. He shouldn’t feel that way, but he does: his parents, Ben, May, Tony, Pepper… they said they would be there but they left him in one way or another. Yes – yes, of course it was all beyond their control but Peter’s the one who has not only been left alone, but left alone to deal with each and every loss. Would it have been easier to keep the Starks at a distance? Would he be able to function differently if only suffering four heartbreaks and not six (seven, eight, nine, ten …)? Or maybe, since there’s so much of it, what’s one or two more?
It doesn’t matter, in the end. They’re gone and Peter’s still fucking here but maybe not for much longer. As his vision starts to darken, as the curtains close around him, he feels completely abandoned. By all of them. By everyone.
May
Tony
Your fault
Your fault
and he learns, at twenty-two, that no one is coming for him. No one is coming for Peter Parker.
–
Rushed footsteps, gasps, and later he’s jostled. Jolted. Dragged, he’s being dragged and sat up, leant against something. It catches the back of his suit, rough and toothy. Cement. Maybe brick. Were there stone buildings in this area? He can’t remember.
A bright light pierces through his mask’s lens and Spider-Man’s groaning away from the intrusion. He shifts.
“Hey- hey!” A female voice calls to him, and there’s patting on his cheek, growing rougher. Sharp knuckles painfully dig into his sternum, rousing him enough to process someone kneeling before him.
She’s in scrubs, brown hair pulled back in a quick knot. Doctor or nurse, it’s unclear. But he’s relieved to see a small medical bag by her side.
“Tell me your name.”
“Is-is any–” He tries to ask, hopeful. Maybe he’s wrong – maybe he misremembered a pattering heartbeat slowing and stopping. “Is, is anyone al-” But the woman’s look of deep regret leaves him nothing to misinterpret. “Fuck… fuck!” Tears gathering, pooling, and spilling, he sobs and gasps against the pain again. It radiates throughout his whole body. He shakes. Wanting it all to leave, he fights against grief, fights against the memories, fights against the overwhelm. He tries to tamp it all down and keep his torn-open skin unagitated.
After a few moments collecting – exhausting – himself, the woman resumes assessing him. “All right – focus on me, okay? Focus on my voice and tell me your name.”
“Sp’dr-m’n” is all he can offer, still waiting for the pain to dull.
“Hi, Spider-Man. Call me Claire.” She says as she pulls out a few packs of gauze. Eyes closing against his will, he can only hear her rip open the plastic. But he quickly gasps, eyes popping back open with agony as she pushes hard on his abdomen. A low groan follows as the piercing pain subsides, leaving behind residual ache. “I need you to stay awake, okay? Tell me what hurts.”
“Fuuuuuuck-”
“Yeah, I know. Hold tight, I’ve got some morphine-”
As the wave of pain cedes a little more, Peter’s able to relax enough to respond. “Don-don’t bother… won’t work.”
Hands still busy, the medic named Claire keeps him talking. “Won’t work, huh. You got impenetrable skin, too?”
“N-no,” he doesn’t get it, but he’s concussed, he’s bleeding out, he’s lost people, so maybe he’s just slow. “No, jus-jus’a dope metabolsm…'' the word slurs, sounds wrong.
“Hm.” Pausing for a moment, she reaches into her coat pocket. Peter’s not sure what she’s doing until her features spark up. A match is lit, and shadows dance across her face as she holds the flame to what might be a joint. When it starts to glow, she brings it over to him and reaches for his mask.
Spider-Man grabs her wrist, halting her movements.
“Relax,” she says, clinically. Like she’s done this before. “It’s CBD, alright? It’ll dull the pain.” But Spider-Man doesn’t move: he stares at her from behind his mask to search for any danger or malintent. Yet all he sees is a tired medical professional who clearly worked a long shift and just happened to stumble upon an unfortunate scene. Looking beyond her, he searches for cameras, searches for witnesses in the windows around them, and tries not to look at the bodies feet away from him. “Relax,” Claire says again, “no one will know what you look like – you’re safe with me.”
Before releasing her wrist and pulling the mask up himself, only just to his nose, Spider-Man mutters, “it’s not my safety I’m worried about.” To many, he isn't a hero. To many he’s a terrorist; caricatures like J. Jonah Jameson see to the perpetuation of that near-fact.
Everything Spider-Man touches comes to ruin
And that’s not technically wrong because look around him, look at
It’s just me and you, okay?
the people he tried to help. Tried and failed, his mind sourly corrects.
Claire’s waiting for the go-ahead, waiting for the reluctant nod Spider-Man gives before helping him steady the joint at his lips. Shakily, he inhales and only barely resists coughing and further hurting himself. After a few seconds of holding, he exhales, clouds of smoke puffing from his lips. Satisfied, Claire goes back to work.
“Do that one or two more times, steady,” she pauses, considering, as she rips open some gauze strips, “maybe three more times, for you.”
And Peter does as he’s instructed, dozily watching her assess the situation with sharp eyes. She lists off the obvious injuries: through and through shot in the abdomen, no organs hit; a busted knee; likely a concussion, but she can’t say for certain since he won’t lift his mask any further. She asks if she’s missed anything: Spider-Man shakes his head. Bullet wound the priority, she readies the sutures and waits for the weed to take effect.
Head drooping, his tired eyes slide shut as fatigue pulls him down like a weighted blanket. “Hey!” A loud clap makes him start, eyes wide and alert. “Stay awake.” Claire orders. “Talk to me, okay? Tell me something.”
Noting the tingling buzz spreading warmly through his body, a pleasant numbness begins seeping into his body like a fog. Slowly, or quickly, the throbbing pain of his injuries fades to a dull, mostly-conscious awareness. He knows he’s hurting, he knows he’s broken, but doesn’t really feel it that much. A long breath leaves him. He relaxes some.
“Spider-Man, you need to talk to me.”
Peter swallows, mouth dry. “She’d’ve been fifty-eight.”
“Who?”
“May.” Peter realizes he’s said her name more times tonight than he has in the last four years. That thought makes him sad. “My, May.”
“Fifty-eight’s a good year, my mom says.”
“Yeah, I bet. She was kickin’ its ass, her fifties…”
Claire begins her work now, gently tending to the wound. “Sorry for your loss,” she says, pressing gauze soaked in disinfectant to the entry wound. He hisses at the sting, tilting his head back and trying not to move. Once his tension subsides, she starts sewing up the wound. He stays silent through the process, giving her space to concentrate. She’s clearly adept, deft fingers and compassionate touch easing him through what is always a difficult process. Like May and Tony used to, like Happy did, even Pepper a few times, Claire puts him back together. More than ever does he think of May, think of her perfume, her resolution, her intelligence, her stubbornness.
Lips turning upward a little, a small chuckle leaves him. “You remind me of her, a little.”
She smiles. It’s a pretty smile. It makes something smitten swoop in Peter’s stomach. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She murmurs as she ties off the last stitch. He hears tape open and rip before feeling gauze press over the now-closed hole.
“Y’should.” He gruffs out as she hauls his torso forward to access the exit wound.
He grimaces again through the application of disinfectant, grunting in pain and dismissing Claire’s apologies. Before long, the needle pierces through the skin and the wound slowly grows smaller. Quiet contemplation overtakes him as he remembers May, remembers her stitching him up. Memories growing heavy in his chest, his head droops down again. Embarrassingly, it rests on Claire’s shoulder.
It’s just me and you, okay?
“Hey, hey, you falling asleep over there?” Her voice carries through the reverie.
“No,”
“Keep talking. Tell me about her.”
There’s a reluctance in continuing, binding Peter’s heart to his silence. He hasn’t talked about her before, not really. He had intended on staying connected to her through their memories, but the weight of them and every other dead or forgotten loved one was too much to bear. These days he forces himself not to remember. These days he forces himself to forget. Peter Parker has died – so should those memories. He builds himself concrete walls to separate himself from all that. From the waters, black and impending. Yeah, they may spill over, but not yet, not now: grabbing anything and everything, he builds that dam and will gnash his goddamn teeth at anything that prevents its constant and continuous construction.
But Claire wants to know about May; he’s lost a lot of blood; and his body’s buzzing with a high never felt before. Tongue loose, the silence rips open wounds that join the others. “She was a rock. And… ’nd a really bad cook.”
Claire chuckles softly.
“Supportive. She was- damn, I couldn’t’ve been Sp’der-M’n without her... Y’know those people who jus’...” he trails off, gesturing vaguely with his good arm, “keep y’on the ground, they-they… make shit make sense?” Smoothing over the taped gauze with gentle hands, Claire pulls away, rests him back on the concrete, and nods. He continues, “May was that – Tony, Tony was too. They were, like… like- embedded, y’know?”
“Yeah, I do.” It sounds like she really does. Though his face is obstructed, it feels as though Claire is looking into his eyes – as though she can see him. She shifts back and examines his knee. There’s a grimace on her face when she sighs. “Alright – do you want me to count?”
Blowing out a raspberry, Peter nods his head.
Bracing, he watches Claire steady his foot against her shoulder before reaching for the knee. He looks away when she lightly grips the joint. “Okay, on three: one-”
Spider-Man’s shout rips through him as the pain and pressure pierce through the fog of his high. Claire keeps her hands firmly bracing his knee as the pain ebbs. When it leaves him, when he’s able to slump against the concrete behind him and sigh, he holds his hand out in lieu of asking. He wants more of the CBD. More of the pleasant feel of its warmth, like a hug. When did he last get a hug from someone? Peter wonders at that as his lips close around the paper filter and pull from the joint, long and deep. Holding the smoke in his lungs, it dawns on him that he doesn’t remember. Peter Parker can’t remember the last time someone hugged him. Maybe Spider-Man can; grateful civilians hug him on the daily. It’s different, though. Detached – more of a ‘thank you’ than an ‘I care about you’.
Controlled as can be, he lets out the smoke and stifles a cough, grimacing at the pain that follows. And after a few minutes, as Claire finishes packing up her supplies, he feels the pleasant high even more and sags a little in relief. “They were… a part of me…” he continues absently, “like-like my skin, and now, without them, it’s like I’m…” he shrugs, “...incomplete.” Silence warbles in the air as he absently rubs the tip of the joint against the ground to stifle it. “Missing parts,” he mutters bitterly, more to himself.
Claire has been staring at him, not saying a word. No doubt she’s seen people in pain ramble, or confess things in bad moments. But there’s a suffering, an understanding, in her look that encourages these words from him. So he refuses to be embarrassed. Maybe he will be, later. Offering the half-smoked joint to her, she shakes her head. “Nah, you take it. I’ve got more.” Pulling out the tube she’d extracted it from, she slips it away and places it back in his hand. “Think you can stand up?” Shouldering her bag, she looks expectantly at him.
Bracing carefully, he shifts to his good side and uses the little strength he has to pull himself up. He struggles, feeling the wounds sear in agony – he sways with the intensity of it and takes a few seconds to adjust to the constant throbs of pain. Glancing up at Claire, he sees her concerned frown and offers a grin of reassurance. “Eh, it’s not so bad.”
She looks unimpressed. “Surely you know you’re benched for a while.”
“I do not, and don’t call me Shirley.”
There’s a laugh she suppresses, but Peter catches it all the same. It makes him smile. She continues her prescription: “Your through-and-through luckily hit nothing critical. But I don’t recommend heavy lifting for at least a couple months. And I really wouldn’t try to move too much, when you get home. Your probable concussion means you’re in for a rough few months.”
Instead of shaking his head in dissent, he lifts a shoulder and says “more like a couple days.”
Folding her arms, she regards him curiously. It makes him feel self conscious, so he pulls his mask back down below his chin and nods at her. “Thanks a lot, Claire. You literally saved my life.” He straightens up a bit, glad his face is covered so he doesn’t have to suppress his frown. “It was really great meeting you. And weed. Despite…” He gestures to the scene around them, “...this.”
Still studying him, she takes a moment to respond. “Hey, look – my apartment is really close by. Why don’t you recover there? It’s safe and warm, and I can oversee your injuries.”
It’s almost considered, the offer. Bits of him want to give in, to give up a little and let his guard down. But
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
I wanted to you be better
there’s something inside him – something resembling shame – that tells him Claire is better off without him around. The bodies around them can attest to it. So he appreciates the offer, swells with gratitude, but ultimately refuses. No, he says, “I need to…” he’s about to indicate to the casualties, to work with the authorities, but the incoming wail of police sirens tell him he no longer has the luxury of time.
Turning to Claire, he ushers her in the opposite direction of the scene. “Go, go!”
It’s just me and you, okay?
“Keep running until you get home, okay?” Spider-Man orders. Claire hesitates before taking off, looking over her shoulder a couple times. Only when she rounds the corner, hopefully closer to her home, does Peter limp from the scene, taking off to the skies and moving through back alleyways to get back to his flat. He finally gets to his drop-off point and changes awkwardly (painstakingly) behind a dumpster. Then, slowly and carefully with each searing step, he walks a random block a few times to see if he’s been followed.
–
He gets home at four-thirty in the morning, dragging feet thundering raucously on the hollow, wooden steps of his old apartment. Not wanting to leave her in the lurch, Spider-Man wouldn’t conclude his patrol until he was certain no one named Claire had been booked into any holding cells or jails within a ten mile radius. Anyone with that first-name was immediately viewed and thankfully dismissed. She was safe.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive
Claire’s safe. That’s something.
Upon entering his apartment, Peter immediately notices that Ned the cat has somehow found his way in and made himself comfortable at the head of the bed. Sighing, Peter eases himself out of his bloodied coat. He throws it in the overflowing laundry basket, hearing it land on the pile before sliding to the floor. “Hey, Ned, look: you can stay but you’re not sleeping on my pillow.” Peter mutters shakily as he sheds his ruined shirt and tosses it in the trash. “Okay?” Collapsing on the bed, he kicks off his pants and rolls under the covers. His bullet wound throbs a little; he can feel the skin knitting back together slowly, uncomfortably.
Lord Eddard Stark takes his time circling, finding the perfect spot to rest in. He lightly, experimentally, steps on Peter’s abdomen, causing him to jackknife up and hiss in pain. The cat startles away to the end of the bed.
“Sorry,” Peter wheezes, hand pressing lightly over the gauze. He holds back cries as he steadies himself. After a minute, he slowly lies back down. “Sorry, buddy, just not there.”
Eyes closed, body still lightly buzzing from the joint, he lets himself finally relax under the blanket of exhaustion. He lost a lot of people today. And that’s – fuck, that’s part of being a hero. Tony said that to him once. But, still, he
I wanted you to be better
feels like he isn’t doing enough – isn’t helping enough. It doesn’t feel like he’s doing more good than enduring the bad. He drapes a bent arm over his eyes as tears form and fall into his ears, onto the pillow. Quietly, Eddard rejoins him in the nook of his shoulder, circling once and kneading the mattress before settling next to Peter. Purring loudly, Peter lifts his arm to investigate and sees two green, inquisitive eyes staring back at him. “I didn’t get there in time…” he tells Ned, “I needed my guy in the chair.” And he hides his wet face in the crook of his elbow once again.
Peter falls asleep to gentle vibrations.
–
He’ll later find out the name of one of the victims he failed to save: Elizabeth “Betty” May.
If you were good enough –
He goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up for a long time