I ALWAYS THOUGHT I MIGHT BE BAD, NOW I'M SURE THAT IT'S TRUE

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CHARACTERS: peter & sonia & maya & then sonia again AND MAYBE MORE??? we will see...
DATE: post cure and until the end of their time in woodhurst
WARNINGS: manpain about eating people probably
SUMMARY: getting S L A P P E D, ramen, & science museums


SONIA.

( it's about three days after his cure, maybe closer to four, when he finds himself back at Sonia's door. he's armed with the heartbreak of last night and the messages left on his magitek, of a newfound friend and confidant desperately trying to reach him.

Sonia already knows he's back to himself again, she'd been there when it happened, yet she hasn't seen hide nor hair of him since then. it's much harder, to face people in person, when Peter would very much like to crawl in a hole and never come out, or at least crawl into the sewer and distract himself curing literally every infected there, like maybe it'll relieve even an ounce of the guilt blooming in his lungs.

it won't, and neither will making another apology, yet that didn't invalidate that Sonia deserved to hear one.

he hasn't announced himself, he's just here; he hasn't stopped to consider that his presence might not be very welcome when he knocks on the door. at least Sonia won't have to be surprised as to who is behind it, when he hears her moving toward the door (yeah, he even knows its her by the sound of her footfalls), he calls, ) It's me.

MAYA.

( it's been a bit more than a week, and Woodhurst is already starting to show signs of improvement. the overwhelming numbers of infected are starting to even out, the people of the city are starting to find their path toward recovery and it's slowly and surely hinting back towards something like a normal city in the 90s.

Peter has not been spending a lot of time doing much beyond madly trying to cure whatever infected he could find, not since his uncomfortable apology tour to half the team is over. and trying (and mostly failing) to sleep sometimes. don't say he never learns anything, y'all!

he'd be happy to keep himself to mindlessly working — no time to think when you're mindlessly working — but Maya is pretty persuasive, he's noticed. she isn't wrong that he owes her something like a hundred dinners, and they'd better even some of the score while they were still in a place he could buy her food. it's just a matter of getting there... you know, if they survive the moped ride. )

Have you driven this thing yet? ( he asks, not realizing the doom he is definitely walking right into by trusting Maya to do the driving. there's only one helmet, who gets it? Maya, apparently, he'll survive better if it comes to that. he plunks it on her head without asking, and it doesn't fit great over the topknot but whatever. her head is still vaguely safer for it. )

SONIA. (AGAIN. I KNOW.)

( his last meeting with Sonia hadn't gone the best, but they'd found a decent conclusion in the end. it'd certainly been something Peter had wanted to improve on, though; he's pretty new to making and maintaining friends, and Sonia is one that is important to him. he realizes from experience how hard making the cure had been on both of them, and he knows how difficult it'd been to deal with being infected, too.

now that their time in Woodhurst is drawing to a close, they've only got so much time left for potentially distracting themselves from the weight of the mission. they need a break, and Maya has been good at reminding him that people still need those. Sonia definitely does, and he hopes that a trip to the Science Exploration Museum will be a good one. she's dealt with enough of the dark side of science... why not have a little fun with it, for once?

the place is locked up; a lot of Woodhurst is still in recovery after Bristol. still, Peter is not going to be deterred. they're getting in there and Sonia is going to have Fun and that's the long and short of it. ) I know a way in, but you're going to have to trust me. ( a more difficult feat than it used to be, isn't it? )

WILDCARD.

want a thing? throw me a prompt, and I will throw you a spider! you can always catch me via pm or at ~meowed if you wanna plot something!

Comments

[webdesigned]

( no, the ginger touch of his hands was pretty far from destructive. it makes one wonder why he's so cautious, as if he's a loaded gun with a hair trigger and a broken safety — but honestly, even if he's back to himself he still feels like one. he's strong enough that he can hurt, bruise, break, even kill easily. he's seen proof of it under his hands not once but twice, with enough awareness to know it was his own lack of control to blame, rather than a virus that no one had been able to fight.

he's no stranger to wondering if things could have been different if he'd done something more than simply watch. if he hadn't been blinded by his annoyance with the storekeeper, could he have stopped the mugger before his uncle was shot? most assuredly the answer is yes. he could have chased him right after it happened, maybe even that could have been enough. instead he watched it all unfold, and it's only hindsight that tells him what he could have done. ) I've had moments in my life like that, too, when I didn't realize what was happening before it was too late. That's not who I am now, I'm not naive anymore. I've had my powers for years. I thought about what could happen if I got infected but I didn't take it seriously enough. Nobody wants to say it was my fault but the only person who could have stopped all this before it got dangerous is me.

( he held onto his secrets, he didn't think of the risks, he ignored all the signs. Peter is all too gifted at assigning himself guilt, but in this instance there's nowhere else to put it, either. at least not in his perspective.

shouldn't he be glad Stiles isn't dead? the phrasing is too blunt, it kills the breath in his lungs. he is grateful that Stiles isn't dead. he's not sure what he would have done if he wasn't, but that doesn't make what happened okay. ) He could have, Sonia. It would have been easy. The force could have caused brain damage, the impact could have broken his... broken his... ( he stammers on the sentence, unable to finish it, because the last time he hurt someone he loved? he didn't have the chance to be grateful she hadn't died.

Peter feels like he can't breathe, the weight of the guilt of what happened to Gwen suffocating him. it's been suffocating him a long time, and what happened to Stiles is just proof that he can't take the risk anymore. he doesn't bother to hide the tears, what good would it do? ) I got a second chance this time. And I'm going to protect him, it doesn't matter what it takes. ( if it took being alone and miserable, if it took never getting that close to someone again, it was a price Peter had to be willing to pay. he couldn't protect Gwen from himself, didn't have the chance. he'd almost managed to convince himself it was an accident, but feeling bones shatter under his grip chased any doubt away. he's a threat to anything and anyone he loves, in so many ways, and the worst being what could happen in a simple slip of control.

he loves Stiles too much to risk being with him, especially when Stiles refused to put his own safety first. )

Sonia, I ... I can't talk about this anymore. Please. ( his head and heart both are already reeling, and he doesn't trust what he will say next if they dig any deeper. )

[assent]

[ Her knees push herself up a little, her right hand moving up to gently push through his hair in a way that she hopes will be comforting. It's strange in that she never really had moments like this before, back home if she cried it was on her own. Any weakness was prohibited. Going to Japan had changed that. Yukizome, their teacher, had changed that. Nanami had changed it, along with her other classmates.

It's why she cannot leave him to suffer on his own like this either. People have given her so much, and as friends... should she not do the same for him? ]

Then perhaps the blame should be shared. You were not the only person who saw you in that time, no? Even I did, yet... [ Her shoulders shift as she breathes in. The entire topic is heavy, and really her fear about returning to what she was before had made her hyper aware of her own symptoms. If you haven't lived through it though, the ache to hurt and harm others, it's a lot easier to take for granted.

I got a second chance this time. And I'm going to protect him, it doesn't matter what it takes.

She can only assume what that must be like. She hasn't had her second chances yet. Will her friends even wake up one day? It is hard to know. She cannot blame him for wanting to keep his distance, to be certain he cannot harm him. It's just something in that phrasing that makes her wonder about what might have happened that he hasn't said.

She repeats the words back as a murmur, a soft utterance of "second chance" that makes it clear she's at least thinking about it. More importantly, he's definitely crying now. It's enough for that hand that was in her hair to pull him forward. Her own hold it light enough as she guides him to her shoulder, her arms moving to hold him around his shoulders. ]

Peter, I... I will stop for now, but unless you talk about it sometime, you will not heal. Do you understand that?

[ From someone who knows that all too well, she herself had started to sink more into herself until she finally went to Nami who told her it was okay to feel guilty. ]

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( he doesn't have it in him to fight the point anymore. that nobody was responsible for his state of mind, that nobody could have possibly known what was happening better than himself. it wouldn't be fair to deposit that blame elsewhere, when no one else could possibly could have seen it as clearly as he ought have. besides that, it seemed a weak excuse, to expect someone else to note the raging virus in his brain before he himself had. no, it was a cop-out, and he refused to accept those.

he'd hurt people due to his own inaction, selfishness, and unawareness. there was no sugar-coating it, no hiding it, no pinning the blame at the feet of someone else. there was no one to blame but himself, and Peter wouldn't forget that fact any time soon.

for someone he told to avoid touching him, Sonia seems to be failing spectacularly at it. still, as she draws him nearer and runs an arm around his shoulders, he doesn't fight it. this isn't much like the hug of gratitude she'd offered him not even that long ago — just like when Gwen tried to comfort him after his uncle's death, he almost doesn't know what to do with the offering. it feels like there's an iron vice on his lungs, making every breath harder than the last, tight and panicked in his chest. she holds him closer and he's lost all strength to fight it. he doesn't know how to process the comfort other than accepting it, breath muffled against her shoulder.

she's probably right, that if he never claws those memories to the surface again, that he won't ever heal. when his aunt had told him to put those memories away, she hadn't been suggesting to box them away in his head, letting them go to rot in his conscience. Aunt May hadn't meant for him to isolate everything about Gwen so deep and dark and tucked away that it could only burn when it was brought to light. and maybe Sonia is even right, maybe he won't heal until he lets those memories come to the surface again...

but if he speaks them, then they become real, they become an unshakeable truth that even he cannot ignore. and maybe, just maybe, he would rather hold onto the misery than let any part of Gwen Stacy go.

Peter nods into her shoulder, the only sign he grants that he heard and understood her. he's lost the voice to manage anything else. he knows better than to risk it. he should release her, try to find some level of composure, and sooner or later he'll have to. instead of pulling back, though, he finally puts arms around Sonia and allows himself the comfort he knows he doesn't deserve. this moment can't last and he can't go on like he is now, it's impossible. it's this moment and this moment alone that he has to let his misery show, let the weight of his guilt actually have a voice. when he leaves here, he'll have to leave that heartbreak behind. he has no choice, because he doesn't have the option to hide away in himself for months like he had when he lost Gwen.

he hasn't lost Stiles, after all... giving him up was supposed to be the right thing. maybe eventually, it'd even feel like it. )

[assent]

[ Everything has to be guess work when she doesn't know how he will react to something. She's glad when he returns the hug instead of protesting again, because this is definitely for him and not for her. She wants to make sure he isn't alone in this, especially when she spent two months when she first arrived suffering on her own. No one should have to do that, and that especially applied to Peter who has helped people so much with the cure, and probably in other situations as well.

Things did not balance out, because that isn't how the world works, she just hopes that this will be enough to help him pick up the pieces and pull himself together eventually.

Her hand moves to rub his back gently, soothing up and down his spine. Her movements are smooth and slow enough to not cause any worry, nor does it encourage him leaving in the slightest. If this is one of the few times he will give himself, she fully intends for him to make the most of it. She understands the need to lock everything up as well, after all. How many smiles has she given by this point that are automatic rather than genuine? Does she even know the difference at times?

It's why that even when her knees feel sore, she doesn't move away. She only lets him go when enough time has passed to let him process it all, let it sink it, to ease himself out of the pain and to bring himself back together again.

When she watches him go, it's with concern and worry, but she also knows there is no way of stopping him now. ]