fifty-two.
When Peter woke up, the first thing he was made aware of was the searing pain in his body. It burned in his leg and in his shoulder, and for a moment he couldn't remember why. It took him a long minute, but then he remembered the way that those Hydra agents shot Wade right over him... The way that they shot him at close range without care.
The second thing he was made aware of was the fact that it was pitch black and that he was no longer chained to a table, but instead closed inside of what seemed to be a box. He extended his arms as far as he could, his breathing already picking up. The box he was in was no bigger than a small refrigerator box.
His Spidey-sense was going haywire, the absolute sheer panic invading his body like a burglar come to make off with all of his belongings. And he screamed. He kicked and he fought.
But the wood was strong and he'd been weakened and there was absolutely no chance of escape like this. But he kicked despite the searing, blinding pain that comes with every move of his leg. And he punched, despite the same accompanying pain with every move of his arm.
And he fought until his leg couldn't take the movement anymore and his bloody knuckles ached the same way his heart did. And he screamed until his voice was hoarse and cried until he was all out of tears.
He curled in on himself, to try and make his small space seem bigger, but he knew that the same panic would ensue once he woke again. He was sure that this nightmare would last for the rest of his life, however long that may be.
In his dream, the harsh and horrible reality of his life did not end but instead elevated. He threw open a set of heavy double doors and saw May chained to a table identical to the one he'd previously been on.
Her hospital gown was shredded revealing the bloody rags and stitches underneath. In a flash of light, the scene before him changed and instead of a beaten May, instead there she lay with her stomach slit open, guts hung halfway to the floor.
Peter covered his mouth to try and swallow the urge to vomit as he took in the sight of the corpse before him. She was absolutely covered in blood and cuts and bullets and the hole in her chest revealed her missing ribs... missing everything.
She was no longer his aunt. Now she was merely just the husk of what she used to be. It was her skin. Her hair. Her bones... But it wasn't her.
Not anymore.
Everything that she used to be had been stripped clean away, like a car just before it's rebuilt.
With another flash, the room looked back to normal. May looked alive and breathing and not dissected in the slightest... And then he heard her sing-song voice coming from somewhere other than the body in front of him.
"She doesn't love you, Peter..."
He looked around trying to find where her voice was coming from.
"I have never loved you, Peter... I never wanted you in my home... In my life... It's your fault that he's dead, Peter... It's your fault that Ben is gone!" The sing-song voice turned into pained screaming directly in his ears. Then the screaming turned into high-pitched ringing.
He covered his ears to try and drown it out, but it was coming from the inside of his head, not the outside. There was no way to escape the shrill sound pounding away at his eardrums. All he could do was curl in on himself and wait for it to fade away.
When he next opened his eyes, he was somewhere different. Inside of another small room with no windows and this time no doors, no way to escape. The room he was in was dimly-lit, closed in. The room had no more than a five-foot span in any direction. Peter could stretch out his arms and touch both walls, but he couldn't stand up straight. The five-foot ceiling wouldn't allow it.
The room was cold, no, not cold, it was freezing. And Spiders don't do well in the cold. This one would do worse, as he didn't have anything to protect himself from the bite of the chill... Another one of his fears, as irrational as it may seem. Freezing to death was pretty high up on Peter's list of things to be afraid of. The fear had increased significantly when the team got temporarily trapped in a blizzard in Niseko and Peter got lost in 12 feet of snow.
As of this moment though, there was no real snow, and there were no Avengers to save him. It was just him, the four walls, and the vents that pumped in the ice cold air.
....Peter wished that this was all a dream. It wasn't.
Some of it was hallucinations from medication, some of it was real, cold-blooded torture.
And Peter could no longer tell the difference between what the real torture was, and what wasn't. It all felt so real. From being boxed in, to May's lifeless corpse.
And it made him wish that they'd just kill him already so he wouldn't have to deal with the harsh reality of not knowing anymore. He longed for it. He wanted it all to be over. He wanted to be free of this hell. He wasn't sure how long he'd been here anymore. The torture made all of the days and nights blend together into a meaningless film, tightly wrapped around his life.
He wanted to suffocate in it.