#not back from the dead yet but ive drawn her all over my homework so i gotta do it digitally now

[pearlescentmoon-enjoyers]

she makes me. so happy

[madasthesea]

should I tear my heart out now? (everything I feel returns to you somehow)

He’s been reborn many times in his life; forged anew in refiner’s fire. A phoenix in the ashes.

The world that Tony steps into when he exits the Milano is still buried, choking in ash, unsure yet of what it will be when it finally licks its wounds clean.

Tony isn’t sure of what he will be, either.

Or: Tony mourns.

read on AO3

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Tony remembers that first step out of the cave in Afghanistan, holding the car battery and squinting in the sunlight, seeing his guns in the hands of his kidnappers and knowing, then, that his life would never be the same. So, too, does he recall the first wobbly flight in the Mark II armor, bolting from his garage with a thrilled whoop of joy sitting in his throat, racing into a world unlike any he’d ever known.

He’s been reborn many times in his life; forged anew in refiner’s fire. A phoenix in the ashes.

The world that Tony steps into when he exits the Milano is still buried, choking in ash, unsure yet of what it will be when it finally licks its wounds clean.

Tony isn’t sure of what he will be, either.

“I lost the kid,” he confesses, then crumples in the face of this new world: this world without Peter.

“Leave me alone, Rhodes.”

Someone has been with him from the moment he gained consciousness and he’s sick of being watched. He looks like the same person—a little gaunter, a little rougher perhaps, but still like Tony Stark—but he isn’t. He’s a doppelganger, a replica. A ghost.

“No.”

“Go away, James.”

If they stop looking at him, he can stop existing. That’s how it works, right? Quantum physics, Schrodinger’s cat, the “wanted: dead and alive” t-shirt Peter used to wear. He’s only alive because they think he is.

“Nope.”

Tony’s patience is as thin as he is right now.

“I want to be alone,” he snaps. His snarl used to be impressive but now he just feels like a kicked dog, barking as it hides.

Rhodey finally closes the book he was pretending to read, sighs heavily as looks up at Tony.

“You’re on suicide watch, Tony,” Rhodey says. Tony freezes, the heart monitor sluggishly picking up its pace.

Rhodes settles back a little bit in his chair, tilting his chin up defensively. “Suicidal tendencies double in bereaved fathers.”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” Tony says numbly, shying away from the very thought. Suicide sounds too violent. He doesn’t want to die, he just wants to... fade. Like Peter had. But he doesn’t know how to explain the difference.

“I'm really glad to hear that, Tones, but—”

“I’m not going to because I don’t have to,” Tony interrupts, his vision blurry but not from tears. He thinks he might pass out. He hasn’t said it out loud before but it’s true, and the words tumble out before he can stop them. “I died when he did. This is—I’m just—” Peter’s English homework is still sitting down in the lab, he thinks. They’d read lines together because Peter wanted to impress that girl he was smitten with, in his nerdy, awkward, adorable way. Out, out brief candle. Life’s but— “—a walking shadow.”

Rhodey purses his lips, his eyes suspiciously bright. “Tony. Losing what—You’re still alive. It might not feel like it right now, but life goes on.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t,” Tony whispers. Then he turns onto his side, thinking that he probably hasn’t made the point he meant to.

The constant guard doesn’t stop and Tony knows he doesn’t need it, but he can’t blame them for not believing him.

Bruce falls asleep the third night in. Tony’s mind feels hazy, thinks they might have laced his nutrient saline with a sedative.

He wants out of this bed. He wants to not be looked at but the entire west wall is glass windows.

He knows how to take out his IV without too much mess, unplugs the heart monitor before he takes that off too. The door is propped open.

He spills forward like a puppet on strings, fast and uncoordinated, every limb numb. His head is swimming like he stood up too fast, but the feeling only intensifies the longer he’s up.

He falls a hall and a half away from the Medbay, but he crawls to the wall and hauls himself up before FRIDAY has even finished asking if he wants her to get anyone.

By the time he reaches Peter’s room, he’s running into the walls, tripping over his own feet, but he has to get there. He has to do this because he can’t do anything but this.

Tony’s hand trembles as he turns the knob. He falls inward as the door opens, barely catches his own weight and then his breath as the sight registers: messily made bed, books piled on his desk. There’s a picture of Peter, May, and Ben on the nightstand.

He clambers drunkenly to the far side of the bed and pulls the covers over himself. The sheets smell like Peter.

His breath stutters. His eyes burn.

The sheets smell like Peter but his mouth tastes like ash.

He closes his eyes and imagines what it feels like; burning, tearing, rending. Ignition, combustion, extinction on an atomic scale, on every level of existence. To be so afraid, and so desperate, and in so much pain.

He thinks it probably feels like this.

He turns his face into Peter’s pillow and weeps.

He wakes up to someone crawling into bed with him and he wonders that he doesn’t think it’s Peter, not even for a delirious, half-asleep second. People talk about forgetting, about turning and expecting them to be there, about denial and acceptance and how it takes time, but Tony doesn’t understand that because the knowledge lives in his chest, gnawing and biting and shredding and no amount of denial will take the pain of it away. He wears it like a funeral shroud, breathes it like toxic fumes. It pounds through his veins like poison.

His eyelashes stick together when he opens his eyes. He can’t remember the last time he’d cried himself to sleep, but the pillow under his cheek is still damp with tears.

It’s Pepper, her hair splayed over Peter’s second pillow, the one he never used but Tony did when he came in to comfort him from a nightmare.

“Thought you’d be in here,” she whispers, reaching across the distance and taking his hand. “You scared us.”

Tony blinks at her, his eyes itching and swollen. He knows he should apologize but it seems so pointless. He can’t find it in him to be sorry, not between the emptiness.

Pepper watches him and he watches her back. The light from the hallway paints a stripe of gold in the dark room, the curtains drawn closed.

He wants her to understand that this is all he will be, now. There is no moving on from this—Peter was the gravitational center that was holding him together and now he’s spinning out of control: the world has lost its shape. Everything is trivial and small. Everything is very, very still.

Tony closes his eyes. Pepper puts her hand on his cheek.

“He was—” Tony whispers.

“Your son,” Pepper finishes. “The one thing you can’t live without.”

Tony aches down to his bones. “One of two,” he assures her, because that’s never changed. If he’d lost both of them, he would have had Danvers chuck him back into space. But without Peter—

“I am—I will always be... half alive.”

Pepper nods, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I can handle that. Half’s better than nothing.”

She pulls him to her, their tears smearing together as she kisses his forehead.

“You deserve better.”

“But I want you.”  

It’s the first time Tony’s ventured to the common areas and he regrets it the second he sees Steve. Natasha’s there, too, and Bruce, in the corner with his headphones on, but it’s Steve he doesn’t want to see, and Steve who sees him before he has a chance to escape.

Rhodey’s guiding him along by the elbow and he’s embarrassed and snappish.

“How are you feeling, Tony?” Steve asks politely as Tony leans against the kitchen island while Rhodey reheats some leftovers for their lunch.

“Spectacular,” Tony bites out. Steve gets the hint and doesn’t say anything else for several long minutes, merely eating his sandwich and watching Nat as she starts making tea. She keeps giving Steve a look, like she’s urging him to do something.

“What,” Tony finally demands. “For a spy, Romanoff, you’re not being very subtle.”

Natasha gives him a dangerous smile. “Maybe that was the point. Steve, do you have something you want to say?”

“I think he would take it better if I wasn’t the—”

“Rogers.”

Steve sighs, then looks at Tony.

“We’re planning the memorial for those that... we lost. We wondered if you wanted Peter to be under Peter Parker or Spider-Man.”

Tony thinks he might throw up his lunch.

When they’d told him that May was gone, he’d felt a traitorous, disgusting, despicable stab of relief that he would never have to see her live in a world without Peter. He thought about how, with her gone, he wouldn’t have anyone he would have to be strong for, no one to question if his level of grief was earned. And then the numbness crept back in because it was too much for one person to bear.

He misses her terribly now because she would understand the visceral abhorrence he feels at the thought of Peter’s name of a memorial to the fallen.  

“Neither.” He tries to make it sound imperious and unquestionable, but his voice cracks. He stands, shakily, leaning heavily on the counter as he does.

Steve clears his throat. “Alright. For the private funeral, I’m assuming Peter would be best.”

He wonders how no one else is losing their balance when the whole world is tilting off its axis at the mention of Peter’s funeral.

“No,” Tony rasps. “No. We’re not having a funeral.”

“Tony,” Steve sighs, in that way that used to make his hackles raise, but now it doesn’t make him feel anything but tired. “Peter’s gone.”

“No, he isn’t!” Tony snaps, his head jerking up. Steve’s eyes widen and he looks impossibly sadder. Natasha steps forward, dread in her eyes and Tony knows what they’re thinking. “He isn’t gone. He isn’t lost. He’s dead. Just say it. He’s dead. Why do you all keep talking like I don’t know? Like it isn’t all I think about?”

He glances around him, at all the people looking at him in pity and shock, and feels the confession build up in his throat like bile, hot and acrid. “I held him. I watched. I didn’t wash his ashes off my hands for three days because that was all I had—”

Tony breaks off, grinds his teeth together to hold back a sob but the sound leaks out anyway.

“Peter’s dead,” he says breathlessly. “He’s dead. If he was gone, I would bring him back. If he was lost, I would find him. But he’s dead and that is the only thing in the universe I can’t fix.”

He holds Steve’s gaze for a moment, takes a shuddering breath, and then crumples forward just as Rhodey rushes toward him, catching his shoulders.

His friend lowers him to the tile floor, leaning him against the island to steady him.

“Rhodey,” he gasps. “Rhodey, do you remember—do you remember when my parents died?” Tony asks, his voice coming in spurts as his lungs spasm in pain at the thought of taking in oxygen when Peter isn’t. “Rhodes, do you—”

“I remember—”

“And you, you found me, drunk on the floor,” Tony hiccups. Someone thumbs a tear off his cheek, but he doesn’t know who, can barely make out the shapes in front of him. He clutches at Rhodey’s t-shirt, his arms shaking.

“Yeah. You were one shot away from alcohol poisoning,” Rhodes sighs, wrapping one hand around the back of Tony’s neck and supporting his head.

“James,” Tony says, his voice broken. “I’d rather relive that night a thousand times than know what it feels like to lose my kid.”

Rhodes’ face crumples and a tear spills over, clings to his eyelashes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Tony’s next sob is muffled against Rhodey’s shoulder as his friend clutches him to his chest, Tony’s tears soaking the fabric of his t-shirt.

It’s only when the cabinet behind him starts shuddering, too, that Tony realizes it isn’t a cabinet at all, but Steve, supporting both of them. Tony turns his head and meets Steve’s red eyes, then glances to his right and sees Natasha, her bottom lip trembling as she once again wipes a tear from his cheek. Bruce is knelt behind Rhodey, his face pinched in concern and pain.

“I can’t bury an empty coffin. I can’t read his eulogy.”

Steve nods, tears shining in his eyes. Tony unclenches one hand from Rhodey’s shirt and holds it out, Steve instantly grabbing it.

“I’m sorry about Sam,” Tony says, and for the first time the loss of everyone else hits him. The whole world is grieving, an entire universe full of fathers who have lost their children and suddenly don’t understand what their purpose is anymore. It aches all the way down to his atoms, to the bits of stardust in his veins that he shared with those people, however many lightyears away. “I’m sorry about Bucky. I’m so sorry.”

Steve bows his head, but it doesn’t hide the tear that falls onto Tony’s arm.

If Thanos had had any mercy, Tony decides as most of what’s left of the Earth’s mightiest heroes sit on the kitchen floor and weep, he would have killed them all.

Tony used to have to fight to escape his own whirling thoughts, but now he lets himself be submerged in them, in the roiling, tumultuous sea that Peter’s absence has created, like a hole punched through the center of the earth.

He lies paralyzed in bed as anxiety tears through him. He isn’t sure what he’s afraid of—he’s already lived his worst nightmare, but not quite because Pepper—

Pepper isn’t in bed next to him.

“Pep?” He asks, too quietly, being yanked back into his own body. He has been so horribly selfish recently—Narcissus staring at his own reflection but not because he loves it; because he loathes it so impossibly much. His own continued existence often seems so detestable, he acts as if he’d died anyway. It is unforgivably cruel to those around him, but he cannot make himself stop.

“Pep?” he asks again, stirring from his resting place.

She appears in the doorway of the bathroom, her jaw set and shoulders squared.

“You ok, honey?”

“Yes,” she says breathlessly. She comes forward, puts a hand around his stomach as she passes and leads him back to the bed. He sits heavily, watching her in dull confusion as she sits cross-legged on the rumpled covers.

“Tony,” she murmurs, curling an arm around her stomach. “I’m pregnant.”

Tony blinks and the bedroom around him disappears, diffusing like a mirage in the desert to show the reality that he lives in.

He has been huddled in the skeletal remains of a once-great forest since Titan. The fire is out but he’s still waiting to burn and here is Pepper, kneeling in front of him with a sprouting seed in her hands, the green of new life nearly foreign in this bone gray world.

One new tree. She is promising one new life, but the atmosphere is still so choked with toxic air the sunlight can barely reach the earth and one tree is not enough to purify it all.

He reaches a trembling hand forward and stops short of brushing his fingers against Pepper’s knuckles.

Surely, it will die if he touches it. Surely he can’t have this.

Pepper’s face falls. Tony forces himself to take a breath of poisonous, burning air.

“I love you,” he says because even the end of the world cannot change that fact. “I love you.”

He kisses the apple of her cheek, the corner of her jaw. He kneels on his bed in his room and does not let himself think about how quiet the forest is now that all the birds are dead; he kisses her stomach over her baggy t-shirt.

“I love you.”

He doesn’t know how to love a child that isn’t Peter.

Growing up, Tony had always wiggled his loose teeth. He’d push on them with his tongue, pleasure-pain shooting through him, until they finally came out.

He sits on the porch in one of the wicker chairs Pepper had picked out and grinds his teeth—it was a habit he’d kicked in his first year of MIT, changed it out for worse ones—and thinks about holding an infant in his arms and being expected to move on.

The screen door swings open and Rhodey walks out, his leg braces whirring softly. He’s got two glass bottles in one hand and he passes one to Tony, who snorts upon seeing the label for root beer rather than anything with alcohol.

“Pepper told you,” Tony asks blankly.

Rhodey settles into a chair with a sigh, pushing it back on two legs until he’s balanced, like he’s a sixteen-year-old instead of a decorated military man on the far side of fifty.

“Yep. Congrats, man.”

Tony hums. “She can tell I’m not as happy as I should be,” he murmurs. “She thinks I don’t want it.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can’t imagine why she thinks that then.”

Tony shoots him a sideways glare—he’s not in the mood for levity or being congratulated, he wants to brood. He’s always been a very good brooder, an overthinker. Someone that pushes on a bruise.

Rhodey pops his soda open with a fizz, then reaches over and does Tony’s too. Tony takes a sip, just for something to do.

“Know what I think?” Rhodey asks.

“I get the feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“I think you’re a great dad.”

Tony looks down at his hands, twists the bottle around. “I don’t think I’m a dad anymore. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to do it again.”

“You don’t grow out of being a dad, Tones. That baby will come and suddenly every instinct and emotion you felt with Peter is going to come right back.”

Tony can’t answer, unsure how to say that that might be the thing he’s most afraid of.

“Peter would love having a little sibling, you know that, right? He’d be thrilled.”

Talking about Peter hurts, but not talking about Peter for so long has been like slowly suffocating. He can’t stop the way his mouth twitches up.

“Yeah,” Tony sighs, nodding. “They’d be absolute terrors, the two of them together. My DNA and that kid’s talent for trouble? I’d be doomed.”

It’s like pressing on a bruise, picking at a scab. It hurts. It hurts, but he can’t stop.

“He was so freaking smart, you know? Just brilliant, some of the stuff he came up with...”

Rhodey laughs. “The kid drove you half out of your mind, Tones, what are you talking about?”

Tony snorts, takes a swig of his tepid root beer. “Yeah. Oh, do you remember that time he tried to make me a birthday cake?”

Rhodey chokes on his own mouthful of soda. “Geez, how long did it take you to get the batter off your ceiling?”

“It was still there,” Tony cackles, “when—”

Pleasure-pain, from his teeth to his toes.

“Peter climbed up and tried to scrub it off,” Tony continues, hiccupping over the gap. “But it had fused with the building, I swear. Would take a nuke to get that stain out.”

Pleasure-pain. Exquisite, tender. An open wound weeping blood and affection.

Tony clenches his jaw hard, grinding his teeth together.

“She wants me to go to a support group,” Tony suddenly blurts. “In the city. It’s for dads, all their kids—”

“It might be good for you,” Rhodey says, scratching at the label on the root beer bottle with his thumb.

“It won’t be. Not that. I’ll... read whatever, do a blog, some other self-therapy nonsense. I can’t go.”

“Why not? They’re all in your situation, Tony. It’s for dads like you.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s for dads whose kids died. I killed mine.”

Rhodey nearly tips too far backward in his chair, windmills for a second before crashing back to all four legs.

“What? Tony—”

“I killed theirs, too,” Tony says robotically. “How could I possibly go and meet them all and talk like I’m one of them, all the while knowing that I killed their babies?”

Tony grinds his teeth harder, pressing until it hurts, until a muscle in his jaw seizes. Rhodey stares at him in horror for a moment, then shakes his head with a heartbroken expression on his face.

“You didn’t kill them,” he breathes. “Tones, you didn’t.”

“I didn’t save them.”

“Neither did I,” Rhodey says, lifting his chin and accepting his defeat with a dignity Tony could never fathom possessing. “But I tried. And so did you.”

“Yeah,” Tony whispers. “Yeah.”

“Blogging, huh? Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Think I’d be any good?”

“Absolutely not. I can’t wait to read it.”

Tony never sleeps well when it’s hot. The simmering summer air smells like grass and dirt up here, rather than sweat and cigarette smoke, but the heat makes him feel antsy, sick. It makes it hard to breathe.

He wakes up at 4:30 and doesn’t want to go back to sleep. He doesn’t want to get up either; go to the lab until Pepper’s awake, have breakfast with the hot, cloying air only worsened by the heat of the stovetop where Pepper makes scrambled eggs and toasts English muffins.

He wants to be sedated, he thinks. Surely no one would fault him for wanting a little bit of blissful, painless unconsciousness, today of all days.

The air is too hot. Tony kicks off his blankets, pulls off his sweat-soaked shirt.

Cicadas are still chirruping in trees whose leaves are rustling despite no cooling breeze blowing through them. The middle of August has always been—had always been... is Tony’s least favorite time of year.

Tears sting behind his eyes, adding to the heat all around him, the burning inside him.

He can’t stay in bed any longer.

He showers in the guest bathroom, so the sound doesn’t wake Pepper—the water too cold on his skin, so cold it makes his sternum ache, and he’s shivering when he gets out and goes downstairs, not bothering to towel dry his hair.

The light filling the kitchen is gray, already turning white. Early sunrises are another reason he hated summer as a younger man. He didn’t like to be woken up by the light after a long night partying, but he hasn’t slept in for years now. Can’t, most of the time. Didn’t want to, a year ago today. He’d been too excited, as if it had been his own...

It’s Peter’s birthday.

He sits at the kitchen island and stares out the window over the sink and watches the sunrise.

Tony can’t see the lake from where he’s sitting, but he can hear the splashing, the laughter, the shouts of a phantom child running and jumping in, the hot summer sun chasing away any cold that might linger in the water. Peter’s impressive acrobatics make May gasp and his friends cheer. The frosting is melting off the cake as it sits on the porch, half-eaten, the detritus of lunch and presents still at the picnic table.

He can envision it so perfectly. The way Peter glows in the light, in the affection.

The sunlight filters golden and piercing through the trunks of the trees and Tony blinks, and the image is gone.  

Sniffing hard, Tony rubs his face, dispassionately unsurprised to feel the tears there.

He can’t be here. In this house that Peter will never set foot in, in this kitchen where he’ll never spin on the bar stools while he waits for Tony to finish cooking dinner. In this life that Peter wouldn’t even recognize.

He can’t be the expecting father and newlywed husband and retired superhero. Not right now. Not today, it’s not—it doesn’t fit. Right now he does not exist outside his grief.

He can’t go back to being the Tony that Peter knew either. He can’t be the longsuffering mentor, the lab partner, the doting surrogate parent.  

He grabs the keys to Peter’s favorite car from the hook by the door.

The road is empty, stretching on before him, nothing to measure distance but the white lines darting passed him, and he lets himself imagine, for a moment, that he can drive forever, run from his grief and his responsibilities and his guilt for having kept living when Peter couldn’t.

But he knows he can’t and he knows he doesn’t really want to, despite himself. He wants that cabin by the lake, he wants his amazing, wonderful wife, and he wants his baby. He just wants Peter to be there too. He wants to be able to think about the future without his chest aching.

The greenhouse catches his eye and he slams on the brakes, the car stopping in the middle of empty road. There are so many plants hanging in front that the sign is nearly invisible.

Two weeks before the end of the world, he and Peter had helped plant trees for Earth Day. Well, he and Spider-Man. Service was always Peter’s thing, but he’d talked Tony into it, smiling and reciting facts about oxygen and climate change and Tony had agreed.

“Sometimes it feels like all I do is destroy things,” Peter had murmured as he pushed the dirt over the roots to keep them warm, wiped his palms on the Spider-Man suit as if it was a ratty pair of jeans and not a multi-million dollar piece of tech.

“It feels nice to help something grow for a change.”

Tony does nothing so well as he destroys. He doesn’t think anyone has destroyed as much as him—not in all the annals of history, no conqueror, no tyrant has ever burnt the entire universe to ash like Tony has.

The greenhouse is still closed, because it’s 5:30 in the morning. Tony climbs out of the car, checks the hours on the door, then sits in front of it and waits, because here he is neither husband nor grieving almost-father. He can be a novice gardener: he can help something grow.

A half-rusted pick-up truck pulls into the parking lot some time later. Tony lifts his head and watches with dull eyes as a middle-aged man wearing sturdy work boots caked in mud climbs out.

“Can’t say I’ve ever had anyone waiting for me before,” the man greets casually as he comes forward, a big ring of keys jangling in his hand. Tony watches as he finds the right one with practiced ease, inserting it into the padlock on the door.

Tony doesn’t know what to say so he just mutters a soft, “Sorry.”

“No reason to apologize. What can I help you with?” The gardener swings the doors open and a wave of damp, scented air rushes over Tony’s face.

“I need a tree.”

Tony follows the man into the greenhouse, his muscles aching from his long wait.

“Any particular kind?”

“Um, no. I don’t know. I... I live upstate. By a lake.”

The man continues to walk, leading him through a maze of long low benches overflowing with flowers and trellises with vines climbing all the way to the ceiling. Tony turns his head this way and that, finding it easier to concentrate on the flowers than on the conversation.

He tunes back in as the man shows him a little tree in a pot. “—It’s known for its red and gold fall colors.”

“Red and gold, huh?” Tony asks, smiling faintly. He looks at the tag and sees that it’s called the Autumn Blaze Maple.

Peter loved autumn. He was one of those people that was decked out in sweaters and scarves and drinking cider and cocoa from the first day of September, even when it was still eighty degrees out.

“I’ll take it,” he murmurs, rubbing one of the leaves between his thumb and forefinger.

The greenhouse owner helps him get the tree to his car, balking a little at the expensive sports car that Tony carefully puts the tree in, uncaring about any scratches that might get on the leather seats.

“Thank you, sir,” he says as he prepares to climb into the car.

“Thank you, Iron Man,” the man replies earnestly, his voice low.

Tony’s eyes burn. He clenches his jaw and shakes his head, then ducks into the car, slowly backing out of his spot.

He puts on Peter’s favorite playlist on the way back, the summer air already warm enough for him to roll his window down as the early morning sunlight floods the world in gold.

He hums along to the songs he knows well enough, his voice rough and cracking.

Fifteen miles from the lake house, he pulls onto the shoulder of the road, and rests his head on the steering wheel.

The tears come instantly. Tony has never been a big crier, but for the last four months, any time he’s alone he feels like he’s going to break apart, just cry until he dries up, until he resolves into a dew. Niobe reborn. There’s an endless well of grief inside of him and he fights it, all the time, around Pepper, around any of the team that bother to show up, but it builds and builds until he has to cry it out or he’ll burst.

He sits with his forehead against the steering wheel and listens to the tears dripping onto the leather upholstery and the soft guitar music in the background and breathes.

After a long time—three new songs that Peter loved—Tony sits up and looks out. The breeze that comes through the window smells like dry grass as it ruffles Tony’s hair and the leaves of the sapling. He closes his eyes for another long moment, remembers laying on the tower rooftop in the heat of August with Peter next to him, smelling of sweat and grinning in his Spider-Man suit.

He sniffs, wipes away the tears still clinging to his chin, and puts the car into drive, easing back onto the highway.

He doesn’t check if Pepper is still asleep when he gets home, but she isn’t out on the porch waiting for him like he’d half-expected. It’s only 6:45 and she’s been so tired lately. Tony makes her tired, even if she doesn’t say it. He’s happy to let her sleep.

He’s ridiculously, anxiously, worryingly cautious as he maneuvers Peter’s tree out of the car, making sure not one twig gets bent, not one leaf falls off. A therapist would have a field day, probably, Tony thinks, scoffing, but he isn’t any less careful as he crouches and lifts the base of the thing into his arms.

He doesn’t make it very far. It’s heavier than he expected, and he’s never bothered working on getting the muscle he lost back. He stops after fifteen yards, gently sets the tree back down, then bends over his knees huffing and puffing. Then he stoops and picks it up again. And walks and stops and pants and picks it up. His arms start shaking embarrassingly fast.

There’s a wheelbarrow in the garage. Some carts in his workshop. He could even call a suit, if he wanted to, just fly the tree to its spot on the lake and blast a hole in the ground and stick it in, but it’s Peter’s tree. It’s Peter’s tree and Tony’s going to carry it. He isn’t going to avoid it or find a shortcut or a cheat and he’s absolutely mental because it’s a tree but it’s Peter’s and he’s going to carry it, shaking arms and all, because he couldn’t carry Peter when it counted.

He’s sweating by the time he finally sets the tree down in the right spot, the sun already beating down on him. He goes and finds a shovel in the garage and gets a bucket of water, which he pours a little of into the pot even though the tree’s probably fine.

The first shovel-full of dirt is hard, baked in the heat of late summer. Tony carefully throws it away and gets another one, stamping down on the blade to get it to sink deeper.

He loses himself in the rhythm and sweat and monotony.

The hole expands until Tony can maneuver the clump of roots into it. He does, carefully, making sure it’s sitting level and deep enough. He fills in the hole with the shovel as much as he can, then kneels on the dry grass and pushes the soil up around the trunk as if he were tucking a child in.

The leaves of the sapling provide meager shade against the sun.

He stares down at his hands, covered in dirt. It’s underneath his fingernails, buried in the creases of his palms.

Tony rubs his hands together, smearing Peter’s ashes as his breath quickens, as the golden sunlight darkens until it’s bleeding orange. Every wheezing gasp makes the wound in his side ache with pain, makes his heart long to collapse in on itself because Peter’s gone. Dead and dusted—

Pepper finds him with his forehead pressed against the tree, tears watering the earth.

“Tony, sweetheart,” she whispers.

“It’s Peter’s—”

Peter’s birthday, Peter’s tree, Peter’s ashes. Tony had insisted on not giving him a funeral but had erected a gravestone anyway: here in his own yard, where he can see it from the kitchen window, the inside looking out of a new life that Peter will never get to have.

“I can’t leave him.”

“It isn’t Peter, Tony. It’s a tree.”

“I-I know that.”

“Then come inside,” Pepper coaxes, bending in a way that makes her sundress show off the little bump of her abdomen. “I made all of Peter’s favorites and they’re going cold.”

“Ok,” Tony says, brushing a kiss to his fingertips and then pressing them to a knot in the bark of the tree.

Later that night, lying in bed in the warm dark, Tony cries.

“I’m the only person left in the world that loves him,” he whispers to Pepper as she holds him. “I’m not enough.”

May, Ned, MJ, they’re all gone. Every person who would feel the hole that Peter left in the world like a gaping wound is gone and it feels like all the hurt they would have felt is his, like he needs to grieve for all of them because Peter deserves that much and more.

“I didn’t even do it right. I didn’t—I didn’t tell him.”

“But you loved him,” she says firmly, running her fingers through his hair. “That’s more than you had to do.”

“I loved him,” Tony agrees. “I couldn’t not.”

“That’s enough.”

He isn’t sure about that, but as much as hates it, it doesn’t matter now. He loved Peter when he was alive and didn’t show it. He loves Peter when he is dead and now all there is to do is show it to the world. To live it and breathe it in and suffer through it and let it change him. He doesn’t know how, yet, just like he still isn’t sure how to live in a world without Peter. He’s stumbling blind, but he’s pretty sure he’s moving forward. It’s all he can do.

Tony wakes up to the sound of retching and shakes his head to rid himself of the dream of Peter laughing.

“Babe?” He calls sleepily, making his way to the bathroom.

He finds Pepper there, sitting on the tile floor and wiping tears and sweat from her forehead.

“Let me find your medicine,” Tony says quickly.

“I already took it,” Pepper whispers pathetically, wiping tears off her chin. “I threw it up.”

Tony kneels in front of her, takes her face in his hands and wipes the tears away. “Are you in pain, honey?”

“No,” she says, but her bottom lip trembles. Her nausea has been terrible, but Tony has never seen her quite this upset.

“What’s wrong?” he whispers, and the tone he uses nearly sends him reeling back to days when Peter would come crawling in the window of his penthouse at 2 AM, crying because he couldn’t save the woman being attacked in time, because the robber shot himself before Peter could stop him, because he couldn’t be everywhere at once.

He swallows, forces himself back to the present.

“I just,” Pepper sobs. “I always thought my mom would be here.”

Tony’s heart sinks, his shoulders slump. Pepper’s mom had been one of the ones Snapped. They’d flown out to Illinois for the memorial and Pepper had born it with grace and decorum and steely strength while Tony had still been drowning under his own loss. He hadn’t been there for her like he should have been and if he had been in her position he might have hated her for it.

She never had. She had always understood.

The weight that Tony carries cannot be shoved aside. It cannot be lessened or lightened or shared. He does not know how to live his life with it constantly bearing down on him, pressing him backward down the hill, the stone getting heavier and heavier as he goes.

But his wife is sitting on the bathroom floor, crying because she misses her mom, because she’d always assumed that when she became a mother herself, she’d have her there to support her.

If Tony can’t bear his grief and support the love of his life when she has done nothing but comfort and strengthen him, what is the point of him?

He wanted to die when Peter did. Part of him did die, but it wasn’t the part that loves Pepper Potts. He’s ashamed it took him so long to realize that.

“What do you need, Pep?” he asks.

She whimpers as she holds out her arms and Tony instantly sweeps her into a hug, into his lap, and holds her while she cries.

He can be Sisyphus, rolling his stone uphill in atonement for his failure, and he can hold his wife. It’s progress.  

There are gummy bears at the check out line.

After the Snap, the survivors had gone insane trying to prepare for the end of the world that had already happened. Store shelves were emptied a mere hour after being stocked, prices of even the cheapest goods skyrocketed. It took nearly four months for production and consumption to start leveling out and even now you can only find non-perishable items with any regularity, unless you’re willing to pay a lot. Meat and vegetables are hit and miss delicacies.

This is the first time Tony has seen gummy bears since before that alien spaceship had appeared in the sky and he’s grabbing them and putting them on the counter before he even registers what he’s doing because he always used to buy them for Peter to eat while he did homework.

“Wait, one more thing,” Tony says, dashing back into the aisles, searching until he finds a familiar jar of JIF peanut butter. Smooth, not chunky. Peter hated chunky peanut butter.

When he gets home, a grocery bag in each hand, Pepper is in the kitchen, sitting at the island.

“Tony, you didn’t have to,” she says, but she’s smiling a little.

“Mm, it was more of a favor for the cashier actually. She looked bored out of her mind, thought seeing Tony Stark might cheer her up,” Tony says flippantly, unloading his purchases for Pepper to inspect.

“Oh, is that right? ... Did you buy gummy bears?”

Tony puts the frozen burritos in the freezer, then rubs the back of his neck. “Uh, yeah, well, you said you didn’t know what you wanted...”

Tony leans against the counter opposite Pepper, idly spins the package with a finger.

“They were the kid’s favorite,” he blurts after a minute. Pepper hums, her chin in her palm as she looks at him.

“He used to eat them with peanut butter ‘cause—teenage boys—freaking... aliens, I swear, just no taste buds at all.”

Pepper raises an eyebrow, then reaches across the counter for the jar of peanut butter. She opens it, then the gummy bear package, and unceremoniously dunks one head first in the thick spread.

She pops it in her mouth, licking the extra peanut butter off her fingers and chewing steadily. Tony feels stupidly nervous watching her, as if her not liking one of Peter’s favorite snacks will be a personal affront. But after a moment, she smiles, laughs.

“That’s actually really good.”

“Is it?” Tony asks, perking up. She nods again, going for another gummy bear.

“Try it.” Pepper offers the next one to him then prepares another for herself. They chew them together, both laughing a little bit because as bizarre as the combination is, it’s surprisingly good.

Pepper looks up at him and smiles, reaching across the island to take his hand. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

Tony smiles back, his own a little dimmer, a little less familiar. He hasn’t smiled without a shadow since coming back from space, but all that matters to her is that he still smiles.

“It was Peter’s idea,” he shrugs.

Pepper nods, stands and rounds the island to the sink. She takes the picture frame off the shelf, the one with Peter and Tony and that stupid certificate that Tony wishes he could find.

“Thanks, Peter,” she says, kissing her fingertips and gently caressing the image of Peter’s face.

Tony exhales a shaky breath, standing behind her and dropping his forehead between her shoulder blades, rubbing his hand along her arm.

Their home is warm and lit and the fire of the world has died down to smoldering ashes. He still chokes on it, sometimes. He still sits by Peter’s tree and hates every breath he takes that isn’t acrid and deadly because his every moment without the boy he loves like a son should be pain.

Peter wouldn’t want him to be in pain: Peter would want him to learn how to love his baby like he learned how to love Peter. He would want Tony to build a swing in the branches of his tree and play with his daughter in its shade. He would want him to eat gummy bears and peanut butter.

“Thanks, Peter.”

[megmachine]

Mistakes

A/N: this is the first section of my WIP star trek fic. See the tags before reading if your interested, and please let me know what you think! 

The last time Jim ever saw his aunt alive, she was crying. He was thirteen and being led onto a bus alongside his cousins and had glanced out the darkened window on a whim. She had been standing in the doorway to their farmhouse, clutching little Sarah’s favorite blanket, arguing with one of the large men dressed in black that had come to take them back. The man had laid his hand on his belt, saying something, and Aunt Josie had broken down crying. Through a cloud of red dust as they drove away, Jimmy saw her fall to her knees and sob. Tear tracks cut through the dirt on her face, leftovers from when they’d been playing in the garden earlier. They turned a corner and trees finally blocked his view, and he turned back to talk to his cousins.

He was only supposed to be on Tarsus IV for six months. Driving the car into the canyon had been the last straw, and even though they’d ‘worked things out’ with the cops, Jimmy knew he’d pushed too hard. Frank was fed up with him and he’d been suspended from school again and his mother was still out there, exploring space without him. Winona said she would be earthside ‘in just six months, Jimmy, it’s only six months,’ and that this was just a stopgap to get him away from his step-father.  What a load of bull that was, not that he’d say it to her face. Two months in, when he moved into boarding school full-time and wasn’t counting down the days till his shuttle home, Winona messaged him. She told him her ship, the U.S.S. Faragaut, would be delayed eight additional months and for the first time, he wasn’t heartbroken. Fourteen months in the colony, he could make it fourteen months. His aunt actually liked him, she never even hit him, and his cousins didn’t treat him like a burden the way Sam used to. Classes challenged him, for the most part, and he got to go back home every weekend to see his aunt and the farmhouse. Sure, meals weren’t that big, but Jimmy had never really gone hungry here, either. Tarsus was good. Life was good. 

This time, though, as the farmhouse faded from view, he could tell his Aunt knew something was different. Clouds of red dust obscured his view and it felt like he was losing something, somewhere he’d finally started to call home. It was silly to get so melancholy about a semester at boarding school, he’d thought. He’d thought a lot of things that ended up being wrong.

It was two Saturdays later when Jimmy and Will wondered if something was wrong. A full two weeks since they had seen the rest of their family. They were sitting on his cousin’s bed, each with a PADD in hand, working on their homework. Their teacher, Hoshi, had been grilling them on languages, and despite Jimmy’s efforts Will couldn’t grasp Vulcansu conjugations. 

“No, see, it’s a past tense irregular verb, and you forgot the hyphen-”

“Jimmy.” Will interrupted him, something he never did. His face, normally an open book, was drawn and stiff. Jimmy held his tongue and swallowed back his knee-jerk snarky response. His cousin took a deep breath, held it for five seconds, and let it out in a huff.  

“I’m worried about my mom. She hasn’t been responding to my comms all week, and Mr. Davies told me we aren’t doing home visits next weekend, either. I just… I know you think it’s stupid to get all worked up over family, but this isn’t like her.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute, both brains running through the options. Finally, Jimmy sighed. He knew his cousin well enough to know where his mind had immediately gone, and had an idea of how to deal with it. 

“Look, Will, I do understand where you’re coming from. If you’re really that worried about Aunt Josie, how about we go see her? Will that make you feel better?” Jimmy tossed his PADD aside and stood up, stretching his arms over his head and groaning exaggeratedly. Honestly, he’d been wanting to stretch his legs too, but hadn’t had the right opportunity to sneak out until this moment. 

His cousin wasn’t convinced yet, though. “What do you mean? How are we supposed to get home if buses aren’t running to the farm?”

Jimmy smirked, tilting his head and glancing back. “Why, we’ll be breaking out, of course!”

That line sealed the deal. After all, Will was a bad boy at heart, too.

It was dark out by the time they could put their plan into motion. The double moons were rising in the west, casting everything outside the range of the street lamps in a faint, pale light. They took a walk in the botany gardens after dinner, a fairly inconspicuous thing to do. Subconsciously, Jimmy noted that a few of the plants seemed wilted, white flecks spotting a few lower leaves, but he wasn’t a botanist and so made no comment. Will kept an eye on the teachers that patrolled the area while Jimmy made his way to a shadowy corner, the one place he knew of that the cameras wouldn’t see him. From there, he accessed the security system from his PADD - he’d been teaching himself programming since he was five, sitting in the back of his kindergarten classroom, it was a breeze to hack these types of systems - and ran a loop of camera feed. From there the two made their way to the chain link fence that surrounded the school. 

The principal told them it was to keep wildlife out, since Tarsus had some rather nasty native predators. Of course, there was a hole in the fence that Jimmy had known about for a few weeks, and nothing had managed to get in, so he didn’t know the validity of that statement. The gap was barely big enough for him to squeeze through, scrawny as he was, but he’d kept it in the back of his mind in case he ever wanted to sneak out. There hadn’t been anything suspicious going on, at least as far as he was aware, so he’d had no reason to utilize it before this night. He was enjoying his classes, and had no reason to mess around. At, least, not until then.

Jimmy went through first. After making sure the coast was clear, Will forced his way out, too. The fencing groaned, and they both held their breath for a minute before determining no one else had heard. After that, it was smooth sailing for the rest of their ‘escape.’ The fence opened up into a thick forest, full of a mix of native and terran flora that formed a dense canopy and heavy shadows. They could still use the moonlight and their knowledge of direction to make their way towards the nearby town of New Franklin. The school they attended was fairly secluded, so their hike took nearly an hour. The principal and teachers, when asked, had said that the governor thought it important that students learn astronomy and botany and all types of things you couldn’t study well in the city, so their school was the only thing this far out. They were surrounded by forests on one side, and a massive plain on the other, and as far as one could see there was no other sign of civilization. When he first got there, Jimmy had thought all the greenery was wonderful. Now he was starting to hate it, as he was slapped in the face by yet another palm frond-looking thing.

Eventually, pushing through the thick greenery native to Tarsus, Jimmy thought he could hear the murmur of human life. It was about time - they still had to consider the hour-long drive to and from the farmhouse, and he wanted to get a little bit of sleep that night. Their plan was to either hitch a ride from a kind stranger, an idea Jimmy wasn’t a big fan of, or steal a vehicle, something Will didn’t like - even though Jimmy had argued that they wouldn’t really be stealing, they'd be borrowing with the intent to bring it back unscratched. That argument was part of why they’d gotten started so late, and now Tarsus’ first moon was more than halfway through the sky. Its blue face watched them as they foraged on through the woods, unwavering and unyielding in its faint light. 

They popped out on a paved road, the outlines of squat, wide-spread buildings against the tapestry of stars the only sign of civilization. There were next to no lights on, Jimmy noticed. No street lamps, or illuminated windows, or headlights. He’d have thought the town was dead, if not for the hum of generators he could still make out. A curfew, then? Why? Neither of them had any answers, but this did throw a wrench in both their transportation options. More so Will’s favored plan than his own, though his would be difficult to pull off too. 

Well, there was no way around it. The two boys exchanged glances - neither had said a word their whole adventure other than to warn the other of a hole or tree branch, too scared of being heard and caught - and advanced towards the dead town. Jimmy knew more than enough about hotwiring to be able to steal most civilian vehicles, and Will had been driving aunt Josie’s truck for the past year, so they were rather confident in their abilities. But that all depended on whether or not they would find something to steal. 

The first couple of buildings they approached were barren. Jimmy could make out the muffled sound of human voices and movement behind the walls, but there were no vehicles other than a couple of rusting bikes parked out front. The first hovercar they saw was all black and parked in the middle of town square. The engine was still running, but no one was sitting inside the car. Jimmy made a mental note of it and kept creeping along, hoping for a less suspicious get-away vehicle. The next one they saw was sitting in front of a small house. The car itself had four wheels and more than a little bit of rust, but it obviously hadn’t been used in the past few hours. The house it was parked near, similarly, didn’t show any signs of life. Neither Jimmy nor Will wanted to think very hard about that fact. Still, this was a better option, less likely to be noticed missing if they could get away quietly. Jimmy cracked his knuckles, gave his cousin a grin, and eased the driver’s door open.

Since he’d been old enough to start developing his fine motor skills, Jimmy had been playing with wires. Maybe not a sign of the safest childhood, but it certainly had its perks. For one, he could open a panel inside any car, four-wheeled or hovering, and get it running in under five minutes if it was a model from the past half-century. Thankfully, this one was. Another thing Jimmy was thankful for, he considered once the engine hummed to life, was that 23rd century cars were so much quieter than previous renditions. Not even the house a block over could hear it starting up. Will nudged his cousin over, crawling into the driver side and adjusting the seat to his liking. 

“I’m still sticking by my argument that I could drive this puppy just as well as you,” Jimmy grumbled from where he was buckling himself into the passenger seat. 

Will ignored him, throwing the car into gear and ever-so-slowly crawling out of the driveway and onto the road. “How the hell am I supposed to navigate all the way home if I can’t turn on the headlights?” he hissed, peering over the steering wheel in a way that didn’t really give Jimmy much confidence in his abilities. 

He sighed, hunching over the center console and pulling out more wires from Will didn’t even know where. In between stripping colorful rubber with his teeth, Jimmy explained himself. “Most modern cars actually have the ability to display an active infrared view through the windshield - night vision. It’s better than using the headlights, actually, but we humans are too attached to the way things have always been to use it. Manufacturers even got rid of the easy-access switch, but they never bothered to get rid of the tech itself. Lucky us.” He spared a second to glance up at his cousin, grinning wildly, before twisting two bare wires together and clipping them to a circuit board. Jimmy had no idea how like his mother he looked in that second, and the excited expression faded almost as suddenly as it had appeared. 

The windshield display flickered once, twice, before the pitch black landscape became visible in various shades of green and grey. The compass, temperature read out, and clock reappeared in their usual location (lining the top of the windshield, out of immediate eyeline), now a bright white against hunter green shadows. 

Jimmy almost whoop-ed, catching himself at the last second and instead silently punched the air. “What’re you waiting for, Willy?” He snickered, flopping back into his seat. Will grumbled something about ‘cocky little nerds’ and eased his way down the pavement, gradually making his way out the town as a pace that had both of them out of their minds with boredom before they’d even made it a mile. 

It took a little over ninety minutes to get to aunt Josie’s farmhouse. More often than either of them wanted to acknowledge, they’d pulled off the road and held their breaths, paranoid that they were being followed, only to laugh at themselves when no one showed up. Jimmy didn’t voice the alternative - that they were being stalked, toyed with. Will was on edge enough as it were. 

The lights were off when they pulled up. Neither were that worried - Aunt Josie had always been more of a morning person, after all. Her red pickup was still parked under the carport. As they walked up to the front door, Jimmy watched his cousin unwind, tension easing out of his muscles. Will pushed the door open - again, not worrying, they lived far enough in the country to not bother with locks - and stepped into the kitchen. The house was silent. Jimmy followed, hands in his pockets but eyes darting around the heavily shadowed room. 

Making their way deeper into the house, Will seemed to relax further and further while Jimmy felt the hairs on his neck stand up. Something felt off, but he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly was wrong. It was a somewhat similar feeling to what he would get when Frank was about to come home, full of cheap liquor and anger he’d take out on Jimmy and Sam. The air felt stale in his lungs. At the end of the hallway, the door to Aunt Josie’s bedroom was closed. 

Will was smiling as he nudged the door open. He took a deep breath, ready to call out to his mom, ready to be reassured of her health and safety. The next second he was hunched over, hands clasped over his mouth and stomach rolling. The smell of decay overwhelmed them, and Jimmy finally identified what, exactly, was wrong. 

Aunt Josie was laying on the ground near her bed, an archaic bullet hole through her chest. The light grey rug under her body was stained dark brown with old blood. While Will clung to the doorframe, trying desperately to keep his dinner down, Jimmy stumbled forward to her side. He’d always heard that people were peaceful in death, but Aunt Josie looked as distraught as she’d been when he last saw her, through a school bus window, two weeks ago. Her body was breaking down, past rigor mortis and well along in the bloating process. Deep tan skin was now motley green. The stink of rotting meat and excrement and who knew what else was thick in the air, having been trapped in the room with her. Dark liquid covered the wood floor, leaking out from her body, more fluid than one would expect from a corpse. If he looked closely, which he tried not to, he could see the small movement of maggots and cadaverous bugs within her small wound and under the skin. 

Saliva pooled in Jimmy’s mouth and he turned away, stumbling out of the room before collapsing to his knees and retching. Will staggered after him, pale and sweating. Neither of them said a word for the longest time. Will was barely breathing, not making a sound as tears pooled in his eyes and ran, silently, down his cheeks. 

“How long has she been dead?” he finally whispered, choking on the word.

Jimmy hated how his mind automatically went through the stages of decomposition, hated how for a split second he could objectively analyze how far along the body (his aunt, not the body, it was his aunt lying there) was. He was barely aware of his lips moving and the words coming out of his mouth. “It takes around eight days for discoloration to start. She’s probably been… for over a week.” 

“Fuck.”

It took another ten minutes for either of them to move. Jimmy pulled himself to his feet, dragged his cousin behind him, and made his way towards the front door. Will didn’t make a sound as he was led along, eyes unfocused and staring into the distance. It was past midnight at this point, and Jimmy knew they had to get going if they wanted to avoid being caught out. As he passed the kitchen table, a stack of mail caught his attention and he grabbed them, curious, glancing over the words. 

‘In response to your request… Cannot supply more rations… Distress signal…’

Jimmy swallowed and stuffed the papers in his coat pocket without a second thought. 

Will was still unresponsive when they reached the stolen car, and without a second thought Jimmy shoved him into the passenger seat before climbing behind the wheel. Driving this old thing couldn’t be more difficult than the corvette, and this time he wasn’t trying to run from Frank and the cops and Riverside. Jimmy didn’t spare a second to glance in the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the farmhouse. If he did, he wouldn’t have been able to leave. 

It was only when they got close to town that Jimmy noticed they were being tailed. At first he thought it was a figment of his paranoid imagination. It was barely there, in the corner of his eye, and his cousin was of no help in differentiating real from fabricated. Will hadn’t spoken a word since the farmhouse. Jimmy stepped on the gas a hair and fixed his eyes on the road in front of him, ignoring the tingling in the back of his mind. 

Jimmy pulled off on the side of the road and stared out the back window. He’d seen it again, bigger and more obvious. He was 85% sure there really was something out there, in the black of Tarsus night. Either way, he wasn’t too keen on getting caught, so they would be legging it through the woods the rest of the way back. He hopped out of the car and led Will behind him into the dense forest. He'd finally started responding when Jimmy asked him questions, and could see his surroundings well enough to avoid low hanging branches.

“Come on, we’ve got to go, they’re behind us Will, we’ve got to hide,” Jimmy panted in his cousin’s ear. They were making far too much noise, stepping on twigs and getting slapped by branches. He just hoped they could get far enough ahead of the people stalking them, out of hearing range and back to school before sunrise.

 Just as the thought crossed his mind, he heard boots stomping through the undergrowth after them. “Hey! Where’d you go? You know the punishment for breaking curfew, it’ll hurt less if you just stop running!” The overt threat of pain and punishment sent a chill down Jimmy’s spine and he couldn't let himself get lost in memories of Frank, he had to get his cousin back to safety. He grit his teeth and made a conscious effort to be quieter, shushed Will when he spat a curse at a vine that tangled around his leg but it was too late. Bright flashlight beams cut through the greenery and into Will’s face and shouts filled the air. 

Then they are running through the woods, abandoning all hope at subtlety and there are crashing footsteps behind them, the high pitched whine of phaser blasts and deep voices calling out promises of pain, and - 

Will trips over a branch, twists his ankle, and Jimmy hauls his cousin up and behind him. He’s limping and leaning heavily on the younger boy but Jimmy clings tight to him. He won’t lose more of his family, he won’t, not after Sam, he can help Will, it’s not too much further to the fence and if they can just lose these guards they’ll be fine.

Gunshots and phaser fire follow them, sinking into tree trunks in their wake, cutting through leaves and then they hit something definitively not wood and Will is screaming, crying, begging Jimmy to stop but he’s bleeding out all over Jimmy and it’s too much, too much, he can’t make it stop please make it stop! There’s a hole in his stomach, gaping in what little moonlight is filtering through the tree branches. Hot blood is burning his hands, his face, and he can’t put enough pressure on the wound while trying to run and he can’t stop running or they’re both dead. They’re both so, so dead.

Will is clawing at Jimmy’s hand and at first he grips it tight, trying to take some of the pain from his cousin, but he’s being slapped and Will is glaring at him with as much strength as he can muster, though it’s fading fast. Jimmy has never seen so much fire in those brown eyes until now. He’s wheezing, but he can force out a mouthful of words. “Leave me, Jimmy. You gotta get out of here.” The men are gaining on them and they don’t have much time left. Will lets himself go limp, still staring at Jimmy, shrugging out of his hold and collapsing onto the ground. He shoves him once, for good measure, when Jimmy stops moving. “Go!” Will shouts, the force of his words making blood spew from his paling lips.

 Jimmy runs. He runs, and doesn’t look back. 

[blookmallow]

whats up i entered a story contest

ive been wanting to write short horror stories for Ages but never really had a solid concept 

our local bookshop is having a story contest, so i figure now’s as good a time as any to give it a shot. contest results aren’t out yet but i wanted to share it 

the only set rule was that it had to be within 1200 words

and so, i present to u: 

Sal

-----

I need you to understand, I didn’t do it.

They’re coming for me. Someone has to know the truth.

They’re not going to believe me, but maybe they’ll believe you – please… please tell them.

Tell everyone. Or at least… make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I never meant– I didn’t. I didn’t. Somehow, somehow, it was… her.

Let me start from the beginning.

When I was a kid, we always used to go to this one amusement park, Clown Town or something like that, really ancient, run-down kinda place, but you don’t notice that when you’re a kid. Everything is all bright shiny colors and lights, you’ve got pockets full of arcade tokens, cotton candy in your bloodstream, and it doesn’t really matter if the roller coaster squeals on the turns, and the paint’s peeling off all the sun-faded signs, and you know the carnival games are all rigged but you always play them anyway. Because you’re ten years old and it’s the best day of your life. You’re gonna scream yourself hoarse on every ride and eat sugar until you feel it buzzing in your skull, no school, no homework, nothing but saltwater taffy and cheap bright-neon plastic toys you suddenly want more than anything in the world.

But there was… one thing about that park I hated, and I mean hated.

Her name was Laffing Sal. She was this massive animatronic woman, towering over you with a huge red gap-toothed grin plastered across her squashed face, her hulking torso convulsing with shrieking laughter all day long, her thick hands flailing in the air… the whole thing was just… grotesque, wrong. I thought she was supposed to stop but couldn’t, trapped forever in a sickening fit of hysterics, waiting for the day her body would finally just fall to pieces.

I actually used to have nightmares about this thing, all the time. But then, sometime after we moved, the old park shut down, some health code violation scandal or something, I never got the details. I thought I’d never see Sal again.

That is… until she came back.

Ten years later, a traveling carnival rolled into town. Some friends invited me along to come check it out. I’m a little old for carnivals now, but I was looking forward to it. I had almost forgot all about Sal, until… I heard it. That horrible, mocking, shrieking laughter. Before I even saw where it was coming from, I knew it was her, and my heart splashed down into my stomach. Twenty-four years old, and I was paralyzed, hit smack in the face with fight-or-flight terror in an instant. For half a crazed second I thought she was coming after me, like she’d followed me, chased me all the way here. My friends just laughed, joked about how creepy she was. No one else seemed to be affected by her like I was. They laughed it off while I stood far off in the corner, frozen, unable to look away from that monstrous face.

…So, there she was. Kept up in a case as part of some funhouse history display, still laughing just like she always did. I didn’t look at the signs – didn’t want to get any closer – but somehow, I knew it was her. The same Sal that terrorized me as a kid. She found me.

That night, I had the nightmare again for the first time in years. Thousands of her, surrounding me, looming out of the dark, laughing, laughing. The next night, it was the same thing. And the next. And the next. It went on for the whole week before I couldn’t take it anymore.

I had to get rid of her.

I snuck out late, shivering in the night air, and jumped the fence into the deserted carnival. Hidden in my backpack was the biggest, heaviest hammer I could find in my dad’s workshop. I could feel the weight of it against my back as I crept quietly into the carnival, feeling positive I was going to run into a security guard any second – but there was no one around. The tents and food stalls were all shut up for the night, shades drawn over the counters, lights out, the excited commotion of the day dissipated like mist, leaving nothing but empty walkways and the vague hints of saccharine scent still lingering in the air like cotton-candy ghosts. The huge painted face of the entrance sign clown stared down at me. All I wanted to do was run home, forget this insane revenge mission, get out of here before I was caught – but I knew what I had to do.

As I came closer, I realized I couldn’t hear her laughing now. Maybe they do turn her off at night, thank God – the thought of her still laughing her hideous curly head off all through the night, standing there in the dark all by herself, had haunted me for years.

I took the hammer from my bag, swinging it through the air, steadying myself. I was ready.

But when I turned the corner, the ground was sparkling with shattered glass.

The display case was destroyed, and Sal was… gone.

Was it possible someone else broke in and stole her? On the very same night I came to destroy her myself?

It wasn’t possible. I stared for ages at the glass, the hole, the empty case, trying to figure what could have happened, until…

Kk-thump. Kk-thump.

Echoes of coarse laughter, bouncing off the walls, coming closer.

I whirled around in a sudden blind panic, and there, heavy wooden feet clunking and scraping against the pavement, was Sal, slowly lurching by.  

My mind reeled with ice-water terror, suddenly boiling into righteous fury. It was just me and her and I was the only one who knew, I knew, I knew what she really was and I was the only one who could stop her, must stop her, flew at her with a panicked scream and a heavy cast-iron hammer, and – SMASH.

Her face shattered, falling all to pieces, her shrill, hideous laughter growing louder, distorting, shrieking, screaming, screaming, she was dying, she was falling to the ground, her smashed face a pool of – …

My hands were soaked with… something hot, dark and viscous… I ran. I ran until I had no breath left in me, my throat torn ragged and raw, and… somehow, I was home, desperately scrubbing red out of my skin, throwing stained clothes under the bed hoping to burn them later, sobbing.

She shouldn’t bleed, she shouldn’t bleed, WHY did she bleed?

In the news the next morning, the body of an elderly woman was found brutally murdered on the pavement at the carnival. Her skull smashed in with a hammer. Sal, back in her case, untouched, exactly as she was. No shattered glass. Just a dead woman on the ground.

I know what I saw. I know what I did. I destroyed a carnival automaton, a… monster, a thing. I didn’t kill anyone. I know what I did, and I’m telling you – there was no old woman.

There was only her.

At least in prison I won’t hear her laughing anymore.

[tanzani-coil]

tagged bbys

Tagged by the wonderful @figment-fantasies​ <3

The Last: 1. Drink: coffee eyyy 2. Phone Call: my dad 3. Text message: my guy jakub bby 4. Song you listened to: sleepover by hayley kiyoko bc im trash 5. Time you cried: like. sometime last week when i was with quinn??? it might’ve been friday bc of a dumb outlander vs tumblr post i was just fuckin crying

Have You: 6. Dated someone twice: twice??? bitch i havent dated someone ONCE  7. Kissed someone and regretted it: haven’t had my first kiss yet!! <- same bby!!! 8. Been cheated on: No. they’d be dead if they did lmfao 9. Lost someone special: yah sucks bro 10. Been depressed: mate depressed is my entire personality 11: Gotten drunk and thrown up: nope not yet im hoping to get plastered w quinn one day List 3 Favorite Colors: 12. blue. like. baby blue or egg shell blue??? 13. black 14: white (my entire wardrobe is black n white monochromatic)

In the last year, have you… 15. Made new friends: @onelassieandherfandoms​ this asshole 16. Fallen out of love: nah like??? wasnt in love in the first place 17. Laughed until you cried: yES 18. Found out someone was talking about you: i mean. always 19. Met someone who changed you: i dont rly know??? i cant tell when i change 20. Found out who your friends are: eyyy yeah 21. Kissed someone on your FB list: gross

GENERAL: 22. How many Facebook friends do you know in real life: this is???? so specific????? i mean most of them i still have like. perhaps 10-20 online friends on there i havent met up with yet so 23. Do you have any pets: never had any </3 always wanted a cat and a doggo but. parents hates animals so i gotta wait till i move out 24. Do you want to change your name: yah, my birth name is like. rly feminine and long and pretentious n ive been going by my nickname for the last 6 years so much that my birth name isnt rly??? i dont rly associate it with myself 25. What did you do for your last birthday: went out for a meal with my fam. dont have enough friends to rly do anything else lmfao 26. What time did you wake up: i mean i woke up at about 9ish, went back to sleep, woke up at about 11 again, then was on and off sleeping until 12:30 when i got up 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: homework bc my teachers live off my pain 28. Name something you can’t wait for: seeing quinn again, new skuldug book, new season of outlander, 29. When was the last time you saw your Mom: today 30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: my insistence on self isolation lmfao 31. What are you listening to right now: my mom jenna marbles trying to get one (1) kill on pubg 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: yah 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: art block!!!! good fucking god i havent drawn anything in like. two months. and then after that i cant remember the last time i drew anything for me because i wanted to and not for homework smh 34. Most visited website: this hellsite 35. Mole/s: got loads of em on the side of my face, but thats the side of my face that my hair/fringe covers up so??? could be worse i guess 36. Mark/s: birth mark on my right shoulder which i love a bit too much, a round patch of darker skin on my deltoid(?) where i got shot with a paintball and it’s left a scar, a scar from a shaving cut on my kneecap, and like. the unfairly over-abundance of stretchmarks on my EVERYWHERE 37. Childhood dream: I wanted to be a horse 38. Hair color: dirty blonde and blonde 39. Long or short hair: longish??? covers my nips at this point 40. Do you have a crush on someone?: uh 41. What do you like about yourself: uh?????? 42. Piercings: none, they freak me out??? but if i were to get any, it’d have to be a helix(?) piercing. i’d fancy like. a thick ring piercing if that makes sense 43. Blood type: do i look as if i know 44: Nicknames: george, but thats only if ur close to me 45. Relationship status: single and lonely as fuck lmfao but thats probably best, im just not built for relationships 46. Zodiac: sagittarius 47. Pronouns: she/her 48. Favorite TV show(s): person of interest, orphan black, outlander, the 100, brooklyn nine nine, orange is the new black, rupauls drag race, 49. Tattoos: none yet, but i rly fancy “be brave” in EXACTLY the same font as the skulduggery books, on the inside of my right wrist 50. Right or left hand: right 51. Surgery: um>?? i mean not rly??  52. Hair dyed a different color: i haven’t yet, but i want like. a lighter blonde ombre??? bc my hair is lame as fuck and i want to do SOMETHING with it 53. Sports: omf no 54. Vacation: i went to majorca a couple of weeks back just as the heat wave fuckin hit (rip me) 55. Shoes: tesco converses or black boots 56. Eating: biscuis 57. Drinking: coffee, with water inbetween bc im thirsty as fuck 58. I’m about to: do :))))) homework :)))))) 59. Waiting for: school to start up again. if i have to do homework i wanna do it actually AT school bc i cant focus for shit at home, but i can get so much done with the school facilities so 60. Want: to see quinn again i miss her dumb face 61. Get married: i want to tbh but. not built for that sort of thing 62. Career: ahahahaha jesus fuck i have no fucking clue lets not go into this

WHICH IS BETTER: 63. Hugs or kisses: HUGS. I FUCKIN LIVE FOR HUGS 64. Lips or eyes: eyes 65. Shorter or taller: i mean???? depends on the person but typically taller 66. Older or younger: older 67. Nice arms or nice stomach: i????? 68. Sensitive or loud: man idk. both 69. Hook up or relationship: relationship bc im a sap 70. Troublemaker or hesitant: hesitant bc i have a crippling fear of authority

HAVE YOU EVER: 71. Kissed a stranger: nope 72. Drank hard liquor: nope 73. Lost glasses/contact lenses: nope 74. Turned someone down: nope. i’d be so lucky lmfao 75. Sex on first date: bitch i’ve never been on a date let alone 76. Broken someone’s heart: nope 77. Had your heart broken: ahahahahahahahahahahaha 78. Been arrested: nope 79. Cried when someone died: yep 80. Fallen for a friend: ahaha  hahahah  hahahahahahahahahahaha

DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 81. Yourself: well someone fuckin has to 82. Miracles: i mean??? i’d believe it if i saw it 83. Love at first sight: i believe that you can have an instant connection or chemistry with someone which would then lead to love, but like. love at first sight has only rly ever applied to pretty emaciated people so 84. Santa Claus: nope 85. Kiss on the first date: i mean?? nah

OTHER: 86. Current best friend: i have like. three friends?? all of which i’d consider my best friend i think 87. Eye color: blue but with like. yellow on the inside??? which. having googled is apparently called central heterochromia  88. Favorite movie: oooo. probably spirit stallion of the cimarron 

i mean. all the people i would’ve tagged I think @figment-fantasies tagged anyway so like. have fun folks