billions || peter parker

01

-=+=-

look at the stars, look how they shine for you

-=+=-

It was beautiful.

It was dark, but the white light of millions of stars shone around him, reflected in his eyes. In the distance, there was a whole other galaxy, the planets and stars melted together into a colourless blur. The sky was tinted with a deep purple, strokes of navy blue and dark, endless black. It was like something you'd see straight out of a masterpiece of art...the brushes of paint strewn so carelessly over the canvas, but so purposefully and perfectly.

It was strange, how so much fear, pain and death could be shown in such a prepossessing, alluring way.

And a stripe of white light fell through the atmosphere, and Peter watched it as it dived into a never-ending orbit. He wished he was just another star in the universe. Not caring, not feeling, and just falling into the emptiness.

But it wasn't all aesthetic.

There was something bewitching about its magnificence. Something else, something more to how the stars simmered away and the planets moved in perfect unison. All serving the same purpose – but there was more to that purpose. Something irresistible, something...unfathomable.

There was something hidden in that infinite black. Something in the shadows of the universe that whispered;

"Abandon...abandon."

Abandon hope. Abandon love. Abandon life.

It was something that made you want to just...just let go...and float away into that nothingness, where you can join the stars and the moons and their worlds forevermore. It made you want to fall asleep, and let the universe take you away into a place where you didn't have to feel compassion, triumph, power, or trauma, guilt, desperation. Where you weren't condemned to a life you couldn't live, because you were never meant to live it to begin with.

Piercing frost was biting into Peter's skin. Numbing his body, cooling his thoughts.

He wanted it to take him. Whatever lurked in those dark places of the winsome world you couldn't see from your bedroom window. He couldn't live with the weight he had to bear on his shoulders. The weight that pressed down upon his chest, constricting his breath, squeezing his life away.

"Abandon...abandon."

But what?

Abandon what? What's left to be abandoned? Not May...not Ben, not his parents. Not even the man who had come to be his father. Not Ned...not even Michelle. What was left?

The Earth beneath him? The world he was so far beyond, so far away from...did they need him? Can they be abandoned? The billions and billions of lives way down there...were they worth staying here for? Were they worth protecting?

They were before. But times have changed, haven't they?

Things are different now, than they were...before. He's changed, his life has been turned inside-out and upside-down and he's been changed. And he couldn't go back to how he used to be. He couldn't go back to his old life after this.

What was left?

But...but they haven't changed. They were still the same – those billions and billions of lives way down there. They're still living their old lives. They haven't changed.