spiderman angst/sickfic oneshots

dolphins and whales (irondad)

TW: major character death, suicide attempt, grief

When Peter was young, he always loved dolphins and whales.

It was a strange obsession, he had whale pajama pants, dolphin stuffed animals, and lots of books on marine biology.

As he got older, his intrigue slightly subsided, but his favorite animal never failed to be one of the two.

It got harder to have favorites of anything, however. Favorite days, favorite activities, the older he got the more his life seemed to flip on its head, each time leaving him more shaken and hopeless than before.

Death after death.
Peter began to believe he was bad luck.

First his parents, then his uncle Ben, and now May was on her deathbed, unconsciously lying in a hospital, the only signs of life a simple charade maintained by the plug in the wall.

"Say your last goodbyes, she can't physically hear you, but if you believe in an afterlife, I'm sure she's listening." The doctor had said.

Peter had just sobbed into his Aunt's body. She was pale and limp, her heart monitor beating steadily, but only because machines were running her body for her: a feeding tube through her nose, a machine reminding her heart to keep beating, a ventilator moving her chest up and down mechanically, and a scan that he had been showed of her caved skull and blank, mushed brain. He'd thrown up on the scene when he saw her, her head's contents spilling out over the steering wheel and splattered to the ceiling by the airbag.

His aunt had been brain dead for 50 hours now. He had counted every minute. He hated that he wished she were announced dead on impact.

Somehow her heart had been beating and her lungs had been instinctively gasping for breath. Somehow, call it Parker luck, she had suffered another 2 hours before her body was run by solely medical machinery.

Peter sobbed again.
His own injuries didn't matter. He would heal soon enough, but May never would. Never.

He was alone.
The guilt was unbearable, knowing he had the power to do something to stop the crash, knowing if he would have thought quicker he could have prevented this, knowing he should have been the one to get hit.

"I love you, May." He had whispered through his tears.

And then, he had fled the hospital.
All the way down the stairs.
All the way out the doors.

Spiderman lived on, but Peter Parker was dead. He didn't deserve to live.

-----

The awesome thing about having two identities is how easy it is to make one side completely disappear.

He had seen his face posted on the internet, all over articles. Missing posters. 'Help Find Peter Parker' The story was everywhere and he hated it. But the hate he felt towards himself was what he deserved, so he wallowed in it. He let Peter Parker sink so far down inside of him that it became unreachable, lost in the baltic of his own internal sea. Too deep for any normal creature to reach.

His negative emotions fed on it. They festered and turned into a well of guilt that never stopped giving.

As he swung through the heights of Queens, he thought of whales again. Whales and dolphins.

So graceful as they breach above the water, and so silent as they die, breathing out one last time before sinking to the bottom of the ocean and becoming food for anything that needs it.

Maybe they were his favorite because they were still helpful after they died. Even in death, they were vital to the survival of everything around them.