Infinity War Saga

tell me we're forgiven

When Aunt May opens the door, he tells himself that he has to be strong for her.

"Hey," He says, and she does not answer, so he repeats himself, because he does not know what else to say. "Hey."

She's staring at him like he's a mirage and her worst nightmare come to life at the same time, and when she breathes out his name, it sounds more like a prayer than a declaration, a promise that the wind could snatch up and tear apart. Her hand is trembling on the door knob, and when she reaches out an arm to him, it's shaking, like she can't bear to touch him in case he crumbles apart again.

"It's me." He tries for a smile and it wavers. "It's really me, Aunt May. I'm sorry I couldn't come home sooner-,"

He had a whole speech planned out. That he was okay. That he was sorry. That no, he wasn't hurt, he wasn't afraid, he was a superhero, nothing ever scares him.

Those are the things he's supposed to say.

The things that he says so she doesn't worry.

But it doesn't quite work out.

"I'm sorry," He says again, and then he is crying, shoulders heaving with his sobs and his knees weak. She finally snaps into motion, and when she hugs him he sinks into it, his weight dragging them both down onto the floor, and he can hear the neighbors opening their doors to see what is wrong but he cannot stop himself, just lets her rock him back and forth in the doorway and tell him that it is okay, holding him a way that she has not done since he was very young, maybe since Uncle Ben died. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," she says, and he is grateful that she does not ask any questions. He does not think he can tell her- about the empty wasteland of the dusty orange planet in space, how he had felt himself dissolve and could not hang on, the way those things on the battlefield tore at him, how he thought he was going to die, how Thanos wasn't scary as much as he was unsettling, that there was a wrongness about him that felt like it was trying to pry the skin away from Peter's bones. About Tony. "I'm here now. I'm going to make everything be okay."

It is a terribly untrue promise, but he can't find it in himself to mind.

It's chaos for a while.

No one seems to know what to do. There were people who had spent the past five years trying to survive, and then there were people who had gone and reappeared in the space of a second. No one seems to know what to do with all of them now that they were refilling all those empty spaces.

"Business as usual," Aunt May told him, her voice filled with a forced sort of cheer, and Peter finds the urge to apologize rising up in him and has to shove it down. He says sorry so much that it's starting to worry her, though everything he does now worries her.

For him, business as usual meant school. School as in the grade that he had been in five years ago, with half the class grown up and half the class right where they had been.

He's not sure that he can take it.

Most of the faces were unfamiliar. The crowd is pressing in on him and the lockers are slamming and Peter is just about to go to the principal and rip out his suit and tell the truth, beg to be homeschooled on the grounds of extenuating circumstances, and right when he thought that he was going to cry, he half turns and sees Ned staring at him.

"Hey," he croaks out, and there are tears in Ned's eyes, too, and they go through the old handshake, the motion feeling alien even though technically, according to their time, they had done this just two weeks ago.