Somehow, she and Ned had both managed to convince him that going to Times Square for New Years was a good idea. The both of them had been so excited when he'd finally agreed, beaten down by their eagerness; at the way she had described what she imagined millions and millions of fluttering pieces of color and laughter would be like dancing in the cold air, how it would feel to stand in the middle of it all; amidst the lights and sounds of the city enthralled with the night.
She had smiled this sweet, lazy smile as she'd thought of it. She'd thrown her head back, hair shining as it ran over her shoulders like a lazy river, long eyelashes kissing soft cheeks, hands in the air grasping at imaginary confetti as it fell around her; everything about her soft and warm and cozy.
Maybe they were going; if only to see the confetti in her hair.
Ned had him fully convinced a few days later when he talked about how his mother had been to see the ball drop a long time ago; when her heart still beat and her eyes carried this light in them like Ned's did. She'd told him that it was the most beautiful, life altering thing to be surrounded by so many other warm bodies; people joined together in celebration of the great panorama; another set of painted days alive and here and present. More days to hope, and love, and experience; to feel and to change, and grow.
Of course they were going; if only to see the smiles on their faces.
They'd planned the whole day out carefully: layering long sleeve shirts, sweaters, and jackets; it was a bitterly cold one. It was the kind of day that made you hold hands and push into warm shoulders, surround yourself in soft, sweatered arms, and push noses into beanies that smelt like flowers and reminded him of spring. She'd spent the whole day with her hand wrapped up in his and smiling at the way Ned and his girlfriend were doing the same. He'd spent the whole day nosing at the hair around her ears and cold, rosy cheeks; all ticklish strands and ticklish words.
Truthfully, the packs of people, hundreds of thousands of jittery bodies had his nerves standing on end; the sounds of so many hearts, breaths, and voices in his overly-sensitive ears building and sticking together to create one large, buzzing noise in his skull. There were so many people, so many different things that could go wrong; it was too cramped, it was too loud, and it was crushing.
He was even more nervous because he had left his suit in their apartment; had hung it up and tucked it away in the closet to only be put back on in a new year.
He had wanted to be Peter Parker today, Peter Parker only.
But God, if it didn't feel wrong.
She knew his brain was a chaotic mess of worry, knew that he was reaching his limit, as she always did. Her hands were at the back of his neck, rubbing in soothing circles the moment she'd felt his muscles stiffen, when she felt them coil against her, reaching max tensile strength as his patience did. She would rub and Ned would smile, distracting him with jokes, familiar laughter, practiced and comfortable routine. He and Ned's girlfriend would just watch and admire the brilliant sources of light illuminating their lives; two suns beaming; there was no resisting the pull of gravity.
The ball at the top of the One Times Square building sat atop its pedestal, reflecting sunlight off of it, regal and shiny as it waited; the star attraction for tonight's sky. Truthfully, he was excited to see her enact her musings on color and paper and the air in person. It would be a memory he would catalogue into all things [Y/N.]
When the sun went down and more people showed, music started playing from the stages and he could relax despite the energy of the crowd growing; everyone moving and excited by the pulse of instruments and the charge in the air.
And there was a charge in the air, it was electric and it stung, but in that way that started your heart and got it going. The smiles, her smile, and the way the different colors from all of the screens and flashing lights from stages and buildings taller than he was used to, played with the base colors of her skin and hair, changing them into these brand new, unnamed hues that reminded him of street lamps and snowflakes on eyelashes.
He was so caught up in the magic of the lights and colors and warmth that he had hardly noticed they were only minutes from a new year.
He should have noticed.
His hair was standing on end and his neck was tight, his heart beating wildly, but he hadn't noticed for the feeling of the night, his best friend's shoulder against his, her back on his chest, gloved hands resting on his jacketed arms.
He only began to really pay attention to what his body was desperately trying to tell him when he spotted a drone in the night sky, out of place, lights flashing; a few people in the crowd pointing up at the alien invader circling above. If he listened hard enough, he could hear its motors whirring, could hear the camera at its base zooming in and out.
Around him the voices of thousands and thousands of men, women, and children pick up, all counting down to a new day.
Ten, nine, eight....
He felt a cold chill run down his spine.
Six, five, four...
His head buzzed and he watched as the drone pulled farther away from the glittering, flashing object that held the whole planet's gaze.
You idiot, you stupid, stupid, fucking idiot.
Three, two, one...
And then the ball dropped and every color he could think of launched into the air around it. He felt her joy light up his heart.
And then the ball exploded, shattered, the shock wave sent all of its pieces flying out into the air. He felt her terror deep in his bones.
It was beautiful, really. Every piece of that colored paper she had come to see combusting and catching fire in the air instantly, catching in the heat of the explosion; the light they gave off as they flash-burned was enough to fool everyone into thinking it was daytime; that maybe this was a day dream and not a nightmare.
Each broken piece of the ball was floating, shimmering, and shining; a dangerous cloud of a million reflective fireflies lighting up all that was visible for the seconds they seemed to float in space above the heads of thousands of hopeful, terrified people.
Then the sound hits his ears: piercing, disorientating, and painful. He would have covered them with his hands but he was too busy shielding her head from the falling debris. He'd pulled her down to a crouch, curling his body around hers and wrapping solid arms around a precious head. He peeked an eye out to see that Ned had done the same with his; brown eyes meeting. They were full of fear, but there was trust there too. He was trusting him to keep them safe from whatever this was.
He was Peter. But he was Spider-man, too.
If only he had brought his suit.
Stupid, stupid, fucking idiot.
He hadn't even brought his web shooters.
He had forgotten that Peter Parker and Spider-man are the same person, that they were mutually exclusive; not something he could tuck away in the back of a closet, not even for a day.
The next series of blasts sent his body flying backwards, her body ripped from his as the force of the air igniting and combusting hit him full on. When he hit the ground that wasn't really the ground, but a mass of wriggling, panicked bodies, his eyes immediately searched for her. He found Ned and his girlfriend first, both standing, dust and blood coating their faces from the explosions and the debris from the buildings on either side of the square that the bombs had been rigged in.
"Y/N!" He called as loudly as he could. Although he couldn't really hear anything but ringing. Despite the overwhelming sounds of screaming, crying, and glass cracking from the heat of the flames burning, his voice had somehow reached her. He saw her perk up immediately twenty or so feet away. She was a bit dirty and a little worse for wear, but she was alive.
As his chest pulled towards hers like the moon to the Earth, his body did it again. His hair stood on end, his stomach clenched, and his head felt like a hive.
His gut told him to look up and when he did his eyes spotted the drone in the sky. It was withdrawing into the night again, its camera pointing at the building in front of him, the building behind her: the One Times Square building.
The screens decorating the buildings around the Square flickered on all at once, sputtering to life with a fizzle and a pixelated pop to reveal a face that was suddenly all he could see, all anyone could see; this man with no hair, a straight nose, dark eyes, and an ugly purple scar that pulled at the lips in a way that made him look like an angry dog. He could hear breathing.
Then the man laughed and showed the world what he was seeing through the eyes of his drone.
"I am life. I am death. I am man. I am Terror," a voice, one that sounded like every voice, echoed through the heavy air, imprinting the words into the soft flesh of his brain before the screens cut off again.
And then the world ended.
One by one, level by level, the windows on the building behind his moon violently ejected their glass into the sky, so many explosives shaking the foundation, so many waves of sound erupting from around her that his ears had simply given up; his brain had given up.
A final explosion rang out from the middle of the tower. And then there was no longer just glass in the air, but chunks of concrete and warped, twisted steel falling. Falling. Falling to the ground.
She was looking at him, panic in those beautiful eyes.
That fucking drone buzzed above it all.
He was running before he'd even thought to, stepping on legs, arms, and chests, not really trying to avoid anything for fear that one step too little, one less point of contact for his pumping legs would mean the difference between the light of day and the darkness of night.
As he watched the massive, broken pieces free fall, the only thing he could think about was a physics lesson he'd learned a long time ago from a girl with bangs that didn't quite suit her face and old, dirty tennis shoes. He thought about mass and velocity, he thought about acceleration and the pull that gravity has on an object.
The pull that she had on his core was immense, but it wasn't enough to change his own terminal velocity. It wouldn't have been enough to prevent the end of the world.
But God, how he wished it had. He wasn't going to make it.
She was running too, but it wasn't going to be enough. Nothing would be enough.
Her soul found his and she gave him one last watery smile before his heart stopped and there was nothing anymore.
The light of the Earth, the sun, the moon disappeared beneath dusty concrete and twisted metal; snuffed out with no pomp or ceremony; crushed by one of man's creations; crushed by life, death, and terror.
He couldn't breathe.
His heart wasn't beating.
Was he screaming? No, there was no air in him to scream with.
It was Ned's voice bouncing around his head, Ned who was wrapping burning arms around his frozen shoulders. But he couldn't really feel it, wasn't truly hearing him. Ned was just the buzzing in his skull, the weights holding him back; so he shoved as hard as he could.
He was Peter Parker on this new, terrible, disaster of a day and he didn't care that anyone saw that other part of him when his numb hands and trembling arms lifted and tossed that crushing thing from her body.
He fell to his knees and his heart tore itself out from his chest.
There was nothing.
He couldn't bring himself to touch her; what was left of her. There was just a pile of skin and blood, broken bones and cloth. There was no making out who she had been save for the color of her hair, the sweater she'd worn, the blood soaked beanie he'd whispered secret words into hours earlier.
There was nothing.
I'll die without you.
He doesn't remember much after that. Just that he somehow ended up back at his apartment, in his bed, wrapped up in his blankets, mind full of screaming and concrete and drones as he stared out his window, at the diner that was still celebrating a Christmas from another year.
When he'd come back to himself, he became a man obsessed.
He spent minutes, hours, whole days after, playing out imaginary conversations in his head. In his mind, he could pretend it had happened differently. That it hadn't been so abrupt; that she hadn't been snatched from him like you ripped a dandelion from the grass; that maybe, instead, she had floated away onto the breeze the way a dandelion does when you make a wish and blow.
In his heart of minds, he held her close and his hands brushed silky strands of hair from her face, face that was still whole and a head that wasn't the soft putty it had been. His mouth found her forehead and her nose and wet eyelids, kissing full lips to keep them from frowning too much. In his imaginings she had been beautiful even in death.
"Don't you give up on me," make believe him had said to make believe her. She had smiled her sweet smile with tears in her eyes and pain on her brows. But only a little pain, death not the ugly thing like it had been.
"OK, Peter," she'd whispered, promising his lips. Her breath was still warm, flowers in the air. There was no blood in this scene, only shimmering lights, people laughing, and colored paper like butterflies swirling about your heads.
He spent minutes, hours, whole days after, looking for the ordinary man with the scar on his lip. Ned begged him to sleep, to eat, to do anything, but he couldn't and wouldn't until he found him. Until he could unleash the supernova building inside of his chest; center of gravity condensing to this singular, dense, hot mass of hate.
"Peter, come on, man. You can't do this to yourself. She wouldn't have wanted this for you," he'd pleaded in his text messages, his voicemails, "Pete, please, just let me help you."
"Peter, I loved her, too," he had whispered to the swirling patterns and knots of his locked door when he returned from the memorial service. He hadn't gone, couldn't go.
I'm not ready to say goodbye.
When he did find him, it had happened entirely by chance, kind of like the way she'd died. It found him, like death had found her. It was fitting; poetic justice.
He had just put his key into the lock on his car door, metal jingling as the few keys he had clanged together, echoing throughout the darkened parking garage. Someone sneezed. He looked up and his entire world narrowed into this single point in his plane of existence. The ordinary looking man with the unordinary scar was walking towards him, or in his direction rather, carrying a paper bag full of fruits and vegetables.
But then he had been destined to walk towards him, right? Fate had decided that for him when she'd disappeared beneath the white.
He was a man consumed.
He couldn't control his breathing; at the sight of this man, the way he carried himself, walking like he was as light as a feather, like he hadn't killed hundreds of people, like he hadn't killed her, like he truly was ordinary.
Instantly, he turned into this wild, desperate, blood lusting thing; this burning, scalding hot image of a man. Every cell, every nerve ending in his body was screaming at him; the fibers inflamed, enraged. He was angry, but more than that, he was rage itself.
And then there was nothing again, nothing in his brain but that.
So he lost himself to it.
He was sprinting, furious breath puffing from his nose in white clouds, feet pounding into concrete, legs and arms clearing cars to get to him. The fight was over before it began.
A package of strawberries crinkled as it hit the ground, spilling a few red and fleshy fruits, juice leaking out onto the dirty, blackened ground.
And he punched, and hit, and beat, his knuckles pounding against bone, splitting flesh; capillaries busting and spraying his shirt, his throat, his lips and eyelashes with a fine red mist. He was screaming, lungs burning, all of the heat that had engulfed the inferno of his mind scorching the open air with violent notes. He was sobbing, too; salty rivulets streaming down his cheeks; and there was steam.
He couldn't see anymore, didn't need to see through the blurriness of tears and blood and snot. He didn't want to see what his fists were doing to this ordinary, disgusting, and wholly terrible man's life; didn't want to see how his lips were ripping open; the scar there now even more grotesque as it twisted around the teeth that erupted from glistening red flesh.
There was nothing.
This was everything.
Kill him.
She's dead.
And this is wrong because it's empty and it hurts.
Kill him. Hurt. Kill him. Kill.
Come on, Spider-man. Come on, Peter.
And he punched, and hit, and beat; and his muscles ached as they tensed over and over again. He closed his eyes and tried not to imagine how his knuckles; knuckles that were shooting arrows up his arms, were sculpting this terrible, fucking sick, ordinary man's face into something pulpy and disfigured; unrecognizable.
Come on, Peter.
That was her voice.
It had been her voice erupting from inside the shadowed valley of his mind, spurred on by the thought of his name, the thought of him; the sound of her caressing his skull and surprising him enough to extinguish some of that burning, burning, burning fire. That voice, that sweet, sweet voice sounded hurt. She was confused.
What are you doing, Peter?
It was enough to give him pause, his fists slowing as he listened for more, begged for more, full body aching for just one more word.
Peter, she whispered. He whimpered. He squeezed his eyes shut more firmly; thinking that maybe if he squeezed hard enough, wanted hard enough, that she would let him see her again; see her freckles and pink cheeks, warm and alive so that his mind could begin to defrag itself of the way her face had looked last he'd seen her. His fists were frozen, hanging mid-swing, blood dripping from between webs and creases and fingernails.
The thing underneath him spluttered and choked, groaning and whimpering. He was nothing. He was everything. He squeezed his eyes harder; they hurt; he had monster blood in them. "Shut up," he spat, venom in his voice, pushing his knee deeper, more sharply into its chest.
He couldn't miss it, couldn't miss her. Again? His heart begged.
He was full out sobbing when her voice sang out into the ragged edges of the open wound of his mind; sounds like a wounded animal filling the enclosed space, terrifying wailing bouncing from concrete and parked cars all unaware of the universes conversing between dimensions inside of him.
Peter. He could feel soft lips at his ear; chapped lips brushing at the fine hairs, her warm breath moist against skin; smelling like whipped cream and hot chocolate.
Oh, but it's Peter, she said, and he understood.
He fell over its body and bubbling noises to meet with the ground. Falling. Falling and smashing his shoulder at an awkward angle beneath his body, head smacking against the oil slicked concrete, lights flashing across the screens of his blackened eyes.
He collapsed into that universe then, black hole at its center pulling him in, past the event horizon he'd been lingering on the edges of for days. And he cried and cried.
He forgot that he lay next to a monster; forgot that he had come close to being a monster himself. But she had stopped him. And he knew now that he could make up her words by himself. That he had done it himself.
Peter, you are good, she breathed into the crook of his neck.
Peter, you are not a killer, she declared with burning eyes.
Peter, I love you, she whispered into his ear.
Peter, she moaned into the dark of their room.
Even in death she stayed; answering that question. Answering the question that he so wished he had had the courage, or something like it, to have answered back with a long, long time ago. Wished he had written more on that note he left taped to a locker. Wished he could go back to that rusty swing set and thin silk dress on a cold, starry night.
But it didn't matter now, because yesterday she is, and today she was, and so tomorrow he would be.
So he pulled himself off of the ground, with bloody knuckles, red wrists, and splattered arms to stand over the body of the monster who was really just a man. A man with no face; not really anymore. He would have more scars to disfigure his face now; ugly companions for the mark that sat on his lip; hardened, ugly flesh for an ugly, blackened heart.
He lowered himself to a crouch, his nose inches from the man's red mask, furrowed his brows and took a deep breath. Two swollen fists clenched stiffly around the fabric of a soaked collar, pulling a limp head up from the concrete; bulbous, purple, swollen nose brushing against his.
A squelching, choked sound came from the man's mouth.
"I never want to see you again," his words were calmer now, less like an animal's growl, "do you hear me? If I ever even so much as think you might be around, I'll..." and he felt his face soften, hard lines of his face finally giving up and a dry, humorless, bark of a laugh left his lips.
He would what?
So he let go of the man's ruined shirt, let his ruined head smack against the pavement and walked away. He went to his car and finished unlocking the door, as he had been trying to do minutes before the world had ended for a second time. In it, he pulled out a piece of paper and a marker he kept handy for situations just like this one. He left the paper sitting on his chest, sticky blood as an adhesive.
'I found this for you. He knows what he's done. No more broken promises.'
He called for an ambulance and closed the car door.
He picked up his phone again as the rear tires rolled over the bump at the exit. He answered on the second ring.
"Peter," and he sounded so relieved. So unashamedly, blissfully relieved. He realized then how long it had been since he'd actually really heard his friend's voice, since he'd listened to the love woven into every syllable.
"Ned," and his voice was barely above a whisper, so low that he almost didn't even hear himself.
"Are you OK, do you need something?"
"Ned," and this time his voice is a little louder, words a little watery. "I need you. I need your help."
"OK, Peter."
And that was enough.
Because tomorrow: he would be.
