Peter had been living at the Avengers compound ever since Thanos and his forces were defeated. May had died in an accident three years after the snap. He was finally, truly alone in this world. There was no one left in his family. The Avengers had been trying to be there for him, and Tony promised he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Empty promises.
Everything was empty nowadays. The compound. His room. Him. Everything was bathed in varying shades of gray and Peter felt like he was drowning half of the time. He couldn’t sleep without the nightmares of the final battle, or the warehouse falling on him, or dying. Him dying was the most common of his nightmares. He could feel each cell dissolving and turning into ash. He could feel his body try to patch himself back together. It had felt like he was being burned alive, drowned, and stabbed all at the same time. He kept telling himself that the body doesn’t remember pain correctly, but he can close his eyes and remember the feeling so vividly that he thinks it’s happening again.
He knows logically that it won’t. He knows he won’t have a warehouse fall on him again (probably), but it doesn’t help the crippling claustrophobia and the panic attacks that follow him around, or how he always assesses the structural integrity of any building before he enters it.
But mostly… He is so damn sad. All the time. The sadness and the numbness make it so much harder to get out of bed and go about his normal day. Well, normal was a relative term. He didn’t ever really know what to expect out of his days. The Avengers came and went as they tried to help the chaos that had descended upon the world when half of the population returned three months ago. He kind of slipped through the cracks. No one really noticed if he didn’t get out of bed all day. Or if he didn’t eat. Or the panic attacks. Or even the fresh little lines that appeared on his wrists every night but vanished by noon the next day.
He just felt like he was going crazy. At times all he could feel was unbearable pain, and he would wish for it to stop. At other times he couldn’t feel anything at all, so he tried to cut himself just to see if he was still alive or not. The last feeling he experienced these days was an aching, soul crushing loneliness, and the pain seemed to help with that too.
He felt like a passenger in his own body, and he wondered why he even bothered anymore. He found himself losing track of time, and seven hours would just vanish as though they never happened. The scariest instance was when he lost four whole days. It was as if they never even happened.
Tony does check in every few days, but after he was injured in the final battle, he was up at his lake house with Pepper and Morgan. He needed time to recover and he needed to spend time with his family. He had invited Peter to go with them, but he had turned Tony down. Peter brings death with him wherever he goes. They don’t need that. No one needs that.
He’s just so tired. He’s tired of trying. He’s tired of thinking…. He’s tired of breathing. He’s tired of living. But he pushes on. He cuts himself at night and tells himself that once the world has somewhat stabilized, it will need Spider-man. Its all he’s fucking good for, and it’s his atonement for everything he has done; for everyone he has failed.
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The next time Peter opens his eyes the late afternoon sun is shining through his window and a figure is standing in his doorway. Peter really couldn’t care less who stood in his doorway, but he hoped they were there to kill him. It would make things easier for him. He really didn’t care. Until the figure spoke.
“Peter, you can’t keep doing this. I know that losing May has been extremely difficult for you, but you have to keep trying. You can’t give up. Kid I- I’m really worried about you. Please talk to me.” Tony spoke with an unsteady voice and sat on the bed next to Peter running his fingers through Peter’s curls.
“Why are you here? You should be resting, and I’m fine on my own.” Peter’s voice sounded lifeless even to his own ears.
“Peter, this really doesn’t look fine to me. When was the last time you even got out of bed? When was the last time you ate?”
“Dunno. Depends on what day it is.” Peter turned his head into the pillow and his voice came out slightly muffled.
“Do you really not know what day it is? Have you been dissociating?” Tony sounded afraid.
Peter hummed slightly. “No. I haven’t.” He lied. “I just don’t care.” The lie wasn’t really that much better than the truth honestly.
“Peter, please. Just try. Come eat dinner with us. Sam and Steve are back for the week. They finished their relief mission in Birmingham, and Steve is making chili, which I KNOW you like. Come on, kid. Please.” Tony sounded slightly desperate.
Peter nodded and started to climb out of bed. It must have been a while since he ate last, because he almost fell over when he stood up. His vision almost blacked out entirely. If Tony had not grabbed his shoulder, he would finally know what his carpet tasted like. Not that he cared.
Tony guided Peter to the kitchen and kept looking at him like he was made of shattered glass one blow of the wind away from falling to pieces. Unfortunately, he did know the feeling. God, he wished he didn’t think about that because now his chest feels kind of funny, and his breathing is uneven.
“Peter?” Tony questioned. Peter waved him off and let everything float away. He couldn’t have a panic attack in front of Tony or Steve, and especially not Sam. He had to act as normally as possible or they would never leave him alone, and it would be so much harder to find a moment to kill himself. And wait, when did he decide to kill himself? He thought about suicide a lot, but he never really decided that that was what he wanted. Sure, suicidal ideation was one thing, and he would admit (to himself) that he was passively suicidal, but he never really decided that he would really kill himself.
He realized that he was spacing, and that he needed to pretend to be normal, so he shrugged, assuming that they had spoken to him. He walked to the bar stool and stared at his hands. It was always so weird when he dissociated. He felt like he was watching someone else live his life. It was like he was watching everything going on around him through little tv screens. He didn’t feel like an active participant in his own life.
He managed to eat half of the chili set in front of him before he decided that that would be enough to satiate the adults watching him from the corner of their eyes. He knew that they kept trying to make conversation, but it never really registered in his brain what they were saying. It just flowed through him.
A hand on his shoulder and his name finally did capture his attention.
“Peter, we really need to talk. All of us.” Tony started to lead him towards the couches in the lounge.
“Peter, you have been having some very concerning behaviors lately. We know we haven’t been around as often as we should have, but we really need to know what’s going on inside your head right now.” Sam spoke with a practiced calm that only someone that had done this dozens of times before could possess.
“What do you want me to say?” He spoke without inflection, and without feeling. It took all of his concentration to follow the conversation. He felt so drained and so so far away.
“Peter. Are you having suicidal thoughts or feelings?” Steve said quietly.
“No. Never. I just need time. It just gets harder and harder each time; the more people I lose.” Again, with a half-truth. And with a lie. A lie that tasted slippery and sour as it passed through his lips.
It didn’t look like the adults sitting around him fully believed him, but they trusted him. And that is where they went wrong.
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They let him go that night after promising that he will try to talk to them, especially if things start to get harder than usual. He even told them that he planned on going out as Spider-man that night. And he did. Just not for the reason they hoped.
Being Spider-man meant that he had seen every part of Queens. The good. The bad… And the ugly. He knew where the drug dealers gravitated towards.
After he got to Queens, with a bag full of cash that Tony had given him over the past few months for food and clothes he never bought. It would come in handy tonight. He changed into street clothes and headed off. He was able to find the shadiest part of Queens easily and spotted a dealer that he had even seen before. He really wasn’t interested in drugs, but he knew that it was going to be incredibly hard to kill himself with his metabolism. He had sleeping pills in his bathroom, but he wanted to be SURE he finished the job. No one could make him throw up drugs that were injected directly into his bloodstream. And he was going to buy enough to kill a horse. He approached the dealer, in plain sight, but without hesitation.
“Sup Kid. What are you doing in this part of town?” The dealer seemed mildly suspicious. He knew that he was young and alone. But he came for a reason.
“I want to buy heroin. I know that you’re the person to go to.” Peter spoke quietly.
“You got cash?”
“Do I look stupid?”
The dealer snorted. “How much do you want?”
Peter opened the bag, containing hundreds of dollars. “As much as this will get me.”
“Damn kid, you rob a bank?” The dealer looked shocked, but he didn’t care where the money came from, as long as it payed the bills.
“Does it matter?” Peter’s voice was flat.
“No. It don’t.”
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After Peter payed the dealer, he returned back to the compound. He took the bag into the bathroom and started to get everything in order. He would take the pills first, and then inject as many syringes of heroin as he could before he lost consciousness.
This had to work. Screw everyone else. Screw Spider-man. It was like he was already dead. He really didn’t have anything to live for. He was a failure. He had blood on his hands. He let so many people die and had almost killed so many people. He was a curse that brought death with him wherever he went.
He was a fool for thinking he was ever going to be good enough. No one would miss an annoying little brat from Queens. His pain was never going to end. He was never going to be happy. He didn’t deserve love. He didn’t deserve to live.
“FRIDAY. I want you to turn off all alerts in my room. Medical or otherwise.”
“Peter, I don’t think that would be wise. Mr. Stark has placed-”
“FRIDAY, just do it. Damn the consequences. Please. Just for twelve hours.” In twelve hours, he would be long dead. There would be nothing left to be done. Nothing to be done except shopping for a coffin.
“As you wish.” FRIDAY didn’t sound happy, but Peter wasn’t about to be concerned about upsetting one more person (give or take) before he left one final time. He arranged all of the syringes on the bathroom counter to make it easier to grab the next one easily, and sat down to write his suicide note. God, this was really happening. He was really going to do it.
For the first time in months Peter felt something other than numbness, loneliness, or pain. He felt relief. He almost smiled.
Tony,
I’m sorry that it came to this. I’m sorry for lying to you. I’m sorry for everything. I never should have bothered you. I should have turned you down before Germany, so you never got entangled with me. You never would have had to take me in or stress out over the dumb decisions I have made.
I hope that at some point I made you proud. As sorry I am about letting myself get close to you, I need you to know that I loved you. I loved you so much and none of this is your fault. I just can’t do this anymore. I’m so fucking tired. I’ve been lying so much recently that I hardly know what the truth is at this point. But I do know that I love you. That is the one thing that has held true. You were there for me after Ben died. And you became a father figure I could look up to. You were everything I wished I could be.
I’m just not strong enough. I will never be strong enough. I have failed enough times and enough people to know that I can never be as good as you. Please just forget about me when I’m gone. I don’t even deserve to be thought of in passing. Maybe you can convince Morgan that I was a dream. I really liked hanging out with her. She’s going to change the world someday.
I bring death with me wherever I go, and I don’t want you to get killed because of me. Or any of the other Avengers, and god forbid if something were to happen to Pepper or Morgan. I would say that that would kill me, but by the time you read this, I will already be dead.
Please blame no one but me. You don’t have to grieve. You’ll be better off without me. You’ll see. I should have died in the plane crash with my parents. I’ve been living on borrowed time and stealing it from others. Other people have died because of this curse I bear, and dammit, I refuse to let that happen to you.
As far as Spider-man goes, don’t tell the world who I am. I don’t deserve any attention from the people, even in death. Maybe tell them that I retired to live my life. It sounds selfish, but that’s what this whole decision is anyway. Maybe they will forget me. I hope they do. I hope you all do.
With love,
Peter Parker
Peter folded the letter carefully, placed it in an envelope, sealed it, and placed it on his pillow after carefully writing Tony’s name on the front.
He took a deep breath and started to swallow the sleeping pills he removed from the bathroom cabinet. He had to be fast to overtake his metabolism before he passed out. He started shooting the heroin into his veins as quickly as he could.
He got through nearly all of them before he started getting dizzy and his heart rate sped up. His breathing was getting a little shallow, and he started to sweat. He sped up and managed to inject all of the drugs he had purchased. Now all he had to do was wait for his heart to stop.
He laid down on the bathroom tiles and stared at the ceiling. He started to get drowsy and closed his eyes. The last thought he had before he lost consciousness was that he was finally going to be free. A smile graced his face for the first time in months.
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“Peter?....................... Peter if you don’t respond I will override your previous request to turn off all medical alerts for your room as part of the Spider’s don’t have nine lives protocol…………... Peter?............................... Alerting Tony Stark.” Friday’s voice rang out into the silent bathroom.
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“Mr. Stark, Peter appears to be overdosing from consuming a lethal dose of sleeping pills and heroin.” FRIDAY spoke out into the training room where Tony and Steve were sparring, while Sam ran laps.
The three froze in place before sprinting from the room in the direction of Peter’s room. Steve was calling for a med team to be sent to Peter’s room and for the Medbay to be prepared. All Tony could think of how his blood froze when he heard FRIDAY speak and how much he failed. God. They had seen this coming. Why didn’t they do more? Why did they take his word for it.
“Where the fuck did he get heroin?!” Tony was panicking and trying to latch onto any details he could to ground him into the present moment.
“Karen has informed me that Peter went out as Spider-man and took off the suit upon arriving in Queens. Shortly after he put the suit back on and swung back home. Maybe in the intervening time he purchased the heroin?” FRIDAY supplied.
“Karen?” Sam sounded confused.
“His suits’ AI. The kid named her.” Tony supplied.
They reached Peter’s room and burst through the door but saw nothing but an envelope on his bed. They ran through the room to the bathroom door. The door was locked, but Steve wasted no time in breaking it down.
What Tony saw would haunt his memories forever. Peter lay on the floor. He was pale, and sweaty, but most horrifyingly, his skin had a blue tint. He was dying.
The med team arrived and pulled out the Naloxone immediately. They tried rousing him but he was unresponsive. He wasn’t breathing.
“He has a pulse. We have to go downstairs to pump his stomach and start dialysis.” The first paramedic said. Tony felt a brief bit of hope flit through his chest. He wasn’t dead yet.
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The next six hours were the worst of Tony’s entire life. He sat in the hallway while the med team worked on his kid. God. He had screwed up so bad. He would give his life for Peter to be okay. He had read the letter, and it broke his heart that Peter thought so little of himself. As if he could ever forget him. As if Peter’s death wouldn’t literally destroy Tony.
The doctor finally came out and told him that Peter was going to make it. There wasn’t going to be any permanent damage.
He sat at Peter’s bedside for the 28 hours he remained unconscious. When he first opened his eyes, Tony was there to greet him with a ‘Hey Pete.’
Peter never really believed in an afterlife. Hell, he didn’t deserve one. He didn’t even deserve eternal damnation. He deserved to just cease to exist. No conscious thought. No anything ever again.
The first thing he was aware of was that he had fingers. And those fingers must be attached to arms. He realized he must have a face, and faces had eyes. He decided that he should try to see where he was. Maybe there was a Hell. He sure did feel like he was hit by a truck. That would have been better. He opened his eyes a bit and heard the quiet ‘Hey Pete,’ that could only have come from Tony’s mouth.
God. He had failed. He couldn’t do anything right. Why couldn’t he just die? He wanted to die. Without realizing it he started to cry.
“Peter, it’s alright. You’re safe. You aren’t going anywhere.” Tony spoke softly once again.
“How am I not dead? I told FRIDAY not to alert you for twelve hours! I should be dead. I just want to be dead.” He cried.
“Peter, I-” And for the first time in his life, Tony was at a loss for words. The journey through recovery was going to be a long one. But Tony vowed that he would be there for Peter as long as he was alive.