If you had died, I feel like that's on me.
A gravestone, one not fit for who lays beneath it.
The dead bursting through, half-suited in nanotech.
Uneasy lays the head that wears the crown.
Then, a voice from nowhere and everywhere: If you were good enough, maybe Tony would still be alive.
He jolts up with a shout, then looks around him and eases back against his bed. The ceiling appears to be moving above him, the room tilting and turning, but he knows it's just an illusion from moving too quickly and suddenly.
Blindly he reaches for the glasses and struggles to put them on with one hand. The lens light up and a voice greets him.
He bites his lip. "Edith, this is real, right?"
She confirms it. He sets the glasses back on the bedside table. That exchange, repeated over twenty times now, is the only use he's made of Edith since he got back home.
A glance at his alarm clock reveals it's four in the morning, but he doesn't fall back asleep. There's insistent voices echoing in his mind, and he can't shut them out. Or, if he can, he doesn't.
The voices are right. Everyone had been right about him. Tony, Ned, Fury, Beck. They've all muttered or exclaimed certain truths.
The problem is, Peter already knew. He absolutely despises it when people point out shortcomings that he's already aware of.
When he had woken up from the nightmare with a shout, it had been a shout of anger.
Loyalty. He wants in return what he had given others for so long. He followed Tony onto the hurtling space donut. He went with Strange's plan. He gave in to Fury's demands, and he went into battle at Mysterio's side.
No one wants to have someone showing up and telling them what they did wrong. People want to have someone by their side to console them.
But for what it's worth, Peter, I really am sorry.