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Peter had seen darkness at a young age. The loss of his parents led him to a mental state that was one of pure pain and suffering, but he was far too embarrassed to tell anyone that, instead choosing to suffer alone. His scars, mental and physical, are a deep, suffocating reminder of that.
That’s why he liked taking photos.
It started as curiosity, just messing around with the camera he found mixed in with Uncle Ben’s junk, but when he started taking more photos, he realized he really liked it. He could paint the world in a way that let him ignore the darkness, let him ignore the fact his parents were dead.
Maybe his parents were in the sunsets, maybe they were in the clouds but when Peter took pictures of either of those things, he could pretend they were just sunsets and clouds, with no ulterior meaning. He could pretend that he saw sunsets and clouds the same as other kids his age, instead of a reminder of things he desperately attempted to forget. They were just beautiful, and they didn’t have to be a reminder of anything.
When he took pictures of parents and their kids, he could pretend that it didn’t leave a pit in his stomach. He could silently live vicariously through these photos, pretending it was his mother caressing the side of his cheek, or his father throwing that baseball, though you would never get him to admit that’s what it was.
Because to those around him, Peter was simply a kid with a hobby. He took photos of everything, anyway, so who’s to say they all had any meaning? How could one connect a photo of a sunset to a photo capturing pure maternal love? His wordless act of desperation was one only seen by the artist.
He kept the photos in an album with no meaning to the order, at least that he would remember in the future. When Uncle Ben died, Peter dug the old photo album out from under his bed, desperate to remember the lines that made up his face.
Wiping the dust off the cover, coughing as it spread across the room, he opened it. He turned pages quickly, flashes of memories resurfacing. He stumbled across one specifically, where he had set up his camera on a timer in an attempt to have a Christmas family photo. Aunt May stood with a smile, but his uncle moved too much, and it led to him just being a blur. It almost made him laugh as the photo was sort of poetic now, as if it was a warning to what was to come.
Those memories captured in that photo album brought him back to the same mental state he was in when he filled it, the same scared child scratching at the door, desperate to escape.
He felt the same original bitterness numbed by the idea that it was “just a photo,” and maybe it was just that, but something in the back of his mind couldn’t stop the tears from falling. They soaked the pages in the book, ruining the borders of photos, but he couldn’t care. This photo album was a frozen frame of who he once was, just a scared child crawling desperately for any act of consolation.
He grew angry at the existence of a reminder of his old pain, worsened by the newfound reason to grieve. With the strength of his recently found powers, he ripped the book in half, photos being thrown around the room. He didn’t stop until he couldn’t tell what the photos originally were, instantly feeling a sense of guilt, as if he murdered what was left of his parents and now his uncle.
He furrowed into a ball, anger and sadness replaced by a numbness that was indescribable. The sheets were wet with tears and covered by paper. It was cold, his window opened enough to have the winter air sneak in. All that could be heard from him was a whimper and something that sounded like an apology, be it to himself or those he lost.
He cried until he passed out that night, holding what was left of the photo album like his mother used to hold him, silent sobs of desperation hidden behind his chapped and bleeding lips.