Ghosting

                                    

                                          

Spooktober 13: Early Grave
⚠️a/n: description of canon-typical violence⚠️


For all intents and purposes, Peter Parker was dead.
He was young when it happened; just barely fourteen. The shock of a bullet rattled through his chest, and he drowned in his own wet, sticky blood in the abandoned warehouse where he... he couldn't remember much of what he had been doing. Just that he had been so angry, angrier than he'd ever been, and then an unnerving calm took over him, and then he woke up like this.
He was more of a vague concept rather than a person. His chest a perpetual emptiness, withering away cold. Not visible to anyone but himself, but in his own view his hands and arms were tinted a cotton-blue and transparent all the way through. If he concentrated enough, he could put his hand against something, the floor, the wall, furniture, whatever— he could feel the solidity of it, but not the texture. Sometimes he swore he could smell the nauseating sharpness of iron, stinging his nose in a way that had him looking down for an injury that wasn't there. 
So yes; Peter Parker was dead. 
This is why, when he did wake up, he was able to get over the swirling excitement pretty fast of haunting the house of a man he never really got to meet. 
Tony Stark wasn't as awe-worthy as he had believed during his living days. He was still fascinating— Peter was never bored when he got the chance to sit near him while he worked in his lab— but the truth of it all was that he was just a man.
Mr. Stark, as Peter had begun to call him, was bitter a lot of the time. He followed him in a ghostly-daze through the halls and watched as he would snap over the phone, go from meeting to meeting, and then sit alone for hours in his lab staring at nothing. He was broken.
Something about 'the accords', Peter gathered. Whatever those were. 
"You know, Mr. Stark," Peter said, lounging on the ceiling. "I don't know entirely what all this stuff means, but..."
He paused, trying to think of what to say. Not that it mattered in the slightest— Mr. Stark couldn't hear him. Mr. Stark couldn't see him. 
"... I think you'll make the right choice," Peter said finally. He smiled, laughing quietly to himself. "Who knows? Maybe if I were still alive, I could have helped you fight."
He tried to picture it; him stumbling into his and May's apartment and seeing Tony Stark on their ratty old couch, expensive suit and all, talking about how smart and capable Peter would be to work with. His smile widened with a giddy, childish amusement. The image was out of place, something out of a dream he might have had when he was younger and declared he would be a scientist. 
"That would never happen though, huh? You don't even know— You didn't even know I existed, when I did, I guess. But I think I would have been helpful. I've never been on an airplane before," Peter rambled pleasantly into the quiet room. He looked back down at Tony and stopped short, furrowing his eyebrows. "Wait, what are you looking at?"
He hopped down from the ceiling and walked over, a confusion settling into the wispy space of his ribs. "Is that..."
Mr. Stark was muttering to himself, scrolling over holographic news articles with an idle wave of his hand. 
Queen's Vigilante Disappears After Battle!
Where is The Spider-Man?
Spider-Man Potential Sighting Disproved