Peter sat up in a hurry, his breathing heavy and his face covered in sweat. He leaned against the wall of the room in the ship, daring to close his eyes as he finally got his breaths under control. His eyes moved around the room, an exercise to help ground him in his surroundings, even if they weren't all that great. Peter then had his mask reassimilate itself into his face, having brought it down right before he allowed himself to doze off... a desire he wondered if he should've given into.
Once his new nanotechnology mask had reformed itself, Peter spoke up.
"Karen?" he said, and instantly the A.I. system fired to life.
"Yes, Peter?" the soft-spoken automated voice responded.
"How long was I asleep?" he asked.
"Approximately four hours, thirty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds," Karen dutifully answered.
"Okay," Peter responded, his breath finally returning to its proper resting rhythm. "I can work with that."
"Peter, your circadian rhythm is still out of sync," the A.I. said. "I recommend a few hours more rest in order to properly recover your..."
"No!" Peter shouted before quickly recomposing himself. "I mean, no, Karen, it's fine. I think I'll be okay. I still have some work to do before we take off."
How exactly was Peter supposed to tell an artificial intelligence that more sleep was the last thing he felt as though he needed right now. Once more, he'd had a rough dream, even though this one started out fine: he'd "woke up" in his own bed back in his and May's apartment in Queens. Getting out of bed and heading to the living room, he'd found both his aunt and Ned there, acting as if he hadn't just been stranded on another planet for a few days.
It didn't take long, however, before they'd both started to disintegrate; Ned first, then May. The worst part was that they hadn't even seemed to realize what was happening to them, carrying on as if everything was normal, but the end result was the same as it had been for the last couple days or so: Peter was left all alone.
The truth was that such thoughts had plagued Peter's mind even in his waking moments of late; the thought that he'd get home, only to find that he'd lost everyone he cared about. He kept trying to remind himself that the odds were against it. Thanos had said, after all, that once his mission was complete, fifty percent of all life would still be alive. Of the seven billion plus people back on earth, perhaps he might even come out as one of the more fortunate ones. However, his mind being the glass half empty type it had been the last few days, doubt kept creeping back into his mind.
"Peter?"
The voice of his suit's A.I. jolted him back to the present.
"Yes, sorry Karen," he said, once more apologizing to the voice coming from his own suit. "My mind was just...somewhere else for a moment."
"It's okay Peter," Karen reassured him, and her kind sounding words made Peter so glad that Mr. Stark had programmed his suit's A.I. to be so sweet and encouraging. "I just wanted to say that I have completed an analysis of the tasks you have left from the schematics you were able to give me yesterday, and I've ordered them in a way that will get it functioning the fastest."
"Wow, thanks Karen," Peter said. "I really appreciate that. So, what's first up?"
What really ended up being first up was checking on his food supply. True to what Peter suspected, he was running a bit lower on food than he'd like right now after indulging himself a little yesterday in order to keep himself going. He'd have to be careful going forward; theoretically, the trip back shouldn't be too bad if things worked according to plan, but Peter knew he couldn't on that.
It was going to be a bit of a lose-lose situation right now, choosing between going hungry more than he could usually afford or trying to rest and having his sleep plagued with terrible dreams. Peter felt confident that he could finish the rest of the repairs in one sitting, but there were still a lot of what ifs going through his mind. He made up his mind that he was going to plunge through the work that remained, and that was all there was to it.
"After all," Peter said out loud to himself, "do, or do not. There is no try."
"I'm not sure I understand what you mean?" Karen questioned.
"Oh, my bad Karen," he said, not realizing that his suit's A.I. wouldn't understand the reference he was making to try and keep up his spirits. "Just... just talking to myself."
"I see," Karen replied.
From there, Peter set out to take care of the final things on the repair list, having his A.I. pull up the first thing on the list it had made. At first, he also tried talking to Karen, but after a while, he realized he didn't have much more left to say, so he simply tried focusing on his work, ignoring the pressing mix of guilt and worry that was seemingly ever present in his entire being.
He'd been working for a couple hours when his hunger really started to hit him, but he opted to press on with his work. His stomach frequently complained about this decision, grumbling every once in a while to remind him that he needed to refuel himself, but he ignored it. While this decision did cause him to slow down a bit, Peter didn't mind too much, as going slower gave him a bit more opportunity to make sure he was doing it right.
Of course, that was assuming he could focus enough.
As he pressed on, his mind wondered back to his dream involving Adrian Toomes from the other day, thinking about some of the stuff he said.
"This is what you deserve."
"People like Stark, they don't care about us."
Sometimes the voice sounded as if it was coming from the real person, causing Peter to look around from time to time. Every once in a while, he tried talking with Karen some more, but once more he found them quickly running out of conversation topics. The most he'd ever talked with his A.I. prior to this was during their stay in Damage Control Vault in D.C. Part of that was simply him giving her commands regarding figuring out how to get the right code to open the vault door, but even altogether it wasn't nearly as long as he'd been trying to do here.
It was at this point that it clicked in Peter's mind that he'd been away from home and isolated on a planet literally ALL BY HIMSELF for somewhere between two and three days now. It suddenly hit him how much he missed true human interaction, things even as simple as a handshake with Ned or a hug from May. Tears threatened to spill out from his eyes, and he fought hard to keep them back. He tried to make his mind focus on the fact that he was so close; with just a little more work, he'd soon be on his way home. Karen tried to tell him his heart rate was elevated a little, but he told her he was fine.
He couldn't let anything stop him now. Sure, he might be on the verge of a nervous breakdown all of a sudden, but he had to keep going. He thought to stories he heard of people surviving for weeks on end alone. He'd felt sorry for their situation, but he never really gave those kinds of things a second thought, but now, here he was, living it out, and so help him, he was going to make it.
Finally, after nearly seven straight hours of work that day, everything was finally ready. Peter had Karen run one final check, and everything seemed a go. Closing everything up, he sat down in the cockpit, strapping himself in.
"Alright Karen, are you ready?" Peter said, his voice displaying the most enthusiasm, and hope, he'd had in the past few days.
"As ready as an artificial intelligence like myself knows how to be," it replied back to him. Peter chuckled in response.
Having made note of which button did what, he pressed the proper one first this time, and the engines roared to life.
"So far so good," Peter dared to say. He then took hold of the controls, one in each hand and, slowly, moved them forward. The ship then began to rise, and before he knew it, Peter was flying up towards the sky. As he climbed higher, relief began to spread through his body. It didn't take long before the sky around him grew darker, then there was no sky at all as he left Titan's atmosphere. Peter didn't even bother to look back at the desolate, broken planet that had been his home for the last few days.
He hoped he'd never see it again either.
Peter then reached towards the hyperdrive lever, resting his hand on it. This was what was likely to make or break the trip; they had traveled at such speeds in order to get to Titan, and Peter wasn't keen on finding out how long it took to get back to earth otherwise. He had done the work he believed it took to ensure it functioned properly, so he had to trust it.
Slowly, Peter pushed the lever forward, practically holding his breath as he did so.
Without hardly a second's hesitation, the ship suddenly rocketed forward at what was likely faster than the speed of light. It wasn't like in Star Wars, where you see the stars all blur together for a moment before truly taking off; this happened all at once.
His body a bit more taken aback by the move than he had anticipated, Peter took a moment to catch himself before finally unbuckling himself. His trajectory set and the ship's autopilot engaged, he decided now was the best time to take a moment to finally answer his stomach's calls for food. He wandered over to the pantry style area, grabbing some more alien food that he hoped he would never have to see again, forcing himself to take a bite. Perhaps, Peter thought, that was the one good thing about being so hungry: it made it easier for the nasty or the tasteless to go down.
After eating until he was at least satisfied, he headed back to the cockpit, and decided maybe allowing himself a little rest would be okay. He was closing in on home, and he was, for perhaps the first time in the last few days, truly feeling as though he was going to make it out of this okay.
Strapping himself in just to be sure, Peter leaned back as much as the seat in the cockpit would allow, and slowly allowed himself to doze off.
Peter was startled awake to alarms blaring and light's flashing. Unable to properly discern what exactly was going on, he decided the safe thing to do was to come out of hyperspace early. He grabbed the lever and pulled it back, and soon understood why the alarms were going off: he was headed straight for a pile of wreckage.
"How could this have happened?" Peter thought to himself, he could've sworn he set the navigation properly...
Taking evasive action, Peter grabbed the controls and pulled them to the right, swerving the ship just out of the way of what looked like the cockpit area of another ship, torn apart from the rest of it. The one thing he had on his side was that weird sixth sense of his that warned him of incoming danger. He took full advantage of it, veering away at even the slightest tingling feeling he received.
Unfortunately, spider-sense couldn't make up for his lack of piloting skills, and as he shifted left to avoid some debris, he found himself heading inside the torn hull of a much larger ship. It was a tight fit, and Peter, when confronted with his first obstacle, accidentally pulled too hard the other direction, causing one of his wings to smash into the side of the ship he was literally passing through, scraping along for a while before he leveled it out again.
Peter was already internally freaking out about this when he found himself needing to veer again, but this time he simply acted too late, and he bumped into something else as well. Fortunately, he came out of the ship and it looked all clear, finally having passed through all the debris.
Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.
First, the hyperspace failed to reengage.
"Nonononono," Peter said, his voice shaking out of nervousness.
Next, the ship started sputtering, and power began to fail in certain areas.
"Oh, come on!" Peter shouted as he stalled out. He got up, unstrapping himself from his seat to head back to check on what he could. With any luck, maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed.
Unfortunately, it was that bad, if not even worse. An analysis showed damage to the engine even greater than before, as well as vital losses in power to other vital areas of the ship. Basically, his work had been undone, and then some.
"This can't be happening," Peter said, taking in everything that was, in fact, happening to him. He could feel his heart rate shoot up exponentially. He put his hands on either side of his head, sinking to his knees. It wasn't long before he began to cry as he hung his head dejectedly.
"Why are you surprised by this?"
Peter looked up slowly, his eyes narrowing as anger built up within him.
"You're not real," he said in response to the voice of Adrian Toomes. Despite this, the sound of his footsteps felt real.
"No, I'm not," he said, but that didn't stop him from practically feeling the man's presence come up next to him. "I'm just the last straw of your broken mind; a piece of yourself that's come to remind you of what you already know."
Peter turned slowly, his face actually relaxing a bit as he faced the image before him.
"And what's that?" he asked.
"That there was never a point to this," he said. "That there was no way this was ever going to work. You're not a pilot; much less a pilot of an alien ship. That was always going to come back on you."
Peter had nothing to say to counter the man's point. This event was like the straw that broke the camel's back when it came to his morale.
"Then what do you suggest I do?" he questioned.
"Accept your fate," Adrian replied, almost sounding sympathetic for a change. "What else is there to do?"
Peter looked away again. He no longer felt the faux presence of Adrian Toomes with him, but his words hung over him like a noose slowly squeezing out his willpower like it were oxygen.
"What else is there to do?"
Peter slowly got up, staggering back to the cockpit in a broken daze. His will to do anything at all was gone; perhaps his mind was gone too. He couldn't even make it to the seats in the cockpit, slowly slumping against the wall just behind the seats, ending up in a sitting position. His body seemingly sapped of all its energy, he just sat there, unable to make himself do or say anything, except say one final thing to his loved ones.
"I'm sorry guys. I'm... so sorry."
Hope you all are enjoying this read despite its depressing nature. It gets better…. It just takes a while.
Thank you to those who have already been following this! Please, feel free to leave a review of what you think so far, be it good or bad (if it's the latter, all I ask is that you please be respectful).
Continuing to pray for you all. Stay safe and healthy!
"Now I urge you, take some food. You'll need it to survive." Acts 27:27-44
