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Peter Parker figured that at least if he didn’t have anything else left at all, he still had Spider-Man. But on the street, for whatever reason, even after Strange’s spell, the world was still divided on their opinion of the vigilante.
He’d try to stop crime, and even the victims would tell him no. And, well, no means no, and you gotta stop if someone tells you they don’t want their purse back from the mugger if it’s you to recover it, even if that’s kinda stupid. They don’t want the robber who stole the cash register if it’s him to chase them down.
And then, just cause he’s respecting the wishes of the people who don’t want him involved, the people who actually still liked him started calling him a coward and a liar, who only ever did anything for the clout. Just cause he backs off. Just cause he stopped saving the people who told him they didn’t want saving.
And slowly, in a trap of his own perfectly kind nature, he’s strangled. He’s sure there are people out there who still believe in him, but from where he’s standing, it sure seems like everyone hates Spider-Man, and he can’t do a thing about it.
It’s hard to accept at first — the lack of logic is like a wrinkly dollar entering his brain — but eventually, he realises that it doesn’t really matter what he does or who he is, or how he argues his case to the world, just by being himself and trying his best. The simple fact is, he realises, that people will believe what they want to. And once they believe whatever that is, and they’ve felt even for a moment justified in that, there’s no talking them back. He can’t do anything to change their opinion. They’d have to come to the conclusion, of their own will and volition, that Spider-Man is a hero, not a media-whore and a menace. And right now, Peter doesn’t exactly hold out much hope of that.
When it’s been a good few months, and he’s sitting by May’s grave and he feels completely alone and he couldn’t even afford the rose he wanted to buy her on top of his rent, he realises — or maybe ‘decides’ is more apt — that he truly has nothing left anymore.
After trying for… not that long, sure, but it feels like forever, and getting only suffering in return… he decides it’s not kinder to keep on trying, to keep defending people on the streets of New York. He decides it’s arrogant of him in the first place to consider his help an act of kindness or heroism. He decides that without that, without that reason to keep on trying… he doesn’t need to be alive anymore.
And, well. Living is… cool, or something. It’s hard, and it hurts, and he’s tired, and he doesn’t have anything at all that makes him happy. So… why would he stick around for the bad stuff if there’s no hope at the end of it? You know?
He tries cheap junk food and candy in an attempt to stimulate a dopamine response, and it doesn’t work. He must be broken, he realises, if his neurochemistry is that fucked. He can’t afford the doctor’s appointment or the psychiatrist to even start the process of getting help. If he did, he doesn’t think he’d be able to afford the medications they’d prescribe. He can’t afford the psych ward, he doesn’t have health insurance, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to anyway.
Maybe if he tried harder, he’d find more options hidden in the dark. From where he’s standing right now, he’s exhausted every angle. Maybe it’s just an excuse to leave. He’s not a doctor, but he’s pretty sure he’s mentally ill. Maybe his brain is just backing him into a corner on this one. Whatever’s really happening, he doesn’t have the strength to fight it anymore.
He spends a while thinking about how. Ropes and knives and bridges and water. He wonders if he’ll even be able to do that to himself. When Dr Strange took Peter out of his body, his body acted on the spidey-tingle alone. Would that stop him?
His body responds badly to the cold. If he gets really cold first, he’ll be weak. That might negate the risk of the spidey-sense trying to stop him.
He calls MJ. He remembers her number, even if she no longer has his saved. It’s the middle of her shift, so naturally, she doesn’t pick up. She’d never answer an unknown number anyway. Her answering machine makes his heart clench, just the sound of her voice. He tries to explain what he’s doing and why, and what happened, and why he loves her. He can’t quite do it, it ends up vague and crazy-sounding. He can’t take it back, it’s a voicemail.
He buys a bag of ice from the convenience store, he runs a cold bath. He sits in the cold, and his mind gets so sluggish his heart almost beats out of his chest, panicking, why can’t I think? He realises he’s terrified . He clambers out of the cold water and drops the dollar-store razor he’s bent in half squeezing too hard. His clothes feel like they’re made of steel soaking wet, and he tears them off and his brain is trying to think of a million ways that tomorrow might be better.
Crazy, impossible things, like MJ remembering, or Aunt May magically coming back to life. He calls MJ again, and he apologises for the other voicemail. Obviously, she doesn’t answer, she’s still working. But he hopes she listens to this one first so she knows to ignore the first one. He’s not leaving, he’s too scared.
But as he dries himself off and throws the blade in the trash, the hope and the reasons to stay that his mind conjured up in his moment of fear start to bleed away from him. They’re all bullshit, he realises. He can’t trust his own mind.
He cuts himself by accident rooting through the wastepaper basket for the bent and broken razor blade. He calls MJ again, and it goes to voicemail for the third time. He’s not quite sure if he’s resolute to leave, but he’s building himself up to it, he thinks. Or maybe down from it. He can’t tell. He wants to tell her why it’s okay that he’s doing this, but he just rambles about things that don’t matter.
With dry clothes on, he tells the woman who lives next door to check on him later. It’s a strange request and he knows that. She knows that too. But she accepts. He doesn’t want to be stopped. He just wants them to find his body before it gets embarrassing. Yeah, he’s made up his mind. He’s leaving. Maybe he secretly hopes she’ll find him before he dies.
He takes out the trash. All his spider-gear is in it, and he buries it at the bottom of the dumpster before he goes back up, and he gets back into the ice water, and he waits while he works up the pluck to use the awkward bent blade. He gets tired and numb in the cold.
When he finally thinks he’s ready to do it, he calls MJ one more time, and it’s straight to voicemail again. He gets out the last things he wanted to say, and then he digs into his arms, awkwardly, not sure where to cut. Flash Thompson told him lengthways in junior year, so he follows the general instruction. It’s pretty when it mixes into the water.
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Marjorie spent all day worrying over what the kid next door said that afternoon. It’s why, instead of letting it slide, she calls the police when nobody answers her knocking on his door. When she hears the policeman call for an ambulance, she worries even more. And when the figure on the stretcher’s whole body is covered in a sheet, head to toe, face included, her heart sinks. That cements when the ambulance drives away without sirens or lights.
She knows what’s happened when the police don’t leave for two hours. When the cleaners that show up at the crack of dawn wear hazmat suits and carry trash bags and buckets marked biohazard. Maybe she’d let it happen. In her defence, she couldn’t have known for sure. She didn’t want to invade his privacy by knocking earlier than he asked.
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An unknown teenage boy was found dead in his Queens apartment yesterday evening following what appears to be an instance of suicide. The deceased has yet to be identified. No friends or family with any further information have been located at this time. The NYPD encourages any who may know the boy to come forward to help identify him and provide further clarity to the investigation, which, despite the evidence, remains open.
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The things Peter Parker said in those messages were insane. Really insane. She doesn’t know what half of them mean, and the things he did explain… she doesn’t know if she has it in her to believe them. She has no doubt, however, that he believed what he was telling her.
She listened to the first voicemail without really thinking about it, but when she’d finished listening to them — and she listened to all of them, because they were so strange, how could she not? — she remembered the teen suicide on the news. She didn’t look at the screen while it played.
She opens the NYPD website on her phone, and scrolls down to where there’s an image of a cold and bloodless face on a steel slab, no CW or anything, and clicks on it. She reads for a few moments, she studies the fact and tries to imagine it more alive. Then she takes the subway to the morgue.
She identifies the body. She gives them access to the voicemails. Nobody knows any more than she does. Suicide gets ruled, officially this time, and the case is closed. She doesn’t know what they do with the body, where they bury it when they find no family, no will, no friends.
The one thing she does know is that she will never be able to decide whether or not to believe what he said to her. And she’ll never be able to figure out what some of it meant. She has ideas. But without Peter, she can never find out if she’s right or not.