I had another idea for 'Grief' so I decided to go ahead and post it here as a bonus!
Grief (another one)
A year to the day after they'd buried her uncle found Penny Parker sitting on a bench outside of the cemetery where his casket still lay approximately six feet under the ground. Wasn't that how deep they buried them, she wondered idly, shivering as snowflakes swirled around her face. Six feet? That's what the TV shows all said. Did someone measure? Did a machine dig the grave that held her uncle's body? Or had people done it? It was mid-January and her fingers were so cold they felt numb, and her toes were kind of wet from the snow that had seeped in through her boots, but none of that mattered because her uncle was in a box under the ground and it was all of her fault.
Penny was no stranger to boxes…in fact, she had a lot of boxes. That's how she thought of them. There were big ones and small ones, and all of them had a place and all of them had a purpose. She hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about what they looked like, but she knew they were there, sitting around in her mind and holding the things she needed them to hold. They stayed locked up most of the time…parts of her life that were better off kept out of sight and out of mind. Her aunt didn't know about them, of course. No one did. That was the whole point. She was an honors student at one of the best schools in the city and she had an internship with Tony Stark. She was a superhero and a member of her Academic Decathlon team and no one needed to know about the boxes she kept locked away.
Only sometimes, things got out. They escaped.
She'd made her first box when she'd been around eight years old. That was when she'd learned to be quiet about the things that she loved. Sometimes she thought something was wrong with her…other people didn't seem to love things the way that she did. They didn't watch the same movies over and over, wearing out the VHS tape and then panicking and sobbing until their aunt and uncle bought a new copy (and a backup copy for when she inevitably wore that one out too.) And she didn't think their hearts did a little flip in their chests, their whole body lighting up with excitement whenever they saw books about the things they loved, or when they saw copies of those VHS tapes (or later, DVDs) in the store. They didn't make up their own little stories about the characters or scour the internet for art other people had made about the thing they loved. In fact, she was pretty sure that most people just…watched stuff. And read books. And then they moved on with their lives.
She had no idea what those people could possibly spend all of their time thinking about.
It hadn't been her aunt and uncle who had told her that she should keep her love of Star Wars to herself. She still remembered the day she'd first seen The Phantom Menace in her living room…how at six years old, she'd been absolutely entranced. How she'd pretended to be Obi-Wan Kenobi at recess with her best friend Ned (there weren't any girl Jedi in the Phantom Menace) every single day, and the two had pretended that sticks were lightsabers and then, when their teacher had ordered them to put the sticks down because they were going to 'poke each other's eyes out', they'd moved onto stealth missions that didn't involve lightsabers…until they'd moved out of the teacher's eyeline where they'd promptly picked up their lightsabers again.
And she remembered telling May and Ben all about their games, and giving them a play by play of her favorite scenes, sometimes acting them out with sound effects. They had smiled indulgently and had let her talk, taking note of every Star Wars toy and Star Wars book and Star Wars game and Star Wars LEGO set that she wanted and adding them to her Christmas and Birthday lists.
But then her and Ned had been at lunch one day, halfway through 3rd grade…she still remembered how the pizza on her tray had tasted, with the rubbery cheese and crispy pepperoni cubes, and how her chocolate milk had been open on both sides of the carton because she hadn't been able to get the first side open, and how Ned had been grinning and leaning over the table to tell her all about how his new toy lightsaber made a noise when you swung it, and he'd been making the noises and swinging the pretend lightsaber…
That's when she'd glanced over at the girls sitting a few feet away, catching the way Erika, one the prettiest girls in their class who'd started carrying a bright pink purse to school every day which held the lip gloss she'd started wearing after her eighth birthday and was in the shape of a heart, had rolled her eyes, meeting the gaze of the girl across from her and snickering. And Penny had felt the rush of shame wash over her, her stomach twisting in a knot and her whole body going hot and prickly. She'd known then…they were making fun of him.
It happened again on the playground at recess that day. The teacher was watching so they couldn't use sticks, and for the first time, Penny had felt self-conscious about picking up her pretend lightsaber. She'd watched Ned hold his pretend lightsaber in his hands, fingers wrapped around the imaginary handle, and then she'd glanced over to find Erika and her friends watching from the swings they'd been perched on, giggling and whispering amongst themselves, and she'd felt that same shame sweep over her, cheeks going hot once more.
In the years since, she'd wondered how Ned had been so unselfconscious about how much he loved Star Wars…how he could hold a pretend lightsaber and replicate the noises while he jumped around the playground and pretended to have an epic battle with her while everyone could see them. She didn't understand how he couldn't see the other kids snickering at him, or how they would giggle and whisper about him. And she'd wanted to stand up for him…to tell them it wasn't fair! That they were just playing. But she'd never been brave enough…instead, she'd asked if he wanted to play over on the other side of the playground where not as many kids were standing around, or had told him she wanted to play something else.
She'd gotten the point loud and clear, though. Normal kids didn't love things that much. And kids who weren't normal got made fun of and mocked and pointed at during recess, so she'd put her love of all things Star Wars in a box. The box wasn't locked, though. She got it out when she was at home or with Ned, the two of them safe and alone. She went to the new movies and watched the TV shows and talked with Ned for hours about their theories and they made up their own stories and she read fanfiction on the regular, making sure her phone brightness was all the way down and that no one was reading over her shoulder.
That had been her first box.
Skip had been the next one, a year later.
An older boy. He'd lived in her building. His lips on hers and the way she'd let him touch her because she hadn't known how to say no. That went in a different box. A smaller one. So small and locked up so tightly that what was inside would hopefully never get out. And any time a flash of that memory came back…any time she remembered her own nervousness or the way that boy's hand had felt on her skin in the dark alley behind the playground in their building where they'd been playing, just out of sight of her aunt and uncle and of his parents, she shoved it all back in the box, locking it up tighter and hiding it even deeper inside of herself in the hopes that what was inside would eventually suffocate, never to be seen again.
And then there was her uncle.
Logically, Penny knew that there was no reason for her to feel ashamed of how much she loved something…no reason for her to keep her love of Star Wars that felt like more like obsession sometimes, but in a good way, between herself and Ned, so much so that she barely even talked to May about it anymore. She knew that. And there was no reason for her stomach to turn into a ball of lead, or for her whole body to flush hot, her heart lodging in her throat when she thought about telling May about kissing an older boy behind the playground, even if she knew that it hadn't been kissing…not really. She knew that her aunt would be on her side. She knew it would be safe to open that box because her aunt would be there with her and because even though it would hurt, somehow, instinctively, she knew that she would feel better at the end of it. And she knew that if she could just stop caring what Flash thought of her, she would be happier.
Mr. Stark had a box too…Mr. Stark and Happy and the months of voicemails she'd left that had gone unanswered and that moment when he'd taken her suit away…looking back at those eager voicemail reports she'd left for Mr. Stark's bodyguard still made her whole body flush with embarrassment even though Mr. Stark had told her to report to him! She still felt like she should have known! She should have understood that Happy Hogan wasn't interested in her little reports of giving tourists directions or stopping random neighborhood kids from stealing bicycles. So she put those memories in a box too.
But there was another box too…one that she never, ever opened. This one was bigger than the others, no matter how small she tried to make it. No matter how deep she buried it, it never stayed hidden. She'd even imagined herself doing it as she'd laid in bed, tears running down her cheeks in the dark of her room when the nightmares woke her…had imagined herself digging the deepest hole she could and throwing the box inside, then burying it under layers and layers of dirt until it could never be found. But no matter how many times she buried and reburied it, it always came back to the surface.
Because the facts were the facts.
She'd lied to her aunt and uncle about sneaking out after she'd gotten her powers. She'd fought with him when he'd called her out, saying horrible things to him because she'd been afraid and because she'd felt trapped and because he'd been right! She'd been the one to run out of the apartment. He'd followed her, but she still hadn't stopped. She'd been the one to duck into the convenience store, sure that he wouldn't follow her and make a scene in public.
She'd seen the man with the gun and she'd seen her uncle try to stop them and she'd already had her powers!
But instead of stopping the man who'd shot her uncle, she'd just stood there, frozen in place, like a frightened child instead of a superhero.
How could she ever feel anything but shame? How could she ever face what she'd done?
So she put it in a box and buried it over and over and over again. She moved on with her life and pretended that she wasn't the reason he was dead. She tried to avoid talking about him which wasn't all that hard because her aunt had been too heartbroken to bring him up for a long time and then they existed in a kind of uneasy silence that had eventually turned into a normal silence. Anything was normal if you did it for long enough.
She'd left school during lunch. Ned had been talking about Star Wars and the LEGO Millenium Falcon he'd gotten for Christmas and at first, she'd been fine. All day, she'd been fine. It wasn't the anniversary of the day they'd lost him…just the anniversary of the day they'd buried him, and it had been a whole year and sure, there were times that May stared at the photo from their wedding for a little too long or held her a little too tightly when she got back from patrolling the city, but things were okay and they were moving on and there was no reason to talk about any of it because what good would talking do and besides, Penny couldn't talk about it. She physically couldn't.
And then Flash had walked by.
Flash Thompson wasn't the kind of bully she'd seen on TV or read about in books. He had never shoved her into a locker or tripped her in class or thrown her books onto the floor in the hallway. Sure, he'd called her names and some days she thought that one more smart remark from him might be the thing that broke her, but most of the time, he was a fairly minor annoyance. She was Spider-Girl, a superhero that he had, on more than one occasion, said was his favorite, and she had an internship with The Tony Stark where she went to the actual Avengers Compound every other week and she had Ned and MJ and so she told herself again and again that it didn't matter what Flash thought of her…that his opinion was the least important opinion there was. That she would never see him again after high school anyway.
Except on that day, on the one year anniversary of the day she and May had buried her uncle, Penny had been almost happy. Or…maybe not happy. Distracted. She'd been distracted, thinking about spending time with her best friend and the LEGO sculpture they'd spend hours building together over the weekend after her internship on Friday…and then Flash had walked behind Ned, pausing only for a few seconds before moving on and rolling his eyes.
"Freaks."
He hadn't even stopped to make fun of them to their faces, instead sitting at his own table a few feet away. MJ hadn't looked up from her book, and Ned hadn't stopped talking, either having not heard Flash or having decided to ignore him, but either way, Flash's voice had been too loud for her to ignore as he'd told his friends what they were talking about.
"I'll bet they still play with lightsabers."
"That's all they ever talk about," a girl whose name Penny didn't even know had put in.
"Remember when they used to play Star Wars every day on the playground?" a guy who had gone to both elementary school and middle school with them had asked.
"Oh my god, didn't you say they used to hold pretend lightsabers and make the noises and everything?"
Penny knew that there was no reason for her to care what they thought and no reason for their words to hurt her so much. But she'd stood up from the lunch table anyway, ignoring the way MJ had stared at her and Ned's concerned voice calling her back…asking where she was going and if she was okay. She'd left her backpack in her locker and, with only her phone in her pocket, she'd walked right out of the cafeteria and then out the side door of the school, knowing that they would call her aunt and not being able to bring herself to care.
She'd promised her aunt that she would never skip school again (after the whole skipping detention thing) but sitting there on the bench as the snow fell in soft flakes around her, Penny didn't care about that either. Because one day, surely, her aunt would know. And she knew it wasn't the same…her embarrassment when Flash made fun of her for loving something too much and that deep, paralyzing shame when thoughts of her uncle clawed their way to the surface shouldn't feel so similar.
But they did. Because something was wrong with her. And surely one day everyone would know it. She loved things too much and she'd been too excited to talk to Mr. Stark and she'd been too afraid to say no to a boy on the playground when she should have been braver and then she'd been too afraid to stop the man who had killed her uncle even though that time, she'd had literal superpowers.
What kind of superhero couldn't even save their own family?
Penny heard the car. She heard the door shut. She heard the footsteps. But she didn't turn around. She couldn't. Because no matter who it was, whether they were here for her or not, she couldn't stand the thought of anyone seeing the tears running down her face. She knew how to stop crying most of the time. Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Hold your breath. Think about something else, anything else. Her favorite Star Wars fanfiction or the instructions for how to put together the LEGO Death Star that she and Ned had spent three whole weekends on, stopping only to eat. Sure, those things were embarrassing because, of course her love for Star Wars was too much and what kind of person tried to drown their real grief with a fictional world, but sometimes it felt like all she could do so she would take what she could get when it came to distraction.
Sitting on the bench outside of the cemetery, none of it was working. The grief wouldn't be drowned and the shame wouldn't go away and all she could do was sit there and stare at the tombstones and wonder if this feeling would pass or if this was how she'd feel for the rest of her life.
When Mr. Stark sat next to her on the bench, pausing only to brush snow off of the seat, she didn't turn her head…didn't dare make eye contact. Her hood was pulled up, she reasoned, so maybe he wouldn't see her face. Maybe he wouldn't know that she was crying or that she couldn't stop crying or that she felt surer and surer every day that her boxes wouldn't hold forever and that soon, everyone would know what a terrible person she was….that she was broken and that she was afraid even though she knew she shouldn't be…that she'd been afraid for so long and that so many parts of her felt so deeply shameful.
Mr. Stark was quiet for a long time, which was kind of strange…based on her limited experience with the man, he usually would have made some kind of joke by now…would have broken the tension with a smart remark. Not in a mean way…he wasn't mean. He just…he didn't do big emotions. And that was fine because she didn't want to either. Of the six or so times she'd been to the Compound for her internship, they'd had lots of conversations, and every single one had been about science or their projects or what college she wanted to go to or what they would eat for a snack before dinner, and exactly zero had been about anything involving emotions. So even if she did have any kind of feelings about what had happened at her Homecoming dance or the months during which she'd left Happy voicemails that had rarely been answered or how he'd taken her suit away…or the looming anniversary of her uncle's death, they certainly hadn't talked about them. Those things went into boxes and those boxes had locks and what were imaginary shovels for if not for burying imaginary boxes?
Six feet under, right?
"Your aunt called me," he told her after what felt like years but what must have been more like minutes. It was still so strange to her that her aunt had Tony Stark's phone number…that the two of them talked about her. That Mr. Stark kept her updated any time Penny got hurt and that they both made sure she stuck to her curfew…and that, apparently, when she skipped school, May told him about that too. "The school called her…she told me what day it was."
Penny didn't answer. Couldn't. Because the boxes were too close to the surface and she hadn't had time to bury them again and if she opened her mouth, he would know. And she didn't think anything in the whole world would be worse than Tony Stark knowing.
"I tried calling first…figured your phone was still on silent."
It was. Penny had felt it vibrate, of course. Had heard it buzz in her back pocket. And like the snow and like the boxes, she'd ignored it.
"So I had Friday track it."
She wanted to ask why he was there…why he'd bothered. He'd gone months without speaking to her. Why couldn't he just let this go? But that was mean…hadn't he made up for it? Hadn't he returned the suit and hadn't he given her an actual internship? That's what she'd wanted, right? Didn't moving forward make the past go away? If she kept burying the boxes, wouldn't they disappear?
"Did…did you want to…" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him jerk his chin towards the cemetery and the tombstone, one of which had her uncle's name on it. "I can wait here. Give you a ride home when you…uh…if you want."
She hated that he was being nice…hated that his voice had turned gentle because goddammit she didn't deserve gentle! She was the reason her uncle was dead! She was the reason that her aunt was alone, stuck with a child she hadn't asked for! Right then, Penny wanted to scream at him. She wanted to scream and throw things until he went away and maybe he'd take away the suit and maybe he'd take away the internship and maybe that's what she deserved.
"Or we could sit here and freeze to death."
There it was. Her lip twitched into a smile and she felt the pain in her chest ease just a little. "Option B," she whispered, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him nod.
"Yeah, alright. I guess I've had a good run." He sighed, sitting back against the bench and crossing his arms against the cold.
Maybe it was because he wasn't looking at her. Maybe it had been the joke, breaking the tension and making it just a little easier to breathe. Maybe it was because he'd come to find her and he hadn't dragged her off the bench and back to school.
Or maybe it was because, over the last three months, he'd become someone important to her…not a replacement for her uncle because no one in the world could ever replace her uncle, but someone important nonetheless. Not an uncle and not a father but…a Mr. Stark. His own category. His own box.
But the words built in her, practically choking her, and she thought that maybe, just maybe, if she could make herself say them, then maybe the anxiety and terror that built and built and finally crashed over her in waves that made her chest hurt so badly it felt like she was having a heart attack might finally stop. Maybe her limbs wouldn't feel as though they were weighted down with lead and maybe she'd be able to breathe again.
"It was my fault."
The whispered words were nearly lost to the wind but she knew he'd heard by the way he stiffened, and this wasn't normal territory for them. They didn't talk about things like this. He was Tony Stark and Tony Stark was a superhero and a billionaire and it was a miracle that she'd even gotten to meet him, much less gotten an internship with him, and if anything he was her boss, so there was no reason she should be saying this to him, but she said it again anyway, releasing the words as thought they were steam in a pressure cooker on the verge of exploding.
"It was my fault."
He didn't answer, just waited, and she went on, dragging every single word out of the box she'd buried over and over again, sure the whole time that pulling out her own teeth would have been less painful.
"We were fighting. I left the apartment. I ran…he followed me. Into the store. The man had a gun. I could…could have stopped it."
The words were inadequate. A chalk outline versus a full color photograph. But she was already crying and her whole body still felt so heavy it was almost impossible to move and it felt like more words just wouldn't come! Lifting her hands took every bit of strength she had and she managed to cover her face just in time for his hand to land on her shoulder, sure and strong and grounding her when it felt like she might explode from the pain.
"Kid, he had a gun," Mr. Stark murmured, a gentle reminder she didn't need because of course he'd had a gun! She still dreamed about the gun! Still had nightmares about the man with the mask who'd pointed a gun at the cashier and then at her uncle who had begged him not to shoot and about the sound it had made, so close to her, and the way his blood had soaked the front of his sweater, turning the maroon fabric nearly black.
"I had superpowers!" she cried, clutching her hair in her hands and relishing how it hurt. "I've stopped people with guns before!" And then, in answer to the question he didn't ask…that she'd barely been brave enough to ask herself, she went on. "I was scared!"
The hand moved from her shoulder, but instead of pulling away, he wrapped an arm around her, and it felt like a hug and usually she would have had some kind of feeling about that because he was her hero, the man she'd looked up to for as long as she could remember, from the first moment she'd seen him stand up in front of the press on TV and announce to the world that "I am Iron Man" but she couldn't feel anything other than the pain of her own confession.
"I was scared!" she sobbed again, but that wasn't entirely true because she was still scared! She was scared that her aunt would find out and that she would hate her and scared that she would freeze again and let someone else get hurt or let herself get hurt and scared that her inability to face any of this meant something was wrong with her and even more scared that everyone would know that something was wrong with her!
Mr. Stark put a hand on the back of her head, nodding a little as if to himself. "Yeah, that makes sense," he murmured after a moment, going on before she could argue. "It's okay to be scared, Pen. Someone was pointing a gun at someone you loved. Anyone would be scared." That didn't matter, but he kept talking anyway. "I would have been scared too. Hell, I've been there. And I am scared. Every single time."
"You still save people!"
"So do you."
"Not him!"
He sighed, his other hand coming to rest on her back. "Yeah. I know, kiddo. I'm sorry."
She closed her eyes and tried to bury it again. She had a routine. She would get the shovel and go back to the hole she'd dug that somehow, always, failed to do its one and only job. She would dig and dig and drop her box inside and then she would fill it all in again and she would think about something else. She would watch Star Wars again or text Ned or open social media or go to her internship and she would simply not think about that box. But she was so tired and it still hurt so badly that she couldn't make herself do it.
"Will you tell me about him?"
The question took her by surprise and she wanted to say no on instinct. She didn't talk about her uncle. Ever. Not with Ned and not with MJ and not with her aunt. They almost never brought him up and she didn't even let herself look at the pictures of him that still littered their house. The one that had always sat in her dresser now lay face down at the bottom of her sock drawer because how could she ever face something like that? How was she supposed to talk about the worst thing she'd ever done?
"Was he a fan of Iron Man?" Mr. Stark went on, voice light.
"He was more of a Captain America guy."
He huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, well…everyone has their flaws."
Penny smiled through the tears she'd almost forgotten about, breath coming just a little easier, and she thought that maybe, just maybe, burying it wasn't going to help. It certainly hadn't so far. And, she thought as she wiped a hand over her face, wouldn't her uncle have wanted to be remembered? Wouldn't he have been just a little honored to have The Tony Stark asking about him? He may have been more of a Captain America fan, but he'd always admired Mr. Stark too…had always loved the story of a person who'd made bad choices but who had decided to try and be better.
Wasn't that what who wanted to be too? Someone who tried to be better?
So, closing her eyes and picturing her uncle sitting on her other side of the bench with her, she took a deep breath, then opened the box.