Don't stay in one place too long. Keep running; stay ahead of the sadness. It’s the only way to avoid the pain.
That was Peter’s philosophy. It was simple and shoddy at best. At worst it was absolute bullshit. He didn’t have much time to come up with anything good. He thought about it while talking down a suicide attempt. They had shitty parents and an abusive partner. It was their saying. And he might have borrowed it.
There wasn’t much to the philosophy. All he had to do was run. So that’s what he did. Peter ran and ran until running was all he knew. There wasn’t much else he could do. If someone tried to get close to him, he ran. If he was questioned, he ran. If the Avengers were looking for him, he ran. Peter ran until he couldn’t.
It was a shitty way to live, but it was his. The blame for his less than stellar situation fell on his shoulders and his shoulders alone, that was just the way it was. It was his fault for having trust issues. It was his fault for not being able to handle the thought of someone being close to him. It was his fault that May had died. It was always his fault. He had given up the thought of things getting better long ago.
It wasn’t hard to give up. In fact, it was probably one of the easiest things he’d done in a long time. It was like he opened Pandora’s Box, and the last spirit left was gone. Hope. He felt free. He no longer needed the fleeting feeling that things would get better. Hope was such a burden. He could finally let himself go. He no longer needed the meaningless mindset that things could get better. Because he knew the truth. Things would not get better.
After he got rid of the horrible weight, he began to lie as a defense mechanism. He obviously couldn’t tell anyone about his situation, that would be preposterous. So lying was an easy fall back. It was certainly easier than running away all the time.
So when he met Tony Stark, he had a half-mind to just ignore him. It’s what he did with his other problems. Peter really didn’t want another adult in his life. All they did was die order him around. He didn’t need Stark. He didn’t need anyone. He didn’t have anyone. But he couldn’t run. Stark would find him no matter where he went. So Peter settled for the next best thing. He lied, and he lied until lying was all he did. He lied about everything.
He lied about needing help with his science project. He hadn’t been enrolled in school for months.
He lied about Aunt May, and how she was getting slightly better at cooking. She hadn’t been able to cook in months.
He lied to Stark. He lied to Rogers. He lied to Happy. Hell, he even lied to FRIDAY.
Soon, lying was as easy as breathing.
Stark invites him over for a lab day? Sorry, Aunt May has the flu and I need to take care of her.
Barton asks if he wants to join their weekly game night? Oops, I forgot to do my essay on the Khmer Rouge.
It was so easy it was almost laughable. All he had to do was drop a few quick excuses and they would leave him alone. Soon he had hundreds of excuses lined up. He even found ways to connect them to make it seem more believable.
Which, now that he thought about it, probably wasn’t a good thing. He was so good at coming up with lies, that telling the truth seemed plain wrong. He had kept up the charade for months. He could have gotten help if he had just said a few things. It would have been so easy, telling them what was wrong. But he didn’t. He was a coward.
He didn’t tell them that he wasn’t with Aunt May. She was dead. That he wasn’t living in an apartment in Queens. He lived in an alleyway near a restaurant. That he wasn’t getting three meals a day. He occasionally got a meal from one of the nearby dumpsters.
He was so deep in his lies that he didn’t know if he could tell the truth. He didn’t know if anyone would believe him. Typical Parker Luck. He was the only person capable of destroying his own life with words.
He was at rock bottom. There was no chance anyone would love him now, not after he had spent almost a year building relationships on lies. No one would forgive him now. He couldn’t even forgive himself. He was all alone. He doubted that anyone could want him anymore.
And that… that hurt. The simple idea that no one cared for him anymore was like a knife wedged between his ribs. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe it was a sign from the gods. Maybe they just had to drive the whole point home, that he wasn’t supposed to get a happy ending.
Maybe every tragedy in his life was just the gods trying to tell him that in the end, no matter how hard he tried, he would end up alone. First his parents, then Ben, then May?! No wonder he wasn’t supposed to have a good life. A glance at how it was going so far was evidence enough. It’s no surprise that he simply wasn’t destined for a happy ending.
He wanted to scoff. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted May.
But now that he’s thought about it, he’s angry. He’s so fucking pissed.
Of course. Because there is no way that Peter Fucking Parker was allowed to be happy. Ha! What a stupid thought! Why should Peter Parker have any amount of happiness? It was simply insane! The gods would mock him until the day he died. The memories of their deaths would haunt him till his last breath. The gods should just smite him here and now. Maybe it would save him from a life of more pain.
With the hard realization that things would in fact not get better, Peter whispered to himself, “Of course. Of course, I don’t get a happy ending. It was stupid and naïve of me to think I would.”
He sat there for a moment, gazing at the stars. They were bright tonight. All the anger and sadness drained out of him. Now, he felt nothing. He scoffed.
Thinking for a moment, he remembered something MJ always said about lying, “If I tell a lie and you believe me, that’s your fault. But, If I tell the truth and you don’t believe me, that’s my fault.”
He chuckled sadly. It really wasn’t their fault, it was his. He was dumb enough to think that he could live in a web of lies. And even if he tried to tell the truth, he doubted they would believe him.
According to her “philosophy”, it was their fault that they believed his lies. Bullshit. It was no one's fault but his. There was no way to save his situation. He would just end up alone as the gods intended.
But now, due to his circumstances, he decided to change the saying. From now on he would live by a new philosophy:
If I lie and you believe it, it is because you think too highly of me- you see the person I pretend to be, not the person I am. You are a good person, one who sees the best in people, so you hesitate to think the worst of me. You choose to believe me because my manipulation has worked. I am a terrible person.
It was perfect. All he had to do was live by it forever. It wouldn’t be hard. After all, it was a philosophy befit for a liar.