Work Text:
‘The day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.’
– The Twelfth Doctor
Lying in bed beside her, he traced a finger aimlessly along her bare back where her top had ridden up. Smooth, pale skin dotted with faded acne scars. She was soft, elegantly so.
“Beautiful,” Peter mumbled.
“Hmm?” Gwen replied, half-asleep.
“You’re so beautiful.” He pulled down her top to cover her back again and drew her closer.
Rain pattered against the window, drumming delicately. Peter buried his nose in her hair, comforted by the scent of her strawberry shampoo. He wrapped a hand around her waist and Gwen threaded her fingers through his, holding them together, safe in their bubble of peaceful bliss.
Peter was thrown from the memory back into the waking world. Like every morning, he paused as he remembered the reason he lay alone in his bed. A blow worse than any he’d ever been dealt. Pain rudely made itself known again by the cloying sensation in his mind. No matter how longed for sleep to take him back the world would never be so kind as to grant him that.
Defiantly, he shut his eyes and tried to draw the warmth of the dream back to him. It was like grasping at air.
The words he’d strung up on Brooklyn Bridge had begun to break up. Each thread untethering, a promise unravelling as the cruel hand of fate continued to cut. Strong gossamer falling to pieces, carried away by the wind. After two weeks, there was no trace.
The world kept turning, unconcerned.
Peter’s world stayed still. Every morning the sun rose only to bring another empty day. The way the world moved on was like she hadn’t even been there. There was a cruelty in that. She was gone while he was forced to look for her in places she no longer was. It didn't make sense in his head, like trying to force two puzzle pieces that didn’t fit.
Even if the rest of the world left her behind, she wouldn’t leave him. Or he couldn’t let go. Either one, he didn’t care as long as he got to hold her in his mind. Echoes and reflections of reality that he feared would distort over time if he didn’t take the time to memorise them all now.
Memories where she laughed at his jokes, rested her head on his shoulder in comfortable silence.
Memories where she teared up before he was about to leave.
The memory of her, lifeless in his arms.
They were all he had left of her. He would trace each one back, scanning every moment for where he went wrong, what he could have done differently to make it so it never happened. Each time came up with a solution that his panic-addled brain hadn’t thought of at the time he was stuck with dull pain, adding to the strangling guilt that hadn’t let him be since that night.
Aunt May could see it. He wanted to tell her he would be alright, that he’d get better. But how could he tell her what he didn’t even know? There was pain in the way she looked at him. It only confirmed what he’d known all along. He was only good for hurting everyone around him.
One night, a few weeks after, she was there when he’d woken up crying. She had held him while he’d wept, his tears soaking into her pyjama top. Peter hated the way he had clung to her as she’d soothed him by stroking a hand up and down his back. He loathed the way he needed her. He certainly didn’t deserve her.
It was weeks before he was able to tell her what happened. He told her the truth. She died saving the city. She died because of Spider-Man.
Because of me, he wanted to add but if he let the words take shape on his lips he feared he’d crumble under the weight of reality. So he kept them in his mind and let them tear away at whatever they found there.
Gwen didn’t die like heroes are supposed to in some sort of glorified sacrifice. She hadn’t been allowed the privilege of making it her choice to go, of steeling herself for the end.
Shouldn’t it have been me?
She’d thought she had time. She’d thought Peter would have saved her. So had he. He wondered if she’d realised neither of them would make it.
It should have been me.
When the reel of that night played back in his mind those few terrible seconds didn’t stretch out like they had then. Time had broken in that moment. He could no longer understand it, couldn’t speak the language any more. Now, there was only After.
He didn’t know how long it had taken for the police to arrive to take her away. He didn’t remember how he’d got home. May had held him as he told her those awful words that no matter how much Peter willed them not to be, were true.
A numbness had settled under his skin, weighing him down with its strange familiarity. Grief was an old acquaintance of his. Now, it gripped him with the full force of cold, cruel hands, sharp fingernails digging into his skin.
Morning had been on its way by the time he sat on his bed, his face sticky with tears. He’d clutched the mask with trembling hands, his suit discarded at his feet. It had been the last face she’d seen. The last person to fail her and the one person who shouldn’t have.
What was the point of it all if he couldn’t even save her?
He’d hurled the mask into the cupboard, followed by the suit and slammed the door.
He went back to college. May said he should, that it wouldn’t help Peter to stay cooped up in the house. Wounds need fresh air to heal, she’d told him. She didn’t know his had already begun to fester.
He wandered aimlessly through the days in a distorted dreamland. Random reminders stalked him. Mentions of the college debate team. The smell of hot chocolate. A girl with a blonde ponytail.
Worst of all were the photographs. She smiled at him, still and unwavering. They barely matched the real thing, devoid of her dynamism. But Peter couldn’t bear to look away.
Too often he visited her grave (not her, he had to remind himself). Sometimes he saw her mother there. They had a script they never veered from.
It’s nice to see you.
You too.
How are you doing?
Better.
Repetition was easier than truth.
Peter imagined how she’d hate him if he ever told her how he’d taken her husband and daughter from her. He held that hate deep in his chest. It hurt. So he held it tighter.
Once he visited Captain Stacy's grave. He stood in silence for a long time feeling small and uncertain.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice so quiet that the wind whisked his words away. He might not have said anything at all.
The route to the cemetery was muscle memory to Peter. Too often he visited her grave (not her, not her) except on the days when he was locked in his room, ensnared in a tangle of pain and paralysis. On those days he lay in bed, headphones on full volume, a lifeline to pull him from the thoughts that threatened to drown him. He was unable to move, submerged in wordless lyrics and uncertain time signatures until his ears ached from the screaming melodies.
Time must have passed because October withered into November. A chill settled into the bones of the earth. It all went unnoticed by Peter. He was already numb to the cold.
Spider-Man re-emerged. Peter Parker did not.
After he’d seen the Rhino ushered into a police van he came home and lay on his bed in his suit, not caring about the grime that he was spreading on the sheets. He’d do the laundry himself later, whatever May said.
There was no fulfilment in it, not how there used to be. But could disappear into Spider-Man, no matter how briefly, so he didn’t have to feel like Peter Parker anymore.
Spider-Man didn’t feel pain like Peter did. He was invincible. A hero. An inspiration. Everyone thought he was so brave, so special, words that sounded so foul to Peter now. They didn’t know the truth about the naïve hero he foolishly believed he’d been. Instead that knowledge was reserved for him alone.
Still, Grief sat with him, a faithful hand always on his shoulder.
It had been a run-of-the-mill corner store robbery. Three guys dressed in black. The first two had gone down easy. The third guy had gotten to the next alley before Spider-Man caught him, falling onto him with enough force to knock him into the brick wall behind him. He’d been relentless, unrecognisably so.
It was only once he’d got home and taken off his mask that Peter saw the sickly shade of red staining the knuckles of his gloves. He’d washed it off in his sink. It had taken too long for the water to run clear.
So many nights came to end that way. He would swing home, his knuckles were bloodied and bruised, stained the same colours as his mind.
Captain Stacy’s words from long ago haunted him. He’s an amateur who’s assaulting civilians in the dead of night. Is that what he’d become? Is that what he’d reverted to?
Cycles repeat themselves indeed.
He went to see Gwen the next day, like he did almost every endless day. The sun was setting, the night waiting patiently at the corners of the sky to take over. Still, Peter stayed. He stared at her name in the half light. Cold, grey stone stared back at him, impassive to his presence.
He imagined it was her instead. Her smile, her bright eyes and the way they wrinkled at the corners. He wondered if she would be proud and laughed to himself. A horrible, hollow sound.
When Peter got back to the house, May gave him that same look she always did. Pity, his mind screamed. Undeserving.
“Peter?” she said softly. Everything she did around him was soft nowadays as if she was afraid she’d hurt him. Pity, he wanted to hurt.
“How long did it take to move on?” His voice was hoarse, the sentence scratching his throat as he spoke.
“From your uncle?” She sounded surprised but not shocked. Peter nodded. “That’s not something- time isn’t useful in that sense, Peter.” May knelt in front of him and gently took his hands in hers. She didn’t say anything about the yellowing bruises on his knuckles. “I won’t ever move on from him. I loved him very much. I still do.”
“But then-” his words failed him. They did that a lot these days, twisting away from him in escape. She ran a soothing thumb over his fingers.
“The thing about losing people, is that they never really leave us,” she said, spilling a rhetoric that he’d heard countless times over the past months. But he let her go on. “It’s silly, sometimes I imagine what he’d say if he was here. Like what he’d say about my meatloaf or how terrible all those new covers of his favourite songs on the radio are.”
She actually smiled at that. Peter didn’t understand how.
“What hurts is that you never imagine being without them so when you are-” she looked away from him, her smile disappearing as she blinked away tears. She squeezed his hands. “You hold onto them tight and you remember them. But it takes time to get to that place where it doesn’t hurt so much anymore.”
But what if time didn’t move for you anymore, Peter thought to himself. How would you get there?
“Gwen wouldn’t want you to be so unhappy.” He jerked his hands away from her, possessed by muted anger.
“How do you know?” he snapped. “She’s not here.” The sharpness in his voice didn’t match how feeble and broken he felt inside. All jagged edges and missing pieces.
May said nothing. What could she even say that would fix him?
Instead, she wiped away his tears with her thumbs like she used to when he was ten and he’d fallen off his skateboard or Flash had called him names Peter no longer remembered. But his tears weren’t the problem anymore. He couldn’t be patched up with a plaster and a kiss on the forehead. There was nothing more she could do for him.
Defeated, they said goodnight and Peter exchanged his misery for his suit, escaping into the darkness.
Peter carried on. He went to his classes. He did the shopping for May. He earned money to help keep them afloat.
Spider-Man became a silent assailant. He played the hero, Peter’s most of all. There were moments when he almost forgot why he clung to his alter ego like he did. Forgetting scared him more than any adversaries he faced.
Some nights he spent atop the Empire State, wondering down at the lights that flickered and flitted about beneath him. Up here it was just him with the distant sky and the rough winds for company.
His loneliness made space for anger. “I didn't ask for any of this,” he would scream into the emptiness. “I don't want it.” The wind listened with deaf ears, like a parent ignoring the tantrum of a petulant child.
If he wasn’t Spider-Man he wouldn’t be here. If he wasn’t Spider-Man Gwen would be.
If if if.
“Is this what she wanted?” he asked. Again no reply.
Peter carried on.
After returning to his universe, he went to the cemetery. Like he did every time, Peter stared at her name. The stone stared back. The early spring chill made him draw his jacket closer to him.
There were already flowers in the pot in front of the grave. An array of white, bright against the grey of the stone. Even after she was gone, Gwen Stacy was still beloved. That was only one of the many words to describe her that came to Peter’s mind. He set down the flowers he’d brought next to the pot.
Peter remembered what her grave had first looked like when the earth had settled after eight months. New grass unaware of the heartache that tainted the soil it had grown from. Since then, the grass had endured year after year.
That day Peter spent his time talking to Gwen. He complained about the awful guy who’d sat next to him on the bus earlier. He told her the story about May getting into a fight with one of the porters at the hospital. He imagined how she’d laugh at that.
Something had thawed in him. After had metamorphosed into Now.
“Guess what,” he found himself saying, “I’ve got brothers now. The multiverse is real, I told you it was. They’re not a lot like your brothers. Well, Peter One is pretty into Star Wars. He’s just a kid but he’s crazy brave. Peter Two is this old dude, kinda reminded me of a youth pastor but he’s awesome.”
He rambled on about the past few days feeling lighter than he’d felt for years. That morning May had told him he seemed to have a brightness to him. Peter liked the sound of that.
“I wish you could meet them,” he said, “they’d love you. I mean, they are Peter Parkers.” Not his best joke, he admitted, but he laughed a little anyway. “I’m not alone anymore, Gwen.” It had been a long time since he’d been able to say that. He wondered what they were doing now. Both with their MJ’s, both just trying to figure everything out.
He shuffled his feet, staring down at the ground. “I still miss you.” Those words would be true for the rest of his life. Today though, that truth didn’t tear into him. Instead it sat lightly on his chest, finally allowing him to breathe.
Peter wasn’t sure when it happened but Grief had removed its hand from his shoulder. He could still feel it there, standing an inch behind him but his shoulder was no longer cold from its touch. Feeling and warmth bloomed under his skin where its fingers had been.
He pulled himself to his feet and faced the gravestone, his lips creasing into a small smile.
“Bye Gwen. See you later.”