Clessidra | Peter Parker.

31. what's left of us

"You're right."

She stopped talking, her terrified expression not leaving her face as she observed what once was Simon Fizz, and that had become nothing but a soulless, empty box. He was nothing, she could see that, and the reason why he was agreeing with her without even putting up a fight was freaking her out.

"Well, then, let's get the hell out of here. We'll find a solution outside," Tony suddenly exclaimed, when the tension got so deep it could have been cut with a knife. June barely nodded, carefully following the others as they moved the furniture away from the door to walk out.

"Keep an eye on the boy," June heard Tony whisper to Peter, and she couldn't agree more. She didn't know what it was, but the way he agreed with her so easily didn't make any sense.

The situation got even more stressful when they got out of the clinic intact, having fought only a couple of patients without major injuries. Cecilia had followed them lifelessly, her eyes dull just like Simon, and June felt like she was about to throw up because she felt something was terribly wrong, but what could she do? Stop time? No, she needed Tony and Peter's help to have a possibility of avoiding anyone dying, and finding herself in a timeless world with Simon wasn't too thrilling.

It was too late, though, after Tony had made Cecilia sit down on the damp grass to calm her down, when Peter let out a loud yell toward June, after he had spotted the twisted look on Simon's eyes.

Before she could do anything about it, time around her stopped. Peter's hand froze millimeters away from Simon's shoulder, and Tony and Cecilia's heads remained turned towards the teenagers in expectation.

For a moment, it seemed as if June had been stopped too, because she didn't move a single muscle. She just stared at the boy she thought she knew, but that she couldn't even consider weak, for everything he had gone through.

"Simon, don't," she mumbled, making cautious steps towards him as he moved backwards, toward the doors of the clinic where the trail of gasoline stopped.

"I'm not like your bunch, June. I'm not a hero, because none of us are! But at least I'm realistic enough to admit it, unlike your stupid self! 'There's another solution, we still have time, we're better than this'... bullshit!" he started yelling, making furious steps towards her, June now being the one backing away. "Maybe you can talk like that because you've always had someone by your side, cheering you up, I've had the luck of not having anyone like this next to me, so I learned the hard truth about life way before you. There's no escape from our destiny, June. There is no happy ending, not for those who lost everything, and if there's still a small glimpse of affection towards me inside of you, you'll let me go."

June stopped moving, stomping her feet on the ground as Simon stopped as well, making sure he was still close enough to the entrance. June winced at the amount of words flowing in her head, trying to find the right ones to deliver him so that he could change his mind, but who did she think she was? She wasn't a speaker, she couldn't move entire masses of people with a single sentence, and she definitely wasn't a hero.

She was just a teenager who had the extreme misfortune of being born with the wrong genes, that had given them powers she couldn't handle, and that she didn't deserve. Superheroes like the Avengers could have used them for a good purpose, they could have used them to save way more people than she ever did, and yet they reached her, they attached themselves to every cell of her body and didn't even allow her to succumb to them. For whatever reason, they were given to them, and only for her to hold.

"I'm not talking to you as a superhero, or anything like that. I'm talking to you as June Sullivan, a lost girl who found someone who was just as weird as she was and who helped her overcome her fears and finally grow up. Don't let despair overcome you, Simon. There's so much in the world for you to see and experience, you can't really think you life is ending tonight. I know nothing can substitute the absence your father left, but you have us, and you have yourself. You-"

"I'm sorry, June."

Tears were already brimming her eyes, the first drop hadn't stained her cheek yet, when her words died in her throat and her heart sank to her feet. Simon hadn't even given her the chance to finish her speech, to find better words than the messy ones she was putting together. He didn't even send her a second look, and glance of resentment, as he grabbed Cecilia's lighter from the pocket of his jeans and backed away enough so that his feet splashed in gasoline. He didn't even look at her as he ignited the lighter and made it fall to the ground in slow motion, while the girl could do nothing but look, the timeless world oppressing her soul as it became the very witness of the loss of every hope.

June had barely the time to back away as the fire slowly spread through the whole clinic, surrounding Simon's body and taking him away from June's sight forever, his dull eyes hitting her so hard she knew she was never going to forget about them.

Time started again, but June didn't know the difference. She stood there, her knees eventually hitting the grass as Tony and Peter took their time to process the complete failure of their jobs as superheroes, because that's exactly what it was: failure. They had failed in every way possible, and not even Cecilia could sound satisfied about accomplishing her plan, because observing the building she had given her entire life to crumble to the ground with all her patients inside, innocent victims of a superior strength, she wished there could have been another solution, and she would have liked to create it herself, with the help of the broken girl in front of her that they had lost forever.

there are many things I want to say about this chapter but I'm gonna leave them all for the next one, which is the epilogue. :'(