#tw:canon character death

[momentofmemory]

fictober - day seven

Prompt #7: “No, and that’s final.”

Fandom: Spider-Man (All Media Types/Tom Holland Films)

Warnings: Canonical Character Death

Rating: PG

Characters: Peter Parker & May Parker, Ben Parker (mention)

Words: 2461

Author’s Note: part v of a may & peter series, but can be read as a stand alone. we all knew this was coming but that doesn’t really make it any easier, im so sorry. i wound up cutting out a lot for time’s sake, so i’ll probs buff it up a bit when i clean it up later. but for now, enjoy :)

>>No Strings Attached

Peter is four. No, Peter is fourteen—but Peter is four.

Peter is four, because it’s just not possible that May would have to drive through the dead of night to a police station, fear lancing through her heart, twice in one lifetime.

May fights back tears and races into the one hundred and seventh precinct, and it’s just as frantic and overwhelming as it was ten years ago—except Peter is fourteen, and Ben isn’t here to fight off the officers that intercept her this time.

They tell her she doesn’t need to ID the body, and her stomach churns when she realizes that it’s because Peter already has.

Still, they ask her if she wants to see him anyway, and she does, she does, because she saw Ben just barely under an hour ago and it already feels like an eternity.

(Mary is thirty-six and thirty-six and thirty-six, and Richard is thirty-eight and thirty-eight and thirty-eight, but Ben is fifty-one and god, how can there not be a fifty-two?)

What she says is: “Where’s Peter?”

They tell her he’s been taken to one of the back rooms to get cleaned up and get a change of clothes, and that it could be a little while before he’s ready for her.

One of the officers asks her if they’d like her to dispose of his old clothes, and May’s brain refuses to compute why that would be necessary. The officer glances at his partner, and then explains that the stains will probably never come out.

May clutches at the desk to keep from dropping to the floor, and manages to stammer out permission to do whatever they want to with them.

Peter is fourteen.

(But Ben is fifty-one.)

She wavers, torn between her grief for Ben and her desperation to see Peter.

“Take me to him, please,” May says, because it doesn’t feel real yet. “I want to see my husband.”

She does, and it feels real.

She locks herself in one of the bathroom stalls and cries and cries and cries, because Ben is gone and she doesn’t know how to live in a world without him in it, and she doesn’t know how to take care of a teenager by herself, and this wasn’t supposed to happen.

But it has, so at the fifteen minute mark May scrubs away her ruined mascara, splashes the coldest water she can stand across her face, and asks the officer outside the door if Peter is ready yet.

When she walks into the room Peter’s been told to wait in, it feels so much like that night she can almost hear Ben arguing on their behalf in the background, because Peter’s sitting on the floor, back squashed against the wall, orange shock blanket draped haphazardly across his shoulders.

It steals May’s breath away, because for a moment, all she can see is a Peter who is four.

A piece of paper is clenched in his fist, and his hands are raw and red-looking, like he’d been scrubbing at them for hours. Peter looks up, and when his red-rimmed eyes meet hers, her soul cracks in half because he is, inarguably, a Peter who is fourteen.

May stumbles across the room and frantically checks him over. The officers told her he was unharmed so she’s not really looking for anything, but she needs this to feel real, too. Finally satisfied, she takes his hand into hers and asks him if he’s okay.

He stares at the desk in front of him and shakes his head. No.

May wraps a hand around the back of his head and pulls him to her. She plants a kiss in his hair and strokes his back, because he may be fourteen, but she’s only fifty-three.

(And Richard is thirty-eight—and Mary is thirty-six—and Ben is fifty-one.)

______________________

When the day of the funeral comes, Peter is almost late, and May would have been furious at him if she’d had any energy to spare. He’d been acting weird ever since the science trip to Oscorp three weeks ago, and apparently even a funeral is not enough to change that. They stand in the receiving line next to each other, and pretend to smile and tell the well-wishers that no really, they’re okay.

Halfway through, one of Peter’s classmates—Michelle, May’s brain supplies—pushes to the front of the line and says, “Some new vigilante dropped off the mugger at the precinct forty-minutes ago.”

May stares at the girl, uncomprehending.

“He still had the gun on him, so as long as the prints match there shouldn’t be any trouble getting a conviction.” She shrugs. “Thought you’d want to know.”

Several of the people in hearing distance nod approvingly, but their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Dara, just scoffs. “Typical vigilantes. Only show up in time to clean up the mess, not stop it.”

Michelle glares at the woman, and then gives May a salute that’s awkward, but not mocking. She slips off to wherever she came from, and May realizes that she does feel a bit lighter knowing that Ben’s killer can’t hurt anyone else.

May keeps smiling and shaking hands, and it takes four people passing by before she realizes Peter is no longer by her side.

______________________

May guilts her supervisor into letting her off early her first day back to work, because the pitying stares and I’m so sorrys are enough to make her want to drive her headset through a wall. Money is already too tight for her to have to pay for damages, so instead, she signs out of work at 1:30, and takes the train the long way home because the normal route reminds her too much of Ben. She gets off two stops early, buys a coffee she can’t afford, and avoids the eyes of every couple she passes.

Peter had texted that he’d be spending the night at Ned’s, so May fully intends to go through an entire case of beer the second she gets home. She also intends to pull up every single home video they have, which is a decent amount thanks to Peter, and bawl her eyes out while curled up in one of Ben’s old sweaters.

This plan is completely derailed when May goes to unlock the apartment door and it nearly slams open in her face.

Peter is standing on the other side, hoodie pulled up around his face and bags under his eyes. He clearly wasn’t expecting her arrival, just like he clearly isn’t happy about it.

“May!” he says, scrambling back as May pushes her way into the apartment. “How’re you—what’re you—what’re you doing here?”

“What am I—what are you doing here?” May notes the way Peter is edging  towards the door, and so she clicks it shut with her foot.

“I just needed to get some stuff for tonight and now I have it, so, bye?”

“Whoa, buddy,” she says, placing a hand on his shoulder to lead him away from the door. “Try again.”

Peter shimmies out of her grasp, and the movement dislodges a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It falls to the floor and his eyes widen, coloured with an emotion May can’t place, and he scrambles after it. He’s faster than May’s ever seen him, but not fast enough to reach it before she’s placed her foot firmly on top, pinning it to the ground.

He looks up and she jerks her head in its direction. “What’s this?”

“Nothing,” he says, definitely too quickly for it to be true.

May slides her foot across the floor, and the paper with it, until it’s directly under her.

“May, please—”

She ignores him and bends over to pick it up, unfolding it and smoothing out the wrinkles.

It’s a piece of printer paper, and the watermark on the top is from the NYPD—May suddenly remembers seeing him with it in the back room. There’s one line drawn in black ink down the middle, dividing it in half, and red, blue, and purple tally marks fill it nearly two-thirds of the way down on the left side. The right, however, is completely empty.

May lingers on the different colours, knowing Peter’s too disorganized to have more than one colour of pen on him at one time. She frowns. Peter must have been keeping track of something over multiple days, or at least multiple sittings.

Her eyes flick up and meet his. He looks at the floor.

She takes a sip of her coffee and wishes it were something stronger, and then places the cup on the counter. “What’s going on, Peter?”

“I—” Peter’s eyes dart back and forth between her and the door. “It’s nothing.”

“I majored in bullshit, Peter. Try again.” The dividing line stands out starkly on the page and suddenly, it clicks. She lowers the paper and stares over the top of her frames. “You wanna tell me what was so important you had to make a pros and cons list in a police department?”

Peter loops his thumbs under the straps of his backpack and mumbles something May can’t pick out.

She places a finger behind her ear. “Excuse me?”

“It was—nevermind.” Peter pauses, and kicks his foot at nothing. “It’s nothing, and I’m going out now.”

“You got somewhere you need to be, Parker?”

Peter groans, the hood of his sweater falling off as he cards anxiously through his hair. “This is exactly why you weren’t supposed to be here.”

“I can’t be in my own apartment now?” May can’t believe what she’s hearing. “Who do you think pays—”

“That’s the problem!” Peter shouts, and he whirls around, and May’s startled by the unshed tears in his eyes. Then he deflates. “Or at least... one of them.”

"Then what’s the problem?”

Peter starts to just shake his head, and then his back straightens. He sets his jaw. “...I’m leaving.”

“Yes, you’ve said that.”

“No, like.” Peter bites his lip. “Leaving.”

May stares at him.

“Forever.”

The world drops out from underneath May, because out of all the things she’s expected to come out of Peter’s mouth during her long, sleepless nights, this has never been one of them. May’s eyes jerk back and forth between Peter, who’s inching towards the door, and Ben’s empty chair.

“Peter Benjamin Parker, if you so much as step one foot out that door you are grounded for life.”

Peter shakes his head, a hysterical determination in his countenance. “No. No, I thought this through.”

“Clearly not enough,” May snaps, grabbing his wrist.

Peter breaks her hold easily, and May’s taken aback because when has Peter gotten strong?

“I’m not—I can’t—” Peter chokes, his throat tightening. “I can’t be around you. Or anyone.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I—he—” Tears start running down Peter’s face. “Look at the tally marks.”

May does, and for the first time, notices that the very first lines are not red at all, but only reddish: rust-like in colour, unusually thick and too inconsistent to be from a pen.

Almost like blood.

Oh god.

“Peter,” May says, wanting to hold him but scared he’ll bolt if she does, “Peter, it isn’t your fault.”

Peter shakes his head. “I could have stopped him. I could have, May, and I just—I let it happen all over again. I killed my parents and I killed Ben and I can’t stop thinking about how I’m going to get you killed, too, and I could have stopped it this time—”

“Peter, look at me.” May throws caution to the wind and grabs him by the shoulders. “He had a gun. Okay? I don’t care if you’re four or fourteen, there was nothing you could have done to—”

“You don’t know that!”

The apartment echoes with the sound of his shout, but the empty space between them echoes louder. May drops her hands from his shoulders and Peter’s fists quake at his sides.

“Okay. You know what? You’re right.” May says, taking a step back. “I don’t.”

Peter sucks in a strangled breath, but May ignores him. Instead, she rifles through the apartment, tossing pillows off couches and overturning magazines, until she finds what’s she’s looking for: a green ink pen. She snatches it up and walks over to the dining room table, and slams the paper down.

“All right, let’s try this shall we?” She uncaps the pen and starts to draw. “First off, we’ve got the lying. Constantly. And for god knows why. You’re late for everything, no matter how important and how many times I remind you. You space out in the middle of conversations. You’re unnecessarily snappish, you’re irresponsible with your things, you have an annoying tendency to vanish on the rare occasion you actually do show up. You’re a teenage boy so you break shit all the time, which I then have to pay to replace. Your uncle—”

May cuts off, her throat having closed up. Hot, salty tears land on the page, blurring the ink. May doesn’t know if they’re hers or Peter’s.

“—your uncle died in front of you. So did your parents.”

She finishes writing with an aggressive swipe, green tally marks littering the paper for every damning thing she’s said. Peter’s jaw is clenched so tightly May can hear his teeth grinding together, but it can’t stop his tears from spilling out.

“And you know what?”

Peter jerks his head, no, not trusting his voice. May abruptly rips the paper clean in two.

“I don’t care.”  She crumples up the side holding the tally marks, leaving only the blank piece intact.

“You could have pulled the trigger yourself and I still wouldn’t let you go.”

A sob rips out of Peter’s chest, and he shakes his head. “I can’t, I can’t. I–I messed up so bad, May.”

“No. You listen to me, remember? Me.” She holds up the blank sheet of paper. “You see this? There are zero reasons written here, Peter. Zero. You could have a million reasons on the other side, and it still wouldn’t matter because I don’t need a reason to know you’re mine.”

Peter’s lip trembles. “But I—”

“No. And that’s final.” May reaches out and wipes the tears off Peter’s cheek with her thumb. “I’ve already lost Ben. I’m not losing you too.”

Something snaps. Peter’s backpack drops to the floor and he crashes into her, hugging her like he hasn’t in years and sobbing I’m sorry, I’m sorry into her shoulder.

May hugs him back and they rock back and forth in the kitchen, and when Ben doesn’t come up to join them, she sobs, too. But she doesn’t let go.

“I promised you forever Peter. No strings attached,” May whispers, tears running down and merging with his. “Just me.”

[liliaeth]

After Allison’s death, Scott has to continue on.