excerpt from a fic I'll finish one day
“Doing grief before, doesn’t mean it makes it any easier.”
“What do you want me to say?” Peter says again, voice raising more than he intends it to. He feels like he’s on the edge of a precipice, staring down at a bottomless pit. If he steps over the ledge, he’ll never come back out again. “That I was there when it happened? That I held his body as he died just like I did for Ben? That I had to be pulled off the corpse by Rhodey because I refused to let go? That my last words to him were I’m Sorry? Is that what you want me to say?”
Ned hesitates before nodding slowly. “At least that means you’ll be talking about it, processing it, taking the first step to moving on.”
Peter’s hands are shaking. He links them together on his stomach, doesn’t move his eyesight from the ceiling. He doesn’t want to see Ned’s face, pitying or desperate to help in that Ned way.
“I felt it when I died,” he admits, eyes watering at the memory. “It didn’t happen all at once like it did with everyone else. It was slow. Painful. Like my body was trying to heal while being torn to pieces. Tony held me. I told him I was sorry, that I didn’t want to die. He held me as I died and then five years later, I held him as he died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ned says. He sounds like he might cry too.
* In which Pepper and Tony both die in the final battle leaving Peter to pick up the pieces and become Morgan's guardian.