myresponsibility | 041

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[Peter's actually been back for about a day.

He remembers where he is. He does. The infirmary's on the second floor, the library's on the fifth, his neighbor's a redheaded woman named Jean who can hear people's thoughts and move things with her mind. So he knows. Everything just feels like... fog. Walking through fog.

Which is how it's felt for months now, honestly. He's not sure what took the Admiral so long - he hadn't really remembered the Barge when he'd been home, but he'd talked to him right after Captain Stacy died, and he'd been alone and desperate and numb when he'd held Gwen's body - but he'd asked, and Peter had said yes, yeah obviously, please, and so he's here.

Except he wants to be here just as much as he wants to be anywhere, which is to say he doesn't want to be here at all.

Everyone's in port when he gets back, and he's grateful for the space the not-quite Endor provides. He just walks, walks, walks, because he hasn't been Spider-Man since that day, and he doesn't think he wants to be anymore. One of the natives sneaks up on him, and apparently, even off brand Ewoks can sense when someone's walking around with a hole in their chest. The hug he receives is bizarrely one of the most comforting things he's experienced since the funeral.

A hug isn't going to fix everything, though, so Peter's back to feeling sullen and empty and numb when port's over. He goes through the motions: stopping by the maintenance office, staring at the pen formation in the ceiling he'd made a lifetime ago last time he was here, eating mechanically in the dining hall, staring over the rail on deck watching the stars with a thousand yard stare that shows he's not really all here. He looks older - not much, but older - and tired and worn, and his reactions are dulled, but it could be worse. At least he remembers.

So Peter's back, but he's not really the same, and it shows. Something's broken. He's not sure it's ever going to be fixed, even if he gets his deal.

It gets worse when he realizes Gwen's room isn't here anymore.]

[ooc: multiples, fuzzy time, old and new cr all welcome. c:]

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[His eyes dart over Peter's face. It's unsettling, how much they share: Bond has made armor of the fact that most just don't know what what this feels like, what that kind of loss, that young, can do to you. Peter negates that armor, and Bond feels naked without it, without that distance to hold between himself and - anyone else.

Peter isn't just anyone else, though, and he has to ease the tenseness in his shoulders before he can speak.]

And?

[If it was more than just an accident - something sharp and angry in him wants to laugh, because for so long, he'd wondered if it could possibly have been an accident, his parents on their mountain climbing adventure. He'd accepted it, for the most part, but even now, sometimes, when prompted - he wonders.]

My dad was working on a project to try and help Harry's dad. He was sick, and they were experimenting with spiders. My dad tried it on himself, so I guess that's why it worked on me. [The spider bite, he means. It didn't kill him, and it didn't mutate him like Connors or the lab rat, and he'd always wondered about that. Now he knows.]

They didn't want to leave.

[Which he'd always wondered about, and the relief there is evident, even under the grief. Peter had always wondered what he did wrong, why they'd left, and know he knows, and that at least is marginally comforting.

Except for the obvious, anyway.]

Harry- I think Harry's dad had them killed?

[There's no proof, but Peter's not an idiot. He can connect the dots.

He wipes at his face again, still trying to hold himself together enough to finish the explanation.]

They left me at home so I'd be safe.

[Bond exhales slowly, quieting the tiny flare of jealousy he can feel in his chest. Now, that's not warranted, that's not necessary. He shifts his hand up to the back of Peter's neck in a comforting, familiar sort of gesture. It says he's here better than any worse possibly could.]

Good of them.

[Maybe his parents did the same - but he pushes that away. It's easier to focus on Peter's parents. Well, not easier: the correlation leads him inevitably to the Bonds, but he can disconnect. He can switch it off, at least for now.]

And his father?

[He keeps it vague, doesn't ask if Norman Osborn is dead, even though that's what he hopes. He could be in jail, and that would be almost as good. But Bond knows his preferences.]

[Peter shrugs almost listlessly.] Died a couple months ago.

Harry's sick, too. It's genetic. He thought Spider-Man could help save him, but using my blood, or the venom or whatever doesn't work on normal people. I tried to tell him, but.

[He hadn't listened, and now Harry's insane and Gwen's dead, and it's not fucking fair.]

[He stays silent a long moment because no, it's not fair. James has found that life rarely is, especially when you don't get a normal job like you're meant to, settle down, get married, have kids. When you constantly put your life in danger for the sake of others - or maybe to feed your own adrenaline rush - you aren't rewarded for it. Not in the ways that really matter, and not in the long run.

He's always known that. James knew what he was getting into when MI6 recruited him. How much did a seventeen-year-old boy know when he put on a brightly colored costume for the first time?

Bond squeezes the nape of Peter's neck lightly, and speaks bluntly, factually: offering a statement rather than pity. There's his brand of gentleness in it: he's not flinging the words like a weapon, and he's not trying to give Peter a reason to break down.]

She vanished. Not long after you did.

[He wants to say that she's here, that she will make all the difference in that struggle. Having Vesper here was...It was hard, he won't lie, and he was relieved when she left, he won't lie about that either. But he's missed her this long half year, and he remembers when she was here, how her presence grounded him.

But it wasn't even him that saved her. (Maybe she saved him.)]

Your first deal worked all right?

[He can tell, and it helps. Better to have the facts than feel attacked, or be coddled. It's easier to focus on, even though he kind of wants to hunch in on himself when he says that.

She vanished. She'll know, probably, it'll happen to her. Which is admittedly probably in some strange, horrible way preferable, because he'd never be able to keep it a secret from her.

He's so fucking bad at secrets.]

Yeah. [Captain Stacy got to see his daughter graduate at the top of her class, and had buried her less than a year later.

Peter lets out a laugh that sounds dangerously close to a sob.]

I'm kind of surprised he didn't kill me.

You're a good man, Peter.

[He doesn't even have to think about it. He drops his hand so he can look up at Peter properly, turning himself to look head on.]

An accident or a mistake won't change that.

[Part of him wants to believe that. Desperately. Guilt is heavy and stifling, and he wishes he could pull away from it, even if just for an hour or two.

But he can't. It makes it hard to look Bond in the eyes, like he's afraid of what the other man will see there.]

I have no idea how you got through this, [He admits, and he doesn't mean how, really, because he was here for that. He watched it happen, maybe even nudged it along a little bit. But this? Getting up and going about his life and using it as fuel to do things? It's like a completely foreign concept.]

You push back. [He wishes he could say he doesn't remember, but he does. He does.]

It tries to bury you, so you push back. You didn't both die, and she wouldn't want you to stop living your life.

Forgive her, [for dying, for daring to die, because even if he doesn't think it now, that brush of anger will rear its head eventually,] and forgive yourself.

[There's a part of him that wants to protest, that insists he's not mad at Gwen, he doesn't blame her for what happened, and that's true. But it's also true that he's not the only one who could have made different choices, who could have let this wind up at a different outcome.

(Except then he'd be dead, and the city would be screwed, but he sometimes selfishly feels like that would be better.)

So he lets out a shuddering breath, a wounded noise, and scrubs his hand over his eyes, stubbornly trying to do exactly that. Push it back. Don't let it bury you.

He's not sure he's ever going to be able to forgive himself, though.]

[Bond had been the other way around. He'd convinced himself he carried no blame, he laid all of it at Vesper's feet. He hated her, and still he couldn't let go of that picture. Or her necklace. It was all he had left of her.

And somehow, in the end, when he sent the Canadian on her way and had Yusuf in his sights - he forgave.

Not Yusuf. Not Quantum. But he didn't have to destroy what was left of his soul to destroy his memory of Vesper. He could let her go.

He hope Peter doesn't have to go through that.

Exhaling, Bond pulls him into a hug, tight but brief. All he can do is learn to fight, and Bond can't force him to do that. He'll have to sort it out on his own.]

[Peter doesn't fight the hug, even if he doesn't try to hold onto Bond longer than he feels comfortable with. He doesn't immediately tense up or pull back like he used to, and instead just leans into it gratefully.

It's easier to lean on people when you don't have to lie about what happened, or pretend that you're upset for different reasons.

He pulls back when Bond does and wipes at his eyes, nodding quickly. He'll try. He'll do his best. He's not sure he has another choice.]

Thanks.

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