Peter realises he doesn't know what it feels like to fall. Not really. Sure, he is out swinging every day, and there are moments between letting go of one web and shooting another when he falls, but he is always going to rise again. There was the time he was dropped into a lake, the parachute built into his suit doing more harm than good as it tangled around his limbs, but then he had been more focused on freeing his body and not drowning. Falling while fighting was different, focused more on not dying, on saving people, than the fall. Holding onto the side of a plane as it crashed, but too focused on the Vulture to feel it.
But now, as the concrete below his feet changes to air with a step, he learns. He feels the way his stomach drops, the way his heart plummets but sticks in his throat all at once in a seemingly impossible paradox. Without his suit, the air rushing past his face brings tears to his eyes, and he can feel the wind almost tearing out his hair.
Before, he wouldn’t have been able to see the ground, but if he blinked the tears out of his eyes, he would be able to see every dip and bump in the damp pavement he was steadily falling towards. Before, he wouldn’t have been able to hear every sound for three blocks, every voice, breath, ad playing on a tv. Before, he probably wouldn’t be able to remember every touch, the feeling of rough hands on smooth skin. Before, he hadn’t felt the weight of his uncle in his arms, the warmth, the stickiness from the red seeping and gushing from his chest.
Before, he likely would have never been in this position.
But now? The After? Now he could. And he wanted it all to stop.
He had made sure no one was around; it was too dangerous to be walking in the early hours of the morning in the alleyways of New York. It was easy for him to get up high; scaling the outside of a building, even without his suit, was like child’s play.
When he was a child, he dreamt of being a hero. Like the ones he read about in comics and saw in movies, then, eventually, like those he saw on the news. Turns out, not all it was cracked up to be. At night, when he tried to sleep, he was haunted by those he couldn’t save. He saw them, bodies burnt and broken, his mind conjuring images he knew logically he had never seen, but it didn’t matter. He had stopped sleeping then, only stopping when he passed out into unconsciousness so deep he didn’t see anything other than flashes of memories he couldn’t remember once he woke.
As time went on, waking got harder. Well, not in the normal sense, but pulling himself out of the greyscale his life had fallen into became impossible. He did what he always did- while he was in pain, he didn’t want to cause others the same- but eventually he stopped. Stopped hiding, stopped caring, stopped feeling. Stopped trying. People noticed, of course they did, but he wrote it off as a bad day. He woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He didn’t sleep well. The excuses and lies rolled off of his tongue with such practiced ease he almost believed them. Almost.
But he knew better. He knew better than to patrol in storms, yet he did. He knew better than to stay out after curfew, yet he did. He knew better than to miss sleeping in favour of staring blankly at the ceiling, yet he did. He knew better than to skip meals, especially with his metabolism, yet he did. And no one noticed.
At least, not until it was too late. Not until he was on a random rooftop at 3am in some sketchy New York neighbourhood. Not until he had pressed send on the messages he had written and rewritten a million times in his head before ever typing them out. Not until he was turning his phone off as it blew up. Not until he was stepping off a ledge and into the waiting air.
He had stepped off the ledge, could see the concrete coming closer. He realised, with a jolt, that he felt free. For once in his short life, he didn’t feel sad, or scared, or guilty. He was calm. The fall lasted longer than he thought it would. Almost a whole minute. And during that time, not once did he regret it.
He closed his eyes, and realised he knew what it felt like to fall. He had been doing it all his life. From the moment he found out his parents weren’t coming home. When he got bit by that god-forsaken spider, when Uncle Ben bled out in his arms. He had known all along.
It felt like home.