Archive of Our Own

It's late. Peter always waits until it's late, until everything's quiet and only a few stragglers are left around.

It's dark and cold, but Peter doesn't feel it. Too much grief is on his shoulders for him to be able to notice anything else.

He's got his Spider-Man costume underneath his unremarkable jumper and baggy sweatpants. His mask is in his left pocket, just in reach.

To be fair though, most of these nights he doesn't end up spider-manning at all. What used to be nightly occurrence has diminished into barely a few times a week.

It's not raining tonight, but the clouds are heavy and almost completely cover the moon. That may be for the better, he thinks bitterly. Less chance for anyone to see him break.

Peter doesn't struggle as he jumps the fence. It's broken as it is, this cemetery being one of the poorer ones in the city.

He doesn't have to look closely, or shine a flashlight to figure out where he's going. He's done this enough times already –he could do it in his sleep.

At the end of the path, four headstones await for him. One worse off than the other older ones –guilt always overwhelms him when he looks at it, but the bare minimum is all he could afford.

Digging into his right pocket, he finds four squished flowers he grabbed from the park. There are enough right now around for no one else to notice them missing.

There's a fifth flower hidden inside his mask, but it won't be laid here to rest. Somewhere else needs it most.

Peter lays each one in front of each headstone, despair filling him at how sad it looks, how pathetic.

He takes a deep breath, than another. His eyes, against his will, still fill with tears. 

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better."

Body beginning to shake, he lets himself fall onto the overflowing grass and damp dirt. He buries his hands in it to feel something, but it's not enough to dampen the sorrow he feels.

"I'm sorry I keep making bad choices," he continues, voice breaking. "I'm– I just– I miss you so much. I'm so alone."

Peter looks away as he takes another deep breath, feeling embarrassed. "It's not an excuse. I know I'm– bad."

"But," he looks at the second most recent one, the prettiest one in his opinion if beauty is something that can be found in these things. He knows it's because Aunt May cared about it the most, polishing it and adding flowers and maintaining the most expensive stone she could afford at the time. It's Uncle Ben's, and now she lays in a tomb just beside him. Peter cleans his face with his sleeve before looking decisively at it again. "I know I can be good."

"I– I want to be good," he amends. "I'm going to be good. Just, just give me another chance. I promise. I won't– I don't want to keep letting you down."

Standing up, he clenches his fists as he looks down at the tombstones surrounding him. "I don't want to keep letting myself down," he adds just under his breath.

Squeezing the top of Aunt May's tombstone, he looks back at the other three before turning around. He still has someone else to apologize to.

It's not the first time he's done this– come visit them, lay flowers and talk to them. But it's the first time he's promises them to turn everything around. It's the first time in a long time he talks about change and means it.

(In the morning, a lone squished flower is found by Tony Stark's urn as well. No one knows how it got there or how it bypassed security to get there, but no one knows to compare it to the flowers resting in a low–cost cemetery a little ways' away. No one knows it means something more– no one knows it's an apology, a display of affection and a promise all in once. They up the security and throw it away.

...not that it'd stop Peter, of course. Every time the ones in the cemetery is refreshed, one appears there as well, driving the security team insane.)