Chapter Summary: There is something akin to madness in it. A sad attempt at justification, when really? How do you justify this?

We are empty of dreams

Just hollow shells

We can burst at our seams

Plead with agonized yells

(But nothing will hear us if we waste away in self-imposed cells)

He shut down after that.

It wasn't that he disassociated, it was just that he wasn't quite present. He felt so anxious that he almost couldn't breathe and wondered if silent panic attacks were a thing as he could hardly twitch his fingers through his discomfort.

If they were, he wouldn't be surprised if he'd experienced an inordinate amount of them.

May was crying silently, he noticed, hugging him from the side and kissing his temple. She was rocking him slowly as well, shushing him with soft whispers and assurances. She'd shifted into her determined state – the one where she would block out her own pain for his sake.

He didn't like the pang of guilt in his chest from it.

(Like the rotting carcass of a burned-out church, he was smoldering in an uncomfortable purgatory. One where the wood of his heart was alit by flames which threatened to devour him whole with his self-determined blame.)

Something about feeling so guilty for ratting out his abuser made him feel like a terrible person. He knew he shouldn't feel guilty for telling on Skip and he felt sick that he even was, but that didn't make the guilt go away.

It was like Skip's name had carved into his ribs, a stain that could never be washed out. Like a black hole, Skip sucked everything good from the world until his chest felt like it would cave in from the pressure of holding so much inside of it.

People said you weren't supposed to hold onto your grief – your trauma and pain – and maybe Peter understood that, now, watching the world around him crumble to dust through blurry eyes.

(And, since dust is made of human skin, are we also just beings made of dust? Or is it like the rule of squares and rectangles – one cannot be the other, and yet, they're both the same?)

He felt like he was going to throw up. It wasn't a new feeling, but it was unwelcome in this circumstance.

He wasn't sorry, really, but it stung to know that he'd hurt his aunt and his mentor so much.

He tried to stay afloat with the sharp rising and falling of Mr. Stark's voice ringing in his ears, but his awareness was dragged down by something heavier than gravity – escaping his fumbling fingers to melt into the floor in a sick puddle of something only vaguely resembling humanity.

They sat in an uncomfortable limbo between silent and loud. Peter wasn't surprised Mr. Stark was angry, really, but he wished for one or the other; not the painful buzzing in his ears that came from the inability to comprehend the opposing stimuli in the room.

Something about Mr. Stark's anger set his ears buzzing. His mind scrambled to keep up – to process anything beyond the dull roar in his ears like the rushing of waves tumbling over each other to reach the shore.

(Waves churned and broke apart shells under their wake. They eroded rocks until they smoothed. They weathered shards of glass until they gleamed teal and sparkled in the sunlight.)

At the root of anger was a desire for change.

(See, violent things changed people, and places, and things. Slow or fast, they could break things apart and build them back up again.

Turbulent seas were only one example of this. Natural disasters could strike cities, countries,nations, and tear the very Earth apart at its seams. Sickness could rot the body with bloodless pain until families would collapse under the pressure or nations would weaken under the heavy weight of their corpses.

Violent things – angry things – changed people, and places, and things.

Or so people said.)

Apathy was often related to passivity, though Peter wondered who thought that you couldn't wish for change half dead – both physically and emotionally. A lack of anger was often deemed as contentment within a situation, but he just thought it meant a lack of faith that it would change.

Being content was different than being hopeless.

And apathy had long been a coping mechanism for when he felt too much – heard too much.

It wasn't something he'd have chosen consciously, but it helped him curb his panic sometimes. Though it was easy to see that once he'd fallen into apathy, he tended to hide from his problems – to push them away and pretend they weren't there like an ostrich with its' head in the sand.

(Though hiding from the things that hurt him did not mean he had no desire for things to get better.

For himself to get better.)

He could understand Mr. Stark's anger, though. He could understand that anger was his only way to cope with his discontentment of the situation. It was logical to assume that anger meant a desire for change because it often did.

But that didn't mean that Peter's empty tears at midnight trying to swallow around the hollow feeling in his chest were any less of a desire for something to get better.

For things to not be as terrible as they were.

For the world to be what it said it would when he was young and stupid and still saw the world through bright eyes and rose-colored glasses that made the world shine in pretty pastels.

When he still believed the empty promises Aunt May was telling him – that it would be 'alright'.

That he would be 'fine'.

People act as if faith could save the world – could be anything less than a crutch to rely on.

He knew differently.

(Faith was just a cold comfort to hide behind.)

Peter pondered when he lost his faith, but then he realized that it had to be long ago. Long before bruised souls and battered innocence and long before he knew the taste of betrayal.

It was probably sometime around the death of his parents. The time when he'd been promised they'd be back soon only for them to never return at all.

Peter wondered if he was selfish for developing trust issues from that.

(He wondered if he was foolish for building his trust back up again – scarred, but unguarded and optimistic once more.

He wondered if that was the beginning of his downfall: letting himself open up again after he'd already been hurt once.

'Once bitten, twice shy' had never quite applied to him when he'd needed it to.)

Aunt May shouted something loud above his head and he snapped back into focus, watching the world slow down to see that he'd curled further into himself in the span of time between his confession (as if he'd sinned) and the subsequent degradation of the situation as a whole.

Tony shouted back, "Well, what else am I supposed to do?!"

"Worry about Peter for now! You're supposed to be a superhero, so act like one!"

Peter didn't know what Mr. Stark and May were referring to, but the way Mr. Stark seemed to deflate at May's words calmed the atmosphere of the entire room.

He didn't think he wanted to know, really.

May looked towards him, eyes soft as she asked, "honey, do you want to talk to us about it?"

"…I don't know," he said, feeling as lost as a piece of rotting wood being tossed by stormy seas. He thought he should probably be worried by that analogy.

After all, rotting wood only had more room to break.

"What do we do now?" Peter asked, hoping that someone might finally come up with a solution to this seemingly unsolvable problem.

"Whatever you need us to do," May said, calmly (but clearly she wasn't calm at all if the way her heart beat like the pounding feet of a stampede was any indication).

"I don't know what I need, so tell me what's going to happen! I need to know what's going to happen!" he yelled, his voice cracking on a tearless sob, tearing through the silent living room like a lightning strike. The scent of ozone seemed to linger in the air, and he wondered if he imagined the faint tingling discomfort that clung to his skin like unwelcome static electricity.

(Peter liked rainstorms because no matter how hard the water from the sky would try to wash him away, he could stand strong against its currents. Torrential downpours could soak him to his soul, and he'd swim in it; reminded of how to breathe through lungs that were filled with liquid instead of air.)

Mr. Stark finally looked at him, unsure, and he wondered if a subject like this would be easier to approach if he was a normal kid. He wondered if the DNA in his blood made this harder – built a barrier between them far deeper than age and experience.

Was he human enough to heal like one?

Physically, he didn't seem human at all. Sometimes, his hands would bleed from cuts and scrapes and then heal too quickly for him to be sure his wounds ever existed in the first place.

Sometimes, it made him feel like some sort of broken-winged angel who tumbled down from heaven, damned to live among mortals in some sort of in-between state of human and monster. He wondered what caused him to fall, what cursed him to stagger forward like a newborn foal on a ground made of broken shards of glass and rusty nails.

(People are not like the rain, or the snow, or the leaves. They are not pretty when they fall.

They are ugly, twisted things unraveling at the seams like torn stuffed animals spewing their guts to the world. They are bloody and vicious and horrifying things that freeze the blood and carve holes of fear into all who witness their demise.

Broken people – hurt people – are devastating things to witness.)

Skip was a human, or maybe he wasn't. He was a reckoning, really, with bombs for hands and blood on his teeth. A symbol of a coming rapture– like that's what you'd see in the end times: the inevitable destruction of everything.

(Everything will fade away, even Peter.

He'll come and he'll go and Peter wonders if that makes him human or not.)

Why did he hide the truth for so long – to the point where he crossed his fingers beneath his blankets in the middle of the night and wished on blinking headlights that there weren't any more kids out there like him? Wishing that he was the only one Skip had ever hurt, because then he'd know that he hadn't done anything wrong.

But if he'd stayed silent only to let other people – children – get hurt as well, then.

Then he'd be just as culpable in their abuse, wouldn't he?

And he just had to make it that way, had to continue this cycle with bruised fingers gripping tight to something that wasn't there anymore.

Because something in Peter thought he owed it to Skip to stitch his mouth together like a particularly well-mannered doll. Somehow, the lingering vestiges of friendship had sunk its claws into his mind and said, 'you don't really want to hurt him, do you?'

And the worst part was that he didn't.

So he stayed silent.

He stayed still.

And he was left with only the speculations of what Skip could've done to so many more who were just like him.

(Peter Parker always freezes when it matters most.)

"I did nothing," he said, voice hollow even to his own ears, "I froze, I stayed still. I let it happen."

And he didn't even mean that he was blaming himself, really. It was more that he just let it be. He ignored it – pushed it out of his mind selfishly only to put others at risk as well through his own inaction.

"So, what do we do when I don't even know how to say half the things he's done? When I don't even think I can! When I don't actually know half the things he's done!"

Tears prickled at his eyes, though they weren't enough to fall.

He wondered if he should be glad he had more tears to shed or sad that he was still crying over something of his own making.

(They say you make your bed and lie in it.

He wishes his bed weren't so uncomfortable, wishes he'd had the strength to keep it maintained.)

Mr. Stark swallowed uncomfortably as May sucked in a sharp breath.

Horror, that was what they were feeling.

(His chest ached.)

"Honey, we've got this. You don't have to worry, you don't have to say anything at all," May smoothed back his curls, smiling a smile that would be comforting in any other circumstance, "we're here no matter what, you don't have to do this alone. Doing nothing isn't wrong if that's what you want to do."

The words made him feel awkward, though they shouldn't have. The words were meant to cheer him up, but maybe he wasn't ready for them.

Or maybe he just didn't believe them – didn't want to hear them.

"Hey, in these kinds of situations it's totally normal to freeze. It's a perfectly natural biological response, which, from an evolutionary standpoint is total bullshit, but I digress," Tony said, taking a deep breath to collect himself. He was obviously panicking and holding back anger that, even though Peter knew it wasn't directed at him, made Peter have to hold back a flinch, "The point is, the only person to blame is Skip and Skip alone."

Mr. Stark was awkward, and he was fumbling, and he was angry. He was so angry, Peter could tell.

But he was also right, even though something in Peter wished he wasn't – some part of him held onto any sort of self-blame he could find as if it was a healthy way to find control in his situation.

Because Peter was 9 when they met. They were just children – and, god, what did that make him now?

If Peter was still a child now, then Skip was still a child then – when he'd been young and naïve and filled with so much hopeless hope.

And how did he confront the fact that his abuser started abusing him at the same age he was now? How could he confront that some people would still look at Skip and think 'he's just a kid'?

Peter didn't want to confront it, really. He'd done a lot of confronting already. More than he was used to, at least.

But did he really deserve a break?

Him, who could've let others be hurt by his negligence – did he really deserve to rest peacefully as if he hadn't sat by knowing there was a child predator on the loose?

"…I don't know what to do," he confessed quietly, wincing at the fact that he was practically repeating himself at this point.

"We'll figure it out," Aunt May said, rubbing a circle on his shoulder, "we always do."

(When Peter Parker was 16-years-old, he learned that confronting his problems was only the first step in fixing them.)