headcanon that ned is alive and knows that peter is dead, but he decides to take it upon himself to make up some stories for may’s sake about why peter hasn’t come home to her yet. “oh, he’s totally fine, he’s just back in washington doing a semi final for another academic decathlon” and when peter left the bus he forgot his phone, so ned texts may from peter’s phone periodically so she has some peace of mind because ned knows that may only has peter and so he protects her even if it means he’s lying to her in the long run. may is hurt that peter isn’t coming home, but ned knows she’d be absolutely broken if she really knew he was dead.
and so ned for the longest time has to keep adding to this wildly intricate story about why peter still hasn’t returned – he edits old photos of peter and him in their uniforms so when he sends it to may from peter’s phone, the date on the photo is more recent. he’ll sometimes go over to may’s apartment, picking up some of peter’s stuff (”he asked me to grab his science notebook and send him a picture of one of his entries”).
he even creates a program from scratch that he feeds recordings of peter’s voice into – and he perfects it to the point where he can call may from peter’s phone while the software is running in the background, and it’s capable of carrying a few minute phone call with her. it’s eerily accurate in the way it portrays all of peter’s vocal quirks (like the way he strings his sentences together when he’s excited or anxious)
at one point, when he feels may is beginning to possibly suspect something, he goes to her apartment when she’s out, and leaves a note in peter’s handwriting – “hey aunt may! we won the decathlon, but now mr. stark invited me for summer internship for 12 weeks and i need to go, but i love you! i’ll call you every friday. if you need anything, ask ned.”
at first, ned was doing it to save may’s sanity, but as time goes on, he realizes he’s doing it to save his sanity too.
Toad's Cave 