Chapter 1
When Harry finally regains the strength to open his eyes, all that is there to meet him is dark wood grains several inches above his eyes, the sort of blemishless smoothness that would be shiny if there were any light in the confines of a casket beneath six feet of dirt.
The rest of his body remains as still and heavy as it has been since he ‘died’, his awareness remaining untouched and present in the paralyzed prison of his body. Opening his eyes is a relief, confirmation that unmoving trapped consciousness will not be the eternity he experiences after his death, even if the most he can manage with the rest of his body is a twitch of his fingers. It’s not hopeless. His senses never gave out on him, at the least. Every word spoken over his bleeding body, every time his body was moved and touched and undressed and redressed, fingers tracing over the barely closed holes in his chest as he fought to shift or move a hand or anything to convey that there was some condition resembling life that remained in him, frantic prayers to gods he doesn’t believe in to let him find a way to signal to someone before it was too late
His current situation is probably exactly what he would have defined as too late. He’s been buried for several days. He has nothing but pitch black and near perfect silence only interrupted by the way water trickles through the soil when it rains, and, when he concentrates, the sounds of the insects nearest to him churning the earth or scuttling along the edges of his coffin. He learns eventually that he can faintly hear and feel the steps of people above him, visitors to his grave, and eventually begins theorizing about who might be who.
Really, only three people ever seem to visit. Most often MJ, he learns. But Peter still comes frequently, often brings May, and Harry tries his best not to feel disappointed when he realizes how much more often MJ comes, tries not to let his heart ache. He does his best to remind himself that Peter is busy, has always been busy and will always be busy, with the amount that he put onto his plate. He chooses to try to find solace in that most everything he owns was given to Peter, May, and MJ, the people he actually gave a damn about and who actually gave a damn about him, with meager amounts of money or certain items left to certain nosier, more entitled distant relatives that would have been quick to dispute the will if he chose to leave them out of it outright. There’s solace that with his burial, he can know that they will never struggle again. Peter can pay for an apartment and just be Spider-Man full time, just how MJ would be able to stop working and just audition full time, and May can have a comfortable retirement.
Time passes. It begins slowly, then gradually begins all bleeding together. Rain isn’t a monument of time passing like it was, instead just a variant in the way things all sound the same. He has a choice between the scuttling of bugs and silence, water through dirt has become simply a third option for if the world feels like spoiling him. He alternates between the wood grain and the backs of his eyelids, occasionally trying to sleep. When he does, a reassurance that he’s more alive than he is dead, he dreams mostly of dying again, wakes up so harshly he throws his head sharply into the lid of the casket. But he keeps sleeping. It allows him to skip the time. Heal more, possibly. Maybe, if purgatory isn’t being trapped in his body until it decays, someday he’ll have regained enough strength to break out.
Will the world have moved on from him by then?
The moment he can move his arms, he tries desperately to move the lid. The performance enhancers made him stronger, maybe there's a chance he can just brute force his way out of there. But no luck. He remains weakened by what should have killed him. Should have. He should be dead.
That thought sticks in his head like a splinter in his finger. He should be dead.
The visits grow less frequent, the vibrations of footsteps are spaced out more and more. There’s a point in which he can’t simply delude himself into thinking they just come when he’s asleep. When he breaks out, the world will have moved on from him. The world is already beginning to. He should be dead. To everything and everyone above him, he is dead. He can’t wish for those he loves to stay in standstill so he can slot perfectly back into things like he used to. He wouldn’t wish for them to do that if he were actually dead. Not fair for his thoughts to demand that from them.
Insects began entering through the crack beneath the lid, crawling in. They find the warmth of his body, gravitate toward beneath his clothes, frequently beneath his body, and they never fucking stopped moving . Sleep becomes impossible for a while, unmanageable as shivers wrack his body as dozens of tiny cold legs. Always so cold. It’s like a dozen needles against his skin, a constant traveling itch that he can’t stop. He can crush them, but there are always ten more to take its place, a constant battle he quickly loses the energy it takes to fight. The bugs are hell, but they’re something. They remind him that he’s real. The cold dank air wasn’t so agonizing, but it was nothing, it made his skin feel like it was detached from his body and eventually like his mind detached with it. The bugs are something. They make him feel real. Human.
Despite that, he curls up like a fetus when they begin to devour him, begin to dig and burrow into his skin, embed themselves in his muscles. He could stand them when they remained on top of him, but he can’t stand the feeling when it’s beneath his skin, when they’re creeping into his muscles, legs feeling like needles as they dig into raw, living tissue. It’s agony. They devour him like any other corpse. They only think to devour, they do not differentiate the living and the dead, if Harry even still qualifies as something that is living.
That’s the day he bashes his head into the lid of the coffin, suddenly desperate to die for real this time. He learns that wood is strong, but not stronger than his skull, and a small shower of wood fragments and soil rain down on him. And in a second desperate fit, claws desperately on his own throat. This is hell. He wants it to end. But the nightmare refuses to end, he can’t wake up. He can tear the tender skin of his neck until it bleeds, until it’s drenched in blood, but his body refuses to die. That tears the rest of the fight out of him for a long time. He is like any other corpse. He is any other corpse, life behind his eyes doesn’t matter much when he’s been buried.
Cold tears at his skin, making it dry and crack, bleed in some areas. But bleeding is something. Blood is warm, warms him slightly. He is starving. His stomach has felt like nothing but a void in the cavity of his abdomen for months. And there is nobody coming to save him, he is trapped and he is any other corpse. It’s been months, his only prayer is that someone will develop a paranoid delusion and have him exhumed, and Harry doesn’t think he’s lucky enough for a glorious coincidence like that.
They visit less and less often. He is being forgotten. MJ begins being the one who visits less frequently. He tells himself that her career is finally taking off, that she’s got so many glorious roles she’s pulled around every major theater in New York, she doesn’t have time to think about some old dead friend. She’s moved on, like anyone would. And Peter’s probably working on graduating with his bachelors, probably still busy with school. And Spider-Man, he was always busy with that. Of course neither would have time to think of him. They rarely thought of him when he was alive, if he was being honest with himself, always thinking of each other more. And really, no need to think of him when he is no longer prancing around demanding to be thought about. And, he reminds himself, he can’t demand they don’t move on when as far as they are concerned he’s lying decaying in the earth, long dead.
He comes to a startling realization of how much Peter in particular has moved on one day, a longer stretch between bouts of rain. Peter’s recognizable steps approach, followed by… another pair. That he doesn’t recognize, too unfamiliar and confident and steady to be May, not brisk enough to be MJ, and they land so, so close to Peter, so close it makes him jealous despite the situation, despite the fact he would be insane to think that he had any claim over Peter to begin with. One kiss seconds before Harry’s false death does not a relationship make. Not like they were married, Peter doesn’t have to wait to move on from one goddamn kiss. Harry lost his chance the most anybody ever will lose their chance.
He makes up a lot of stories about his friends these days, as days and weeks and months drift together, as he grows incapable of finding a difference between wakefulness and slumber, as his dreams simply show him the same horrid reality he faces in consciousness. He tells himself that MJ got back on broadway and stayed there, just like she always wanted, that she got cast in the next big thing, that she’s successful and happy, that every night she sings and acts her heart out to hundreds, that her shows are praised around the country for being the best on broadway for that year. Glowing reviews that don’t sound like her father, that sound like his and all the rest of their friends glowing opinions of her. Because Harry was wealthy enough to see bad Broadway, and he knows she’s not it. He hopes Peter gets into whatever Master’s program he pursues, especially with the money he knows he gave to the man being able to pay his way through it. He hopes whoever that mystery person was, that they treat Peter right, and that he’s happy. He hopes that he’s out of that shithole apartment. He hopes New York is peaceful, is taking it easy on his spider. Not your spider.
Is it self destruction if all the stories he tells himself involve them forgetting about him? Does he wish to be forgotten? He can’t want that, can’t, when picturing Peter and this new person together still makes his stomach churn.
He would scream to hear something new, if he wasn’t so dehydrated that he can’t make any noise. Any attempt makes his vocal cords drag against his throat like pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together, each tearing into the other.
As reality and dreams and time drift from his grasp, he has his first dream of something other than his waking nightmare, and it’s of Peter. Harry trails behind him, one hand held in Peter’s, a warmth emanating from it in the way it only does when it’s skin to skin contact, a specificity he’s glad to have retained when it’s been so long since he’s experienced contact with another person. Peter is pulling him down some New York street. Not a specific one, more an amalgamation of every store and diner he has fond memories of, any business that he looks at and sees comfort. His bug is speaking to him, no specific words that he can make out, only sounds, but his brain responds to it like words. His throat is too dry to speak even in this dream, so Peter speaks to him with no reply. This street is cold, like the city in late autumn, like his waking underground prison. Peter is his only warmth, and he leads him, until he pauses, speaks to Harry more, with the first sentence he can actually understand. He asks him if he is cold. And Harry is. Harry has been cold for months. So Peter, sweet Peter, turns to offer more of his warmth, spinning and pulling Harry into a tight hug, holding him tight against his chest, and it’s so warm, and it’s peter, and it would be bliss and heaven if it weren’t for the fact that this Peter in his dreams has no face.
Harry wakes at that, shivering, drenched in sweat that has him shocked there’s enough moisture left to have him able to sweat. His eyes are immediately met with the sight of the old cracks in the wood, a web of shattered wood with the dark, moist soil suspended above it. In a sudden fit of panic and anger and sadness, he cracks his fist against the lid, and thank the performance enhancers that it breaks to the degree it does, another shower of splinters, but more than when he had banged his head against it. The break in the wood spreads like a crack in a frozen lake. And in that moment, drawing his fist back to hit it again, he decides that even if he digs his way into a world that has forgotten and moved on from him, he cannot stomach the idea of living in a world where he can’t remember Peter Parker’s face.
His fist cracks against it again, and again, a sizable hole quickly forming that allows him to wedge his into the earth above and begin tearing chunks of coffin lid free, ignoring the shower of soil that comes with ever fragment torn away, because if he drowns in earth then he’s dead, and that’s that, but if he lives then he’s free and he never has to sit in his silence with insects burrowing in his muscles ever again. He doesn’t stop tearing through the lid, even when he needs to shut his eyes and blindly flail until his hand catches against sharp outcroppings of wood, until the hole he’s torn is wide enough to fit his shoulders through.
And then is when he throws himself upwards into the soil with more strength then he’s had since his false death, managing to get himself into a sort of folded position on his knees where he can more easily push himself upwards with his legs as he tears his way through layers of dirt. It rains down on his face, molding him as it falls into the box that had been his prison for so damn long, and it suffocates him, fills his eyes and nose and mouth and ears and he doesn’t stop, he can’t, he needs out he needs out he needs out , he’s so close, earth falls into his shirt and sticks to his skin and roots catch on his fingers and stones cut his hands and sides as he moves, but he is going up, up, and he feels alive, he feels like he’s real again, his heart pounds in his chest. He ascends, like this is his rapture, earth is his heaven, the sky and grass and stimulation and living is his heaven.
The wave of bliss that overtakes him when his hand breaches the surface is beyond description, better than manmade vice his grief pulled him towards. The cool, moving air soothes his dry, torn, broken fingers as they grasp against moist grass- grass!- that tickles his palms, and he digs his wrecked fingers into moist earth, securing them and pulling, until his head breaches through and sends clumps of soil cascading around him like he was surfacing in water.
The first thing he sees is the night sky and a full moon, and a dry sob escapes his throat as his hands scramble for further purchase and he falls into the ground, legs pulled free from the prison that was his own grave. Grass. Living. Dew, wet. It tickles his face like it’s a greeting, like the simple plants are welcoming him back. He brings a hand down to stroke the blades, a thank you for the greeting, allowing himself to simply lay there for a moment, to stare into Green. It’s night, it’s dark, but there are colors. Green from the grass, dark Purple from the sky, Gray from the clouds covering half the moon. Red… red from the roses set in a Blue vase, on the base of his own grave, where his own name lies engraved upon it, his date of birth and the date of his death, red roses, fresh, on the one side with a photo set in front of it, a vase of half wilted yellow roses on the other. He crawls over, feeling slightly sick, and finds the photo set against his grave to be the same that he used to keep on his desk, the one of himself and Peter and MJ when they had gone ice skating. At that moment, Harry falls to the ground once again, because they think he’s dead. He can tell them he’s okay, he needs to, he needs to find them, he’s okay, he’s alive.
And for the first time, he feels alive. Even if his only hope is to pray Peter kept his old apartment, as sad as that would be, because it’s the only thing he thinks he knows how to find. He forces himself to stand, propping himself on the tombstone as his legs get used to being used again, and begins taking slow steps towards the cemetery gate.
Harry thanks whatever power controls the world that his body can still produce adrenaline, as that’s likely the only thing that allows his feeble, atrophied legs to carry him the eighteen miles that lie between him and Peter. His head twists ever direction he can find with every step he takes, taking in lights and colors and storefronts and cars and other people, it’s all so beautiful even if the headlights and neon signs burn his eyes , excited to see living breathing humans again, even if they stare at him and rush past at the sight of a filthy scarred man in a maggot eaten tuxedo. He can’t bring himself to care, he’s alive. He’s fucking free. He’s watching the sun rise, he’s feeling the sun on his face for the first time in months, and he’s doing it standing in front of Peter’s run down apartment building, and he’s never felt happier in his life.
He loops around the building, eyeing the window that he’s so, so sure leads to the run down studio apartment that contained Peter Parker, who he’d like nothing more than to see right now, and determines that the performance enhancers can carry him a little further tonight as he begins scaling the building from balcony to balcony, window sill to window sill, ascending with speed and strength that couldn’t naturally belong to his emaciated arms.
Peter’s window is filthy. He can’t bring himself to care as he leans against the glass. He can’t get much filthier than he is right now. His lungs burn from the exertion of the night, exhaustion sitting heavy in his bones, exhaustion pushed to the side in favor of looking through the window and feeling his chest grow warm at the sight of Peter buried beneath heaps of blankets, curled on his side with one arm hanging over the edge of his tiny mattress. Peter, his bug, managed to be his saving grace without even knowing it as he’s done for years, Harry learns, when he tries the window and finds it unlocked, ducking through the window and landing moth eaten shoes first on his floor, where he sits and stares at the other man all over again, letting the warmth of affection and relief spread from his chest into his limbs, then crawls towards him, mind numb to all the reasons he shouldn’t as he crawls into that tiny bed beside him, pressing his body against Peter’s, feeling the outstretched arm wrap subconsciously around him ever so slightly. He lays his head against Peter’s chest, ear pressed into his ribs to hear his heart beating, something that tears another horribly dry sob from his chest, and reaches his hand up to briefly trace Peter’s face as weariness begins to pin his body to the mattress more and more.
He lets his eyes shut, ignores the insects, ignores the cold, ignores the pain of a body torn apart by maggots and sharp stones, ignores the isolation, the anxiety, and tells himself the childish promise that he will wake up here and Peter will make things okay, he’s going to be okay. Peter will make things okay.