Family Tree ~ An El Hopper and Peter Parker Story

Chapter 24

In the morning, Peter woke up to the familiar sound of a Quinjet landing outside. He sat up and rubbed his eyes before looking outside. He saw the Quinjet and the Avengers all coming out of it and walking over to the door. Peter stood up and walked over to the door, opening it and heading outside.

"I thought you guys went back to New York?" Peter asked them.

"We did," Natasha replied. "That was to take the supervillains to the Raft. But we came back to check on you guys. Make sure everyone is okay and help with the clean up at the mall."

"Everyone seems to be okay from what I can tell," Peter told them. "But El... she's really upset about Hopper."

The Avengers all exchanged guilty looks, Carol, Wanda, and Stephen looking the most guilty. Peter immediately caught on to what they were thinking and he shook his head. "It's not your faults. Trust me. You did what you had to do, which was destroy the machine when you had the chance. Hopper wanted you to do it."

"We know," Wanda said. "But we ended up taking away her father and that shouldn't have happened. We feel terrible and we want to talk to El, if that's okay?"

Peter nodded at them and smiled. "Yeah, you can talk to her," he said.

He then led the Avengers inside the house, where he saw everyone starting to wake up. They took notice of the Avengers and they all greeted them. But when El saw the team of superheroes, she glared at them. Peter saw her look of anger and he went over to her, not wanting for her to explode in front of the Avengers.

"Why did you do it?!" El yelled at them, which made everyone in the house more awake. "He could've lived and you guys didn't let him live!"

"El, calm down-" Peter tried to say, but she didn't listen to him.

"Why couldn't you make him move out of the way?! Why did you kill him?!" El screamed as tears streamed down her face.

"There was nothing we could've done, El," Carol spoke up, slowly walking over to her. "We didn't want to do it and we tried to make him move out of the way, but he didn't. He kept Mr. Negative there to keep the machine off because if he let him go, he could've turned the machine right back on."

El stared at her for a few moments before falling to her knees. She buried her face into her hands and sobbed harder than before. Peter knelt down beside her and hugged her tight, letting her cry into his shoulder. He gave Carol a worried glance before looking back down at his sister, calming her down as best as he could.

A few minutes passed and El finally calmed down. Peter helped her stand up and she turned to the superheroes. "I'm sorry," she spoke, barely in a whisper. "It wasn't your faults. I just miss him..."

"We know, young one," Thor spoke up. "I know what it's like to lose everything. In fact, all of us do. You're not alone in this at all."

"I can't help but feel alone though," El said, rubbing her arm and staring at the floor.

Peter wrapped an arm around her. "I understand exactly how you feel," he told her. "It feels like no one can understand what you're going through and that they never will. You also can't help but feel that it's your fault for their deaths in some way. But I know now that none of the deaths were my fault. It's only the fault of the killer. It was an accident with my parents, a burglar with my uncle, Thanos with Tony, and Doctor Octopus with my aunt. With Hopper, it was the supervillains. Not you."

El nodded at her brother, but still stared at the floor. She didn't mean to blame herself for her father's death, but she couldn't help it. Peter was right with everything he said, but it was hard for her to accept that he was dead. If she had gone with them to the lab, then maybe Hopper would still be alive. But then Peter could've died when fighting Doctor Octopus at the mall, so she didn't know what could've happened if she went to the lab last night.