ngl this is kinda rushed  and all over the place but i wanna revisit it later when i have more big brain time and this is the only way I wont scrap it, oofers

War is cold concrete and the slapping of feet as people run.

Peter had already seen war. Seen the hopeless battle with an infinitesimal chance of winning, the pure desperation that filled the air. He still remembers when Tony had given him the call. A heaviness sat on Peter's shoulders when he had been knighted.

"You're an Avenger now."

The responsibilities made themselves immediately apparent. They physically weighed on top of him as if they were the world and he was Atlas.

But Peter had other things to worry about. He was in space with a superpowered titan wreaking havoc, Tony had been stabbed, Thanos' hand wrapped around his throat in vice like grip, he had seen the snarl on a creature that seemed to have the strength of a god. There was so much happening, people were screaming and yelling and what did you do to Gamora, oh man, something's happening, it was the only way-

And in the end? Spider-Man had died on a battlefield in a last ditch attempt to protect the universe. No other way to put it.

Peter Parker had simply disappeared, an insignificant casualty in the face of another tragedy.

That was what hit Peter hard. Human men, women, and everybody in between were on the front lines dying for a cause. Yet their names remain unknown. Heroes nobody stops to think of, faceless soldiers in the midst of death and fighting. Nobodies.

And Peter was one of them.

He felt as if he wasn't a kid anymore, stripped of that child-like wonder. A more mature curiosity clutched his heart, it rabbited out of his chest in a way that left him wheezing for air he already had. Because Peter had died. His conscious floated around, not quite lucid. Thoughts raced through his head, but wherever his mind landed, language didn't exist. Words without meaning took over the agonising time that passed over years and seconds. Time really was relative, he supposed.

Peter knows he felt when he died. He had heard people's hearts stop and disappear. Heard last words that weren't meant for him, had seen brown eyes look at him in an emotion he couldn't quite process.

Peter now knew what he had seen. It was the same look he had whenever May and Ben sat him down to explain why he would be staying with them. It was the same look Peter's face had held whenever the blood on his hands had solidified. It was stone cold realization.

They both had known that it was a one way ticket, he shouldn't be surprised. They both had known that there was a high chance that one of them wouldn't make it. It was just a roll of the dice on who. The billionaire philanthropist whose luck finally decided to run out, or a vigilante who snuck onto a spaceship and has more lives than a cat?

They were just walking dead men. Waiting to be put into the ground. Like Ben was on that February morning, or Mary and Richard as they boarded a flight that never would've made it back. Literally waiting for a shovel to start digging.

Well, when he thought of it 'put in the ground' isn't the right way to say he had died. Peter didn't have a corpse to bury. He was just dust and dirt and and regret that scattered among the galaxy. He was just a headstone next to Ben's, a grave with an empty coffin.

Peter decided he didn't like his grave.