All I Ask of You

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 It still took most of the night for Annie to get to bed, though she had spent most of it talking to Peter. The guy was so stubborn and refused to leave her alone until he was positive that she was okay. Which, what had she expected? After several months of knowing him, Annie had never known him to just drop something.

What she hadn't expected was for Tony to walk right into the house, yelling for everyone to get up. Why in the world did they have to get up so early? They had the entire summer ahead of them.

"Come on, you need to get up," Tony said, knocking on her door.

Annie groaned, "Why?"

"Because I made breakfast," he replied.

Annie sighed, "Can't you make it later?"

"It is later," he stated, "It's after nine."

"That's not later!" Annie exclaimed.

"Just get out of bed," he said, and Annie could almost hear him rolling his eyes.

Annie took a few minutes, but she eventually made it out of her room. While she was the last one out, she was also willing to bet she was the one who had gotten the least amount of sleep. She had been awake until four in the morning. Though it beat waking up in the middle of the night.

Once she was out in the kitchen, Harper handed Annie a cup full of coffee, "You look dead."

"It's because I didn't sleep much," Annie replied, taking the cup and taking a drink of the bitter liquid.

Peter frowned, "I don't know how you can drink that stuff plain."

"Because this isn't the first time she's gone weeks with low sleep," Harper responded, sitting down, "I'm telling you, ya gotta get tested for manic depression."

Annie shrugged, "I'll do that once I turn eighteen. That's the only time they'll be able to do anything about it."

"Why are we saying she has manic depression?" asked Tony.

"Oh, because I go through weeks where I just go completely crazy and productive and get no sleep, but I throw myself into everything. And then I just crash for a few weeks and can't get myself to do much. I don't really know why, but I have a few theories," she explained.

Pepper frowned, "Maybe you couldn't get diagnosed, but you could at least find better ways to deal with it."

"Yeah, but I don't wanna give up my identity or anything. The last thing I need is for my parents to find out. Plus I only have, like, two more years before I move out. It'll all work itself out," she said, taking another drink.

Tony shook his head, "That's beside the point. I'm gonna start training you guys today, though, you both need to work together more."

"But Mr. Stark, we're already working together," Peter pointed out.

Annie sighed, "Yeah, but half the time I couldn't stand you and the other half of the time we weren't really working together. It was really just me and my chronic dumbassery."

"She's kind of right. If you're gonna team up, which you need to do if anything's gonna work out with this whole Carnival business. You have to be coordinated," Tony said, taking a bite of pancakes.

Peter nodded slowly, "Okay, but how do we even know what to do about Carnival? My webbing didn't even stop the guy."

"Because he mimics powers. Remember how I basically blasted off your webbing when we fought that one time? He can do the exact same thing," she replied.