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[10 days earlier]
If there had been any resident still awake in Forest Hills at two in the morning, and if they had happened to glance out the window, they would have witnessed something they would, without a doubt, struggle to forget. After all, it was not every day that one saw a Spider-Man reduced to bloody rags trying to land on the pavement and failing miserably.
Peter hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, bouncing once before rolling uncontrollably across the rough concrete. Each turn tore a new scrape from his already lacerated skin, every impact reigniting pains he swore he was getting used to.
"ARGHH-MMMMMMMM" The fact that Peter managed to smother the cry of pain at the last second was a feat of endurance on its own. Even so, the price for not waking the neighborhood with his misery came in the form of a metallic taste flooding his mouth, the result of biting down on his lower lip hard enough to split it open.
Now, on top of countless other injuries, Peter had blood running from his mouth. Not that the addition made much difference to his deplorable appearance. And the pain there hardly mattered. The real agony was elsewhere.
For a few seconds, he remained motionless, staring at the night sky spinning slowly above him, the stars reduced to flickering blurs. Peter blinked hard, trying to steady his vision.
"C-come on, Peter... you made it this far somehow. Y-you can take a few more steps. We're almost there," Peter whispered to himself in a trembling voice as he fought with every fiber of his being to stand. The world swayed dangerously when he rose, and for one terrible moment, he thought he would collapse again.
But he found strength somewhere—perhaps in the thought of May finding him like that, perhaps in the sheer stubbornness that had always defined him—and forced himself upright, beginning to limp slowly down the dark, deserted street. His left hand, the only one that obeyed his commands, pressed against the right side of his chest, trying to contain what he feared was more than just a bruise.
Unfortunately, with each step he took, it became painfully obvious that those few meters would be the hardest to cross. The adrenaline from his fight against Norman was fading fast, further intensifying the pains that were already nearly unbearable throughout his body.
'Let's see... a twisted leg, if not broken, a ridiculously dislocated arm, a dozen cuts, probably internal bleeding, possibly ruptured eardrums since this ringing hasn't stopped, a split lip, countless bruises, one hell of a concussion if this blurred vision means anything and... yeah, I think that's everything.' Peter mentally catalogued his injuries, trying to distract himself from the pain threatening to snuff out his consciousness. 'But aside from that, I'm great.'
His feet dragged heavily along the sidewalk now, each step a reminder of his fragility.
Peter continued like that until he finally caught sight of his fence. But any sense of relief that reaching home might have brought vanished the moment he noticed, to his horror, that the living room lights were on.
His heart sank.
'No... no, no, no. Don't tell me May is still awake.' Peter froze for a second, dread overpowering even the physical pain. If his beloved aunt saw him in that state, she would surely collapse. Or worse: have another heart attack. The mere mental image of that happening was so terrifying that Peter felt his stomach churn.
He would not survive that guilt.
Crossing the yard at a snail's pace, Peter used the cover of night shadows and cautiously approached the front window that faced the living room, peering in through the corner of the glass.
There she was.
'Oh... May...'
As he feared, his aunt was sitting on the couch. But to his sorrow, she was not awake. She was asleep in a clearly uncomfortable position, her head tilted to the side, resting awkwardly against the back of the sofa. An unfinished crochet piece lay loosely in her lap, the needles still caught in the yarn, as if she had fought against sleep and eventually lost the battle. The television was on at a low volume, casting dancing shadows on the wall, probably some late-night talk show she had put on for company.
She had fallen asleep waiting for him.
Peter pressed his forehead against the cold glass, feeling the sharp contrast against the feverish heat of his skin. A wave of pain — very different from the physical kind, deeper and far more tearing — filled his chest.
In the middle of all that madness, the fight, the explosions, the desperate rush, he hadn't found even a single second to call or text May. To let her know he would be late. To give her any reason not to worry. And now there was the result: his aunt, the woman who had raised him like a son after his parents died, who had sacrificed so much to give him a decent life, asleep on the couch because she was desperately worried about her nephew.
Peter's eyes burned. "I'm sorry, Aunt May…" he murmured, his voice thick. "I didn't mean to worry you… again." For a moment, Peter considered simply leaving. But the idea was dismissed the very next second; his body wouldn't withstand another hour wandering around out there.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he stepped away from the window and limped to the side of the house. 'Let's focus on getting to my room for now.' Peter looked up, wondering how the hell he was going to climb up to the window, before lowering his gaze to his right arm, more specifically to his dislocated shoulder.
'Well… I knew watching four seasons of Grey's Anatomy would help me at some point,' he thought, praying that something he had seen on the show would actually work as he turned his right side toward the wall of the house. 'Just need to line it up. That's it.'
The pain throbbed from his shoulder down to his fingertips, a sharp sting that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat. He pressed his shoulder against the wall first, then carefully rotated his body, using the weight of his torso to push slowly, millimeter by millimeter.
He couldn't make any sudden movements. If he messed something up, like the bone sliding in the wrong direction, he could make the injury much worse — tear a nerve, an artery, turn a simple dislocation into something far worse. 'Come on… come on… come on… get back in place!'
The world narrowed. There was only the wall, his breath caught in his throat, and that growing pressure inside the displaced joint. The muscles around his shoulder trembled in involuntary spasms, trying to protect the injured area, and Peter had to make a conscious effort to relax them, to allow the bone to slide back into place.
Then, after nearly two agonizing minutes, came the dry crack.
Pain exploded like a white flash behind his eyes, so intense that Peter had to bite into the fist of his good hand to keep from screaming. Hot tears streamed down his blood and soot-streaked face, but — as quickly as it had come — the agony began to fade until it disappeared entirely, leaving only relief.
His shoulder was back in place. 'Thank you, late-night binge,' Peter let out a humorless laugh, feeling his fingers tingle as he tested small movements with his arm.
There was no time for celebration, however. He still had to climb.
Peter placed his right hand carefully against the wall, testing whether it would hold his weight. The pain was immediate but manageable — nothing compared to what he had felt seconds earlier. He began the ascent, slow and agonizing.
Every movement was a lesson in humility. Spider-Man, who climbed skyscrapers with with the ease of a spider crawling along its web, now dragged himself up the wall of his own house like a dying insect. His breath came in shallow gasps, his entire body protesting with every inch gained.
When he finally reached the windowsill, his arms were shaking so badly that Peter wasn't sure he could keep holding on. With one last superhuman effort, he pushed the glass up and threw himself inside.
Peter hit the bedroom floor hard, making far more noise than he intended. 'Ugh… better add two or three broken ribs to the list. I hope that didn't wake May.' Remaining still for a few seconds and hearing nothing from downstairs, he let out a strained sigh. 'Okay, I think she didn't wake up.'
Peter rolled onto his side, pushed himself up, and walked to the bed. As soon as he reached the mattress, his legs completely gave out and he toppled forward, landing chest-first onto it. The impact was soft compared to everything that had happened before, but it still made Peter groan quietly when his ribs met the cushioned surface.
Even so, the sensation was almost heavenly. His body had finally been granted permission to stop.
The last thing Peter registered was the faint scent of detergent in the freshly washed sheets May had laid out… and the fleeting thought that he needed to take off the suit before darkness swallowed everything.
***
[2 days later]
Wind blew constantly through the cemetery, bending thin branches and sending dry leaves flying between the aligned tombstones. The sky was becoming overcast with heavy gray clouds, promising a storm later.
Peter walked between the headstones with his hands shoved into the pockets of his dress pants. The black blazer swayed in the wind, just like his tousled hair. The knot of the tie around his neck was slightly crooked — he hadn't had the energy to fix it, not after leaving Norman Osborn's funeral.
Well, "funeral" was a generous word for what happened. There was no body to bury — the explosion of that water tank filled with bombs had been so violent that nothing remained of Norman, not a fragment of bone, not a piece of clothing, not even a shred of that demonic suit he used to wear. The coffin in the cemetery was empty, merely a formality to give the mourners somewhere to look.
Still, that did not change the central fact: Norman Osborn was dead. And it was Peter who had killed him.
The sentence had echoed in his mind since that night, repeating on a loop like a bad song that refuses to leave his head. I killed him. I killed him. I KILLED HIM.
It didn't matter how many times he told himself it had been an accident. That he couldn't have foreseen it. That the explosion had been the consequence of Norman's own choices, of his insane desire to destroy Spider-Man.
None of that could convince him otherwise in the end. Because deep down, far down where Peter kept all his most uncomfortable truths, he knew that in that final attack, when he stuck the pumpkin bomb to the glider's engine, he acted with only one intention.
To hurt.
Peter wanted to hurt Norman in that moment. To make him feel at least a fraction of the pain he had caused everyone, especially Harry. When Peter realized how his friend was being manipulated, used, even hurt by his own father, something inside him broke. And in that instant of blind fury, when the glider sped past him, he did not think about stopping Norman. He thought about destroying him.
And here was the result of that decision.
Peter Parker was now a killer, doing exactly what he had promised himself he would never do since that night when he almost killed Walter Hardy out of revenge (The man who killed Uncle Ben).
Peter had sworn he would use his powers to protect, to save, to make sure no one else would go through the pain he went through. And now… now he was the cause of that same pain in someone else.
Harry was devastated and traumatized. Peter saw it in his friend's eyes during the burial — that empty, lost expression of someone who had witnessed something no son should ever witness. And it was no surprise: Harry had seen his own father blown into a thousand pieces before his eyes.
It was also no surprise that he blamed Spider-Man for it.
And Gwen…
Peter had watched the girl he loved throughout the entire ceremony, holding Harry's hand, supporting him, being the shoulder he needed. She looked beautiful even in black, with her loose blonde hair falling over her shoulders and the contact lenses she wore now instead of glasses.
Gwen was perfect in this new look — in truth, she had always been perfect. Peter had simply been too blind and too insecure to see it, to accept his feelings for her. And now she was by someone else's side, and it didn't seem like she would be leaving anytime soon.
Gwen chose to stay with Harry — not out of love, but out of empathy. He needed support, especially from her, the person who had helped him stay away from his former addiction, the experimental OsCorp performance enhancing stimulant: Globulin Green.
In other words, Gwen maintained her relationship with Harry because she had a big heart and placed the well-being of others above her own needs. And that hurt Peter even more. Because indirectly, Gwen would stay with someone she did not love because of Spider-Man's actions. Because of HIS actions.
The wind blew stronger, making Peter shiver and pull the blazer tighter around his body. His injuries were far from fully healed — especially his ribs, which still ached when he breathed deeply or made sudden movements. But most of the cuts and bruises had already faded, thanks to his dear and beloved healing factor.
However, there was one thing not even his accelerated metabolism could heal. And that problem was beginning to show in the small dark circles forming beneath his eyes, purple shadows that contrasted with the color of his face. Since the night of the fight against the Goblin, when Peter practically passed out on top of his bed, he had been struggling greatly to sleep for long hours.
Because whenever he fell asleep, the Green Goblin was there, with glowing yellow eyes and a malicious smile behind the mask. In the nightmares, the Goblin always destroyed the city, or uncovered his identity and killed those he loved. And every time, Peter failed to stop him. Every time, he lost. He would wake up with his heart racing, sweat soaking the sheets, and the muffled scream of May or Gwen echoing in his ears.
It was simply… horrible. There was no better word.
"Haaa…" Letting out a long sigh that carried more weight than any words could express, Peter finally lifted his eyes and realized he had reached his destination without even noticing the path. His feet knew the way by heart, even when his mind was miles away, lost in dark thoughts.
"I'm sorry, it's been a while since I came here…" he murmured, his voice so low it was almost carried away by the wind, as he stopped in front of a familiar headstone.
BEN PARKER
Beloved Husband and Uncle
1943–2008
Peter swallowed hard, feeling a knot form in his throat. There he was, once again, standing before the grave of the man who raised him, who taught him almost everything he knew about being a decent person. And once again, he came carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"Hi, Uncle Ben…"
***
Disclaimer: This story and its characters belong to Sony Pictures and Marvel Comics (Disney). This is merely a fanfiction written by a fan, with no intention of infringement.