Like The Clouds - TMWC

Introduction

Hey y'all!

I'm starting to write a little more here again. To kick that off, I'm starting with the prompt for TWMC - The Marvel Writers Club. The prompt was emotion, so I decided to mix sadness with Peter Parker.

Word Count: 837

Setting: Post Endgame, Pre Spider-man: Far From Home

Possible Trigger Warning: Intense sadness. This is short, but very sad and filled with grief as Peter is grieving. I just want to make sure that if someone is uncomfortable with that, they do not read.

Peter woke up to thunder.

It was a loud 'boom!' outside his bedroom window, the sky brightening up afterward with a shock of lightning. He rubbed his eyes and pulled the blankets over his head, ignoring the jump of his heart in his chest. He hadn't been seriously scared of storms since he was a little kid, climbing into Aunt May and Uncle Ben's bed at two o'clock in the morning, but being woken up by thunder could shake a person. To an ordinary civilian, it sounded like someone was breaking in or something heavy fell. To him, Queen's friendly neighborhood Spider-man, it could mean much more than that. With his senses dialed up to eleven, everything felt so much louder when it was sudden, especially when it woke him up.

He pulled the blankets over his head to try and muffle the noise of thunder rolling over the city. He could call Mr. Stark to distract himself, if he got the courage to. He was always up at this hour, being the night owl he was-

His heart froze. He couldn't do that. He would never be able to do that. Not again.

Because Mr. Stark wasn't here anymore.

That was what he was trying to forget when he went to bed. He was trying ot forget he missed five years. He was trying to forget how hard it was to look at the sunny days now because he'd lost another person in his life. It was hard not to close his eyes and see Mr. Stark - Tony's - lifeless body in his head, the light draining out of his eyes mere minutes after Peter recieved his first true hug from the man, only minutes after - years after - Peter himself died in his arms on a foreign planet.

He pressed a hand over his mouth and repressed a shudder, squeezing his eyes shut tight against another blast of thunder. This was better than the sunny days. The sun mocked him too much. What did his English teacher in seventh grade say? The sun was a metaphor for happy while the storm clouds cried? "They cry because they have too much weight to hold, and they need to release it." She'd said. It was before he got his abilities, but it was like she was looking at him when she said it. Like some part of her knew how much pain he would be in.

Peter wished she'd been able to give him a heads up.

He bit back a sob and a lump formed in his throat. He wished he could cry like the clouds. Let it all out in screams like thunder booms and strike the walls with fists like lightning. Cry for his parents. Cry for Uncle Ben. Cry for Tony.

But he was Spider-Man. He couldn't do that. People were looking at him to become the next big hero and he couldn't... he couldn't break down. He curled his hands into fists, pressing them into his aching eyes to try and stop the waterworks from flowing. That dam around his mind was cracking, spewing rocks and refusing to be fixed no matter how hard he willed it to be. It just kept cracking, filling his brain with happy memories that he couldn't look at the same way now.

Uncle Ben teaching him to ride a bike, taking him out for ice cream, and helping him build a super special little toy car from more kits than they could count. He could sitting down with Uncle Ben and Aunt May for dinner each night, spaghetti piled high on his plate and laughing about one thing or another - when the world was simple and all he worried about were his grades and his family and what movie they could watch that night. He could the first real, controlled swing of his webs, flying through the air and suspended among the blaring horns of Queens. He could helping old ladies cross the street and helping a kid find his parents in the crowd. The little things that led to bank robberies and holding up buildings. He could going to Mr. Stark's after school, working on projects in his lab and watching how the machines seemed to respond mentally to the billionaire, bending however he wanted them to. There were the bots, FRIDAY, Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, his life finally seeming to come together in little stitched pieces of scrap and-

It all came tumbling down when he got on that ship.

A tear leaked out from behind his hand. Then another. And another. And the dam was breaking and he could do nothing to pull back the waves of grief sweeping through his body, twisting his stomach and pressing down on his brain in an ever-present ache he couldn't get away from. He pulled the blanket closer, thunder muffling his sobs, and let himself cry.

He released every bit of emotion into each tear - like a cloud releasing its burden in rain drops.