I think way back when I was posting Gravesen, someone asked if the story would include a hospital Christmas. As you can probably tell from the title of this chapter, this story does. This also might be the fluffiest chapter in the history of fluff, in my personal opinion.
Chapter 11: A Gravesen Christmas
"I heard you had a little adventure yesterday," Dr. van Dyne began. Peter nodded and grinned sheepishly. The memory of it still sat fresh in his mind, repeatedly making him smile out of nowhere. "I'm glad to hear you managed to have some fun, even though it involved breaking some rules." Peter wondered if she knew about the sandwich, if that was an angle she was going to try and work to get him back to eating real food. Evidently, she either didn't know or didn't plan on exploiting it, because the rest of the session proceeded much the same as usual. She released Peter after an hour, and he walked back to his room thinking about how the session would have gone if he could tell her about that moment.
A few days passed and Bucky got discharged, much to his elation. He really wanted to spend Christmas at home, and now it looked like he would have that wish granted. The holiday decorations on the ward had gone up on the first of December, bringing more warmth and color than Peter had ever seen in these hallways. Now, less than a week before the big day, Peter was full of more nerves than holiday cheer. His last two Christmases had both been first Christmases without people, the grief burning at the forefront of his mind preventing him from feeling much cheer. Peter stared at the LEGO Death Star he kept in his room, the one thing that had managed to lift his spirits last year. Building it with Ned had been some of the most fun Peter had in years.
The tree in the common room shaded a medium-sized pile of presents, most of them donated from charities. Peter sifted through them and found one addressed specifically to him…from Carol. Fortunately, she didn't catch him looking at it. He'd found it tucked among the others, so she'd probably hidden it so he wouldn't discover its existence. Now Peter needed to get something for her in return, but he didn't have any money nor a means of going shopping anywhere. Maybe that's why she'd hidden it, so he wouldn't stress about reciprocating. Unable to do much else, Peter decided to make something.
Dr. Wilson had tried to get him to write as a means of communicating, but every time he'd tried his hand froze up just like his throat when he tried to speak. However, sitting alone in his room with art supplies he'd nabbed from the common room cabinets, knowing that the recipient had no idea he was even making anything, Peter found the words actually came. He wrote about how glad he was to have met her, how she'd become as much a sister to him as anyone he'd ever known, and how he hoped this card made up for countless one-sided conversations. Instead of decorating it like an elementary schooler, Peter chose to leave the card mostly plain and hope the content made it a satisfactory present. Besides, his art skills were subpar at best, and Carol had grown used to Steve's caliber of work. He kept it in his room instead of stowing it under the tree to ensure Carol didn't know about it until Christmas morning.
"Hey Parker," she said as they sat in the common room together two days before Christmas. He could tell from the tone of her voice she wanted to discuss something important, so he nodded to indicate he was listening. "Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and my family's coming here to spend the evening with me." Unconsciously, Peter's shoulders sagged. Honestly, they did that every time he heard the word "family" nowadays. Carol continued, "But I don't want you to be alone on Christmas, so you're welcome to hang out with us if you want to." The offer genuinely surprised and touched him. Knowing Peter didn't have one, Carol had decided to share her family. As much as Peter wanted to at least pretend he belonged to a family again, he didn't want to impose on the Danvers. As far as he knew, this would be the first time Carol saw her mom in person since she was deployed, and Peter didn't want to distract from that reunion. If he was there, Carol would focus on introducing him and attempting to casually explain that he was mute, not rude, instead of enjoying quality time with them. Peter shook his head in answer.
"Are you sure?" she asked. He nodded. "Well, okay then."
Christmas Eve arrived, and Carol's family appeared on the ward just before four in the afternoon. Peter peeked his head out from his room just far enough to observe them. Carol resembled her dad more so than her mom, but the young man with them more than either parent. He must've been her older brother, but Peter had never heard her mention a sibling. She hugged him just as tightly as her parents, so her not talking about him wasn't out of bad blood. Maybe she avoided the subject so Peter wouldn't feel bad about not having siblings. How different would his life have been with a brother or sister? Would the foster care system have separated them? Would Aunt May and Uncle Ben have been willing to take on two kids when his parents died? Would his parents have even died?
Peter let that train of thought get too far. Now he missed Ned and Michelle, the closest thing to siblings he'd ever had, with a fierce desperation. Ned FaceTimed him occasionally to check in, but Peter still couldn't hold up his end of a conversation. While Carol caught up with her family, Peter decided to call Ned.
The boy picked up on the second ring and his smiling face popped up on the screen. "Hey Peter!" he greeted. "Merry Christmas."
Peter smiled in response. Ned's face fell ever so slightly when he realized Peter still hadn't found his voice. At this point, Peter wasn't sure it would ever come back, but just seeing Ned brought a warm and fuzzy feeling to his chest.
"Is the hospital all decorated and stuff?" he asked eagerly. Peter nodded and stood up to offer Ned a virtual tour. He flipped the camera and showed off the garlands strewn up and down the walls of the corridor and the central nursing station whose base was now covered in paper cutouts of reindeer, snowmen, and candy canes. Nurse Heimdall caught him walking around pointing his phone's camera at everything and offered him a warm smile. Peter didn't know where Carol and her family ended up, so he balked at the idea of walking into the common room.
"Is there a tree?" Ned asked. Peter flipped the camera back to his face and nodded. "Show me!" With a gulp, Peter set off for the common room and peeked inside. Sure enough, the four Danvers were seated on the sofas. Carol and her brother seemed to be locked in a war, alternating whose foot sat on top of the other's on the ottoman in front of them. Peter feared one of them might break an ankle with how strongly they were competing. Finally, they broke off the fight with a laugh.
"What are you waiting for?" came Ned's voice, and only then did Peter realize he'd had the camera facing a blank wall for the past minute or two. He opened the door slowly and hoped Carol didn't make a production of his entrance.
"What's up, Parker?" she asked as he stood in the doorway. "Guys, this is my neighbor, Peter Parker."
"Hi Peter," Carol's mom said warmly. He gave a slight wave with his free hand and tried not to let himself completely collapse with self-consciousness.
"Who's this?" Ned asked.
"Oh, are you on a call?" Carol asked. "Sorry. Can I say hi?" Peter nodded. She waved at the camera and said, "Hello Peter's friend. I'm Carol."
"Ned," he replied. "I'm Peter's former foster brother."
"That's cool. I'll bet he makes a great brother." Peter blushed. He'd just wanted to show Ned the tree and get out, but now he was trapped in here. Hopefully this conversation wouldn't last too long and he could let Carol be with her family.
"Eh, he's alright," Ned said cheekily.
"He's got to be better than Steve." That comment confused Peter until he saw Carol's brother punch her in the bicep for it. Apparently Steve was her brother's name too. Peter found it kind of funny that her best friend at Gravesen had the same name as her big brother.
"You're one to talk," Steve countered.
"Shut up." Peter used their distraction to point Ned towards the tree and then started to back away. "You're leaving so soon?" Carol questioned.
He nodded and turned tail. Just before he closed the door behind him, he heard Carol's mom ask, "Is he alright?" and wondered how she answered that question. Frankly, he wasn't sure what the answer was.
~0~
The Danvers stayed until well after curfew, so Peter went to sleep. After seeing Ned, watching Carol interact with her parents and brother, and remembering past Christmases that weren't so terrible, all the pent-up emotions inside of him exploded when the nurse brought his feed for the night. Sharon hadn't even connected the tubing before panic washed over his brain like a tsunami and a band made of steel clenched around his chest. Her efforts to calm him down proved futile. After having so many of them, Peter could recognize when a panic attack was treatable and when it would inevitably hold him in its clutches for however long it could. This one definitely wouldn't let go anytime soon.
Even the meds Nurse Sharon administered failed to bring the calming effects they usually did. His vision swam, the room in front of him blurring in and out of focus, interposed with images of the grocery store and May's hospital room. Peter vaguely wondered if this is what it felt like to have uncontrollable asthma attacks like Steve. Only instead of dogs or dust that triggered them, Peter only needed to see things he would never have again.
Just when he resigned himself to feel like this forever he finally got a hold of his breathing and started following Sharon's instructions. As quickly as it came on, that's how slowly it subsided. "You're okay," Sharon soothed. Yeah, right, Peter wanted to say. The only reason this happened was because he was so, so far from okay.
All he wanted for Christmas was to be okay again.
~0~
Carol woke him up. Well, more accurately, Carol made him get out of bed. Peter hadn't slept much of the night, too shaken by the panic attack and the fact that this was his second Christmas without any family. How many thirteen-year-olds could say that? "Parker, up and at 'em!" she called, knocking harshly on his door. "It's Christmas!"
Peter rolled his eyes at her juvenile excitement. He knew she was just putting on a show for him, and he appreciated it, but it was a little over-the-top. Regardless, he did get up and get dressed, meeting her outside his door. "It's about time," she said exasperatedly. "I thought you'd keep me waiting until New Year's." She grabbed his hand and started pulling him towards the common room, but before they could get far Peter remembered the card he'd made for her. He planted his feet and tugged in the opposite direction, pointing back at his doorway.
"Forget something?" she asked. He nodded, and she let go of his hand. Peter scampered back to the room, snatched up the card, and returned with it behind his back. Together, they marched into the common room and found that Santa (more likely a group of volunteers) had added more presents to the pile and hung a few stockings from temporary hooks on the wall. All the grief in Peter's heart nudged over just far enough to let in some joy. He sat down behind one of the boxes and slid the card under it so Carol wouldn't see yet.
"There's no way we're opening all of these," she announced. "Some of them should go back into storage for any kids that might show up in the next few days, or distributed to other wards. I know for a fact that the PICU doesn't have its own tree, so we should ask that these get delivered there."
Peter nodded in agreement and watched Carol sift through the boxes intently, as if searching for one in particular. A cry of triumph and she emerged with a perfectly cube-shaped box wrapped in gold paper, about the size of a coffee mug. "This one caught my eye a few days ago, and I'm wondering what the hell it is. Do you have any guesses?" she asked. Peter only shrugged. "I guess we'll have to find out." Carol brought the box closer so Peter could see and tore at the wrapping paper, revealing an iridescent blue cube. She inspected it closely, looking for a lid, button, or anything that would clue them in as to what the object was, but she found nothing. "You try," she prompted, handing it off to Peter. He looked at every face, edge, and corner, but as far as he could tell it was just a fancy-looking cube. Peter explained his guess as best he could by placing the object on the corner of the torn-up wrapping paper.
"You think it's just a paperweight?" Carol asked. He nodded. She was pretty darn good at guessing what he meant. "I was that excited over a paperweight? I thought it looked so cool, the perfectly square box in the gold wrapping paper, and I open it to find a glorified rock?" Peter smiled and shrugged. He picked out one small box from under the tree and opened it to find a necklace shaped like an eye.
"That looks pretty cool, though I'm guessing by the look on your face it's not your style," Carol commented. Peter offered it to her, but she declined. "Not mine either. It looks like something a wizard would wear." She crawled back to the tree and pulled out another box, one Peter recognized as her present to him. He tried to disguise the fact that he already knew it was there, widening his eyes when she brought it close enough for him to read the nametag. Letting her drink in the euphoria of having surprised him for a few moments, Peter reached under the big box beside him and pulled out the card.
"Peter Parker, you got something for me?" she said, sounding genuinely surprised and thrilled. He nodded with a grin. She took the card gently and stared at it as if it were just as mystifying as the glowy blue cube. "How about we open them at the same time?" As she opened the envelope, Peter picked at the paper on his box, but not before he shook it to try and guess its contents. He would recognize that rattle anywhere.
"Whoa, there's a lot of words here," Carol said once she pulled the card out. Peter finished with the wrapping paper and found exactly what he'd guessed: LEGOs. But it wasn't any set he knew of, just a collection of minifigure parts for characters he didn't recognize. Carol noticed his confusion and grinned; apparently she'd wanted this gift to be difficult to figure out. "How about you try and put those together while I read through this?"
Peter nodded, eager for the challenge of deciphering this little puzzle. He dumped out the pieces and surveyed them, looking for anything unique enough to let him know what the heck this was. One of the torsos caught his eye because it was broken; the left arm was missing. Peter plucked it out of the pile and held it out to Carol with a confused quirk of his eyebrows.
"It's not broken," she said cryptically. Peter turned back to the pile and separated out the only pieces that weren't for minifigures: the smallest LEGO wheels available, the clip that held their axel and allowed them to roll, a cylinder, and one of those little megaphone-shaped pieces. He put them together in the first configuration to come to mind and ended up with something resembling a tank on wheels.
No way.
A missing left arm? A tank on wheels? He knew people who fit those descriptions, or at least would within the next few months. Peter counted the heads, four, and looked at all the hairstyles, finding they all resembled those of him and his friends here. He looked at the rest of the torsos and sure enough, one of them was white with a grey Nine Inch Nails logo on it. Carol wore that shirt at least once a week. He raced to assemble them as quickly as possible and proudly presented the results to Carol. "I had a bet with my brother on how quickly you'd figure it out." She glanced at her phone to check the time. "I won. Do you like it?"
Peter thought he might start crying, but instead he nodded enthusiastically and extended his arms for a hug which Carol gladly reciprocated. "Did you write this note yourself?" she whispered in his ear before they released each other. This time, instead of nodding, he gave a thumbs-up. "I don't think anyone's ever done anything so meaningful for me. Thank you."
"You're welcome," was right there at the front of his brain. So was, "Everything I said in there is true," and, "Words could never be enough, but they're all I had." But none of those would transform into speech. Still, Peter could tell by the way Carol looked back at him that he didn't need to say anything for her to know how he felt. He'd written it all down, after all.
For his second Christmas without any family, it was actually a fantastic Christmas. And if Peter spent the rest of the day pitting LEGO Carol, Bucky, Steve, and himself against Emperor Palpatine from his Death Star set in a battle to save the galaxy like a five-year-old boy with his action figures, well…nobody needed to know.
~0~
"You know, you remind me of someone," Carol stated, mindlessly throwing and catching the blue cubic paperweight that she'd insisted was a stupid gift but had kept anyway. Bucky had been here for a week and a half around New Year's but had since been discharged until his next round, so it was just the two of them again. Peter curled up in the corner of one couch while Carol stretched out horizontally across another. Every once in a while, she nearly missed catching the cube and he feared one of the corners would take out her eye. But even if he told her to stop or at least sit up, he knew she wouldn't. So he just sat there silently observing like he always did.
"You remind me of that little robot guy from Star Wars," she continued. Peter perked up at the mention of his favorite movies. "The blue and white one who's always hanging out with the golden guy. He's loyal, and everybody loves him even though he doesn't talk. Although I guess the beeping counts as talking since everyone can understand him, but you get the point. Man, what's his name? I know it's a bunch of letters and numbers like all the robots but I can't remember." She tossed the cube a little higher than before, spinning it with a flick of her wrist. It flew in a slight arc instead of straight up and down and almost crashed into her chest. "It's killing me," she said, tapping the cube against her forehead as if to jog her memory. "MP3? No, that's definitely not it. I think it starts with an R…RT? That's not it either.
"R2D2."
"What?!" Carol shot up, the cube skittering to the floor. She glanced around the room frantically, looking for the source of the voice. When she failed to find a possible alternative, her eyes settled on Peter. "Did you…did you just…say that?"
Eyes wide, Peter nodded. He was just as shocked as Carol, frankly. A part of him had been convinced he'd never regain the ability to speak, and he'd begun to accept that. Something must have loosened the mental knot that closed off his speech, but he didn't know what. Vaguely, he remembered his aunt and uncle mentioning that he hadn't started talking until he was three years old. His parents had been terrified that he was born deaf or mute and had taken him to countless doctors to figure out what was wrong. And then he just started talking one day. No one understood why. The best explanation they got was that some exceptionally bright children were late talkers and maybe Peter fit into this genius category. But that same reason couldn't possibly apply to his psychogenic mutism.
Carol had asked him plenty of questions in his time here. Most of them were yes or no questions that he could answer, but some were more complicated ones. More often than not, she just expected him to listen. Talking to someone who wouldn't respond didn't seem to bother her. But this particular question was simple and related to his favorite thing in the world, possibly the only thing that didn't carry tainted memories. Before he could even register that he was actually talking, the name slipped out of his mouth in a muted whisper. Two months of disuse really did a number on one's vocal cords.
"Are you serious? That was you?" Carol was obviously thrown, yet also elated, by his sudden opening up. Her eyes brightened and a half shocked, half overjoyed smile appeared on her face. Peter nodded again. "Oh my god. You—you answered. This is insane." He couldn't help but mirror her excitement in his own face. His first words had been his own name, Peter Parker, and his second first words had been another name, the name of one of his favorite characters.
"Could you…do you think you could do it again?" she asked. Peter shrugged. She started muttering to herself before she looked back up at him, "Okay, he answered my question about some Star Wars character, maybe if I ask another…Parker, I mentioned the golden guy he's always hanging out with, what's that one's name?"
The first time he'd answered reflexively, without even consciously thinking about it. Now she was asking him face-to-face and expecting a verbal answer. Now that the pressure was on, he wasn't sure he could deliver. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Peter focused on the goal: teaching his confused friend about Star Wars. He opened his eyes and looked straight at Carol. "C3PO."
"Oh my god. Oh my god. I didn't believe you the first time. I legit thought I was hearing voices, but…oh my god. Is this…is this the beginning of something bigger? You could talk before, right?"
Peter nodded.
"Do you think you'll get back to speaking freely like that?"
He shrugged. This was just as new to him as it was to Carol, and he had no idea if he'd be able to produce more than one word at a time. Hopefully, he'd be able to do that. Peter wanted to communicate, but for two months now he'd been psychologically incapable. Dr. Wilson had told him it was probably because of the stress of being uprooted from his third family and dropped into an environment so similar to where he'd lost his aunt. Once he found security, he'd find his voice again, the psychiatrist had surmised. That must be it. Here, in this common room where he enjoyed time with his friends, with just him and Carol who treated him like a little brother, he felt safe again.
"It's you," Peter mumbled.
"What? What's me?" Carol asked.
Peter cleared his throat. "Talking."
"What do you mean?"
"Safe," Peter said with a shrug, his throat already hurting from the activity after resting for so long.
"I make you feel safe enough to talk?" she guessed. He nodded, and Carol's eyes glistened with pride. "Wow. I'm so happy to hear that, and in your voice nonetheless! You know, I used to picture your voice in my head, and it's not all that different than what you actually sound like. Although I suppose you're a little froggier right now than your true normal voice."
Peter smiled. As much as he was glad to have rediscovered his ability to talk, he did love listening to Carol ramble. Hopefully she would still do it even if she knew he could contribute to the conversation.
"Do you think you'll start talking to Dr. Wilson and Dr. van Dyne too?" she asked, suddenly hesitant. Peter shrugged. The fact of the matter was he remained wary. For the past few weeks, they'd focused on building rapport to get him comfortable enough to talk to them, postponing discussion of his inability to eat. Verbalizing his experiences with the grocery store and May's illness, as the Falcon no doubt expected of him at some point, would bring up so many emotions that Peter had spent a long time burying. If he dug them up, there was no telling when the anguish would stop.
I have no idea if you can actually order personalized LEGO minifigures, but the idea popped into my head and it was so frickin cute that I didn't care whether or not it was realistic. Also, Carol Danvers does canonically have a brother named Steve in the movies. I didn't make that up just to make things awkward for Steve Rogers. We see him a few times in the flashback/memory scenes and he's credited as "Steve Danvers." Who knew?
