First Cause • Spider-Man: Homecoming [Unedited]

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Laying diagonally across the cramped foam of her cabin's single cot, submerged in complete darkness, Gadea stares into space and wills tears to flow. For the dam blocking her subconscious to swell to the point of overflow, and burst in a spectacular display of raw and unfettered emotion.

A catharsis, if you will. Something to indicate to her what she has been through in the past twenty four hours is an experience worthy of a well and true nervous breakdown, one that is way overdue.

Her eyes, as uncooperative as ever, remain bone dry. Her larynx doesn't swell in her throat, aching to collapse into fits of tearful sobs and gut-wrenching weeping. She retains her ability to respirate out of her nostrils, their pathways free of crying-induced snot.

None of these things particularly strike her as odd, for she already knows. Crying evades her because she's made up her mind that this is not the action to perform in order to change the tune of her dilemma for good. As that's exactly what she intends to do.

Working out just what exactly 'for good' entails in Gadea's mind is food for thought, and one whose edibility concerns her, but she decides to shelf away the brainchild for proper prospection later. Preferably when her clothes aren't still sopping wet with water from an impromptu dive into the East River and sweat from exerting herself running through the city to get to her ship whenever her water-damaged boots momentarily gave up the ghost.

Maybe when she's gotten herself out of this dissociative state, where her emotions feel smothered underneath a pillow and her mind is running a mile a minute with ideas and suggestions, none of which are all that family-friendly.

When she isn't sitting in the pitch black dark still decked out in her armor, blinking once every thirty seconds and laying so still, even she has to perform well checks to confirm that she's still alive.

Could be when she's snapped out of whatever funk she's in and remember she wasn't by herself on that ferry. That she left Peter alone to deal with a whole lot, and some time later, while she's relatively safe, Peter's whereabouts and state of wellbeing cannot be confirmed.

Perhaps when she's attended to all that need attending to. Like attaching the fuel pump on her secondary reserve to the emergency capsule she swiped from the Retrieval and Obedience ship before she promptly blew it up. And with the newfound electricity powering her ship will bring about, she can finally charge her dead timekeeper, run the heat and light, and maybe see about rigging up a new transponder to receive and send holo-messages.

For what she has in mind, she'll need a clear head. The clearest head she can possible have, and staying here on her cramped, desolate ship is not going to aid her in clearing her mind. Being alone isn't going to aid her in clearing her mind.

In a daze, Gadea rises from the bed and strips down to her underclothes. Her cabin, her entire ship, is something of a mess; water and muddied tracks leading from where she boarded at the front entrance a half hour ago leave a trail of messy footprints to both her cabin and outside the engine room, where the emergency fuel capsule sits waiting.