I Need a Hero | Peter Parker x Reader | Wrong Number

-42-

TW: BRIEF MENTION OF SA AND SH

Y/n's POV:

My eyelids felt heavy, my head hurt, and my body felt...weird, stiff.

"Y/n?" I heard a very familiar, but very nervous, voice whisper.

"Mhm," I mumbled. Wow, my throat was dry. I tried to open my eyes again, blinking a couple of times to focus my surroundings to see three faces around me.

One of them, Peter, moved toward me, making me flinch. Shit.

"Y/n?" He asked again, even quieter this time, placing a hand on my arm. I flinched again.

What was wrong with me? I didn't flinch at anything. the phrase 'DON'T FUCKING FLINCH' had been yelled at me enough times that I was pretty sure it was physically imprinted on my brain.

"Water." I croaked, my throat grating with the sound.

The woman, Nat handed me a glass from the bedside table of this hospital bed.

 I drank the entire glass at once before properly looking around the room. It was pristine and white, but it looked a little bit too high-tech to be a normal hospital. That and the three people next to me (who I now recognized to be Peter, Nat, and Tony) could only put me in one place. The tower.

I looked at myself, lying under the bright white sheets of the bed and staring at the various fluids dripping into my arms. As I looked down to my left arm, I noticed Nat and Tony's smiles drop, but Peter's just grew, and so did mine.

He hadn't forced me to show him my arm since he had seen it that night on the room, but there was a hint of pride in his eyes as he looked at the skin where there was no evidence of fresh cuts. his grip on my hand tightened and if I had had the energy, I would have hugged him.

 I don't think he would ever know how appreciative I was for him not pressuring me about it and making sure I knew that as much as he wanted me to be okay, he wouldn't judge me for falling back into the habit.

"What-" I paused to cough, "What happened?"

"Tony and I found you on a rooftop." Nat explained, "What happened Y/n? What's wrong?"

I shook my head. I wasn't ready for that conversation yet. The conversation that involved telling them about my Father. The conversation where I would have to admit that I had never stood up to him.

Would they understand? He was my Father. I hated him so much for everything he had done to me, but he was my Father. He was all I had ever known.

"Okay, we don't have to talk about it right now." Tony reassured me. "Bruce said that we need to keep you here for a couple of days for monitoring since you're pretty malnourished and due to your condition but then you can go back home to your Dad." 

I quickly shook my head, which hurt more than I would care to admit before Nat looked at me quizzically.

"Y/n-" She began. "Is everything okay?"

I nodded hesitantly, but I tried to just play it off as part of my 'condition'.

"Are you sure? You have scars, a lot of them, all over your body." She said slowly. "And some partially broken bones, or bones that tried to heal wrong."

"I'm fine, Nat." I insisted, but she wasn't buying it.

"Are you sure, Honey?"

Woah.

There I was again, back on my bed, in my bedroom with him on top of me.

"Y/n?" Pete whispered again, clutching my hand.

Nat and Tony glanced at each other.

"Did-" Nat took a deep breath. "Did your Dad do this to you?"

Shit.

I guess we were having this conversation now.

Most of me wanted to say no. I don't know why, maybe deep down I was ashamed? But I also felt that it was unfair to be ashamed. 

It was unfair to burn a child with cigarettes once or twice a month from the age of eleven. 

To beat and whip a child with a belt multiple times a week from the age of five. 

To yell at a child and tell her that she is a worthless, good-for-nothing waste of space who killed her own mother on an almost hourly basis, every single day, since the day she was born.

"Y/n?" Tony pressed when I didn't respond.

What should I say? I wanted to say 'yes'. I wanted to tell them everything, but something was holding me back.

"Y/n/n, please..." Peter's voice cracked as he held onto my hand and a tear rolled down my cheek.

I started to nod as more and more tears fell down my face and Peter pulled me in to hug him.

Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.

"I'm sorry Y/n, I didn't know." I told myself, but I just shook my head. 

It would have been unfair of me to expect him to know. there was no way he could have. I never told anybody.

But there, crying my eyes out in Peter's arms, having told one of my deepest and longest-kept secrets, I managed to feel a tiny spark of hope. Maybe it would all be over.