Mind Full of Roses // Peter Parker

3: Freedom

I falter as I hear the familiar words fall out of her mouth. I haven't heard those words in so long that I'd begun to forget what they sounded like.

Roselyn Paxton.

I roll the words around in my mind, familiarity seeping from them as I stare at the woman in front of me.

"It's taken a long time to find you, Roselyn." Yelena says, leaning against a tree. "I'm guessing it took you the same amount of time to find me."

I stay rooted in place, hardly listening to her words as I try to scout the best possible way to win this. She acts casual, but I see the mask falter when I place my fingertips against the knives in my belt.

Her eyes stay glued to my weapons as she takes a cautious step forward, flickering up for a second to see my reaction to her sudden closeness.

I let nothing past the wall that I've built. Cement and iron block any emotions from passing my face but I still add to it. Bullet proof glass and enhanced steel, lasers and titanium, thickening the barrier that I've spent my entire life building.

"Did you get forced into the experiment?" Yelena takes another step forward. Half an inch, then another and another until she's almost at arms length. "Or was it voluntary?"

My fists clench down at my sides and I feel the familiar prickling sensation envelop my fingers but I hold it back. It's not time yet.

"Doesn't matter." I reply, my voice croaky. "I can still kill you with what it gave me."

Yelena laughs dryly, stretching her arms over her head and rolling her shoulders back. "I was kind of hoping to do this the nice way, but since you insisted..." She winks. "Don't take this too personally."

She swings her fist forward and I cartwheel through the air to dodge. Never mind then; maybe it is time. In the split second it takes for her to recover, I pull a knife from my belt and throw it at her. It scrapes her cheek and I watch as a red bead falls onto her lip. Yelena wipes and smears it across her face, studying her the blood transferred to her hand with an unreadable expression.

She looks up and licks a droplet of blood from her lip, grimacing slightly from the metallic tang. "You're really not making this easy, are you?"

I shrug and let the faint prickling in my hand grow until a large ball of red sits in the palm of my hand. Yelena watches is apprehensively, a bead of sweat running down the side of her face.

I smirk and hold my hand up. "I never make things easy." Her eyes widen as I bring my hand back before catapulting the ball of energy towards her.

It makes contact with her chest, throwing her against a tree and exploding around her. Tendrils crawl up her chest and weave themselves around her neck.

She doesn't notice the red vines and gets up, spitting out a large glob of blood before running at me with a vial in hand. I watch in confusion as the red powder glistens under the pale light like a sun of its own. Yelena brings her hand up as though she means to throw it but before she can, I bring my hand up and squeeze my fist, stopping her in her tracks.

The red tendrils pulse under my control, tightening and tightening around her neck and she gasps for breath.

"Roselyn." She gasps, hands clawing at her throat as she tries to loosen the 2d energy. "Let me... help you." Yelena croaks between coughs.

I smirk as I watch her eyes roll back, the hazel turning to white as she begins to loose conscience. Just a couple before minutes before I can return, my head held high while I sit between Dreykov and Madame at the lender's table, discussing future plans about the Red Room.