Morningstar 💫🦇 Peter Parker (Discontinued)

𝖎. Fridays Uptown

       Normally Izzy can get out of these things. The meaningless ones, anyway. She'll send a pathetic note about how she's feeling super ill and that'll be that. But, tonight's the night of her dad's event, the opening of a new science institution. He's a Senator and apparently sponsoring this building will help him get the vote come next election. "It's going to be open to schools for field trips, and jobs and paid internships will be available for college students," he had said on the TV that morning. It's weird, Izzy thinks, when she sees her dad speaking on CBS but she hasn't seen him in a month. It's weird, but the sort of weird that no one can really get. Like, she gets it. How more first world can you get? My dad's on TV but it's like, super weird!

       But anyway. The Oswald Centre of Science and Technology opens its doors tonight, with big scissors cutting the ribbon and everything, and obviously Izzy's got to be there to attend. Even Elijah's back from college for tonight. They've been able to bring her nanny Marie, too, banking on the fact that no one connects the dots between her nanny, the blonde woman that's been spotted with Captain America before, and the faded photographs of the lost princess of Belgium, who went missing at the start of World War Two. Tonight's a big night for Izzy's dad.

       "Isabelle," says someone — a husband of someone her dad works with — as they smile at her. The sympathy across their face instantly tells her what this is going to be about. "You're looking well... How have you been, since... what happened?"

       'What happened' is a lot less scandalous than it sounds. It really refers back to when HYDRA kidnapped her — they all think it's because of her dad, not the fact that she's the Devil's daughter. And Isabelle never truly knows how to reply. Because, she can't honestly tell them how she's been. No one wants to know, 'I've been having recurring nightmares about being kidnapped!' and 'I can't open the front door anymore because I think an organisation made from Hitler's fucking sperm is going to kidnap me again!' And don't forget the best one: 'Because of that whole Thing I had to later fight evil robots in Sokovia and I watched someone die! Right in front of me! Because they were protecting me! They barely even knew me, but they died for me! Love that!"

       "I'm doing great," says Isabelle, nodding, already spiralling in her head. She looks around, hoping she can get out of this conversation soon. "Yeah, uh... Super duper great, really..." She forces a smile, and she tries to block out the image in her mind, of the door to her apartment being opened by a sinister force... "If you'll excuse me..."

       With that she walks away. She doesn't know what she's going to do. She can't leave, not until everyone else does, this is her dad's special night, but she can't deal with another person asking how she's been. It makes it worse. Already does she spend every day a little jittery, already does she spend every day blocking out every memory of what happened, thinking to herself, don't think about it, Izzy, don't think about it... Sometimes she wishes she could forget it.

       Other times she acknowledges that she doesn't really want to forget it, because if she forgot being kidnapped, she'd forget meeting the Avengers, and even fighting alongside the Avengers. Whenever she thinks about what happened, she tries to focus on the best part: how little Isabelle, who was stumbling through the corridors, this close to collapsing, was found and rescued by the person she's looked up to her entire life... Like, it was as if she was on the brink of death, and Hannah fucking Montana helped her out. It was that level of amazing to her.

       But, it's hard to keep that part in mind. Quickly, thinking about being kidnapped, that split second when she opened the door and they restrained her, turns into a spiralling mess, remembering the way she kept on thinking to herself, Why didn't I keep the door locked? Why didn't I fight? Why didn't I hide? Those forty days of suffering are hard to think past most of the time. Which is why, right now, Izzy's making a bee-line out of the hall, to the stairs leading all the way downstairs. She isn't going to leave, but she sits down on the steps, and she puts her head in her hands.