You remember the Code Silver chapter of Gravesen? This is where we finally learn why that went down the way it did. Major trigger warning for graphic depictions of violence.

Chapter 2: Lucky Charms

"I'm going to the store, any last minute requests?" Uncle Ben asked, brandishing the grocery list that had been stuck on the fridge for the past week.

"Lucky Charms!" Peter called. May always vetoed the purchase of sugary cereals, but Peter tried every time anyway.

"I'll tell you what, if you come with me, I'll buy you Lucky Charms," Ben proposed.

"Really?"

"It'll be our little secret."

Peter paused to consider this offer. Was a boring trip to the grocery store really worth a box of cereal that he knew was bad for him yet still loved anyway? Absolutely. Peter leapt off the couch and followed Uncle Ben out the door. May had dragged him shopping with her occasionally when he was too young to stay home alone, but back then he'd found errands exciting. Only the promise of Lucky Charms prevented him from audibly groaning when they walked through the front doors.

Ben grabbed a cart and started in back corner, handing the list and a pen off to Peter. "You're in charge of making sure I don't forget anything, okay? You know how Aunt May gets when I forget things."

"Basil would not have saved that pasta," Peter remarked.

"Nothing would have saved that pasta, Pete," Ben replied with a chuckle. Peter shivered remembering the texture of rubbery noodles and the musk of burnt sauce that had lingered in the apartment for days. They made their way through half the list, and Ben had a hell of a time finding an avocado that wasn't either completely rotted to the core or so hard it could probably be used as a weapon. The cereal aisle sat at about the halfway point of the store, and Peter bounced ahead of the cart excitedly when they finally got there. He understood why May was so against sugary cereals, looking at some of the boxes that contained literal chocolate chip cookies or the lovechild of Cheerios and Skittles, but Lucky Charms were basically just fun-shaped Cheerios with a few tiny marshmallows added in, so it couldn't be that bad.

Peter scanned the aisle for the leprechaun, finding it sandwiched between Cap'n Crunch and Tony the Tiger, and strode up to the box eagerly. The second his fingertips touched the surface, he heard it. Living in such a big city, Peter had heard this sound before, but not often and only from a distance. Hearing it inside, where the sound could echo around the enclosed space, instilled in Peter a twisted emotion he didn't think he'd ever felt before.

"What was that?" he asked, turning to Uncle Ben. Last time he glanced over, Ben had been halfway down the aisle from him looking for the one cereal May ate exclusively, but all of a sudden he was right there in front of him and dragging him forwards. Just as Peter considered repeating his question, the sound rang out again, and there was absolutely no mistaking it this time. Gunshots. There was no mistaking it this time because as soon as they emerged from the end of the aisle, they saw them. Two people stood near the entrance to the store, both armed. Peter and Ben ducked back into the cereal aisle before either gunman could set his sights on them.

"What do we do?" Peter questioned desperately.

"Shhh," Ben prompted. Someone nearby screamed, and the sound of running footsteps followed it. Another shot rang out and the scream cut off abruptly, followed by the tumbling of boxes to the floor. Peter bit his lip to stifle a whimper, knowing that if he screamed the men would find them that much easier. Ben walked with one arm wrapped protectively around Peter, pushing him into a low crouch. Just as they reached the end of the aisle, Peter heard footsteps behind them and one of the men appeared poised to shoot at the other end of the aisle.

"Go!" Ben shouted, shoving Peter in front of him as they ran towards the refrigerated section. Not one second after they cleared the space at the end of the cereal aisle, Peter heard another shot. If they'd been any slower, they would've gotten hit. Hand wrapped tightly in Ben's, Peter raced to keep pace with him. Just ahead of them, the door to the milk fridge had been left open. He saw the white liquid spurt from one of the cartons and leak onto the floor before he even registered that another shot had been fired. Skidding on the tile floor, they stopped before they entered the line of fire and turned back, dashing down the baking aisle.

The entire store now echoed with screams and pounding footsteps, broken occasionally by gunshots and the thumping of cans, boxes, and containers hitting the floor. Peter wanted to wrap his arms around Uncle Ben, but he knew he'd restrict both of their mobility by doing so. "Stay here," Uncle Ben prompted. Peter kept his feet rooted to the floor right in front of the brownie and cake mixes while Ben tiptoed to the end of the aisle to scout out a potential exit route. Another shot, and he ducked back behind the shelves, accidentally knocking over a bag of powdered sugar. It didn't split open, but it made a satisfying thump as it hit the floor. Ben waved his arms frantically at Peter, ushering him to run in the other direction, so he did. He took off towards the back of the store with Ben hot on his trail. Running perpendicular to the aisles, he couldn't help but glance down some of them. What he saw nearly made him stop to vomit.

Cans and boxes and people littered the floor, some with holes in them. Peter couldn't tell where the leaking tomato soup ended and the blood began. He and Ben turned a corner just in time to see a man go down, toppling into a display of sodas and knocking several bottles to the floor where they sat all shaken up. Another bullet punctured one of the bottles and Coke bubbled up like a baking soda volcano. Ben yanked Peter backwards by the shirt and they took off in the other direction.

He swore he could hear hostile footfalls on their tail, but every time Peter glanced over his shoulder he saw endless destruction and terror, but no gunmen. They stopped for a breath, though every instinct in Peter's head shrieked at him to keep running and not stop until he reached safety—though that seemed like a completely alien concept at the moment. Peter didn't remember what safety felt like. Uncle Ben gripped him by the shoulders and locked eyes with him. When Peter was little, a look like that from his uncle could soothe any fear, great or small. This time, however, it magnified his terror one thousand fold.

Because this time, instead of reassurance, Ben offered him nothing except a reflection of his own terror.

Another shot rang out, followed by the distinct sound of cans tumbling off a shelf and a body hitting the floor. Hurried footsteps dashed across the store, and the man came to a stop at the other end of the aisle where Peter and Ben stood. They both turned to look just as the man raised his arm. Ben adjusted his grip and half shoved, half hurled Peter out of the way. Peter slid a few feet across the tile floor, coming to a stop as the man fired his next shots. He propped himself up on his elbows just in time for the perfect view of Ben stumbling backwards into a display of meats and cheeses, the front of his shirt dripping with blood from two bullet holes.

"BEN!" The guttural scream tore itself from Peter's throat and he ran for his uncle with no regard for the gunman still stationed at the other end of the aisle.

"No," Ben choked out. "Peter, go. Run!" The last word was accompanied by a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. Peter disobeyed his uncle for the first time in his life. He fell to his knees and wrapped Ben's hand in his own. If the man decided to shoot him too, Peter honestly wouldn't care. He'd do anything to end this.

In the movies when someone important died, they always had famous last words encouraging the hero to continue on without them or providing advice that would be the key to defeating the bad guy later on. Peter wanted Ben to give him this; he needed one last interaction with the man who had raised him like his own son. He got nothing but ragged, slowing breaths and a vacant stare.

"Uncle Ben?" Peter moved his head back and forth to check if Ben was still tracking him with his eyes, but they remained fixed and unseeing. He tightened his hold on Ben's hand as if afraid he would float away. If any more shots went off, Peter didn't hear them. His head filled with white noise—not the peaceful kind, but the harsh, scratchy kind that sounded from a broken radio. When the police sirens approached, Peter didn't hear them. Nor did he see the flashing lights. He could see nothing but the bloodstains on Ben's shirt. Somehow, he'd gotten blood on his own hands and clothes too, though he couldn't remember how they it got there.

"Kid?" the officer's voice broke through and Peter looked up at him with pleading eyes. He reached down to help Peter to his feet, but Peter refused to relinquish his hold on Ben. "It's okay," the man encouraged. "We'll take care of you." Peter gave his uncle's hand one last squeeze and accepted the officer's assistance. On the way out, he saw countless boxes, bags, and cans littering the floor, some sitting in puddles of blood or crushed by the weight of the bodies that had rested on top of them. Peter wondered how long it would take to clean this place up, to scrub away all the evidence of this tragedy. He wished he could cleanse his mind of these memories as easily as they could get blood off of tile.

When he started shaking, Peter didn't know, but by the time the officer led him back through the front doors he could barely walk straight. The street outside was crowded with police cars, ambulances, and news vans, people milling everywhere. Peter zoned out, keeping his eyes on the asphalt below so he wouldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of another body being carted away on a stretcher. If he looked, he knew he'd want to check which was Ben. Eventually, he found himself sitting in the back of an ambulance, feet dangling, a blanket draped across his still-trembling shoulders. People asked him questions and he thought he nodded along properly, though he couldn't be sure. Everything he saw and heard took on a hazy quality, like he needed glasses and hearing aids but had neither. But his senses sharpened back into reality when he heard a familiar voice.

"Peter!"

"Aunt May?" He finally looked up from the ground and saw his aunt working her way through the crowd to get to him. She broke into a run as soon as there was room and Peter leapt from his seat to meet her. They practically crashed into each other, hugging so tight that Peter couldn't breathe, but he didn't even care. Now he remembered what safety felt like.

~0~

It took Peter five days to stop shaking. Every footstep, every creak of a door made the hairs on the back of his neck stand erect and his breathing pick up. He trembled throughout the entirety of the funeral, a combination of grief and terror strumming up and down his nervous system. May cried at least two or three times a day, and she slept on the sofa now, unable to bear lying down next to an empty half of the bed.

Peter still slept in his own room—slept being a relative term. Every time he nodded off, he dreamed of the grocery store and woke up with a scream in his throat which he just barely managed to staunch before he risked waking May. Each day excavated new reminders of the man they'd lost. Ben's coffee mug left out on the kitchen counter. A week of Ben's clothes in the dirty laundry pile. Ben's shoes by the front door, his coats in the closet, his absence bigger than all of those things conglomerated together.

"Is this ever going to get easier?" Peter asked timidly as he and May sat on the sofa watching a blank TV screen. Neither of them could bear to turn it on because Ben had always insisted on hogging the remote. She scooted over so they sat side by side and wrapped an arm around him, hugging him into her side.

"Yes, baby. I know it doesn't seem like it, but yes," she assured.

"How long did it take before it got easier for you and Ben after my parents died?" Peter didn't understand how fate could be so cruel to his wonderful aunt, forcing her to endure the loss of her brother and sister-in-law and then her husband within a decade.

"A long, long time. It's not something that happens all at once. You don't wake up one day and suddenly feel twenty pounds lighter. But that hole in your heart gradually heals up until the edges of it aren't so raw anymore."

"The hole doesn't close up?"

"No. The only thing that can fit in the hole is the person you've lost, so it will stay forever. And at first it really, really hurts. But over time it becomes a hole like your nostril, one that's always been there and doesn't bother you normally, but will still hurt if you hit it just right."

"Did you just compare grief to a nostril?" Peter questioned.

"Yeah. It's a little something I picked up from a nurse friend of mine who used to be a grief counselor. It's pretty ridiculous, isn't it?"

"Yes," Peter giggled. "But I like it."

May looked at him with wonder in her eyes, maybe because that was the first time he'd laughed since it happened. "I'm glad you like it," she said.

"How would a nose piercing fit into this analogy?" he asked. Now it was May's turn to burst out laughing.

~0~

Peter's stomach growled for the first time since Ben died. He'd been too swept up in his grief to feel hungry up until now, when the raging sorrow had finally quieted to a dull emptiness. Maybe he ate at the funeral, though he genuinely didn't remember. He stepped into the kitchen on bare feet in search of a snack. May hadn't gone back to work yet, but she was out on a walk, leaving Peter alone in the apartment. She'd promised to be back within an hour.

He opened the fridge and froze. The memory hit him with the force of a speeding train, all five of his senses exploding with the same sensations that had assaulted him on that fateful day. The cold from the open door seeped into his bones. His gaze fell on the gallon of milk and he watched it weep its contents everywhere after the bullet struck it and shredded the plastic. Screams echoed in the vast space, punctuated by gunshots. The smell of gunpowder and blood rose in the air like a heavy fog.

Peter slammed the door of the fridge hard enough to rattle its contents, but the damage was already done. His breathing spiraled out of control and he sank to the ground, back against the fridge, to stave off the dizziness. Logically he knew that he hadn't been transported back to the grocery store as if by magic, but that did nothing to stop the balloon of fear swelling up inside him as if his every frantic breath inflated it.

He squeezed his hands over his ears to block out the sounds, but they were coming from inside his head so he could do nothing to stop them. Holding his breath to stop from inhaling the phantom scent failed because a frantic exhale slipped from his lips and kicked him back into hyperventilation no matter how hard he tried to restrain it. Numbness spread to his hands like they'd fallen asleep, and then the sensation swallowed his face too. The tears racing down his cheeks didn't even feel wet, they just tingled.

He didn't know what to do. When this happened in the store, the feeling had gone away when the police arrived and the shots stopped ringing. But there was no real danger now, so what could save him from succumbing to fatal panic? Nothing.

What would May do when she got back and found him like this? What if she made him explain what caused it? How could he tell her that something so stupid had reduced him to a blubbering mess? How could he make her worry about this when she'd just lost her husband? Peter steeled himself and unclamped his hands from the sides of his head, his breaths still forcefully and rapidly ripping themselves in and out of his chest.

He tried to stand up, but his vision washed out and he grew dizzy, so he resigned himself to crawling into his room. Crawling on numb hands wasn't easy, but he made it and slammed the door behind him. His pillow lay on the floor where it had fallen out of bed last night, so he reached for it and hugged it tightly to his chest. The presence of the physical weight helped him force his breaths to become more slow and controlled. He lost track of the minutes, but by the time May announced her return he was mostly back to normal, just exhausted and shaky.

"Peter?" May called. "Where are you?"

"In my room," he answered, hoping his voice sounded normal enough not to raise suspicion. The knock on his door startled him enough to make his breath hitch.

"Can I come in?"

"Uh…yeah." Peter scrambled to get off the floor and managed to flop down onto his bed just as she opened the door. He flashed a (hopefully) reassuring smile, simultaneously inventing a lie for what he'd spent the last hour doing.

"What'cha been up to?" Her casual tone indicated she didn't suspect anything was wrong. Peter stifled a sigh of relief.

"Not much. Had a snack, then just came in here."

"Sounds exciting."

"Yeah, for sure. Did you have a nice walk?" he asked. Anything to change the subject.

"Yeah. A walk in the city feels a lot different when you don't have a destination in mind."

"Cool."

"I know you said you just ate, but I wanna start thinking about what to make for dinner. Any suggestions?"

"Spaghetti?" It was the first thing to pop into his head. May nodded and ducked back out of his room, closing the door behind her. Peter took a deep, trembling breath to steady himself after that close call. Under no circumstances would he let Aunt May know what had occurred today. She had enough on her plate without worrying about her nephew freaking out over their refrigerator. He needed to prevent another incident like this from ever happening, because he couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't witness it next time. Any of the store-bought food in the house might set him off, the familiar packaging reminding him of that horrible day. He didn't know for sure, and he certainly didn't want to test it out. If he could just avoid encountering any of it, everything would be fine. So that's what he did.

~0~

Just two weeks after Ben, May returned to work and Peter returned to school. Getting back to their normal routines was supposed to help them move on. Because her wages alone now needed to support the both of them, she took on a more intense shift schedule. This meant she was already gone when Peter woke up on weekday mornings and didn't get back until six in the evening. Yes, it was terribly lonely, but it allowed him to keep his secret without much effort. She wasn't here to notice that he didn't eat breakfast before school or pack lunch that she'd entrusted him to make for himself since she didn't have time. Peter couldn't even look at the fridge or pantry without his breath catching in his throat—no way was he trying to open either ever again.

The hunger bothered him, of course, but it was nothing compared to the agonizing terror of dredging up that memory. He learned pretty quickly that his stomach started to protest around ten in the morning most days, but after half an hour or so it seemed to recognize that it wasn't getting fed anytime soon and quieted down. If it got particularly bad, he drank from his Stormtrooper water bottle that he filled in the sink every morning, and that always eased the discomfort to some degree. No one at school questioned why he didn't eat lunch because he spent that time holed up in the library studying instead of in the cafeteria. The school librarian was old enough and blind enough that she didn't even know he was there as long as he stayed quiet.

During the week, he ate only what May cooked for dinner at night. He was young enough that she didn't expect him to help prepare food, so he avoided the kitchen until she was almost done, then he set the table. This way he wasn't around while she gathered ingredients, opening cabinets and revealing cans or boxes that looked just like the ones people had collapsed against.

If May suspected anything, she didn't let on. She probably thought he ate more at dinner than he used to because he'd hit a growth spurt or something.

Weekends were a little better. Saturday and Sunday mornings he woke up to homemade chocolate milk. May had always made the best chocolate milk. She somehow knew the perfect ratio of milk and Hershey syrup. She left in on the table in his Chewbacca mug with the stirring spoon still in it—he always drank with the spoon still in the cup. She had her coffee while he sipped his milk and they talked about their week. It quickly became Peter's favorite time, both because of the quality time spent with Aunt May and because he knew the calorific drink would make the gnawing hunger leave him alone for longer.