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Life wasn't easy. It wasn't simple. And it sure as hell didn't go Peter's way. But that was just how it went.
You get a good thing and three bad things happened to make up for it. Not necessarily in that order, and sometimes the bad things just happened and the good didn't. But, at least in Peter's experience, every good thing came with three bad things.
That was just life.
Bad thing number one came in the form of a spider bite. How bad could a spider bite be? Well, insanely bad apparently. It had started with a field trip. Peter had never liked field trips, practically every field trip he'd ever been on had gone bad in some way at some point to some degree. It hadn't ever really been as bad as the spider bite though.
Their group had been lead into a lab full of spiders in glass cages. Peter had sort of zoned out as the scientist spoke about the experiments they did with minimal details. What was the point of explaining the experiments if you couldn't go into detail? It was just a little boring really.
"Every cage you see houses some sort of spider we are working with," the scientist explained. Peter hummed as he looked around. One of the cages seemed entirely empty. They must have made one that was either very good at hiding, or that could go invisible.
As they left the lab Peter trailed behind the group. He pushed his glasses up and ignored the small blur he thought he could just about see in the corner of his eye. He ignored the strange feeling on his hand, and when he felt something sting he shook his hand. Just to be safe he scratched at his hand and made sure nothing was actually on him. He hadn't seen anything on his hand, but he had spotted a small spider on the floor. It looked dead though, so he ignored it.
By the time he'd gotten on the bus to go home he'd started to feel sick. He'd put it down to well his general bad health. Just his luck really.
Except it kept getting worse. And by the time he got home he collapsed into bed, totally ignoring his aunt and uncle. May had brought him dinner but he'd been too sick to eat it. Ben had called him out of school for the next day. He appreciated both of them.
Their help didn't really do much though. He was severely ill. At one point he'd thought he was going to die. He hadn't been scared by that. He'd just, accepted it and wanted it to happen. Not in a he wanted to be dead for the sake of being dead way but in a being dead to stop the pain way. He'd just wanted it to stop.
Peter didn't want to be sick. He didn't want to feel like death was banging at his door. And that was how he spent his evening and night. That's how he felt for twenty four hours after he'd gotten bitten.
It had been awful. But then he'd made it out the other end, in one piece. Once he'd sort of adjusted to the other side effects, he'd let himself think through it. He'd gotten bitten by one of the experimental spiders from the lab. Which was just, ridiculous. There had to have been a series of bad decisions, coincides, and sheer dumb luck for it to all have happened. Or perhaps sheer Parker luck.
That was life though, right? It was certainly life for Peter anyway
After bad thing number one, came the good thing. Though at the time Peter hadn't been sure if it was a bad thing or a good thing. He'd decided, at least after a while, that in some way it was a good thing.
His eye sight had been cured. That was most certainly a good thing, and it was a side effect of the whole sudden super-powers thing. His asthma had been cured. He'd gotten strong, like super strong. Scarily strong. He'd gotten really, really good hearing. Hearing so good it freaked him out. There was a whole host of other things too.
Peter hadn't been sure what to do with his powers then. But well, he'd been young. And life had just thrown them at him suddenly and unannounced. Did you ever get to know if superpowers were coming though? It seemed unlikely you'd get some sort of warning. Still, Peter would have preferred a warning.
Then bad thing number 2 had happened. And it had been his fault. It had been his fault and he could have stopped it but he hadn't. He'd been a coward. He'd been a coward and he didn't think he'd ever forgive himself or get over it.
He didn't like thinking about. Mostly because he blamed himself. It had been his fault, and that wasn't exactly something anyone could argue against. Because Ben wouldn't have been out if he hadn't been. And Ben wouldn't have been the shooting if Peter hadn't gone past it. And it wouldn't have happened if he'd done what he knew he could do and stopped it like he knew he was capable of.
So yes, it was his fault Ben was dead. And he'd accepted that. He just, couldn't move on from it. Did you ever move on from grief?
That was life though, wasn't it? Life goes and it goes, and then it just ends. Sometimes suddenly, and sometimes in awful way. That was life. Peter could accept that, at the very least.
Bad thing number three was a side affect of everything else that had happened. So in a way it had been his fault. That was well something he could vaguely accept.
May had to pick up more shifts at the hospital. She'd started working longer hours, just so they could afford to live.
That was life right? Hard times and working yourself to the bone just to keep a roof over your head? As much as Peter wanted to help, he was too young.
With aunt May out of the apartment more often than not, Peter was left to his own devices. He was left to adjust to what had very quickly become his life despite it becoming so drastically different in just a few months.
That was life, he supposed. It changed quickly, sometimes anyway.
He wasn't sure how he was holding himself together. He didn't have as steady of a support system as he wanted. Maybe, if Ben had been alive, and May didn't have to work so much, he'd tell her about Spider-Man. But that was just life. He couldn't, because then she'd have more to deal with, and Peter didn't think that was something she needed. At least not how she was. Maybe when everything had settled a little, he could deal with it. But as life was, he just had to keep going no matter how much he wanted that little bit of support he couldn't get without dragging someone else into the hectic mess he'd created.