Conceptually, Peter knew that he would never hear his friends make those silly little inside jokes with him again. He absentmindedly wondered whether they still made the lemon joke, if they even knew where it came from. And what about the dinosaur Lego incident? Did Ned still start cackling when it crossed his mind? Did he hear Peter’s phantom snorts laughing along with him? Would MJ register the fact that a page in her sketch book had once held the longest consecutive game of tic tac toe played in one class in the history of Midtown High? Did she ever run her fingers across the scraps that remained from that page and asked herself what it the writing on the edge of that paper once meant to her?
He was fully aware that there was no way someone would ever yell “Penis Parker!” at him randomly in the hall again. He had become aware that was the case after he had broken into his school (no, not his school, it was only Midtown High now, he wouldn’t even be recognized as an alumni) to clear out his locker. It was funny, in a way; he had spent years wanting Flash to stop using that stupid nickname. But now? Now he would give anything for a scrap of familiarity; a hint that he had left the same impact on the people around him as they did on him.
Yes, he was conscious of the fact that his history teacher would never write those special little good luck notes, the ones he wrote only for Peter. While history had never been a huge struggle for Peter, it was hard to look forward to a class in the mornings, especially after a night of vigilante work. Yet, thanks to his history teacher, he managed to drag himself to class and through longs tests all while his body was stitching itself together because of the night before.
His lack of access to anything Stark tech was unsurprising; it was actually something he had anticipated. When he had been applying for an internship with the company- a real one this time, he had waited for the system to tell him he didn’t have the clearance for something the moment he stepped into the building.
He had to actually stop himself from acting like he knew the lobby, the tower, the very code that kept the security systems going. He had to stop himself from acting like he belonged there; like after all the hell he had been through this place was not a lighthouse of familiarity. His home was gone, his mentor, his aunt, his friend, but the Stark Industries building was still here. When he had stepped through the doors after the first time in six months, he had nearly cried. To say that Peter had spent much time there was a vast overstatement, but in that moment, it felt like the closest thing to home he could get.
Yes, Peter Parker knew that his very existence had been bleached from his friends, his very world at that.
But to know and to experience are two very different things.
Take gravity, for example. To know that a spider would fall if it were to leap from too high a place and to feel yourself being dragged to down, down, down to the center of the Earth, and to watch everyone around you regard it as a natural side effect of trying to reach the stars are extremely different. Take it from Peter Parker, who could feel himself free falling through the air, trying desperately to escape from the fate the world had laid out for him.
He went to MJ’s donut shop again today. She looked at him like he was just another customer. She didn’t realize how far he had once been sucked into her orbit.
She was his first actual break up, and it hasn’t even been a real break up. They only had that one moment-
No, he only had that one moment to say goodbye when they both sobbed into each other, knowing the next time they their eyes met, it would mean nothing.
She still had one of his hoodies.
Or take pressure. When you’re sitting in a physics, learning about how if you go too far down into the ocean, it would crush you (that is, if it didn’t drown you first) mercilessly, you may find it boring. But it was impossible for one Peter Parker to find it too boring, he could only feel his lungs screaming for air while his skin was torn apart and his bones were flattened. Why? Because he was experiencing it and you were only learning about it.
Ned bumped into him today, when Peter was studying for the test to get his GED. Because that was something Peter had to study for.
Because he had never finished highschool.
He never finished highschool.
Movies were written about epic senior years. You were supposed to make sure you hung out with your friends. You were supposed to have fun and watch the embers of childhood end with the opening of letters from your dream colleges.
He never got to say goodbye to being teenager.
There was no graduation for Peter Parker. His name wouldn’t even be read off at it. There would be no diploma with his name on it sitting on stage, waiting for him to take what he spent nearly four years earning. He didn’t leave a senior prank for them to remember him by.
He never got to say goodbye to highschool.
Then again -
He never got to say goodbye to anything, did he?
Not to his father.
Not to MJ, the last girl he thought would be interested him, the last person he was with before everyone found out he was Spider-Man, the last person he had kissed, the last person who told him it would be okay, the last person to forget about him.
Not to his mother.
Not to Ned, the first person to ask him to play with in kindergarten, the first person at school to see him cry, the first real friend he had ever made, the first person to realize he was Spider-Man.
Not to May.
He shouldn’t have had to say goodbye to any of them.
Every day, Peter Parker forgets that simply because there were no goodbyes does not mean that they weren’t gone.
And then, every day, he says goodbye a million times in his head for every time he couldn’t.