Lying Heart
It's a weird sensation, feeling his own heartbeat slow in his chest, as if the muscle is tiring and thickening and losing momentum. Peter hasn't breathed for a long time, but somehow he is still here, deaf and unseeing but alive. His father seems to understand this, because he doesn't leave Peter's side, or at least Peter is somewhat certain that he hasn't. He feels a rough hand on his forehead, pushing his hair out of his face—maybe he's imagining it, but it feels too familiar, too innate for him to delude it.
Peter remembers when his father used to put him to bed, how he would read him a story and promise to stay in his room until he fell asleep. It's the kind of memory that Peter has long since forgotten, one that he may have never recovered if it weren't for this awful moment, lying on the cement beside his father and waiting to die. The memory comforts him, gives him some ability to forgive his father in these final moments. He must have loved Peter once, to sit there in that chair every night without fail and wait for him. He must have.
It's hard to be upset. Peter wants to be, but there is nothing difficult about this, there is no decision left to be made. He doesn't want to die, but he finds himself not minding it. He wonders if he'll see Uncle Ben. He wonders if he'll see his mother. At least he won't have too much to answer about if he sees Gwen's dad.
Will he know when it happens, when it's finally over? There have been plenty of moments Peter has assumed his own demise and been mistaken, but this time he is almost curious what will happen to him, if he will remember anything about this at all.
After that, it's Gwen he thinks of, mostly. He knows she will be okay, in her own way, eventually. She is bright, she is resilient—she is already exceptional, and has the potential to go on and be even greater than she already is. It's Gwen who will be a real hero at the end of this, Peter is sure. It's Gwen who will change the world. He wishes he could be here to watch it happen, but even if he were it would be at arm's length, always hoping for her happiness but disavowing it, always thinking in his selfish heart that she would be happier if she were with him.
It's better this way. Now he can wish the best for her and mean it.
The hand pushes his hair back again and stays there. He can't feel his heart beating anymore. His limbs feel so light and weightless that he isn't sure if his body still exists.
"Peter!"
It sounds like a memory; he has heard her call his name like this plenty of times before.
"Is he—is he—?"
She's crying. Peter wonders how she found him, but she has always had an uncanny knack for being in the last place Peter wants her to be.
His father doesn't say anything, or at least nothing that Peter can hear, but there must be a look or a gesture or some kind of finality because Gwen screams the word "no" and Peter feels her hands on his chest, wringing her fingers into the spandex of his suit as if she is searching for something. He hears great, gulping sobs, and the sound of his father saying that it's over, that they have to leave.
"No," Gwen shrieks, "I'm not—I'm not leaving him here."
There is a long pause. "There is nothing more we can do."
He feels an indescribable pressure on his chest, a rhythm, constant and hard. "No," says Gwen again, her voice strained, and Peter realizes that she is trying to press into him and start his heart. He remembers watching her in gym class two years ago, the memory almost like a snapshot: she was doing this to a practice dummy, laughing at some joke her friend made, her hair just slightly untucked from its headband—Peter watched her so long that his own practice dummy probably died from lack of oxygen. He loved her then, before he knew her, and he loves her now, now that he knows almost everything.
It's an unimportant thing to remember at a time like this, but in a way it's the most important. It's this girl that he loves even at her most ordinary. He could pick through a thousand unremarkable memories of her and feel the same overwhelming, undeniable rush every time.
She won't give up on him now. His heart isn't beating, and he has the distinct sense that she is the only reason he is still here.
"Come on," she says, and the pulse of her hands on his chest is harder, faster. "Peter."
His father's voice is low and pained. "You have to let him go."
Gwen ignores him. "He won't die, he's—Peter, please," she says, and the words seem to squeak out of her like a balloon losing its helium, as if there they are trapped in her throat. He feels her lift up his head just a moment before he feels the warm, intrusive burst of her breath in his lungs. His head touches cement again and she starts the rhythm against his chest, persistent and unstoppable.
There are sirens in the distance.
"They'll help him. You have to—an ambulance—"
His father takes in a shuddering breath. "He's gone."
"He isn't," she screams, "he can't be."
"You don't understand … the serum … there is no coming back."
Thump. Thump. Thump. She doesn't stop. Peter can almost feel every inch of himself fading if it weren't for the pounding on his chest, artificially pumping his useless heart.
"Help!" Gwen screams, "You have to help him!"
"Don't get them involved—"
"Peter, please!" She pounds a frustrated fist into his chest and the contact is so jarring that his body arches reflexively. "P-Peter?"
"Ma'am, you're going to have to move out of the way."
Peter feels people all around him now, bodies he doesn't know.
"Please, you have to save him," says Gwen, "please."
She isn't near him anymore. He can't feel her hands on his chest, can't feel anything at all. He doesn't want this. His father is right; it's over. He wishes for a moment that she had just let him go peacefully, had let him die with the comfort of her at his side, but as the rest of his thoughts slide into oblivion he knows that if Gwen is the same girl he has loved all this time, she would never let him go that easily.
He doesn't see Uncle Ben, or his mother, or anyone, for that matter. He has dreams that seem to tangle and interweave. Sometimes he realizes he is dreaming, sometimes he thinks he is dead, sometimes he is so unflinchingly certain that it is reality that it crushes him to be torn away from it.
He dreams of sitting in the back of his parents' car that rainy night they dropped him off. He dreams of his father setting him down on the kitchen counter, of watching his legs dangle so far from the tiled floor. He dreams of man with the star tattoo on his wrist. He dreams of overdue term papers and his first camera and the day the neighbor's dog chased him half a mile from his house. He dreams of his mother asking him if he wanted to be a big brother; dreams of this necklace she used to wear, and how she would watch herself in the mirror when she clasped it around her neck.
He dreams of things long forgotten and things that demand his every shred of his attention. He dreams of Gwen, but shortly, and unhappily. She never stays long enough.
What feels like hundred years of dreaming ends in a flash. His eyes fly open and he gasps, his entire body wracking with agony—he's in the ambulance, people are hovering over him, everything seems too bright. He closes his eyes, expecting to fall into the abyss again, but the next shock comes to soon and he jerks forward and breathes this time, really breathes.
He is alive. His body is screaming with the unbearable, amazing realization of it. There are several sets of hands trying to deter him from sitting up, but Peter can't help himself, and he shoots up, unwittingly ripping equipment off his body.
He's breathing. His heart beats like a gunning engine. He looks around wildly, eyes wide, gulping everything in. The two people in the ambulance with him have backed up as if he might strike at any moment. Peter tries to laugh and wheezes, putting a hand to his chest, feeling everything at once. He croaks a thank you to the emergency personnel. Nobody tries to stop him as he barrels out of the ambulance.
As soon as he leaves the ambulance he sees her, her back turned to him, her body still shaking and her face obscured by her hands. He runs to her. He will tell her everything. He will love her with every fiber of his being, love her the way she deserves, and never look back.
"Gwen," he exclaims.
She turns her head. He sees a fringe of hair, a curve of her cheek, the beginnings of a smile.
Then the dream tears out from under his feet. She is gone, she is faded away, and Peter is alone in the abyss again.
She never stays long enough.
When he finally wakes up, he's in his bedroom.
There is nothing startling about it. By the way the light is shifting in his window he guesses it's sometime in the evening. There are several needles embedded into his skin, and Peter quietly pulls them out and tries to sit up.
His aunt flinches awake from the desk. She looks at him with some amount of disbelief. There are creases on her cheeks where she rested them on his papers and the general disarray of the desk surface, and her eyes are bleary, her whole posture slumped and much older then Peter ever remembers her seeming.
"How did I … ?" Peter starts.
She stands quickly and walks over to him. "You're talking," she says, shaking her head, her eyes wet.
"I—yeah," he agrees. "But I—I thought that—"
"Your father," says Aunt May. She shakes her head again. "I swear, Peter, I swear. I didn't know."
Peter hoists himself up and his aunt kneels next to his bed so they're finally at eye level with each other. "What happened?"
She reaches out to smooth the bed covers unnecessarily. "I'm not sure about the details," she says, "but you never showed up for dinner—and there were holes in our walls—and I tried not to worry, but then, then the whole night passed, and your phone wasn't on, and sometime in the morning there was a knock at the door, and—" She pauses, blinking hard, frowning. "A man was carrying you. Your father."
Peter nods. "He's—well. I guess he's alive."
"I didn't know," she says again. "I realize now—that that's what you were getting at, and—I did recognize his handwriting on that note, Peter, I did, but I just couldn't even imagine that he was still alive, it seemed impossible. Eleven years …"
"Yeah," says Peter, not quite able to look at her. He wonders how Aunt May feels knowing the truth—that she didn't really need to be taking care of Peter all these years, that the burden of raising him could have easily been lifted by a man who decided to disappear.
She touches a hand to his cheek and says, "Hey."
He looks up guardedly. The corner of her mouth twitches upward.
"Lord knows you've given me more trouble than any old woman deserves," she says. "But I wouldn't trade a moment of it. Not for anything. You understand?"
I realize that I have drastically confused people: I said that the last chapter was up Thursday, and some of you thought that that meant the next chapter was the last one and I was waiting three days to post it, but what I meant was I had three more chapters left, and the last of all the chapters will be posted on Thursday. Someday I will make sense to other humans. Until then ... I will write fanfiction.
In other news, I'm officially on iTunes! Not for the Andrew Garfield song, but there's only so much creepering a person can do on the internet before it gets just plain weird, and I think it's safe to say I already crossed that line somewhere within the 200 pages of this story. Trawlawlawlawl.