Silent Night (Nothing Feels Right)

Peter's first five Christmases are the best, though time has made them fuzzy and grief romanticized their imprint on his mind. He sees it in flashes: at the Christmas market around Rockefeller, where Richard and Mary would take him every year to buy new decor that littered the tiny apartment the week following Thanksgiving. In a classic clear lit Christmas tree whose top bends at the ceiling, it's height too high for the space it's confined, in science toys and loving looks, and "Merry Christmas, our little genius. You're gonna change the world someday," his mom would say. The tables were an explosion of glittered tinsel and forest garland, accenting the edges and corners. while Harry Connick Jr crooned "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." In the smell of gingerbread wafting from the oven after a hard day at school, after some kid named Rodrigo called him a four-eyed-freak and pushed him down, scraping his knee. In how he would curl up on the couch with his parents every evening the month of December, an old Christmas movie playing on the TV. Ben and May would join them every Christmas morning, and the five of them would spend the day drinking eggnog and dancing, May snatching the crimson ribbon from the tree and waving it around as her hips swayed. She'd reach out her hand to Peter until they were all dancing and singing, quite horribly, from the top of their lungs. He knows there were things he didn't see, or his mind chose not to remember that might crush his idyllic five-year-old heart. But it was perfect, in his mind's recollection. It was perfect.

Until it wasn't.

Until a plane crashed in the Pacific and his world imploded and crashed with it. He went home with his Uncle Ben, and never returned to the apartment twelve blocks over in Queens. Dancing on Christmas felt wrong; everything, including Christmas itself felt wrong - a stabbing, overwhelming void he drowned in. (At least Rodrigo was nice to him now.) His sixth Christmas Eve, he cried until sleep claimed the remainder of his energy and Ben and May cried with him. The day was met with little fanfare, and he didn't care about the presents under the too small tree, with colored lights instead of clear. Maybe if today didn't happen, if he just laid in the Captain America comforter until it was dark outside again, it wouldn't be real. He could forget the wet grass by the graveside where his parents' names were engraved into stone less than a month ago. The void hurt, his chest constricting with every breath.

"Peter, honey, it's Christmas," May said, her eyes just as swollen and red as his own.

"No, it's not!" he protested, turning his face away from her and burying it further into the pillow. "It's not Christmas without mom and dad. They...they loved Christmas. It can't be Christmas without them."

"You know.." May starts, choking on the words and letting it trail off.

"You're right, Pete." Ben said "It's not Christmas without them. Come on, bud. Grab your coat. We're going on a field trip."

And that's how it started, how they ended up stomping through the dark, gross, mush of snow, presents in hand, to spend Christmas morning with Richard and Mary once more. He didn't know if he believed in heaven, but he hoped it was real, because it was very cold and sad there, Peter thought. But it's the only way he knew to be with them.

It became tradition after that, and even on years that Peter didn't want to visit, they'd brave the weather and sit around the graveside, exchanging presents and stories and highs and lows of the year. A morbid, oddly comforting reminder of everything he lost and everything he still had.

The year that Ben died, gunned down in a bodega over some petty cash, May didn't sleep Christmas Eve. Peter stayed with her, curled up on the couch with a blanket and Ben's favorite Christmas movies playing in the background. The grief eclipsed any remaining joy the "happiest season of all" supposedly carried. When morning came, it was Peter who coaxed May from her despair with hot chocolate and a sad smile.