"And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—
   In her tomb by the sounding sea."
-Edgar Allan Poe

Dark.

It was dark in the Oscorp lab. Silence echoed from every wall, and Peter—

Peter was painfully aware of the moving spider that was under the sleeve of his sweater, crawling up his arm at a rapid speed. Tiny legs maneuvering past every little hair, under folds of fabric, all the while he stood frozen against his will.

He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't lift a finger to scratch away at his skin as the little arachnid moved up from his collar and to his neck.

NO, Peter yelled as loud as he could, but his mouth didn't move and he didn't make a sound. I DON'T WANT THIS.

Gwen smiled back at him, her eyes blank and white. "But baby, this is what you deserve."

The sound of a ringing gunshot filled Peter's ears as the spider jerked and sunk its pincers deep into the skin behind his ear. While he couldn't twinge even a muscle in his face, he stared desperately at Gwen's unfaltering smile, and her eyes stared at him with the same blankness while blood slowly dribbled down from her nostrils.

PLEASE.

"Please," Gwen repeated his thoughts, tears filling her eyes. But her smile never left. "Please. Please. Please. Please. What about sorry, Peter? Are you sorry? Are you sorry?"

Peter couldn't find words to respond with, and the silence that met Gwen's words echoed around them in the empty space.

Her smile slowly faded. Blood slowly sank a river into Gwen's lips. "Are you sorry?" She continued, choking on the blood. She whispered with red-stained lips. "Are you sorry, Peter?"

A sickening crack shoved her into the ground, and with the noise, Peter jolted upwards to try and catch her, to save her, just this once he would fix it, he could save her, and his—

His hands met empty air. A shuddering gasp tore from his throat, his heart pounding out of his chest. His vision blurred as he reeled his head around to try and take in the surroundings of his dingy apartment.

The dark pinks and purples of early daylight filtered in from the cheap curtains left on his window, basking the room in a shadowed glow. His alarm clock read that it was four in the morning, leaving room outside for the mourners to coexist beside the early businessmen and waking sun.

Peter ran a hand over his face and swung shaking legs off of his sweaty mattress. He pulled on the closest clothes and sneakers. Tears were still threatening the corners of his eyes, but he only had one important thought driving his tired body out of the sleeping building—He had to see her.

The trek to the church went quick. Peter moved fast down the sidewalk, made quick work of dodging around cars and other tired people who carried coffees and eyebags from their own graveyard shifts of different meanings. He held back the instinct to mirror the speed of his heart as it tried to race out of his chest.

He kneeled down in the wet grass of her resting place beside the small church and shivered in the cold as it seeped in through his jeans. He took a moment to catch his breath. The bitter frost of the air stung, but he kept taking gasps of it in hopes it would freeze his brain and the thoughts within it.

Gwen always told him he never knew how to properly express how he felt. She used to look at him and rub her nose in the way she always did and she would crinkle her eyes and say, "You think about speaking more than you do speak about thinking. You just have to say it, Peter. Tell me what's bothering you."

Another breath. He could do this, if not for himself, then for her.

"It's bad again," he spoke up, answering the memory. He stared at the carved rock in front of him without the proper words to say. His voice wavered delicately in the quiet wind of crisp morning air. "The nightmares are getting worse. I'm—"

He tried not to think of Gwen like how he remembered her in the nightmare, but her piercing gaze, her empty smile, the blood covering the lower half of her face—It consumed him like a disease.

He sniffed and looked down from the headstone, but looked back up and traced her name with his eyes. "I'm trying to take care of myself. I know it's been months, I know that, but I just— It's getting bad again."

"I just can't let you go," Peter admitted with a sweet laugh. It evaporated in the air as memories of her reaching out, that fear in her wide eyes, fingers outstretched in desperation, rushed through his mind. He felt sick. "I'm so sorry, Gwen. It was my fault. You shouldn't be here.'

'This is..." Peter sniffles. "This is killing me."

The gravestone didn't move. It stared right back at him, the letters not shifting on themselves, her name never leaving, not revealing itself as some sort of sick prank. Peter had bitterly grown to be used to it. After all, a grave never spoke. It only listened.

"I really am sorry," Peter repeated quietly. "I wish... I wish you knew that. I hope you know that."

The silence he received in response was painful, but he sat through it for what could have been minutes or an hour.

When his grieving soul felt at rest with his self-issued penance of the early morning, he forced his legs up and looked upwards. The sun had begun to rise into the clearing, melting at the frostdew left on the grass.

Leaving any gravestone was hard. He couldn't stand sitting there, but he never wanted to leave. It satiated a dark part of himself to sit there in his suffering, to be forced to listen to nothing but his own thoughts and to wallow in the blame and guilt. Still, he left eventually, because he always had to.

He inhaled the air deeply and let the cold sting his lungs some more as he stepped back onto the sidewalk. It had to have been about half past five now, foot traffic was beginning to ramp up in the streets with several other people looking just as exhausted as he did.

Peter had about five hours before he had to leave for work, meaning he had five hours of time to kill.

He almost debated going out as Spider-Man, letting the rush of wind clear out his mind. He was all jittery, woke up that way due to the circumstances and it hasn't left his bloodstream. (Of course, Peter's been jittery for the past several years. Always needing to move, to tap his foot or drum his fingers against a surface so that his skin didn't turn from the inside out as it felt that it needed to.)

But Spider-Man came with a cost (the web didn't reach her fast enough, it was all his fault, and he's sorry, he's sorry, he's—), and after the hellscape of a morning he's had so far, there was a very selfish part of him that just wanted to be someplace warm.

He wanted to be someplace where the people there cared if he was late, and not because they were angry that he was, but because they were concerned for him and the reason for the extra fifteen minutes he took to arrive. He wanted to be someplace where he felt appreciated and more importantly, helpful just as himself. He wanted to be home.

Naturally, his legs started moving towards Chinatown. F.E.A.S.T. was a big building, standing sturdy quite a few blocks away. One of a handful of locations in Manhattan, and a beacon of hope no matter the occasion. May wouldn't be here this early in the morning, much less most of the day staff. Twenty-four hour shifts were something that didn't happen unless volunteers were low or there was a particular influx of people that needed help.

Things have been really good lately, everything considered. May had just begun buying property for a location in upstate New York with the funds given by a very generous and successful charity drive that Spider-Man had agreed to help out with—(And Spider-Man was always willing to help, visits every so often when he can, but not nearly as much as Peter Parker did.)—and they had been celebrating the news just early that month.

Peter's smiles may be tired, and may have been tired for the past six months, past ten years, really, but he couldn't deny that there was some pure goodness in his city. It existed in the cracks of a gravestone, and in the bricks of F.E.A.S.T., and in May's smile lines, and in the little bursts of good news that got him through each day.

When he arrived at the building, the clock on the front desk read that it was nearing six.

Peter walked further into the building, taking a look around at the main part of F.E.A.S.T. as people slowly began to wake up. He goes over to the coffee maker and begins a fresh pot so they can have hot coffee if they want it. The thought of coffee didn't actually seem too bad for himself either, and he knew he would be needing some eventually with the type of exhaustion that sunk in his chest this morning.

Breakfast would probably be ready in an hour, meaning that now someone was in the kitchen would be working on making something, and Peter could help make sure dishes or fruit were washed. He moved around sleeping bags and bunk beds as quietly as he could and finally made it to the kitchen.

"Need some help?" Peter spoke up, tying an apron around his neck.

A volunteer jumped and began laughing, turning to look at Peter with a startled expression. This was Oliver, one of the many people on the staff. They were fairly new, but got along with everybody nicely and made great french toast.

"You snuck up on me. What are you even doing here so early?"

"Sorry about that," Peter smiled apologetically.

"You can wash the fruit," Oliver nodded over to a big rectangular tray of fresh fruit in the middle table of the kitchen. "I'm just about to start on a big pot of oatmeal."

"Yes, chef."

Peter picked the tray up and brought it over to the sink, turning on the faucet. He scrubbed the apples, rinsed the grapes, and the smell of hot oatmeal and coffee flooded through the open room by the time he was done.

"I'll wash the tables," Peter said, taking the apron off.

"Alright. Thanks for the help!"

Peter saluted Oliver and stepped out to wash the food tables down. As he took a washcloth and a bottle of surface cleaner from the counter, he heard somebody walking up behind him.

Furrowing his eyebrows, he turned around to meet whoever it was, and softened his expression when he saw May's surprised face looking back at him.

"You're here early," she said. "Very early. What happened?"

Only May would be suspicious right away about Peter helping out around the city. There was nobody who knew Peter better than her, having raised him since he was a little kid with wirey bones and big clunky bottle glasses. Nonetheless, the last thing Peter ever wanted was for May to worry about him. Not after everything they've been through together.

"Nothing happened," Peter shrugged.

May nodded slowly. "Of course. Well, since you're here, do you mind helping me with folding some laundry?"

Peter opened his mouth, looking down at the cleaner in his hand. "Oh, I—"

"It's alright," May said, as if knowing what he was thinking. "Someone else can get the tables. I need someone strong to carry the heavy basket."

Peter nodded then and sat the materials down. He followed May down the next two hallways and into the laundry room, but didn't find any baskets to lift at all. He glanced at May questioningly. "I think someone already took care of it, May."

"Guess they did," May shrugged innocently. "But hey, now that we're alone, you can tell me what really happened this morning."

Peter sighed, the breath drawing deep from his chest. "May, I really don't want you to worry. I'm alright. It was just a... a rough morning."

May's eyes softened in the most sympathetic way, and he knew in that moment that she could see right through him. She was worn with understanding, the kind that could only come from years of the same grief, and Peter swallowed down the hurt that came with the recognition.

"Peter," she said softly. "I know how difficult it can be. Sometimes I still have trouble sleeping, when I'm reminded of Ben."

"I'm sorry," Peter spoke up, interrupting the topic before the pain could grow. "I'm sorry, May. I know you're trying to help, but I swear, I'm alright. Like I said, it was a rough morning, and I— I don't know. I guess I just wanted to help some people before I left for work."

It eased the guilt. That's what Peter told her, on a morning similar to this, about a month after it happened. He was still doing awful then, looked a lot worse, with circles under his eyes that were dark as the night he lived in and skin so pale you could see the riverways of veins underneath. It eased the guilt when he helped people.

May sighed quietly, but nodded with something bittersweet in the purse of her lips. She put a hand on his cheek and gently ran her thumb just under his eye. He leaned into the warmth of her hand. Home.

"Please take care of yourself," she murmured. "Guilt shouldn't mean the same thing as grief."

Peter nodded slightly. "I know."

And there was something in the way he said it. The way his head fogged up when the words were forced past the hesitation on his tongue.

Of course, May would never find out in certain terms that his "I know" was not, 'I know, May.' It was, 'I know that you want to believe that for me, May. But you don't know all the details about what happened that night at the clocktower, and that's okay. I forgive you, and I forgive the fact that you forgive me even though you shouldn't.'

The truth is that grief has always meant guilt, because ever since Peter could remember, one did not and could not exist without the other. They were an entangled mess of a thing, disgusting, longing, desperate, painful, gasping and reaching for a past life, both marinating in the heavy morose of regret.

Peter brought a hand up and scratched at a scar behind his ear. "I know, May."

May's expression held so much in the aged lines. She wanted to say more. Peter could see it in her eyes. She wanted to say more, but she knew that Peter wasn't ready to hear what she needed to say. Never wanting to push further, never wanting to lose him because of his own stubbornness. He hated that expression, because most of the time May was right, and yet he still hated being out of knowledge.

"I should go," Peter spoke up painfully. "I've got some work stuff to do."

May nodded quietly. "Of course. Make sure you get some rest tonight, if you're not stopping by earlier."

"Yeah."

She tilted her head and curled up half of her top lip fondly. "And your hair is getting long again. If you won't let me cut it, go see a barber."

Peter smiled slightly. "Sure, May."

He kissed her cheek before he left.

His apartment was different in the daylight. Earlier this morning, he woke up and looked around to see endless shadows, jagged shapes, and ghosts. He was more awake now, at ease with himself and coherent enough to understand the picture of Gwen burned in his head was nothing more than a nightmare, and he could now see the apartment for what it was.

It's a tiny box of a residence, as New York apartments usually are when living from paycheck to paycheck. This was his fourth apartment this year, which was actually a feat given it was the tail end of autumn. A window was beside his mattress, cramped into a corner of the room with one of May's quilts crumpled at the end of it from where Peter had thrown it off earlier. He frowned and walked over to smooth it back over his bed neatly.

Unopened boxes were piled up everywhere, lining the side of the chipped brick wall with the window and being used as a makeshift bedside table. Disorderly was one word for his place, because it really was a mess. He never had energy to clean. Never had time, either. The result was scattered clothes strewn all over the place, haphazardly placed technology left dismantled and sitting under a magnifying glass, a laptop on a messy scratched up table that he found in the dump one time, post-it note reminders on nearly every surface that were mostly ignored and useless in the long run. They kept a variety of polaroids and other photographs that also covered his walls fairly hidden, a collage of clutter at every corner.

He moved around all of the mess and sat at the table, shoving old Chinese food containers off and into the trash bag beside him. With a sigh, he took his camera from its place on a nearby box and put the card into his computer.

Peter started editing photos for the Daily Bugle when he first graduated college two years before. It was only something to keep himself off the ground, then, and Peter had thought it was hilariously ironic that the person J. Jonah Jameson was giving his paychecks to take pictures of Spider-Man is the same person posing in those pictures.

(He had wanted to get a job in the scientific field, because why else would he get a bachelors in biophysics if not to apply it in the real world, but he refused to work for Oscorp and the only main company competing with Oscorp was Octavius Industries, which Peter learned early on wouldn't work the same moment that he had to pull a mechanical octopus claw out of his intestines—Right before graduation.

Needless to say, his options were fairly closed when it came to being a scientist. But he has hope for one day.)

By mid-afternoon, he had a handful of Spider-Man photos edited and cropped, while the other few hundreds of them went to the trash for being too blurry. The finished photos were added to the Daily Bugle file, and Peter mentally reminded himself to stop by the building later this week to get his paycheck.

He pushed himself away from the table and stretched his arms upwards with a yawn.

This was the part of the day that Peter waited for. The part of the day where he could pretend to be brave, where a mask sheltered the most vulnerable parts of himself and replaced them with quips, the part of the day where people see him and think they're safer.

He stripped from his clothes and pulled on his suit, then took a deep breath. "Alright, Manhattan. Try not to kill me tonight."

And with that, he ceremoniously leaped out the window.