Chapter Text
Everything moves, everything pulses
Everything lies in the eyes of you
There are red lines etched across Peter's wrist. Little inescapable red lines that remind him of the trauma he's been through the past two weeks. He's surrounded by pain and loss and a constant fogginess in the back of his mind that he can't escape from. He can't arrange his thoughts.
His fingernails are long, but the scratching causes very little pain. It's a dull ache at best. The nerves have been dulled from the constant motions as he runs his fingers up and down, doing his best to get his thoughts arranged. To think straight long enough to get his life in order.
But depression isn't as obvious as black and white. There's no easy answer to his problems. His brain is a mess of emotions and fear. Something he's never been good at sorting through, not when his mind feels heavy and grey and his stomach is constantly growling and looking for his next meal.
There's no savior. There's only one person on this planet that can help him. His Aunt is out there somewhere, and with her, the ability to return Peter's life back to normal. The ability to guide him into recovery. A gentle voice to speak him down and a soft shoulder to cry on at night.
May Parker saved him once. She can save him again.
Peter's sitting in the park. There's a large shady tree that he can find some peace underneath when he gets here early enough. It's one of the few joys of his life: the rustling of the leaves above him, the sounds of children laughing around him, and the patches of shade that give his pale skin a much-needed rest.
He knows if he hangs around too long, the police will come to chase him off. There are too many homeless people now, too many people struggling to find shelter and food. Too many people are not surviving in these horrible times, something he wishes he could help with.
Peter understands the police, but he doesn't approve of the actions to push the homeless people out of the park when they aren't doing anything wrong. Peter has nothing. These people have nothing. All they want is a break in the shade and maybe a chance to take a nap. That isn't a crime.
But when middle-aged mothers call the police station with complaints - worried about their precious children playing nearby - there is nothing else law enforcement can do.
"Peter?"
The boy sighs. He knows his time in the shade is over. He has a right to be in this park like everyone else, but he isn't the type to cause a scene. He doesn't want anyone to get hurt.
It isn't the first time he's been kicked from his spot, and it definitely won't be the last.
But when he opens his eyes to respond to the officer, he quickly realizes that it wasn't an order like he expected. It was a question - one spoken on a soft worried voice. From a speaker that knows his name.
There's a teenage girl standing in front of him with a book held in her hands. It takes Peter a second to take in all her features. It feels like it's been a lifetime since he's seen her curly hair, her brown eyes, the defined features of his face that he used to see every day in the school cafeteria.
"Michelle?"
Peter's voice is rough. He's spoken so little in the past three weeks, besides the rare joking to himself and thanking the kind person who hands out sandwiches. It's like he's forgotten how to speak - the proper tones and inflections for interacting with another human being.
They stare at each other for what feels like forever. It may be the way Peter's heart is pounding in his chest. The relief to see at least one of his friends alive. He'd been unable to locate either of them at their old homes, the conclusion that they must have been blipped as well.
But Michelle's standing right in front of him. Michelle's alive.
"Where the hell have you been?"
There's no anger in her tone. There's a lot of pain. Some fear. A bit of relief that he isn't dead like everyone was beginning to assume. Maybe a bit of resentment.
It's clear in by her tone that Peter's messed this up. He flinches away at her harsh words. He knows Michelle would never physically hit him, but the volume level sets off every strand of painful misfiring in his brain. It brings back the trauma of the battlefield experienced less than a month ago.
Peter's numbed to the core. There's no way for him to answer the question without breaking down, not with the temporary rush of relief flooding him from finding someone alive. There's at least one person alive that still cares for him. That would be pained if anything ever happened to him.
"I think May's dead." The words burst from Peter's mouth before he can stop them. And with them come the tears that he's been holding back all this time. The tears of a lost child with no one to turn to.
Michelle's face softens, though only because there's no one around to notice. She was expecting a fight or some sort of hero's complex argument. The Peter Parker - and Spider-man, because let's be real, it was always super fucking obvious from day one - that she knows would always put the needs of others above his own. He's very self-sacrificing and tends to be impulsive in his actions. That's who he is as a person.
This is beyond anything Michelle could have been prepared for.
One half of Michelle's brain is still struggling to process the situation. So many hero's had been lost in the battle against Thanos: Ironman, Black Widow, Captain America, Vision. There had been worldwide memorials for them all. But she'd been hopeful when Spider-Man hadn't been mentioned in any of the broadcasts.
The days continued to tick by. Michelle was found by her parents. She was brought to her family's new home. All her things had been thrown out and her family seemed disappointed by her return, but she was surviving. She was pushing the hurt deep down.
The thing that hurts most of all was the lack of communication from Peter. It had taken Ned a few days to be reconnected to the internet and get in contact with Michelle. His cellphone had been lost during the blip and the line disconnected, but he had done all he could to get in contact with her as soon as possible.
Peter didn't. She doesn't get any messages from him despite making sure her new cell phone number is exactly the same. No texts. No calls. No social media messages. Not a single meme.
It infuriates her at first. She tries to give him some time. He's Spider-Man and likely has a lot of cleaning up to do afterward. All the other Avengers are silent on social media too.
Worry starts to creep into her chest by the end of week two. A voice chat with Ned confirms the feelings.
"Michelle?"
"Yeah loser?"
"I got in contact with Happy today."
"You did? That's great," Michelle confides. There's a spark of hope igniting inside her, but she jams it down. She needs to stay emotionless. There's still too much risk of heartbreak.
"May committed suicide while we were gone."
"Oh..."
That really does explain it all for Michelle. It would be one of the few reasons she could excuse Peter not reaching out to them. May was his family. His mother. His everything.
For her to be gone. For Peter to exist in a world without her after losing both his parents and his uncle, he would be completely broken. He would have no family left. He must be in so much pain.
It doesn't excuse his behavior. There's still a mild sting inside Michelle from the hurt he's caused her because in a time like this, she believes he needs his friends more than ever. But it does explain his disappearance.
"So he's okay? Just upset?"
Ned's silence says everything. It throws a wet blanket on the spark of hope in Michelle's heart, crushing every ounce of happiness that she was feeling seconds ago. Why does she always forget how bad emotions are?
"Is... Is he..."
"They don't know," Ned interrupts before Michelle can finish the sentence. "He survived the battle, but nobody's seen him since the funeral. They think he's searching for May."
"But your his guy in the chair. He couldn't do that without your help."
Ned doesn't even notice the slipped secret. His heart hurts too much from the loss of his best friend. This whole scenario is so unlike the Peter Parker they've both come to love.
"I know," Ned admits sadly. He knows what the absence likely means.
They'd both accepted the only remaining option as their best friend's death. Not that they have enough energy to theorize on what could have happened, but likely his depression creeping back into his mind. Maybe a possible suicide when he finds out that he's lost his last remaining family.
Emotionless Michelle spends an entire week in bed from the pain in her chest caused by losing her best friend. A whole week of breaking down in her bed every night, imagining living in a world without someone as uplifting as Peter Parker. The world would be so much worse off without him. He's one of the good ones.
The last thing she expected was to find him snoozing in the shade of her favorite reading tree. The one she sits under nearly every day to escape from her parents, but has been to busy to visit since her return.
This reunion isn't easy for either of them.
This is painful for Peter. It's a reminder of all his failures over the last few weeks. All the broken promises he made to his best friends before the blip and people he's letting down by staying on the streets. This is something he never wanted his friends to see.
He knows he should have reached out to them when the search for May came to a halt. What started out as an innocent pursuit for his last living relative quickly snowballed into something more direr: no food, no clean water, no roof over his head, no coat during the freezing cold New York nights, deep scores across his arms from his scratching. It's all become too much for one boy to solve on his own.
Michelle feels pain, too. Not the same pain she knows Peter is experiencing with the way his cheekbones push against his skin. There's no way she could ever understand what that feels like.
Her pain is different. It's the pain of a resurrected hope. It wasn't too long ago that she was crushing on this boy. Developing feelings on one of her closest friends. A time when her biggest worry was him finding out her secret and not returning her feelings. Where her biggest worry was if he would be injured on patrol.
How things have changed. She hasn't had to worry about his patrols because they've mostly stopped. It's not often the friendly neighborhood hero is spotted anymore, and even when it does rarely happen, it's mostly hearsay with little proof. Michelle wasn't lying when she was sure he was dead.
There's a spark of hope growing within her. Not only for the lost feelings she once had but for the situation he's found himself in. This is her chance to get Peter to safety. To help him. Maybe even save his life.
"Can I buy you a hot dog?"