They rarely saw each other anymore, they never spoke (unless of course it was absolutely necessary and even then she would often communicate through others rather than directly to him). He found himself staying in the lab more than he ever had, even when he had first started working with the FBI and Charlie was technically her partner. When he did ride along, the silence in the car was almost unbearable. In those times he often felt his lips part with the desire to just say something, anything, to make everything go back to normal, but as he looked at her and the firm set of her mouth, he knew there were no words.
It was weeks after she had come home that he decided to go to her apartment. It was on a whim and he was drunk, and there was some part of him that thought about that moment about two years ago when he showed up at her doorstep, a bit tipsy, and he apologized for being a total jackass earlier and she forgave him. She forgave him. And he wasn't sure why now was the time, but he knew the ache in his chest still hadn't gone away, and no amount of whiskey was gonna make it better.
He knocked and he knocked and he knocked. He called out her name (maybe a bit too loudly) until one of the neighbors came out to see who was causing all the noise. "She moved!" The man yelled, annoyed that his night was being disrupted by this drunken slouch. Something deep inside Peter broke then. Perhaps at one time there had been a flicker of hope, that one day she may be able to get past all that he had done, although he wasn't sure that he deserved it. But she hadn't even told him that she had moved, that she wasn't there.
She wasn't there.
He never mentioned that he went to her place. He never even indicated that he knew she lived somewhere else. He never told her about all the pain he was in or how much he loved her.
And he wouldn't have regretted this (because he felt he had no right to say anything at all), if it had not been for the Observer and what happened that day.
When he was shot, flying back across the clearing, he could only think faintly that he was going to die before he collided hard with the ground. And just before he lost consciousness, he heard her frantic voice calling his name, and felt her fingertips on his pulse. It was the first time she had touched him in all this time, and he wished that he could say something because surely he was going to die, but the darkness swallowed him whole.
He was conscious of the sound of the heart monitor first, but his eyes were too heavy to open at the moment, so he lay in the hazy realm of half-asleepness and wondered if when he found the energy to drift to the surface, he would find her there, just as she always had been before everything fell apart.
And he felt sure that at one point he heard her voice, and the faintest touch of her hand, but when he opened his eyes, she wasn't there.
She wasn't there.
I know this is utterly depressing, but let me know what you think!