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Peter used to think healthcare and health insurance was one of those scary grown up myths like taxes or grocery lists.
It’s only after the blood is washed away and the ambulance has drove off. Only when his uncle was cleaned from the streets and his warmth stolen from Peter’s hands, that he realizes.
You will never survive without money.
It truly doesn’t come so soon, it comes with the medical bills of their attempts to save Ben. It comes with the heavy weight of his Aunt’s shoulders. It comes with the white envelopes that litter the counter, that his freckled hands resist the urge to throw away.
Ben didn’t make it. His steady hands, his heavy steps, his warm eyes, gone and buried. Yet they’re still paying for it? As if the tax of their grief was only a footnote in the bill of life?
——
Peter died on titan, with gasping breaths as each molecule was ripped, and pulled, and destroyed. Crushed like the fine red dust he had collapsed into.
Peter could feel the white hot tears pooling in his gaze as he begs, begs and begs not to go. He’s been in Mr. Stark’s position. It sucked. But he’s so, so scared. Like a sick child begging their mother to cease the pain.
All he can think of is Ben, of the the red blood rather than the red sky. He looks into the terrified eyes above him, of his mentor.
“Im sorry,” He whispers, just managing before his vocal cords are ground into the air.
Then there is nothing more.
——
Life’s a bitch.. especially when you were not alive for so long. He’s currently staring at the screen of UnitedHealth, unable to know where to start.
He’s 21.
But legally 26. Insurance couldn’t give a flying fuck about the blip because it kicked more kids off their Guardian’s plans.
Peter doesn’t get sick, he really doesn’t. But both Tony and May said he should get insurance because of… adulting.
Tony said he’d cover the costs, (he agreed as ‘group bonding’, help Peter set up and didn’t text back for two months. Peter gave up trying to reach out.) thank the lord because Peter doesn’t know how he’d manage…
$576 dollars a month… fucking Christ.
May laughs and claps a hand on his shoulder, like this is so funny and Peter’s a kitten feeling water for the first time.
The page is confusing (as valedictorian he isn’t confused by much) and he hates it. He fucking hates this shit so fucking much.
——
May is sick, neural neuropathy they said.
It’s worse than anything he’s ever thought of, anything he has experienced as Spider-man.
There’s bad days, and there’s worse days. Where May shrieks and sobs into her pillow and there’s nothing Peter can do.
They were fucking denied.
Her.
Medication.
was.
denied.
There are three points in Peter’s life when he has truly felt like the world was ending.
When Ben died, when he died, and when May begged to die.
It had shocked him, as he creaked open the door and allowed a sliver of light into the dark bedroom. May’s broken and wretched sobs twisting through the air.
“May?” Peter had called lightly, treating into the room on light feet as his eyes make out the lump on the bed as the sleeping (shaking) shape of his aunt.
She doesn’t move aside from wracking breaths, when she does speak it’s a weak and wounded sound. “Please,” she mutters , hands clenching and unclenching in the sheets, as she moves to lay flat on her back.
“May?” He prods further, terrified. His hand shakes on top of the door, gripping tightly at its frame.
“Put me out, out of my misery.” Tears streaming down her face, “let it be over,” the sound is so truthful in its anguish, Peter had to cover his mouth to not make a sob himself.
Fucking denied.
——
May kills herself.
She kills herself while Peter is at work, while he’s working towards his teaching license and subbing a few 7th grade classes.
He comes home, the apartment is eerily quiet aside from Peter’s own rapid breaths and rabbit like heartbeat.
Red. Exploded. Tiles. Copper scent. Rot. Gunpowder.
She dies in the bathroom, using a bullet from Ben’s old gun. Her letter rests on the kitchen counter in flowery handwriting.
Peter immediately calls the cops. The phone shakes in his grip and he’s pretty sure he might crush it.
Statement given.
Voices, note, everything. Too loud. Buzzing. Buzzing.
The mob.
His heartbeat chants like a million voices through the blood rushing in his ears.
Peters fists clamp together as he struggles to breathe, so tired and full of anguish and rage. He wants to scream, to cry, let it all out but he can’t. Like a porcelain doll burning from the inside out. He is a vacuum with an impossible fire growing inside it.
This is what the letter reads, when Peter manages to focus enough on the warmth in the handwriting. Of their swooping shapes like eagles in the crags of a canyon. So alive. So human and identifiable in their nearly illegible form.
“Dear Peter,
There are a million words I wish to say, I want to say I’m sorry. I always know you grew too fast, seems just last week we were playing monopoly. With you hiding all of Ben’s pieces when he went to grab us more food. I love you so much Peter, and I’m not gone because of a lack of love for you, but the lack of love the world has brought and thrown at me. I’m sorry, and I hope you’ll find it in you to forgive me. Please never forget to defend the things you love, just as I’ve failed to defend you.
With all the love,
May Genevieve Parker.”
Defend.
——
There is a newfound fire burning in his veins, an energy he can’t expel.
Rage, anguish, sorrow all thrown in a barrel and rolled down a hill.
Peter is trapped in an endless cyclone of emotions that he cannot untangle, he’s stayed at a hotel for three nights, unable to look at the apartment.
Everything is gone. MJ has called him, he knows that. Ned has called him. Tony has called him. He cannot lift his lead filled arms to pick up. There is so inherently wrong the idea of talking to somebody right now. Of shovi mg the burden of an early death onto somebody. Because that’s what always happens.
Revenge.
His heart chants.
Denied
His hands scream as they pull at his hair.
Defend.
His lungs ache as he gasps for a haven against his own burning sobs.
Everything is burning, everything is like a building collapsing around him. Like his body being ripped apart. Like the days are blurring into one big panic attack he can no longer expel nor contain.
Depose.
His very fibers chant.
The mob, inside his very blood.
Depose all the killers.
It thrums against his skin.
Deny
Defend
Depose.
——
Brian Thompson, 50 years old, father. CEO of Unitedhealth.
This probably won’t fix any of his problems, a now quiet and small voice whispers as the mobs chants for death.
Chants for life.
The mob.
The justice that rests just beneath his skin, his organs, and his soul.
Peter quickens his pace, each step burning like no other. He has the man in his sights, he raises an arm, clad with Ben’s coat and hands gripping the gun tightly.
The recoil is harsh, but nothing against his inhuman strength.
BANG,
Goes the first bullet as it soars toward the tear blurred target that is Brian Thompson.
Deny.
BANG,
Screams the second bullet, easing just the littlest thrumming of his skull. Of the mob.
Defend.
BANG
Cheers the final as Thompson drops to the ground.
Depose.
And finally, in the New York streets, it is quiet.