Make Him Proud, Peter Parker

ONE. don't ever leave me, peter parker

Nellie was perched quietly in the bay window of her bedroom. The serene green of the trees and sunlight reflecting on the lake's surface on the other side of the crystal glass seemed so distant to her, as if she was seeing it through a television screen.

But this was her life. This was real. And it hurt like hell.

Nellie closed her journal of scribbles and tear-stained pages. She tucked her ink pen inside of the pages and set the book to her side. She picked up the framed photo from the cushion in the window sill where it had been tossed out of place the night before. She'd been searching her room for anything to make her feel more connected to him, but nothing seemed to satisfy the aching in her chest. The room itself was barely her room, more like a guest room. And that was just how she felt in it. . .like a guest.

Many of her belongings had been in storage for so long, and still were. So, at last, she was left only with the photo and the memory within it.

Nellie wiped a stray tear as it slipped down her rosy cheek. There was a delicate, rectangular imprint in the lavender silk that covered the window seat left behind by the photo frame. She gripped it tightly in her hands, staring down at it.

In the picture, Tony Stark had his arm wrapped around Nellie's shoulders, pulling her into his side with the biggest grin on his face. She, too, was smiling, and had one hand holding up her silver award for the Manhattan Young Writers Competition.

She shook her head as she reflected on the memory; though she'd only placed in second, Tony had treated her as if she'd won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was so proud of her. She remembered that feeling of support and fatherly love. She'd never experienced it before, and in that moment, it was stronger than she could have ever hoped.

"Are you ready, darling?" Pepper's voice sliced through the thick silence that had hung in the room for the past hour.

Nellie looked up from the photo in her hands to see Pepper standing in the doorway, not a single wrinkle in her fitted black dress. On the other hand, Nellie's dress was all crumpled and crinkled from curling up in the window seat for too long.

"Mommy, you forgot your earrings," Morgan's tiny figure appeared behind Pepper's legs.

Nellie sucked in a breath, still struggling to find the right words. Maybe there were none.

Before this moment, Nellie's life had been extremely unordinary. More so than she had expected, even for having a superhero for an adoptive parent and another one as a boyfriend.

One minute, Nellie had been walking through Central Park hand in hand with Peter Parker. She had been eating cereal on the rooftop of Stark Tower with Tony, watching the sunrise. She had been helping Pepper rearrange the furniture. She had been going to the three dollar movie nights with Peter, MJ, and Ned. She had been thrift shopping with Peter's Aunt May in Greenwich.

The next minute, Peter and Tony were off fighting battles that made Nellie sick to her stomach even thinking of. They were fighting beings she never even knew existed before then. They were doing the one thing that everyone else in the world needed them to be -- they were heroes.

Then, nothing.

From what she'd been told by the survivors, some other-worldly being named Thanos had snapped half of the Universe out of existence -- Nellie and Peter along with it.

During that time -- five years, from what she'd learned -- Nellie had no memories. She just simply had not existed. And then one day, she was back.

They all came back. Not a day older than when they'd disappeared. The world had changed, though. It had kept moving forward -- without them.

Nellie woke up in the same spot she had vanished -- the rooftop of Stark Tower -- where she'd lived with Tony and Pepper for almost a year before everything went down. She was alone and confused.