Saving Grace || Peter Parker

Part 21

Their joyous mood was soon spoiled, sirens pinching at their eardrums, screams of the innocent diffusing into the air.

They shared a worried glance, savouring that last moment, locking it into a padlocked box.

"Go" she whispered, squeezing his hand before turning and running into the crowd.

Peter had called out to her, yet his voice got lost in the swarms of people. He cursed before going to suit up.

People barged and pushed, fear freezing their features and adrenaline alive in their veins. But Nadia ran through them, straight into the beeline of the night worm.

She still couldn't get over the name, having to conceal a snort at the idiocy of it. However, this was no time for jokes- people were getting hurt.

She stared into it, a void of obsidian in her eye sight, an armoured shield moving and cracking with every gust of wind.

Cocking her head to the side she saw a long red piece of cloth, she picked up a stray scarf, wrapping it around her neck and over her nose and mouth, using it as a mask as she got into a fighting stance.

No suit.

No weapons.

Just her. Nadia and her mind: Peter back at the house getting his suit on.

Nadia had crushed the most complex people with only her words, silver tongue and pretty little lies in her corner.

She had left the strongest of men begging at her feet, kneeling before her.

But this...there was no way to even know if it had a conscience- a mind to tie it down to, to unravel and start meddling.

Either way, in her position, she smirked beneath the makeshift mask, pointing at the mist in front of her.

"Let's play a game" she said, feet sprinting into the middle of the road.

Car alarms bleared, lights flickering and the concrete bubbling; it was following her.

Her heart sped up, sick boiling in the pit of her stomach as she turned her head over her shoulder.

"I'm okay" she whispered to herself, hand placed over her heart as if to dull the phantom pain.

She rolled out of the way of cars being thrown at her, swerved between buildings and tripped over cracked cement.

By the end of it, her knees were raw with crimson stripes, screaming with a shriek pain.

But then...there was no warning. There was no preparation. Just cataclysmic onyx surrounding her, engulfing the blonde in shadows and night.

Her eyes widened, arms pushed out in front of her body, attempting to feel her way through.

"Stupid girl" she hissed at herself. She was egging it on, she knew that. She just had to get it out of the way of the innocent. If it was aimed at her, she didn't care.

Except now, maybe she did care. Because all she knew was that she couldn't deal with it.

She wasn't sure how much time had gone by, as if time was not accustomed to this vast darkness. Screams penetrated through her; like the slice of her dagger, they stung.

They jabbed at her, begging Nadia for her to save them. All the blonde could do was crawl into a ball and sob, scream and violently shake.

She couldn't remember the before, the after it even the present. All she knew was the suffocation that this void had on her, the dull screams and the pain in her head.

"Stop it! Please"  she remembers begging, nails clawing at her ears, spotting of blood around her head.

"Stop what?" Came a voice, dark as night and light as wind. "Come on Nadia, stop what?" It asked again.

A presence of something was in front of her, their hands raking through her hair, dragging their finger down the edge of her jawline.

"The screams" she whispered, cheeks drowned in her salty tears. Wincing every time the shriek came.

"You can make it all stop, Nadia. Succumb to us" the voice replied, softer than she thought.

"How?" She asked, desperation and intrigue melting past her mouth and into their ear.

She just needed the pain to stop.

They laughed, low and fiery. "You know what you have to do"

She sobbed even more. Shook her head against her knees, clutching to the scarf as she cried.

It began speaking, a tongue she did not realise nor care to realise. It just kept blabbering, making noise, rubbing her bones together like sand paper.

Her hands beat at her head, shouting falling out of her mouth, words she wasn't even registering.

Laughing, it was laughing, at her. Her tears of pain and desperation stopped and where instead replaced by tears of anger and frustration.

"Get out of my head!" She demanded, her voice as low as the pits of hell. It did not sound like her, the voice not matching her tone.

But she meant it. She needed it out.

"You can make it all stop" it kept saying. Repeating. Repeating.

"No!" She commanded back, elbows scrapping against the concrete as she rose up.

Her eyes narrowed in determination, slits of beady silver and red that would submit to no one.

She rose to her full height, albeit slowly and in agonising pain but rose all the same.

"Leave" she commanded. Her voice left no room for compromise.

"No" it growled back, the void of shadows rumbling I'm anger as if in response.

"Yes"

Before the two could continue, before it was commanded to leave once more, it froze.

The shadows flickered, light seeping through, it was almost disfunctioning.

She eyebrows scrunched in confusion. The screaming stopped. They went numb. She went numb.

In an instinctive movement, she dropped to the floor and covered her head, eyes squeezing shut tight as the night dissolved around her.

Her head was still covered, eyes still tightly shut when he dipped down to her level, whispering "it's okay" into her hair.

Peeking through her lashes, she sighed in relief as Spider-Man stood in front of her.

"Pete" she whispered, Parker scooping her up in his arms and swinging through the city.

He shook the entire time.