Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter was never weak.

He wasn't usually classed as strong per say,

Small kid. Brown mousy hair with messy curls sprouting across his head. Glasses that seemed too big for him, always slipping down his nose. 

Okay, he did seem quite weak.

But contrary to popular belief, he wasn't weak.

But he was a burden.

When he was 7,

His parents had died and he handled it like a champ!

(He went into a depressive state for at least a year before he started getting better.)

When he was 8 he thought,

He was the reason May and Ben cried over the amount of money in there accounts every week.

(Ben had lost his job and they were struggling to make ends meet. But they wanted to be able to get him into a good college when the time came.)

When he was 9 he decided,

His aunt and uncle didn't want to take care of him, they wanted to live their lives in peace.

(They loved him so much, but they didn't want him to forget his parents.)

When he was 10,

He got bit by a spider at a field trip to OSCORP, whilst exploring.

(May and Ben were really worried about him when he couldn't seem to move without crying for 2 days straight before magically getting better.)

When he was 10,

He was the reason Ben was dead.

(Ben had gone out looking for him but a mugger had gotten to him first. And Peter wouldn't speak to anyone for months.)

So, Peter Parker was never weak.

But since he got Ben killed.

When he was 11,

He had decided that he,

for once in his life he would be,

strong.

Chapter Text

Peter Parker was a typical child born in Queens, NYC on the 10th August 1998 to Mary and Richard Parker.

He was a small kid with asthma and according to both his parents and Ben and May, Peter was a genius. (He disagreed but then there were so many idiots around these days so he supposed the bar was quite low? Oh well.)

His mom liked to call him his little genius and while he was too grown up to hear it - secretly, he really liked it because of the warm fuzzy feeling it spread through his chest.

But the most important thing about Peter Parker, well all the Parker's in general, was the monumental amount of trauma they all had. Yay! (Note the sarcasm.) They like to call it Parker Luck™️. But, as Peter was only 7, he had only heard the term in passing and it hadn’t been properly explained to him yet. They liked to say it as a joke, he thinks, to help them cope - it was something that they would say jokingly like during a family dinner “Make sure May doesn’t hear about that Parker Luck before she marries you” or when his parents left for work “Make sure that stupid Parker Luck doesn’t catch up to you whilst you’re away”.

Well it seems like he would learn what it meant first hand - yay!

Likethe fact that at the ripe age of 7, his parents died. Which if he's honest really sucked.

He was staying around his Aunt's and Uncle's apartment, laughing when Ben told him about ‘horrible chemistry pun’ that he read in the paper. He said there was a whole page on the jokes and his favourite was “Don’t trust atoms, they make up everything.” Peter, naturally as a 7 year old does, found it so hilarious that his chest started to hurt with how badly he was laughing. His laugher seemed contagious because soon Ben joined in, smiling and chuckling at his red face. May walked in mumbling about how

“These stupid recipes don’t work” and that she “had a vendetta against potpie at this point”

which only Ben caught, softening further at her annoyance. They shared a bright smile over his still present giggling once May stopped frowning. When suddenly, he just felt it the moment it happened - there was a shift in the air, the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees and he felt a chill go down his spine. (One might think he was psychic but he definitely wasn't, he knew that - he thought later that maybe he was a superhero that could sense when people died but then he decided that sounded really morbid so he decided he didn't want to. But anyway-) 

He abruptly stopped laughing so quickly that even May who had already walked back into the other room re-trying to cook one of Ben's favourites, which she wouldn’t tell anybody what it was, seemed to notice the change in atmosphere too. Ben’s smile slipped of his face as he checked if he asked if he was alright. He thought it was nothing important so he forced a smile and nodded and went back to his Legos whilst May and Ben shared a look over his head.

After Ben told him that he had to pack them up so nobody would trip on them, Peter sat by the window for the rest of the day with a weird ache in his chest that hoped desperately that he'd see his parents car pull up on the side of the road to come pick him up early.

Imagining his mum coming in and scoping him up from the floor in one of her amazing hugs and he would look over her shoulder to see his dad talking to Ben with a his signature blinding smile of his face whilst he looked at his beloved wife and son. But that didn't happen. He thought the ache was odd because it wasn't that he hated going round his Aunt and Uncle's, no way. But after that weird feeling from eariler, he felt like there was a pit in his stomach, a gaping hole that just kept expanding and he felt like he couldn't breathe properly for the rest of the afternoon - like the his oxygen had been stolen from him and locked in a cage, when the key had been long lost. Perhaps it had fallen down the chasm that was in his gut.

He still went through the rest of the day like usual. Trying May’s attempt at the chicken potpie she’d made for Ben, smiling through the painful bites of food and him and Ben both assuring her that it was the greatest thing ever. (There was a reason that Ben usually made food). He distactedly messed around with a small chemistry set that his dad had gotten from work, and he accidently made a teeny tiny explosion that he had to clean up. He and Ben also had to neakily get more food that Ben had already premade just in case of May cooking that night.

And so, it wasn't until late in the evening when he was already tucked into bed with his favourite Star Wars pajamas on. When Ben softly treaded into his room, eyes red rimmed with that horrible look of unending pain in them, his phone hanging limply in his hand, his shaking hands - and it was then was his head was dunked under water. He thought with some urgency that he couldn't swim yet, that he wasn't done with the lessons that his mum took him to like she did every Saturday morning. He wasn’t going to be able to swim ever now, not without his mum taking him there, he just couldn’t.

"Pete?" Ben whispered softly, worry edging his voice.

But Peter didn't hear him, he couldn't yet. He was still under water, muffling all sound. All he seemed to feel was that pit in his stomach that he thought couldn't get bigger, spread. Like it was a black hole just consuming all his happiness as it went from his stomach to his toes and wrapped around the top of his head before spreading towards his heart and taking that too. The need to breathe got a lot worse too and he distantly thought the lack of oxygen was the reason for him to feel (funnily enough seeing as he was drowning at the same time) that he felt a bit like floating which was weird, like he was soaring up high in a bubble. In the back of his mind he thought about why he was feeling like this but it was there, just out of reach, he couldn’t grasp it yet and so…

Higher and higher and higher past the clouds and up and up and up until the the ringing in his ears became deafening and pressure in his lungs became too much. And oh god he couldn't breathe oh god- but seemed too much for the little bubble to handle and-

Pop! 

It felt slightly relieving he supposed until remembered that he was closer to the moon then Ben's apartment. 

Suddenly, he stopped going up but instead went down towards earth, down through the clouds, down towards the ground he went, falling closer to the aparment. Closer to the reality that he didn't want to face because he knew what this meant. He seemed to have grasped that little thought, the one just dangling before him.

He knew, he just knew. Oh no. Please no.

He knew that his mum wouldn't be able to take him to his next swimming lesson. That his dad wouldn't be able to laugh with him the next time Peter outwitted him at something to do with science (Peter and his dad were never really sporty but they had a shared love for the world of science). That he would never see his parents dance around the kitchen together whilst singing some cheesy song that Peter would pull a face at but secretly adore. He knew that he would never feel his Mums warm hugs wrap around him like a blanket, Soft, Safe, Warm. Like the same feeling you’d get when you drank a warm hot chocolate on a freezing day. That his wouldn't hear one of his dads rich inviting laughs again. That he would never ever ever hear their voices, or smell his mums perfume and his dads aftershave, or see his dads blinding smile, or their eyes that filled with love when they looked at each other, and even worse he would never be the receiver of those eyes ever again - his mums warm chocolate eyes filled with so much adoration and all encompassing love and his dads more hazel like eyes that always reminded him of the leaves around central park - that he always pointed out when they walked past them in autumn - filled with that same love and tenderness that was always directed at him.

But despite the fact that he knew. That he was aware of what Ben was going to say next. That he knew what Ben with those same hazel eyes that his father had was going to tell him. Those eyes that he'd never see again on his dads face with his smile Despite the fact that he could probably tell you what Ben was going to say before even uttered the words. Despite everything, despite that fact that he just knew. Despite the fact that when he dragged himself up from the depths of his mind, he still knew. It still really really hurt when Ben said those dreaded words. The words that he knew were inevitable. The words that no 7 year old should hear. The words that no child should hear. 

"Peter" Ben said quietly. And Peter oh so slowly raised his head from his pillow staring at him and it seemed that barely a second had past since Ben came in but it felt like lifetimes for Peter. "Your-uh" Voice thick with grief. Those words. "Your parents aren't coming back. There was an accident on the plane. They're gone." Those stupid stupid words.

And Peter swears he felt his heart shattered at the same time that Ben's soft voice cracked on the last word.