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Peter Parker doesn’t sleep anymore.
He pretends to try. Laying in bed, listening to May shuffle around the apartment.
He doesn’t sleep. There is no sanctuary in sleep, no calm, no rock in a storm.
We won, Mister Stark. We won.
He hauls himself out of bed, climbs out the window. It’s soundless. He knows the routine.
I love you three thousand.
Peter stands on the roof. He does not jump.
He wants to jump. This he knows, the way that he knows that May loves him, that Pepper would include him if he spoke to her.
Tony- I’m sorry.
He leans forward. He tips back. He can feel the cold concrete soaking through his socks, the wind whistling through the buildings around him.
He does not jump, but every night, he wishes he did.
He doesn’t speak. Speaking requires thinking, engaging. Too much energy, too much thinking.
He doesn’t think a lot anymore.
“Peter.” Ned is concerned. May is concerned. Even MJ, who he didn’t know knew how to express anything on the human spectrum of emotion, shoots him looks when she thinks he doesn’t know.
“Dude. I’m… I’m worried. About you.” Peter knows that Ned doesn’t do well with emotions. His family isn’t like that. “You don’t eat, you don’t turn in stuff for school.”
“I’m fine.” He paints on a smile and musters an echo of...something. Reassurance, maybe.
“Just tired.”
He is so tired.
“Okay.” Ned nudges his lunch tray towards him. “Just get some sleep. For me.”
Peter picks up the apple he’s offered, takes a bite. It tastes like sawdust.
May doesn’t voice her concerns, not in the way that Ned does. Instead, she offers him more food, more hugs, reassurances that she loves him, and he knows that, right?
She takes him to the Thai place down the street. Food all tastes the same now, and he hasn’t had an appetite in a long time.
“Peter, sweetheart, you’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”
He pushes his noodles around, swishes them in soy sauce. His fingers don’t want to cooperate with the chopsticks.
“Yeah, of course, May.” He doesn’t look her in the eyes.
“Okay. Okay, honey.”
He pretends not to hear her crying at night.
He tips forward. Leans back. Tips forward until he almost falls, gravity pulling him towards the concrete seven stories below.
If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive.
Deep down, you know I’m right.
Peter stands in the bathroom. May is at work. The apartment is quiet.
He hasn’t spoken to almost anyone in days.
He stares at his reflection. The person who looks back at him is unrecognizable.
He looks, but he does not see.
He opens the cupboard, pulls out a pill bottle, doesn’t look at the label. Shakes them into his hand. Imagines what it would be like to put them in his mouth, swallow, down the entire bottle and the next and the next.
Slowly, he puts them back. Screws the cap back on, replaces them next to May’s perfume. Closes the door.
Stares at his reflection. It’s crying.
Lifts his hand up to his cheek, looks at the tears on his fingers in detached fascination.
He didn’t know that he knew how to cry anymore.
I am going to die.
Peter knows this. He knows a lot of things. He knows that May doesn’t sleep anymore, that she hovers outside his door and frets in the bathroom when she’s pretending to do her makeup.
He knows that he’s no longer in the running for the top of his class. Hasn’t been in a long time.
He knows what it feels like to die.
The feeling of disintegrating flesh, stumbling towards Mister Stark, losing feeling in his legs and crumpling against his mentor.
I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go-
How foolish he had been, not wanting to leave.
He wishes that he had been the one that died, instead of the hero that everyone needed.
How do I not know that I haven’t jumped?
The roof, the roof, the roof-
Am I real?
He doesn’t feel anymore. It’s harder to tell what’s real and what’s flashbacks at this point.
The roof, the roof, the roof, the roof-
Just one step. One fall.
Therooftherooftheroof-
I just have to fall.
Fallfallfallfallfall.
Peter sits on a railing. His web-shooters sit beside him, just in case.
In case he wants to go back.
I don’t want to go back.
It’s still. All is silent.
WewonMr.StarkyoudiditsirwewonwewonI’msorryTony-
Karen’s voice breaks through the crushing steel plate of his thoughts.
“Pepper Potts-Stark is calling.”
“Decline.” There is no emotion in his voice.
(You can’t express what you don’t have.)
It’s quiet for another minute.
“Pepper Potts-Stark is calling.”
“Decline.” A harder tone in his voice, razor-sharp.
“Connecting you to Pepper Potts-Stark.”
“No! Karen-”
“Hey, Peter.” Pepper’s voice is soft. He can hear the underlying terror tucked away under her voice.
“Hi.” Blank. Detached.
“You okay?”
“Yep. Fine.”
“Okay. Wanna tell me why you’re on Queensboro Bridge, honey? It’s three in the morning.” There’s forced calm in the tone, like talking someone down from a ledge.
Well. The situation calls for it, doesn’t it?
“I’m just thinking.”
“What are you thinking about, Peter?”
“Tony.” The word slips out by accident, an unformed thought.
There’s a pause. Peter suddenly realized that Pepper was crying.
“Yeah.” Pepper’s voice is shaky. “Yeah, I was thinking about him too.”
“I miss him,” Peter’s voice wobbles. “I see him, Pepper, I hear him.”
“I know. I know honey, god, Peter, I know.” Pepper sniffled. “But he loved you. He loved you like you were his own. He wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”
He doesn’t have to ask what she’s talking about.
“I just miss him.” They’re small, almost whispered, the words that come out of his mouth.
“He talked about you. When you- when you were gone. He talked about you, all the time. He missed you so much, Peter. He did everything he could to get you back.”
A small sob broke through the barrier. “Why is he gone, Pepper? Why are they all gone?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know. But you’re here. You’re here because Tony wanted you to live.” Pepper took a shaky breath. “He loved you so much.”
Peter closed his eyes. He could feel tears trickling down his cheeks, soaking through the suit.
“Why don’t you come over, okay? We can have hot chocolate, watch a movie. Morgan wants to see you, she’s been asking when her favorite spider’s going to show up.” A weak chuckle echoed through the phone.
Peter lifted his mask, wiped his nose. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Just come over. You can spend the night.”
“Okay.” The words were small, frail. Cracking, but not broken.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see you soon, kiddo.”
The call ended. Peter didn’t move.
Slowly, through the distorted haze swirling in his head, he heard the echo of something.
And if you died, I feel like that’s on me. I can’t live with that.
He grabbed his web-shooters, attached them back around his wrists. Climbed down from the railing.
He swung off into the night.
Sometimes, Peter Parker stands on a roof. He never jumps.
There is always someone to catch him if he falls.