Peter is lying on something hard and cold. At first, he doesn't know where he is. Then, in a flash, it all comes back to him. He had come last night, broken and breathless, to one of the small cemeteries of Queens, climbing the rusty gate that had been padlocked for the night.
And as he did many nights before and will do many nights after, he fell asleep on May's granite grave. His cheek is cold from lying on the stone all night, and his body is sore from the fights and New York’s chilly nights.
In a sudden moment of panic, he looks at what he is wearing and lets out a sudden sigh of relief when he realizes he is not in his suit. No one must know who he is—not again.
The sun is already high in the sky, and without looking at his watch, he already knows that he is going to be late for work again. But even if he knows how much he needs to keep this work to pay the bills, even if he knows how lucky he was to find someone willing to hire an undocumented kid who isn’t even supposed to exist, he can’t find the strength to get up and leave. He wants to stay here forever, he wants the earth to open and to swallow him all. He wants to be with them again. But he can’t.
So he sighs and runs his hand over his face to rub away any traces of fatigue, wincing slightly as he runs his fingers over his bruised cheek from last night's battles. It should have healed by now but he had fought with Daredevil and he had seemed to want to talk to him after the fight, but there was nothing that Peter wanted less than that, so he had rushed off and hadn't had a chance to put ice on the wound before heading to the cemetery. Regardless, with his new lifestyle, food is rare and his metabolism has difficulties keeping up. Nowadays, he simply doesn’t heal as fast as he used to when he had the luxury of having everyday access to three whole meals.
Stroking the names of Richard and Mary Parker, beloved parents, friends, and family, straightening the new yellow orchids in the blue ceramic vase covered in little handprints on the grave of Ben, police officer, uncle, and missed husband with his fingertips and resting his forehead against the brand new plaque of May Parker, Peter finally stands up, drowning in his threadbare sweatshirt that can do little about the cold that has seeped into his bones. But as he gets up, he meets the gaze of a man who stares at him intensely.
He is dressed in a brown and blue uniform, wears a cap with the cemetery's name written on it, and has a watering can in his left hand. He doesn't seem very old, maybe in his fifties. He stares at him with a kindness he is not used to anymore, a kindness that makes him want to cry more than the tombstones and the terrible hunger. How long has it been since someone looked at him like that, like he exists, like he is a human being, like he is real? Nobody looked at him like he was more than a shadow, a ghost stuck on the wrong side of the veil, a mirage whose oasis has long since evaporated, in a long, long time.
How long since he has been more than the mask?
This man doesn't know him, has never seen him before, knows neither his name nor his story. He only sees a bruised kid, half-asleep on a grave, in clothes that are too big for him, too light for the season. He only sees a boy with sad, empty eyes. Peter Parker died with the bravery of a hero and the broken heart of a child. He lost everything over and over and over again. And there are days when he wants to give up because he doesn't know how to help a world that never helped him.
But he has the power to help and if he doesn't and bad things happen, it's his fault. So for a man who raised and loved him more than life and died because Peter was too afraid of the dark, he brings light to the ones lost in the darkness.
But he has to be the best of them. So for a father who died in his arms, one of many, a father who loved him enough to invent time travel, who loved him more than the universe but not enough to stay, Peter forges papers and builds a life for himself and gets into one of the best schools in the world. Because if Peter Parker no longer exists, that doesn't mean he won't change the world, whether he wants to or not.
But a man, with misty eyes and a loving smile once told him that he would be great, that he was someone's greatest pride. So for Happy who took the time to be there for him when no one else was, who hugged him when no one else could, who was real when no one else was, who gave him his home when he had nowhere to go, who protected him every time, against the whole world when he had to, for the man who learned to love him when it was the most complicated and who, even after forgetting him, gave him one of those slightly broken smiles, the ones made of sorrow, hope and broken dreams, Peter will keep the legacy of heroes alive.
But with great power comes great responsibility. So for May, for a woman who didn't hesitate to love a child who only shared her name as her own, because to her he was, for the strongest and bravest woman in the world who hugged him when she learned of her husband's death and who, instead of getting rid of the child who had no blood relation to her, signed papers that made him hers as if it was the most natural thing in the world, for the woman who worked day and night so that he could eat, for the woman who yelled at billionaires and superheroes for her son and who held him against her heart after being dead for five years and whispered that she loved him over and over again as he buried a third father, as she had done the times before, for his aunt, his mother in all but name who accepted him as he was and taught him that no one is ever lost, for the most generous woman in the world world that didn't have much but always gave everything and for whom helping someone meant helping everyone, for his May who died in his arms, smiling through the pain and blood to reassure him with her last breaths, just like when he was five and took refuge under her bedsheets after a nightmare, for May who always said that if you stop smiling for those you've lost you might as well be gone too, for May, Peter doesn't give up. He never gives up and always helps those in need, in a red and blue suit or a sweater too big and worn out. For May, Peter never stops smiling, even through pain and tears.
So Peter smiles gently, a half-broken smile, to the man looking at him as if he is alive and still matters. And when the man, this kind stranger, reaches out to pat him on the shoulder, when the gardener smiles at him, a little too sadly, and reaches into the pocket of his long, dirt-covered coat, to hand him a carefully wrapped chocolate bar, holding it under his nose until he grabs it, and then walks away with one last caring look, Peter remembers why he doesn't give up, why he will l never stop fighting for this world as broken as he is.
Because that look said, "Take heart, kid, the sun always shines in the end. You'll find a way to go through the clouds too."
So Peter, even though he's tired, even though he just wants to go home, where he belongs, Peter stands up with the bravery of a hero whose battle is not yet won and the trembling smile of a child who still wants to believe.
He's not going home, not yet. But he can still smile, and for now, that's enough.