|| GET WELL SOON || Peter Parker Love Story

Chapter XV

"You know nothing. Now I'm grateful to you for helping save my daughter, but don't pretend as if you know what is best for her. Why don't you swing off and do some backflips somewhere far from here before my gratitude runs out."

So she had been here ever since, her body gradually healing itself until all traces of the torture she had endured vanished. Though it did nothing for the empty cavern that gradually expanded within her chest and limbs or the phantom pain of the wounds her powers seamlessly removed. Sophia had all but quarantined herself within her bedroom, feeling content beneath her bedsheets.

Try as she might, she couldn't even remember how she'd come to be captured. She remembered going to Oscorp--seeing Norman there--but the rest was blank. Like the page of a book ripped from its seams. Why couldn't it be the same for the rest of her time there? But there would be no forgetting her experience within those walls . . . ever.

Flashes of red and blue lights coming from outside her window cast on the wall above her bed. The Rambeau home had become an impenetrable fortress with her father assigning officers around every square inch of their home ever since she overheard the hushed conversation between her father and Idris outside her door. None of the units had seen any sign of Norman Osborn or the auburn-haired scientist Lottie described since that night of her rescue. And what was hoped to be a story kept under wraps was quickly blown up across every newspaper in New York with journalists hungry for a story of the now missing CEO of Oscorp. Luckily, none of the papers gave out her name. Though the police cars outside their house did little to help sway people from assuming it was poor Sophia Rambeau that was the captured girl experimented on by mad scientists.

The violet glow beneath her skin ignited beneath the blankets. Instead of tears, Sophia's only response was to reach for the one thing she'd requested for Idris to go out and get one night when he came to check on her condition. A pair of leather gloves.

Silly as it was, they helped to keep her decomposing powers at bay. If she didn't see the luminous veins whenever they appeared, it was easier for her to control retreating the power within herself. Though it didn't always work. She had all but ruined her bathtub and various items in her room whenever she got too emotional due to flashbacks and couldn't control the new horror that the serum bestowed on her.

It seemed as if she'd all but lost her ability to heal. Yes, her body repaired her wounds on its own, but the golden touch of healing she'd known all her life vanished. Even with the hardest of concentration that she could muster, her hands illuminated that haunting, amethyst shade--destroying everything she touched.

How was she going to ever walk back out into the world?

She couldn't. Not until she found that woman and forced those answers of hers out.

Now that she thought about it, the idea consumed her. Why was she laying here wallowing when she could possibly be the only person to find this woman? A person that seemed to only want to make herself known to Sophia alone.

Without thinking, Sophia raced for the closet, throwing on her suit.

It was late enough that she knew that Idris would be sleeping and her father would be patrolling outside the house with the other officers. So she was the quietest she'd ever been as she covered her mouth and nose with her mask, slipping up towards the roof of their home from the window. She waited until the perfect moment to get a running start and leap across to the balcony of a complex off of their property.

The jump was a little too easy, she noticed. Her muscles didn't need to work nearly as hard to launch her across the air. Part of her wanted to be impressed while the other part only held resentment, knowing exactly where her new strength came from.