Boxes, Thoughts, and Memories
Peter woke up in a cold sweat, hyperventilating, sweat-soaked skin and thin clothes uncomfortably clinging to his body ... Sparing a glance at the clock on his right noticing it was 4:33 in the morning. He couldn't help but crumple into a ball, holding himself for a moment. Feeling the ache in his body, chill, and strain in his muscles and bones. The feeling of pure exhaustion settling over him like a thick heavy blanket that he couldn't shake off.
It has been exactly two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, and thirty-six seconds since he lost everything.
It has been exactly two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, and thirty-seven seconds since he lost his girlfriend and best friend
It has been exactly two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, and thirty-eight seconds since he lost May
It has been exactly two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, and thirty-nine seconds since he lost the remaining parts of his childhood... Not that that mattered. That had been slipping through his fingers ever since he lost Ben, ever since he'd been bit at 14, ever since he'd become Spiderman only months later.
It has been exactly two weeks, three days, eight hours, and forty-five seconds since he lost any ties to the avengers, any connection with Peter-2 and Peter-3, and any sense of sanity he previously had.
For two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, and fifty-four seconds, he'd been running on little sleep, little food, and water from the broken tap that tasted vile.
After what felt like hours, which realistically was probably only minutes, he rolled off the crappy, torn mattress and shuffled to his feet. He peeled off his sweat-soaked clothes, memories of a past life and their twisted versions plaguing his mind as he mindlessly tossed them into the small hamper by his window, quickly changing into whatever clothes he found on the floor that seemed clean. While he was there he took a moment to stare at his reflection in the glass. Tired and dull brown eyes stared back as his eyes traced the lines and bags littered across his face, and hollow, pale cheeks. Pulling the window open without a large amount of force proved difficult as his arms strained to open the window at first, exhaustion pulling at his limbs and clouding his mind.
Once he was able to secure the open window he took note of his room. It was, in all honesty, a mess, filled with messy piles of clothes, and boxes smuggled from a once warm apartment in queens that now stood cold and empty, and filled with fragments of memories of laughter and moments of comfort that the sixteen-year-old avoided like the plague. Feeling the air from the window awoke his senses slightly as he moved throughout the small apartment. The apartment was a cheap one, in a rough and sketchy area of midtown, New York, and he didn't have much in his dwindling savings. Thankfully the owner of the building, an older and rather grumpy old man, didn't seem to care that he wasn't actually 18, or even that he didn't have any sort of physical history whatsoever, just brushed it off as "a blip incident" and stated just as long as he continued to pay rent, Peter was free to do whatever.
Lifting the old stained sheet that he hung over the doorframe, dividing the area his bed resided in from the rest of the apartment, He pinned it to the side. Once secured, he found himself moving towards the sink. wrenching the handle towards him, Peter cupped his hands, watching the almost rust-like water sluggishly drip into his hands, before splashing it onto his face, feeling water the temperature of icicles splash onto his skin, getting onto his shirt, and landing on the counters and floor around him in tiny puddles.
He stayed like that for a bit, just feeling the ice-cold water drip from his face, and down his shirt and hearing the amplified sounds from the droplets hitting surfaces and the sounds of New York from outside his window. The apartment complex was surprisingly quiet for four-something in the morning. No sounds of screaming drunks, people having sex or the occasional people indulging in illegal substances..... just silence.
Peter Parker two years ago would've been repulsed at the noises, the things he's seen, where he'd landed, swearing that he would do anything in his power to make sure he wouldn't get that low,
to stay in a one-room shitty apartment in one of the worst parts of new york
no family
no friends
nothing
but in a way that's the funny thing about the future and the past..... you can't exactly see what lies ahead of you nor can you fix the past...
instead, you are stuck in the present,
are plagued by nightmares-
MEMORIES of your past, recollections of mistakes, and suffering and PAIN.
Peter hates the quiet. it lets him slip into his mind, think about HIs past,
HIS failures
HIS mistakes
his loss.
Peter hates the quiet.
Peter's days always seem to have a pattern.
Wake up from nightmares,
sit at the sink contemplating his life choices and why didn't he skip the dreaded field trip to an incredibly un-secure lab corp,
live off the random probably spoiled protein bars he finds stashed in old pockets of jackets and boxes and disgusting, probably rusty tap water,
sit at the card table he found in the dumpster on the decrepit couch that came with the apartment, and sit there for hours as he poured over the limited amount of books he had for GED exam prep,
Work on something else late into the night,
go to bed,
repeat.
This is where the brunette often found himself. Caught in a loop of over-working, under-eating, and stuck in a haze of sleep deprivation. If only Tony or May could see him now.
"come on underoos you can't overwork yourself like this-"
"c'mon Pete, time for some food. let's get Thai- I larb you-"
well.... time to continue the loop
It had been a while since the sixteen-year-olds dissociation at the sink. He moved on shutting the sink off, grabbing the pencils, and books and crashing onto the crusty couch carefully moving the card table closer to him in a way that wouldn't get complaints and glass bottles thrown at the ceiling from the apartment below him in retaliation for waking them up at five in the morning.
Studying always was a sort of comfort for Pete. The ability to sink his brain and senses into whichever topic he was studying, whether it was an easy concept for him or one that caused him to wrestle with it for hours, helped calm his mind, forget what was going on around him, and just focus on the thing in front of him. It gave a sense of stability in a world full of inconstancies and dangers looming at him at every corner. Allowed him the possibility to score some sort of scholarship to hopefully pull himself out of the hell that he had accidentally sunk himself into.
Seconds turned into minutes which turned into hours that passed over his head as he reviewed terms, definitions, concepts, and theorems. Practice problems and writing and erasing old equations. Made adjustments on papers and took practice tests out of the books that his mentor had passed down to him and books he had found in school dumpsters probably dumped by children with a hatred for the work. Working diligently as the silence surrounding him and cold winds outside of the window quickly turned into dogs barking, cars honking, and people screaming and cursing each other out on the streets and in the apartments surrounding him, the temperature dropping significantly as the once cold air turned almost frigid and swooped into the apartment menacingly.
Suddenly, as if all of his senses cried out at once, his brain overloaded with sounds and smells, and the temperature, he found himself dropping the pencil to the side, his head falling in unison onto the card table with a loud thunk, arms finding purchase around himself, in a weak attempt to shield himself from the cold. Pulling himself to his feet, he quickly made his way across the small room, stopping at the open window and wrenching it shut.
Staring outside the foggy glass he could see the haze outside, small snowflakes tumbling down from the sky as the sun seemingly retreated to behind the clouds. He watched as people walked down the street, sketchy people selling things in the alleyways and parents with their children held tightly to each other, shopping bags tucked under their arms, still joyful as they strolled through the mean streets of midtown probably making their way home, speaking to each other about dinner, and the upcoming holidays...
Shaking himself from his trance, he moved towards one of the small boxes that lined the wall next to his bed menacingly. Pulling out a hoodie, he tugged it on quickly, taking minimal comfort in the fabric over his thin clothes, helping him little when it came to the cold. Deciding he was done studying for a bit he made his way to the small refrigerator in the "kitchen" corner of the apartment.
Peter often played a game with himself. Going towards the empty fridge and opening it as if something had made its way into it overnight.
Impossible and childish he knows, and yet he still pulls the door towards him, met with the sight of spoiled milk, an old apple, and the rotten expired Chinese food that resided there since he obtained the apartment. He really should throw that out- the sheer smell of his caused the hairs on the back of his neck and arms to stand up on end as if his spidey sense was telling him that the food was about to pull a fast one on him.
He should really throw that out.
Ignoring the Chinese takeout box, he reached out for the lone apple in the fridge, upon further inspection he noted it didn't seem expired. It was only slightly squishy when his fingertips pressed into it and didn't smell rancid to him. So with a shrug, stomach pains, and a deteriorating mental state, he swung the refrigerator door shut starting to nibble at the squishy and painfully bitter-tasting fruit, willing himself to not spit up the small amount of apple-like sludge that was slowly making its way into his system.
Holding the apple carefully between his teeth, he moved towards the cabinet, reaching out for one of the glasses he scavenged from the old apartment, nestled among the other chipped china he retrieved. Wrenching the faucet open he watched the rust-tinted water slowly glug out of the faucet, ignoring the feeling of nausea that threatened to build up higher in the pit of his gut.
For the next few minutes, he slowly ate and drank, pushing past the sour feelings and the painful feeling of his metabolism attempting to repair itself with the limited amount of food he supplied it with. Once he was finished with his apple he couldn't help but inspect the core, eyes catching onto the small brown seeds nestled inside the shrunken browned flesh.
Memories of remembered facts from classes like biochem or health class and moments of worried parents warning their small children flashed through his mind. Apple seeds contained a small dosage of poison regarded as cyanide… How many seeds would subject someone to cyanide poisoning? If he ingested the seeds would he be susceptible to cyanide poisoning? Or would his spider-induced enhanced metabolism just absorb it and go on its merry little way… he couldn’t help but wonder.
Finally snapping himself out of his trance, he dropped the core into his small little trash bin before running his hands under the rusty sink water. Once he deemed his hands clean enough, turning off the sink he flailed his hands in the air, a quick, weak attempt to dry them.
Moving over to his card table he cleaned up his books and journals, stacking them on the floor to the side and moving to the small line of boxes. Digging through random boxes, Sifting through clothes, books, random collectibles, and parts, he dug out his old laptop. Setting that on the card table, he continued to sort through the boxes slowly.
He kept small items that he recovered from May, mini trinkets, scarves, and sweaters, packing them away quickly into its little box stashed deep under his bed, hidden from sight, lest the memories jumped into his subconscious.
After a small while of repressing emotions, and rescuing the few random odds and ends of his past he came up with three of the boxes he planned on getting rid of at some pawnshop he'd come across when on his trek from queens to midtown.
He hauled these boxes over by the tight doorway, and at the end of it all he was left with a box of clothes, a stack of documents he gathered that were hidden in his aunt's closet, inside another of the falling-apart cardboard boxes held what was once his passion.
Inside lived well-loved tools, electronic odds and ends, and old projects he would work on either in the labs or when he got done with homework and patrolling in his room. Flash drives held together on a keyring with taped-on labels, sketchbooks with papers falling out, and designs and homework problems scrawled on each page. Even tucked in a corner were old sewing projects that he started with his aunt, the materials and stitching still holding with hours of hard work and love put into them. He found himself- gently as he didn't want to accidentally damage things- pouring the box out onto the table, watching years of his work spill out onto the table, unfinished items so small and insignificant, left to rot, abandoned inside a box on its own…. He felt it kind of ironic.
He spent his time carefully, taking old projects he deemed unnecessary, carefully and methodically taking them apart, shedding their old purpose and instead giving them a new one. Their purpose was for parts when he needed them. Distracting from his sorting he came across a small box, the size of a common shoe box. There was a tag attached.
— happy birthday kid -TS
He felt his blood turn cold, hands stilling and dropping the tech he was in the process of taking apart. Shaky hands reached out and grasped the small box tightly. Happy Birthday. His birthday. That was back in August. What happened in August that made him forget his Birthday, a Birthday that Mr. Stark Remembered and got him a gift?
Collecting his thoughts he safely slid the box next to the one his aunt's stuff lay in, tucked underneath his bed to find later. His thoughts itched at him, inside screaming at him to open the box. To see what his mentor, hell his Father-figure gave him, but remained unmoving. Unwilling to open the box of traumatic memories that threatened to spill out from inside the crisp white paper.
Restlessness getting the better of him, he slipped on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, and after piling the stack of boxes into his arms, he ventured out of the small apartment, through the rickety stairwells, and out into the cold city streets.