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Peter’s first patrol After starts off uneventful, for the most part. He revels in the feeling that he’s finally doing something, the familiar motions easing the ache in his chest and building a solid wall between his fragile sanity and the ever-present black hole creature that seems to have taken up permanent residence between his ribs. Though he’s grown used to the constant throb in the preceding three weeks, he likes being able to focus on something else; the chill of the wind seeping through the mesh of his suit, the neon lights of the city bleeding together in a haze of reds and yellows and blues, the melodiously incessant beeping of the traffic crawling twelve stories below the building he’s perched on.
Yeah, he thinks. It’s good to be back. And he knows that nothing is normal, not by a long shot, but he lets himself pretend for a few hours that May will be waiting back at the apartment with her burnt turkey meatloaf and green beans and a warm embrace.
But, as exhilarating as protecting Queens is, it’s getting dangerously close to his strict eleven o’clock curfew, and a thin film of cesious fatigue seems to be settling over everything around him. He’s about ready to head home, to the tower , he has to remind himself, when a shriek interrupts the relative calm.
One more can’t hurt, can it? Famous last words.
Three blocks away he’s greeted by a mugger, not a big dude but not scrawny either, pushing a young woman up against a wall. At first glance, Peter’s not worried. The guy doesn’t seem to be armed with anything more than a pocket knife, easily dealt with from afar using web-shooters. After that, it’s just a couple of punches to his midsection to knock him off his rhythm, then a web to keep him in place for the cops. And Peter will finally be able to go back to the tower, take a shower, rest his eyes (because he hasn’t been able to sleep more than a few hours at a time, not since Before ) until his alarm goes off at seven.
“Karen, call the police,” he whispers. “Tell them there’ll be someone waiting for them in a few minutes.” He jumps down from his hiding place, landing deftly in the alley behind the man. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you about personal space?” He quips, allowing Spider-Man’s easy confidence to mask the exhausted fog slowly rolling in.
The mugger turns around, and it takes Peter a moment too long to realize that he isn’t just holding a knife.
“Ah, New York’s favorite insect has decided to make an appearance,” the man sneers. “I was wondering if I’d see you.” There’s a beat of pregnant silence where Peter doesn’t know what to do, because there’s a gun to an innocent woman’s head and a knife to her throat, and his spidey sense is going off like crazy, as if he isn’t aware of the imminent danger already.
And Peter knows he needs to think quickly, knows that it’s not just his life on the line, but this woman’s too, who could be a mother, wife, sister, and his next actions determine if she lives or dies. On any other day, any normal day, he’d be confident in his ability to disarm the man before any real damage can be done, because Peter relies on instinct and adrenaline, just lets himself feel where to aim and when to shoot, doesn’t have to think about it. But doubt’s creeping in, Grief’s tendrils linger around the edges of his vision, and suddenly he feels fourteen again, fumbling his way through fights and pretending to know how to punch without bruising his knuckles.
His heart picks up, hammering against his ribs, drowning out all other noise in a rapid thumpthumpthump that Peter knows all too well means Grief is coming closer and closer, poking through the brick wall he’s built around himself. He should press the panic button on the inside of his right wrist. Should call Tony, tell him that he needs help. A suit would be there in four minutes tops, Peter could keep the mugger distracted until then. The thug would go to jail, the woman would rush home, and he wouldn’t be allowed to patrol for at least another three weeks. Not an ideal situation, but everyone would walk away, at least.
The more primal part of Peter resists the easy out. He desperately needs to prove to himself that he’s okay, that he’s getting better, that this one part of his life can stay separate from the sleepless nights and Grief-hazy days. That Spider-Man can still be strong, even when Peter Parker can’t.
Before he’s finished thinking it through, he reaches out and shoots a web at the gun.
He isn’t fast enough.
It fires point blank at the woman’s right temple. She goes down instantly.
“Shit, man! What the hell! I told you to stay still!” The mugger’s hysterical, looking frantically back and forth between the woman on the ground and the gun still clutched in his hand. “I wasn’t going to shoot, I swear! You just startled me!” His voice is shaking. Distantly, Peter can hear police sirens. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” It appears the guy can hear them too. He drops the gun and takes off in the opposite direction.
Peter stumbles forward, kneeling next to the woman. There’s a steadily-growing pool of blood staining the pavement, oozing from the wound, forming a sort of halo-shape around her head.
An angel, he thinks darkly.
Her eyes stare up at the stars, towards Heaven and beyond, but he knows they don’t see anything. He can’t hear a heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers thickly, trying to keep the tears from falling. He’s moving to stand when he notices the rings displayed proudly on her left hand.
Wife. Mother. Sister.
Peter suddenly feels sick. He didn’t know this woman, but snippets of what her life could have been, who she could’ve become, wiggle their way into his mind.
Signing her name on the lease for a shoebox apartment uptown. At the kennel with a faceless husband, choosing the perfect rescue puppy. A hospital room, holding a new baby. Dropping her daughter off at school for the first time. Growing old, meeting her grandchildren, spoiling them rotten. Hosting family dinners every Sunday, making time to bring everyone together for just a few hours, to remind them of the things they should be thankful for. All of it’s gone, an entire future erased. And it’s his fault.
Peter stands abruptly, turning away from her body to lean against a brick wall and vomit once, then twice, next to the dumpster. He can’t tell if his eyes are opened or closed, but everything is suddenly black, never-ending and all-consuming. Grief strikes, coiling around his throat and constricting his airways, holding him against the concrete wall. Peter can’t tell if this monster is the same one from the hospital that night, if he’s still feeling the loss of his aunt, or if he’s somehow mourning this woman he didn’t know. A little bit of both, he reckons.
His breath comes in short pants, and then it doesn’t come at all. He’s suffocating, drowning in despair and desperation, trying to bleach from his mind the image of a lifeless stranger lying at his feet.
Red and blue flashing lights cut through the dark, and Peter knows he needs to get away, because her blood is literally on his hands, darker red staining the suit’s gloves, and he won’t be able to explain it to the cops coherently. He can hardly explain it to himself.
He stumbles away, somehow managing to climb back up to his rooftop perch and out of sight of the authorities, but he still doesn’t feel safe. Everything around him disappears, and he’s standing alone in a pitch black room. He still feels the tendrils wrapped around his neck, still can’t breathe, can’t see anything, can’t hear anything but the beating of his own heart, and it sounds too fast. He pulls his mask off in a frenzied attempt to force air into his lungs but it doesn’t work and he still can’t breathe and the dark room’s given way to a never-ending slideshow of the shot, the woman’s body crumpling lifelessly to the ground, her dull eyes staring up, unseeing. He fists his hands in his hair, tugging and pulling, trying to make the images stop.
Peter spends a long time on the roof, trying and failing to re-capture his breath. Every so often, when he thinks he’s close to passing out, Grief will loosen the noose around his neck, just enough so he can gulp down air greedily before tightening again. It wants him alive so it can torture him. He wishes it would just finish the job already.
He’s exhausted down to his bones, and hunched against the lip of the roof of the building, surrounded by darkness and nothing else, he admits to himself that maybe he’s not okay. The past three weeks have been hell on earth. He sees May everywhere: the knitted blanket on the edge of his bed, the bright pillows from their couch that he couldn’t bear to part with, the secondhand books that have found a new home on his own nightstand. He misses her so deeply, with every fiber of his being, all the time. He’s got a bottle of her perfume stashed in his bathroom, and on the nights when he cries himself ragged and nearly throws up from the force of the sobs, he sprays some on his pillow and pretends that she’s there to hold him, to piece his broken parts back together again.
There are rare moments where the light shines through, where Grief backs off just a little and he basks in the sun, letting his skin soak up its warmth and reveling in the brief reprieve. These moments usually come when Tony hugs him, or makes him dinner, or watches a movie with him. Peter’s not dumb. He can work out the common denominator.
He lies on the roof for awhile, staring up at the constellations, focusing on breathing around the vice grip on his neck. That’s the way Peter’s always been: if he can’t overcome, he adapts.
He has to find Orion, Aries, Canises Major and Minor, and Cassiopeia before he can draw in consistent, even breaths again. He floats, pretending that he’s surrounded by stars and nothing else, ignoring the rough concrete against his back and the acrid vomit taste clinging to his mouth. He tries to count the stars, leaving the hurt on the rooftop and focusing only on the tiny pinpoints of light surrounding him.
He makes it to 312 before the sound of metal boots landing heavily against stone pull him back to his body (and, subsequently, the hurt). Tony steps out of the suit, walks carefully over to where Peter’s leaning against the side of the roof.
“Hey kiddo,” he says carefully, sitting next to Peter so they’re almost-but-not-quite shoulder to shoulder. Peter appreciates the breathing room.
“Hey, Mister Stark,”
“I was worried about you.” Peter feels a twinge of guilt.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
They sit like that, Peter collecting his thoughts, Tony letting him. The quiet stretches on forever, until Grief is no longer rearing its ugly head, and Peter can think about something other than the dead stranger in the alley below.
“Talk to me, buddy.” And it’s a simple phrase, but Peter can hear the weight behind it, the pleading undertones. He takes in a deep, shuddering breath, and tells him about the woman, how he knew he wasn’t at his best but he risked it anyways, about how Grief won’t let him rest. About how he only feels okay when he’s not alone.
“It’s like this- this thing that follows me everywhere, and sometimes it goes away but other times, random times, it reaches out and just, like, latches on and it won’t let go, no matter what I do, and I can’t get away from it.” Peter pauses, then whispers, “And I thought I was dealing with it, but I don’t know what to do anymore.” They’re both quiet.
When Tony speaks, it’s with conviction, like there’s no way what he says could ever be wrong. “Sometimes we make mistakes, Peter. We let our emotions get the best of us, we let our personal lives bleed into business. And sometimes we can’t save them all, but that doesn’t mean it’s your fault.” Peter opens his mouth to protest, but Tony cuts him off. “I shouldn’t have let you patrol tonight. I should have waited, made sure you were really ready for it. I’m the adult, I’m taking responsibility. End of discussion.”
“But if I had called you or just walked away or just been a little faster she would still be alive. She’d get to go home to her husband and everything would be okay.” He’s desperate to make Tony understand, make him acknowledge how badly Peter fucked up.
“You’re right. But she’d still be alive if that guy didn’t have a gun, if he hadn’t tried to rob her. Maybe she would have died even if you had called me. Maybe the suit would have startled him.” Tony tilts Peter’s chin upwards so they lock eyes. “We can play the ‘what if’ game all night, Peter. But it doesn’t change what’s already happened. All we can do moving forward is to try not to not make the same mistakes.
“And Pete, please know that I would take your grief from you in a heartbeat. I would bring her back, make your world okay again with a snap of my fingers.” Peter tears his gaze away, tries not to let Tony see the tears welling up in his eyes. “But I can’t, and I’m so, so sorry. I can be here for you though, if you’ll let me. Look at me, bud.” The words are commanding, but not harsh. Peter’s almost shocked by how intense the man’s gaze is. “I want to help you, Peter, but you have to talk to me, tell me when you’re feeling like this. I can’t make it go away, but I can try my best to make sure you don’t have to feel it alone.” The tears are dripping steadily down Peter’s cheeks. Tony wipes them away as they fall, wrapping an arm securely around his shoulders.
“Thank you,” Peter whispers.
“Any time, kiddo.” Tony hesitates, then says quietly: “I love you, you know. Please don’t ever doubt that.” Peter leans his head against Tony’s shoulder, and they sit there, counting the stars together until Peter feels his eyelids growing heavier with the passing minutes, around which time Tony carefully unwraps his arm to re-engage the suit.
When Peter opens his eyes again, Iron Man is kneeling next to him.
“Ready to go?” Tony’s voice is tinny and mechanic through the speakers. Peter nods, lets himself be situated in a sort of bridal-style carry before the thrusters activate and they’re flying back to the tower.
Peter decides he likes the view of the stars much better when he’s flying. They’re so close, so bright, he thinks maybe he could reach out a hand and grab them, pull them close to his chest, never let them go.
The metal plates of the suit are hardly comfortable, and the steel shoulder his head is resting against is a far cry from the memory foam pillow on his bed at the tower, but Peter feels more content than he has in weeks, soaring above Manhattan. He feels safe. Tethered. Grief can’t touch him, not when he’s got gold-titanium alloy arms around his torso and millions of stars to keep the darkness at bay.
When they get back to the tower, after Peter has taken a shower and changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, they end up on the couch, Peter sandwiched between the back cushions and Tony’s side, head pillowed almost on his chest. FRIDAY puts on a random episode of The Great British Bake-Off , Tony’s running an absentminded hand up and down Peter’s back. He feels calm, exhausted. The lights are dim, the TV’s volume is way down, his head is rising and falling with Tony’s breaths. It’s nothing like Before, but Peter decides that it’s good in a different way, in it’s own way, and he can do what he always does: adapt.